There was a sound of feet in the passage outside. A woman’s voice. Mrs Cornelius came in. She was wearing a loose, one-piece dress made of bright red silk and she had a red cloche on her head. Her lips and cheeks were carmine and emphasised the blue of her eyes, the gold of her hair. When she saw me she stopped dead and began to laugh.
‘ ‘Ullo, Ivan!’ She embraced me. ‘Yore a proper littel bad kopek, ain’t yer!’
‘You’re with the Reds?’ I said in English.
‘Been wiv ‘em all ther time, ain’t I? Lucky fer me, eh? Well, they’re more fun than the ovvers. Or were. I’ve got a noo boyfriend. ‘E’s ever so important.’
The Chekist was now looking firmly at his polished boots and frowning. He said something very sharp to the sailors. They began to carry Mrs Cornelius’s trunks into the room. She glanced round. ‘I’m not kickin’ yer art, am I? They’ll do anyfink fer me. But it’s too much, reelly. Sort o’ musical chairs. Yer never know ‘ose bed yore gonna sleep in next, eh?’ She threw back her head and bellowed with laughter. She giggled. She put a soft hand on my arm. ‘Yer gotter larf, incha?’
I did my best to smile and to adopt an easy stance which might convince the Chekist, who remained in the room, that I was one of the party elite. ‘Is Lunarcharsky here?’ I asked.
“E stopped bein’ any fun ages ago. And ‘is wife or somefink got stroppy. Nar. I’m serposed to be wiv Leo, but ‘e keeps goin’ ter ower places. I jest carn’t catch upwiv’imat all. I don’t reelly mind.’
‘Leo?’
‘Lev,’ she said. ‘You know. Trotsky. Littel trotty-true-ski I corl ‘im. Har, har, har.’
‘You’re his - paramour ...’
‘Lovely of yer ter say so, Ivan. I’m ‘is bit o’ all right, if that’s wot yer mean. Well, it’s fer the best. I’m tryin’ ter get back ter the sarth. Is that wot you’re doin’? I couldn’t stand anuvver winter’ere, could you?’
‘To Odessa?’
‘Seemed a good idear. ‘E don’t speak a word o’ English,’ she confided of the commissar, who was looking very sourly at both of us, ‘and ‘e ‘ates me. ‘E don’t seem too bloody fond o’ you, by ther look of it.’
‘I don’t think he is. You are going to the coast, then?’
‘I’ve orlways liked ther seaside.’ She winked. ‘Funny time ter pick fer an ‘oliday, innit?’
She knew I was in trouble. It was a knack she had. ‘Wot’s ther service like ‘ere?’ she asked casually.
‘It depends who you are.’
The leather-jacket said: ‘Would you mind speaking Russian, comrade. When in Rome...’
‘Russki?’ Mrs Cornelius replied in her abominable and attractive Russian. It was easy to see how, with her beauty and her spirit and her accent, she had won the hearts of the top Bolsheviks. She baffled the Chekist far more than I had. She laughed. He turned away to hide his scowl, ‘If yer like, Ivan.’ It seemed she addressed everyone by the same name. ‘This is a very good comrade. He is on his way to Odessa to work for the party there. He is known to many leading comrades from Petrograd days. I think you will find he and Comrade Stalin are old friends.’ The so-called ‘Siberian’ Bolsheviks had more weight with the rank-and-file at that time. Stalin was then just a name to me, associated with various rather incompetently waged Civil War campaigns and not popular with the Jewish intellectuals who controlled Party policies.
I said, taking out my watch, that I had probably missed the Odessa train. The Chekist went to put his cigarette out in a spittoon. ‘It was stopped. It’s being searched at Fastov.’
‘That’s all right, then.’ I make no attempt to imitate Mrs Cornelius’s Russian. ‘You can send a telegram and tell them to hold it up a bit longer.’
‘But how can I get to Fastov?’ I asked a reasonable question.
‘Same way as the troops,’ she told me. ‘By motor.’
‘I am not fortunate enough ...’
She slapped me on the shoulder. She began to pull on a huge fox-fur coat with a matching hat. ‘Daft!’ she said in English. ‘We’ll go in my bleedin’ motor, won’t we!’
On her instructions, the sailors picked up my bags. They took them down to her large Mercedes which was still parked outside the main doors. There was oil on the snow. I thought it was blood. ‘‘Op in,’ she told me. I climbed into the back seats. I had never experienced a car like it. It felt warm under the canopy. In Russian she said to the driver: ‘What’s the benzine situation?’
‘To go where?’ The driver wore a Red Army cap with earflaps, and a huge red star sewn on the front. Otherwise he was dressed in the regular khaki of a Tsarist soldier: trenchcoat, gloves, scarf wound round the lower part of his face against the cold, and goggles.
‘Fastov, was it?’ Mrs Cornelius turned to me.
‘Fastov,’ I said.
‘We can get there.’ The driver was amused. ‘And probably back.’
‘Perfect.’
The Chekist stood outside the hotel. His hands were deep in his pockets. He looked smug. I remembered. ‘You have my papers, comrade.’
As one robbed of his last consolation, he gave them to me. He must have been fondling them. Plainly he disapproved of Mrs Cornelius, but he had no power over her. Now he had no power over me. He had become like a demon in a pentagram.
‘Don’t forget about the cable,’ Mrs Cornelius told him. ‘And if Comrade Trotsky’s in touch asking for me, tell him I’ve put Comrade Pyat on the train to Odessa will you?’
‘Yes, comrade.’ He glared at us. The Mercedes, its engine cranked by grinning sailors, began to shake and mutter. Two of the sailors jumped into the front seats beside the driver. A third stood on the running board, his rifle on his shoulder. The driver engaged the engine, and we were off in style, flying the red hammer-and-sickle flag: an official Bolshevik car! More than once, as we left Kiev behind, we were cheered by the conquering Reds. It was an irony I think Mrs Cornelius appreciated. She would often wave back, but more like a queen than a comrade. It was then that I experienced one of my first ‘releases’. There are a number of them. I value them greatly. They are all specific to this century (i.e. I do not include the release of sexual fulfilment): the Release of Flying; the Release of Steam-liner Sailing; the Release of Rapid Train Travel; the Release of Motoring. In that monstrous German automobile, guarded by elite members of the Revolutionary Army, with a beautiful foreign woman at my side (her rose perfume, her furs, her wonderful complexion, her stylish self-assurance) I knew the Release of Motoring. I resolved to obtain such a car as soon as possible. She too was enjoying the ride. She chuckled. ‘Wot a pair o’ survivors we are, you an’ me, Ivan. That’s ther fing I like most abaht yer, I fink.’
I was still dazed by what had taken place. It was she, after all, who had rescued me. Without her, I should be dead. She nudged me in the side. ‘Never say die, eh?’
Suddenly I was laughing as she, alone, has been able to make me laugh. I laughed like a child.
Between avenues of lime trees, we travelled towards Fastov. I remembered my gypsy Zoyea. I imagined myself driving her in this car. It was not disloyalty to my rescuer to enjoy this fantasy. Mrs Cornelius had no sexual claims on me. I had none on her. She is the best friend I ever had. And all because I had visited a dentist in Odessa and been able to speak English! My luck since then was chiefly to stem from her. She became my mother, sister, goddess, guardian angel. And yet most of the time she hardly noticed me. I amused her. She had as much affection for me as a woman might have for a favourite cat. No more and no less. And, like a favourite cat, I survived to give her some comfort, I hope, in her old age. She wore very well. It was only, really, in the fifties that she began to decline and run to fat, though she had always been built on proper feminine proportions. I hate these skinny girls who try to look like boys. No wonder everyone today is a homosexual. We had thin girls in the twenties, but Mrs Cornelius was always feminine. I cannot say I have been as completely certain of my own sexuality as she, but for that, I suppose, I must blame Prince Nikolai Feodorovitch Petroff and perhaps even my cousin Shura. Unwittingly, Shura showed me that women are not to be trusted: they try too hard to please too many people. It is a man’s world. Those idiots who come mincing into my shop have no idea what I have witnessed. I understand every word, every hint, every gesture. The world did not begin in 1965. Perhaps it ended then. Affection, moderation, understanding; these are now only of value to the elderly. And the elderly are no longer respected. In Russia, if I lived there, they would be calling me an old bore: boltun. We laughed at them in Kiev: the Jews of Podol who had nothing but gossip and memory, which they mistook for experience. It was that sentimentality which used to irritate me. It still does. It is not surprising their sons rebel and become cruel, pragmatic revolutionaries; cynicism is the other side of the sentimental coin.