‘Fraternal greetings, comrades.’ I spread my arms wide, as if to embrace them. ‘Pyatnitski. Engineer and mechanic.’
In Russian one of them said dully, ‘What?’ I repeated myself, word for word. A man in a clean, grey great coat and regulation cap came striding up. He said cheerfully, ‘They don’t know any Russian except military stuff. They can take orders, poor bastards, but they can’t follow a joke. They’re from Volhynia. They’ll understand Polish.’
I thought it best not to mention my Polish. Knowledge is often of most use when kept to oneself.
‘Where are we?’ I asked.
He was amused. ‘Purgatory. We’ve taken over the town as our base. Who are you with?’ He was clean-shaven and spoke with an educated accent. He signed for the truck to pull over towards a church being used as a storehouse.
‘I was going to Odessa. Grishenko asked me to fix the truck, so I obliged. Is there anywhere I can send a telegram?’
‘Someone’s repairing the wires. They’ll be working by morning. At least as far as Ekaterinoslav.’
It would be possible to catch a train from Ekaterinoslav. Sotnik Grishenko and his men came plodding up on weary ponies. ‘Trust you to be hob-nobbing with Jews, Yermeloff!’ He dismounted and yawned.
Yermeloff laughed. ‘He said his name’s Pyatnitski.’
‘He’s got papers to prove it, too.’ These were drawn from the dirty sleeve. ‘See?’
Yermeloff could read. In the bad light he looked at them and shrugged. ‘They’re good papers. Are you on your way out of Russia?’
‘Certainly not.’ I reached for my passport. Yermeloff hesitated, glanced at Grishenko, then gave it to me. I put it in my pocket. ‘I’m working for the Party.’
‘You’re from Moscow?’
‘No. I’m from Kiev. I’m as good a Ukrainian as anyone. I want Ukraine to have her old pride back.’
Grishenko snorted. ‘Well, Katsupi and yids stick together. Good luck with him, Yermeloff. But don’t let him escape, eh? We’ve uses for him. He muttered a spell over our truck and she’s as good as new.’ He crossed to the church and, leading the two little girls by their hands, entered the doors, like, a father on his way to worship.
Yermeloff said, ‘You needn’t be afraid. I have Jewish comrades.’
‘I have Cossack blood,’ I told him. ‘It is my misfortune if I look Jewish to you. Is everyone who is not fair-haired, pink-skinned, a Jew? Is your leader a Jew?’
‘Everyone’s a Jew to Grishenko. It makes killing them easier. You don’t really talk like a Jew. I apologise.’
This well-educated man might be useful as an ally. I accepted his apology in the hope of encouraging his protection. The trouble with brutes is that they are suspicious of Reason yet become aggressive if you shout at them. God knows what their lives are like as children.
We had arrived at a house on one side of the broad, muddy, unmade streets, some distance from the church. It was a small house, built around a courtyard in which two ponies and a goat were tethered. ‘Are you really an engineer?’ Yermeloff asked. ‘Or were you just lucky?’ His cool eyes looked into mine with an expression of the mildest curiosity. He laughed. ‘I was a lieutenant in the Tsarist army. I’m a captain with our Ataman. Would the Bolsheviks make me a general, do you think?’
We entered the doorway. A black-clad woman of indeterminate age shuffled ahead of us along a dirty passage. The walls had patches on them where ikons and pictures had been. ‘That’s our hostess.’ Sotnik Yermeloff called out to her, is there any tea left, pani?’ She went into her room. Bolts were pulled. He was philosophical. ‘She pretends to be deaf. You’d be surprised how many deaf people there are in this district. Everywhere else we’ve stayed, too. At least three-quarters of the population. They go deaf at about nine years old. Before that, they’re dumb.’
We came to a square room with a stove in it. The stove had been decorated with primitive paintings. Most of these had peeled away or been blackened by soot and time. Three other officers, all in different uniforms, sat at benches around the stove. They shared a large piece of meat which they passed from hand to hand. There was black bread. Some vodka.
‘Do you mind if this comrade joins us?’ Yermeloff went close to the stove. They looked at me. One of them, with a dark half-beard and scarred forehead, chuckled. ‘Not at all. Have some bread. Have some pork.’ I had already had the herring and I did not look forward to mingling spittle with these ruffians. They probably had at least three kinds of venereal disease. I contented myself with a large piece of rough bread and a can of thick, acrid tea which had been left on the stove. I was offered no vodka. I had become very tired. I had had little sleep for nights and no opportunity of a reviving sniff of cocaine. I said I wished to urinate; was there a place? ‘In the yard with the horses. The real privy got damaged last night. We tried to pull Yuri out because he’d been in too long. But we pulled through the wrong hole.’ I left these jolly fellows and returned to the yard. It was so cold that any desire to answer the call of nature was instantly dismissed. With the house-door shut behind me, I stood looking at the ponies. The goat was now in the corner, being milked by a crazed-looking girl.
I reached surreptitiously for my cocaine, found a small ‘single-dose’ packet I had hidden, dragged out my handkerchief and pretended to blow my nose. It is not the best method of taking cocaine, but it was the only one available. I emptied the packet into the handkerchief. I sniffed first through one nostril, then the other, until I had inhaled everything possible. It was a large amount. I had come to over-use the drug while working on the Violet Ray. Even this dose had only a minimal effect. I still felt slow and drowsy. But my head had cleared a little.
Nobody knew what was going on in Ukraine in those days: armies came and went, won and lost battles, looted towns, were termed glorious allies, barbaric enemies, treacherous comrades - often within the same hour: bandits, Cossacks, Anarchists, Bolsheviks, Nationalists. The words were meaningless. The loyalties of the various armies were, as we say in chemistry, highly volatile. I could not know if Hrihorieff (who had already fought with Skoropadskya and Petlyura) was with the Bolsheviks or not. He could be pretending to be with them; he could be pretending to be against them. He could be pretending to parley to gain time for his men out on raids. It was the essence, I suppose, of guerilla war. Our land had become worse than the Western prairies at the time of Custer. It was even more savage and with no single government in control. The Seventh Cavalry might well arrive; but it could be in league with the Indians or working on its own account, like Quantrill in the American Civil War.
The oil-lamp in the room was burning low as I came back. All the soldiers with the exception of Captain Yermeloff had huddled down into rags and stolen shirts and were going to sleep. Yermeloff unbuttoned his greatcoat. He tried to roll a cigarette out of newspaper and tea-leaves. I slipped two of my papyrussa from my pocket and offered him one. He was grateful. We lit the cigarettes. It is a twentieth-century ritual, this exchanging and lighting of cigarettes. It requires proper analysis by those who study human behaviour. We sat down together against the wall nearest the door. Yermeloff put the lamp between us. It was cold. The other soldiers had taken the best positions near the stove. ‘Where’s your main host?’ I asked.
‘Hrihorieff? His headquarters. Alexandriya. We’re a foraging force.’
‘My father was a Zaporizhian Cossack,’ I said. ‘So I have blood-ties with the Ataman.’