‘Part of the job. I’ll be all right.’ I refused to discuss my cuts and bruises. There are few varieties of discretion which impress a woman more, yet almost invariably the simple cause of such secrecy is a man not wishing to admit being bested in a fight or otherwise made a fool of. To change the subject I asked after Kitty. The Baroness shrugged. Her daughter was bored. There were no suitable schools for the child and she could not speak the language well enough to take lessons with the German children’s governess. ‘She reads the few suitable Russian books we find. In the afternoons we walk in the park. Today we went up to the Russian embassy.’
I had heard it was bedlam there. She agreed. ‘People sleeping shoulder to shoulder in the old ballroom. No space left for the smallest baby. And fed like paupers from big soup tureens. It’s very sad, Simka. Those people are from the best families.’
‘They are alive.’ I had little sympathy for them. After all, I had issued many of them with their passports. This was better than anything they might have faced if they had stayed. ‘Unlike their Tsar,’ I added.
‘It depressed me terribly. And so many orphans. What would become of Kitty if something happened to me? There are thousands of human predators in this city. The police are useless. I was insulted twice, you know, on the way here. By Europeans! Nobody will accept authority. The British do their best, but one can’t always find the redcaps. And Marusya Veranovna’s taken to drink.’
I was tired. I suggested we go at once to our room above the apartment. She rose with alacrity, all her morbid, petty little concerns forgotten at the prospect of satisfying her lust. I used her with gusto. She offered herself up to any game I suggested. Women, as I well knew, only become downhearted when they do not receive enough attention; and I gave my Baroness the best attention possible. That night, lying beside her, I dreamed Hernikof the Jew and I were together on the ship. It was a steamship, but it carried the triangular sails of an old Greek warboat. Hernikof was in rags. Blood poured from a dozen wounds. I think the Baroness and Mrs Cornelius were present. Hernikof was accusing me of his murder and I did not know if I were guilty or innocent. I asked the others there what they thought, but they were concerned with the ship’s course and had no time for me. Hernikof pointed at himself. He smiled and said he forgave me. I tried to push him overboard, shouting that I had no need of his forgiveness, but at least I should earn it if he died now. I wanted him to be quiet, but he gripped the rail like an owl with its prey and stayed where he was, smiling that terrible religious smile. Then Kitty ran up and held out her hand to him. He took it and gently she led him off. I was jealous. I wanted to drown him and Kitty of all people had rescued him. The Baroness woke me. ‘You’re sweating dreadfully, Simka.’ I was shivering. She rearranged the bedclothes over me. Her naked body aroused me. It was huge and solid, yet soft, and I loved its smell. We made love until dawn and so once again drove the image of Hernikof entirely from my head, while keeping the ghost of Esmé, too, at bay. Leda knew how to be reassuringly silent; a quality younger women do not have. But by morning, after we had revived ourselves with cocaine, the obsession gradually returned with full force. Rather hastily, telling her I had business with another military person, I arranged to meet her for lunch at our usual table. Then, when I was sure she was on her way home, I returned to La Rotonde.
In the café a few wretched Kurds were cleaning the floors and tables. The Syrian sat at the top of a stepladder, smoking a meerschaum and ostensibly supervising the Kurds. When I appeared he put the pipe carefully between his few black teeth and began to climb down. Without acknowledging me, he carried the ladder into the kitchens. One of the Kurds told me that no girls were expected for at least another hour. I asked him, in a dreadful mixture of languages, if they knew a little girl called Helena. She might be Polish, I said. To please me, they made a pretence of thinking. It was obvious they had no information and were embarrassed by my questions. Outside in the Grande Rue heavy rain poured down the gutters, rushed off roofs and filled the holes in the pavements. The streets became a mass of black umbrellas and oilskins. I sheltered under the striped, sodden canopy of the Cafe Luxembourg, then moved first to look in the window of Wick and Weiss’s well-stocked bookshop, then to stare at ornamental brass lamps and tables, poor copies of French Empire originals. Some of the cinemas and music halls had already opened. The occupying armies kept many such places going round the clock. The rain freshened Pera’s air, momentarily driving away the more unpleasant smells from Galata. Posters started to peel from the wooden sides of newsstands, from tobacco kiosks, pissoirs and tram shelters, as if the city were being magically prepared for a new layer of advertisements. A troup of Punjabis went up the steep hill at a trot, arms sloping. As in Batoum, the British had stationed great numbers of nigger soldiers in Constantinople, presumably because Moslems might be less likely to offend the Turks. It was a mistaken notion. Turks are more arrogant towards people they regard as their inferiors, particularly former citizens of the Ottoman Empire. I think they viewed the occupation of their city by blacks as a planned insult. It was bad enough for them to be bested by Greeks, but to be ordered about by Africans like the French Senegalese was inconceivably appalling to them. For all that they had fully earned every possible humiliation (their cruelty to subject races, particularly Armenians, was legendary) they still did not understand why they were being punished. In 1915, while the world was concerned with other things, they had marched some million Christian Armenians into the desert to die. Many still insist it was the logical thing to do (‘People forget those Armenians were very rich’). Your Turks remain the true descendant of bloody-handed Carthage. They never change. They join the United Nations to protect them when they invade Cyprus; they imprison innocent Christians; they bully and steal as thoughtlessly as any of their Hun forebears might have. History is not a book of rules, but its examples are too often ignored. By showing continued respect to Turks we are like that woman who believes repeatedly her brutal husband will reform. It is an indication of her optimism, but never a reflection of the man’s true character.
The rain eased enough to let me return to the Pera Palas where I bathed and changed. Then, with no word from Mrs Cornelius to make me alter my plans, it was time to go again to Tokatlian’s. I stopped at La Rotonde first. A few girls were there, and the redheaded Italian madame, but none of them had seen my Esmé. I said they would be rewarded if they discovered her for me, or could get her address. I believe they had the idea I wished to buy her and seemed very agreeable.
At the restaurant I found the Baroness again enjoying the attentions of Count Siniutkin. They might have been lovers. He lifted his handsome, scarred face to smile pleasantly at me. It would have helped me at that time if the Baroness had transferred her affections, or at least shared them with another, but I think she was still faithful. Count Siniutkin, in very good form, greeted me warmly. We discussed the campaign in Anatolia. The Greeks were finding some resistance, he said, mainly from irregular units similar to those I had described in South Russia. I told him I had known Makhno personally; I had observed Hrihorieff at close quarters and Petlyura himself had tried to enrol me. Siniutkin named a couple of bandit leaders. He called them ‘condottieri’. The most famous and most worshipped was someone called Çerkes Ethem. He was to Anatolia what Pancho Villa had been to Mexico. ‘Similar circumstances seem to throw up similar types, eh? Meanwhile the French are being hit very badly in Northern Syria.’ I was not interested in Turkey’s internal squabbles and listened only from politeness. ‘They’re fighting old-fashioned issues with old-fashioned means,’ I suggested. ‘A bandit on a big horse can’t achieve a thing. Can it really matter who wins? Every single one is an atavist.’