Next morning, profoundly relaxed, I decided to breakfast in my room, congratulating myself that my luck had turned at last. My cocaine protected me from most venereal dangers and Mercy had told me where I might obtain fresh supplies. Neither child was a stranger to the drug. They had, moreover, information where to sell gold at top prices, where to buy a cripple if I should ever desire one, what the best private lodgings were. A friendly whore is one’s best source of knowledge in any large town. She moves in a wide social sphere and hears everything. True she has a penchant for sensational gossip, mystery, conspiracy and romantic mysticism, but that can be discounted. In a single night I learned of bordellos staffed entirely by young Circassian boys, of women who made and sold absinthe, of ‘dealers’ from Trieste and Marseilles who continued an age-old white slave trade to markets in Syria, Egypt and Anatolia. I now knew of an Athenian who would sell me a modern revolver and ammunition. If I left the hotel and walked for three minutes towards Galata I should find someone to prepare me a fresh passport in another name. Had I needed to live on my wits, as in Kiev and Odessa, it would have taken me two days to make all the appropriate contacts. The Pera bohemians prided themselves on their city’s reputation, just as my old Moldavanka friends spoke warmly of local gang leaders and madames as others spoke of film stars. In refusing to judge such people I was quite unconsciously following the edicts of Nietzsche and formulating my own morality which, in time, would be stronger than anything I could have learned in a comfortable and conventional life. Without that background, it is unlikely I should have survived at all.
Lifting myself on my sweet-smelling pillows, I pressed the bell beside my bed. A waiter answered almost at once and I ordered the small breakfast, an English newspaper, some hot water. He returned with my tray and a note from Leda Nicolayevna. Jack Bragg had told her where I was staying. She suggested lunch at Tokatlian’s. She would arrive at twelve-thirty and would wait until two. Sentimentally, full of languid love for the world at large, I decided to keep the appointment. My evening was already planned (I would spend it with Mercy and two of her friends. Betty had a previous engagement), but it would be unwise to snub the Baroness altogether. There was nothing to be gained by hurting her feelings. Moreover I was now in a position to help her get to Venice, should she wish to go. Betty had told me of a man who earned his living illegally ferrying refugees to Italy. The fare was very high, of course. I would offer to pay it.
Dressed in my dark green Irish twill I arrived at Tokatlian’s by one. The restaurant occupied the lower part of a private hotel (Mercy had spoke of its doubtful reputation) and had recently been modernised in the Persian style, with a preponderance of green, yellow and red mosaics. I never discovered if an Armenian called Tokatlian still owned the place. The manager was Dutch. Mr Olmejer had committed some crime, or offended some institution, in the East Indies and could not return to Holland. The restaurant’s huge plate-glass windows revealed a crowd of Levantine businessmen, Allied service officers, diplomats, journalists, many apparently well-to-do Russian émigrés. A tango orchestra played softly on the far side behind potted palms. I would be reminded later of those elaborate cinema foyers we used to have, when films were worth watching, told the truth and were therefore still popular. A tail-coated head waiter bowed and asked if I had made a reservation. I was meeting the Baroness von Ruckstühl I murmured, peering through the ferns and palms to glimpse her at a table in the second gallery, overhead. The waiter bowed again, offered to lead me to her, but I thanked him and made my own way through the restaurant. Her magnificent head tilted back as she talked to the tall man dressed formally in frock-coat and dark trousers who stood smiling beside her chair. He had conventional good looks and was obviously army-trained. I was almost glad to feel a pang of jealousy. It made me realise I retained feeling for her. The meeting would not therefore be as difficult as I had feared. Her brown velvet luncheon frock and a torque of pheasant feathers gave her a pleasantly pastoral look; an eighteenth-century aristocratic shepherdess. As I mounted the half-spiral of the stairs she saw me and waved a gloved, animated hand. She introduced me to her companion. Count Siniutkin seemed a shade embarrassed. I suspected he had wanted to leave before I arrived. ‘But perhaps you already know each other?’ she said. ‘From Moscow?’ I said I had never visited Moscow, but he seemed slightly familiar, and I, he said, to him. His expression was pleasant and open, unspoiled by a scar running from the right-hand corner of his lip to his jawbone. Indeed, the scar enhanced what would otherwise have been unremarkable good looks. His manner was self-effacing, his voice soft and a little sad. I found him attractive. My jealousy disappeared. I apologised to the Baroness for failing to contact her the previous evening. (‘A meeting with some British military people.’) I invited the Count to join us. He hesitated. ‘Oh, for a few minutes, you must!’ The Baroness spoke from generous good manners. Plainly she preferred to be alone with me.