Constantinople became gradually more familiar to me while, with the changing of the seasons, she also grew more magical. By now I had friends around the docks, acquaintances who were engineers on the vessels sailing regularly to and from the city. I was of service to many émigrés still inhabiting Pera. These continued to increase, for the Red Army pushed our Volunteers further back. Some Russians presently fought beside the Greeks in Anatolia. Others had been recruited into the brigand gangs taking advantage of the War. Everywhere groups of renegades joined the service of petty chieftains. There was an entire unit of ‘Wolfshead’ Cossacks helping to establish the regime of a Chinese warlord. Others had gone to Africa to join the Foreign Legions of Spain and France. Some white officers were even lending their expertise to the pirate khans of Indonesia. They had thoroughly turned their backs on our cause. So many Russian mercenaries were little more than children; as a trade they knew only battle and would rather sell their swords to Islam than live on Christian charity. The Allies, caught up in their own political machinations, had no time left to help our Russian Army consolidate. Generals departed for America daily, apparently to lecture on the Terrors of Bolshevism, but actually to join relatives in Toronto and Miami. The Baroness von Ruckstühl was lucky. In April she became a receptionist at the Byzance. We met twice a week in her little room at the very top of the old hotel. Kitty received private lessons on those evenings, from a Madame Kron, attached to the American school. We still spoke of leaving. She continued to apply for a visa to Berlin, but both of us considered ourselves fortunate compared to the thousands of wretches reduced to hanging around the Galata Bridge or the harbours, selling ikons and furs to grinning soldiers and sailors.
The cabarets had taken on a distinctly Russian air in parts of the Grande Rue. Noble princes and princesses who before the War had learned a few tasteful folk dances and little else, now performed them for drunks to the sound of out-of-tune balalaikas, while disinherited Cossacks nightly displayed their skill with pistol and whip. Counts gave riding lessons. Countesses taught drawing and music. The Tsarist upper crust had become a troupe of beggars and third-rate circus performers half a million strong. To be Russian in Constantinople was to be a laughing stock. One preferred when possible to claim another nationality. On occasions I was Polish or Czech. Sometimes I let people think I was British, French, even American. Similarly, the Baroness carefully retained her German style, though sometimes she dropped the ‘baroness’ (since every other Russian had a title) and became Frau von Ruckstühl. Because of my dark looks, I was frequently taken for an Armenian, and it was not always practical to deny it. I knew a few phrases from Sarkis Mihailovitch, chiefly technical terms, and these proved useful to me. Armenians are not Jews, whatever people say. They were very friendly to me and some even called me ‘the nephew of Kouyoumdjian’. They began to ask me to take on the more complicated jobs, almost always ensuring I had the entire fee for myself. Five or six steam engines belonging to the ferry boat owners soon became familiar exasperating acquaintances. I learned a great deal about marine machinery and steam engines in particular. Whenever I could I experimented, making little improvements to my automobile designs.
In the evenings Esmé and I would hire a carriage and a driver. We would tour Stamboul or take the little white coastal roads winding beside the pure turquoise of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. The sky was equally blue, a colour I had once believed the fanciful invention of painters. We ate well, in restaurants overlooking wooded bays and tiny fishing ports. Listen to languorous Turkish music we watched the sun set on impossible landscapes. Spring mists diffused the light, especially at dawn and dusk, and we saw the hills of Scutari and Stamboul quiver in copper-coloured haze. Constantinople was a jewelled treacherous beast. She could fascinate you with her beauty, then strike you down suddenly, to suck out your blood and your soul. Her attractions were potentially fatal. I earned good money as a mechanic, had a worshipping child-bride, a mistress who was equally devoted, but must always remember that my true vocation was to be found in the more vigorous West.
The Allies grew increasingly uncertain of their rule. Peace talks continued. Europe was divided up, her future settled by her victors. The Byzantine city became an embarrassment to them. We heard more of Mustafa Kemal and his henchmen, of nationalists active in the capital. Many French and Italian military people thought Constantinople should remain Turkish rather than Greek. The Greeks, they argued, were just Englishmen in white skirts. The British alone gave genuine support to the Greek cause, supplying them with munitions and ships. Britons considered themselves the true inheritors of an Homeric tradition, thus in helping Greece, they reinforced their own self image. But could it be wrong to want control of the Straits while Islam and Bolshevism threatened to join hands in the Caucasus and Anatolia. Together they would form a Red Horde more ruthlessly effective than any Tamburlane or Attila directed against Christendom. It was not madness to predict the Antichrist’s army one day massing against us. Having fought and won a great battle, the Allies were exhausted but tomorrow that battle would seem as nothing. The mountains were bursting; from scarlet fire galloped the very armies of Hell. Into the fray came swaggering Carthage. The citadels of civilisation were attacked on every front. The West must entrench herself, restore her energies! The real enemy was still alive and on the march!
These condescending young men, with their beards and tartan shirts, come into the shop trying to put Labour Party posters in my window. They have no idea what they were rescued from. The Communist and the Oriental remain serious threats to everything held dear by the West. Those decent men and women voting for Adolf Hitler did not believe they voted for tyranny. They were hoping to contain the spread of evil. Hitler’s greatest mistake was to make a pact with Stalin. His ordinary followers felt a wavering of their faith in him. The Third Reich truly began to crumble when it lost its internal morale and its supporters abroad. Some innocent people were caught up in the great struggle and did indeed suffer an unjust fate, but most who exaggerate the evils of Hitlerism and speak melodramatically of a ‘Holocaust’ are the very ones who thought they had a right to enrich themselves by exploiting their host nations. I am not a political person. Even in my present circumstances I believe in decency and the Fellowship of Man, in good will and tolerance. As a youth, my idealism was even more pronounced. I believed that Turks were open to reason, that they would be grateful to be left alone in Anatolia. I even sympathised with aspects of their struggle. My trust, as was to happen frequently in my life, was abused.
On Friday, 1st May 1920, I kept the usual evening appointment with my Baroness. If it lacked passion, at least our loveplay was comfortable. When it was over she poured me a glass of Polish vodka, the kind we used to call ‘Bison-water’. The musky and dimly lit room was crammed with her possessions, including many framed photographs of herself, Kitty and her dead husband. She seemed unusually excited and full of secrets as she fetched a box of candied figs and offered me one where I lay in bed. ‘I am growing fat in Turkey,’ she said. ‘It’s better than living off German dumplings, I suppose.’ I wondered if she had at last found another lover. She had that air women often display in such circumstances, of possessing private power, of being inwardly amused, of having easily appeased a slightly troubled conscience. I stroked her face. ‘You grow more beautiful every day.’