The sailors were surprisingly good-natured about the trip. I think they enjoyed the motor-car. They had seen a great deal of the world. They had known what it was to risk their lives. They were, in their way, men of good will. They have not changed much, our Russian sailors. When I go to the docks for my vodka, as I still try to do, I meet them and speak to them. They are just as self-confidently tolerant and tough. They were fond of Mrs Cornelius. They flattered her with all sorts of purring Russian endearments, as they would flatter their sweethearts. She responded by blowing them kisses and sharing her food and cigarettes with them.
Scores of dead horses were piled alongside the Fastov road. They were stiffening. Some were still warm; you could smell them. There were human corpses as well, sprawled in the winter sun; young peasant bodies left behind as Petlyura had tried to leave me behind, to cover his escape. Petlyura had been another sentimentalist who betrayed all he claimed to stand for. As usual he had accused as traitors those he had misled; sacrificing them to his enemies when they had come to doubt his lies. They probably deserved their fate. Some still held their booty: a pair of women’s shoes, a length of cloth, an ornamental sword. But most had already been stripped by the followers of Marx and Lenin. We passed a black line of dead Orthodox priests. The line had fallen neatly against a snow-drift. Behind the drift was an almost identical line of birches. It was as if shadows had been reversed, for the sun was on our side of the trees.
There was blood, too, and that was black. The priests had been dead for some while. Their crucifixes had been cut from them, of course, as well as their rings, but otherwise their clothing was neatly arranged. Some pious woman had come upon them in the morning and attempted to give them a semblance of dignity. I remembered the church and the singing. The sweet girls’ voices. I think Catholic Petlyurists had shot the priests.
Mrs Cornelius avoided the sight. ‘Between you an’ me, Ivan,’ she confided, ‘I wasn’t expectin’ nuffink like this. It’s wot comes o’ bein’ English, I s’pose. It wouldn’t ‘appen over there. You wanna get ter London, mate.’
‘I had considered it.’
‘Yer might find me there a’ead o’ yer.’ She gave the sailor on the running board a cigarette she had already lit. She winked and laughed with him. it woz a soft spot fer sailormen got me inter me present predic, really, wannit?’
‘You’ve not been back to Odessa?’
‘Nar! I ‘alf-’oped, see, ter make ther Finlan’ train an’ go that way, like we wos talkin’ abart. But fings got orl wonky some’ow. An’ Leo can be a jealous pig. In spite o’ the fac’ ‘e’s not exactly single.’
‘Why not come with me to Odessa? The French are in control there.’
‘An’ a lot o’ bloody Bolshies, mark my words. I’ve ‘eard.’
‘Are you frightened they’ll do something to you?’
‘Nar! They got no reel respec’ fer women, any of ‘em. That’s me strengf, yeah? Know wot I mean?’
‘I think so.’
‘They don’t reckon women count. Unless they’re in ther Party, that is. I’m just a fancy-bit ter them. I’ll be orl right. If Leo ‘eard I’d got on that bloody train wiv you, ‘e’d jest bring it back, wouldn’t ‘e?’
‘I suppose he would.’ I rather regretted the principles which had, and always will, stopped me from leaguing myself with the Communists. They certainly knew how to gain and hold power better than any of their rivals. They saw and accepted no ambiguities. Many non-Bolsheviks eventually came round to Lenin. It was better to have Bolshevik order than no order at all.
As we entered the rather unattractive town of Fastov, I saw a red flag flying from the dome of the church. A synagogue was burning. There were Red Cossacks everywhere and a considerable amount of filth and confusion. Overhead, a biplane dropped, observed us, then flew away towards the west. As if waiting to board a train, guns and horses crowded the street leading to the station. The long Odessa train had been shunted off the main line into a siding. People crowded around it. There were Red Guards, Chekists, women with babies which they displayed like talismans, Jews who argued vehemently with officials, men in uniform from which all insignia had been ripped: the wadding showed through their greatcoats, so urgently had those symbols been removed. Youths gave the Bolshevik salute, old men wandered about in the deep snow, looking for things which had been dropped, beautiful girls fluttered their eyelashes and tried to flirt with the leather-jackets. Cossacks, with red stars on their caps, were lounging over their ponies making filthy remarks to all and sundry (there is nothing worse than a Cossack who has gone to the bad), while sailors marshalled whole lines of workers and peasants beside the train and into the first-class compartments which filled up rapidly and had begun to smell of urine. The richer people were being forced to enter the fourth-class compartments, or even the animal-wagons at the rear.
The car bumped along a track and came to a stop. An officer in ordinary military clothes, wearing a cloak and an old Tsarist blue and white uniform with the inevitable red stars, came up to us. He did not salute. All the usual disciplines had been abolished at that time. They would return with a vengeance. People were astonished in World War II when Stalin brought back the entire paraphernalia of military rank and etiquette. He was sensible. While war is a fact of life, soldiers must exist; while soldiers exist, there must be proper ways of controlling them.
Mrs Cornelius knew the officer. She greeted him. He grinned at her. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘It’s my friend,’ she said. ‘He needs to be on the Odessa train. Party business. He’s a courier for Commissar Trotsky.’
‘There’s a carriage at the front for proletarian representatives. They plan to argue with French soldiers. Do you think they’ll succeed, comrade?’ He seemed anxious for an answer from me.
‘There’s every chance,’ I told him. I privately prayed the canker of Bolshevism would never touch France. But it was like a gas used in the trenches. It touched everyone. Bolshevism would have died out completely by now if it had not been for that shot at Sarajevo.
They had rounded up a number of people in civilian clothes. I had seen some of them only recently. Then, they had been wearing Petlyurist uniforms. They were taken away behind an embankment. There was a burst or two of machine-gun fire and some laughter. The guards returned without their prisoners. I thanked God and Mrs Cornelius for my escape. By oversleeping, I had missed the train and probably that firing squad.
Mrs Cornelius, with a gesture which reminded me of my mother, at once began to joke with the sailors, asking them which girl they liked the look of most. ‘Anything would do me at the moment,’ one said. ‘I’ll take a horse if the Cossack leaves it alone for a minute.’