A couple of weeks after my first meeting with the Count, I received word through the Baroness to board a three o’clock ferry for Scutari. Count Siniutkin would meet me there. I hastily went to Esmé and taking her by the shoulders told her to be good. I would be back next morning at the latest. I left her some money. She stood on tip-toe, put her slim arms around my neck and kissed me. ‘You will be a great man,’ she said in Russian.
My confidence reinforced by her love and faith, I set off on light feet, stopping only to say goodbye to the Baroness. I assured her I would be careful. She had, she said, great trust in the Count himself, but I must be certain of his friends before I committed myself. I promised her I would be properly circumspect.
I went down to the Galata Bridge and at two forty-five boarded the first available ferry to Scutari. Treating myself to a padded seat for a few extra coppers, I leaned back to enjoy from the sea the wonderful panoramic views of Constantinople’s three great cities. The sun was high in the sky. The domes of mosques were awash with light. Everywhere I looked I saw a different shade of green or soft blue, shimmering white. The smell of brine and spices, flowers and coffee mingled. It was possible, I thought, that I would return to Pera a wealthy man. The world would very shortly hear of my achievements. I would not need to slip away from the city like a felon. I would march into London or Paris a celebrated lion: Pyatnitski, the creator of the flying infantryman. Pyatnitski, the inventor of the patent steam car; Pyatnitski of the aerial liner and the domestic robot. The fame of Edison would fade. Where he had created toys, I was about to create an entire civilisation!
How proud Mrs Cornelius would be of me, I thought, when she heard of my fame. I could imagine her reading the news in the Daily Mail and boasting to her neighbours how we had once been married. I would move about the world with all my lovely women; a great patriarch in the old Russian tradition, yet also a modern man and a man of the future. And it would all have started here.
Thus the centre of the old world would be transformed, becoming the hub of the new.
Triumphantly, in my mind’s eye, Parsifal reached to seize the Grail.
EIGHT
BLINDED FROM TIME to time by the reflected sunlight on the water, deafened by the babble of some score of dervishes wearing mud-coloured conical hats and robes all crowded together at the front of the boat, sweating in my European suit and doing my best not to breathe too much of the stink of the donkey traders and silk merchants who filled up the rest of the steamer, I fixed my attention on the Asian shore. In Scutari Carthage had re-established herself far more thoroughly than in Stamboul. In Scutari virtually nothing of Greece or Rome remained. Here were the cemeteries of Turks, who would rather have their corpses interred on Oriental soil, some of whom had built themselves tombs so grandiose they rivalled the massive mosques, also erected as memorials by Sultans and Sultanas to dead relatives. Lacking much of the commercial squalor of the rest of Constantinople, Scutari seemed tranquil and graceful in comparison, and far larger than she appeared either from the Golden Horn or the Sea of Marmara, with her vast barracks and warehouses in unusually good repair. She had been conquered long before the European city fell and thus the Turks held her in special esteem. Not far from here Hannibal, disgraced and defeated, exiled from his own ruthless homeland, had sought the protection of that good-hearted Greek, Prusius, King of Bithynia; and here Hannibal, in terror at being captured by Scipio Africanus, had sipped coward’s hemlock and died. Like Rome and Stamboul, Scutari too was built on seven hills, but she lacked their density. Large areas were still given over to foliage, from which her domes, turrets, minarets and roofs emerged, adding to her sedate beauty. Here were the villas of Ottoman dignitaries and aristocrats, with their pools and fountains and cool arcades. Once they had been secure in the knowledge that here, too, most of Turkey’s armed forces were garrisoned. Even now, from fortresses and blockhouses, came the distant sounds of bugles, of marching feet and shouted orders, as the little ferry pulled into the quay beside a wide, busy square where horses, carriages, motor vehicles and carts moved apparently at random, under the tolerant eye of Italian policemen. Ahead of me the dervishes went ashore in single file and crossed the square where they were soon hidden behind market stalls. Eventually I took a few steps over the wooden gangplank and looked about me in the hope of seeing Count Siniutkin.
The square itself contained the usual whitewashed Turkish cafés, the offices of various shipping agencies, a couple of banks and official buildings, and from it narrow cobbled streets led upwards between yellow and red houses covered with vines and creepers. Tall plane trees shaded the roofs and everywhere were trellises over which trailing, sweet-smelling plants had been grown. It seemed warmer here. I removed my hat, took out my handkerchief and wiped my forehead, wondering if the Count had, after all, misled me, when, from out of the mass of donkeys, horses and push-barrows, an old De Dion Bouton saloon car emerged. At first I thought it was an army vehicle, since the chauffeur at its wheel wore a red fez and a smart, grey uniform, then I saw my friend’s scarred face peering from the back. He waved to me, jumped out of the car and ran towards me, effusively shaking my hand and apologising for not being there to meet me. Everywhere around us men and women carried huge bundles up into the shadowy streets or moved similar loads onto the ferries. The sky was a pale shade of blue behind the steeply banked houses and the air felt hushed in spite of the considerable commotion in the square. The Count handed my bag in to the driver and politely stood to one side as I climbed aboard. It was a large, well-sprung, comfortable interior. The car, said the Count, had been lent by his colleague. Sitting side by side, we moved off and were soon passing between latticed walls and wrought-iron fences behind which I could glimpse the great, low mansions of the rich. The road rose and fell, twisting through great clumps of trees, fields of tombs and white marble monuments, the awnings of restaurants where well-to-do Turks lounged and smoked in the bright sun, as if there had never been a war, an uprising, a palace revolution, to disturb their enduring tranquillity. Later the white roads grew dustier and the walls lower, revealing lawns and gardens, the glittering mosaics of magnificent villas. The air was scented by brilliantly coloured shrubs and flowers, filled by the sound of splashing, tinkling water from courtyard fountains. It was to Scutari that the rich retired and they were anxious to be as far removed from the dirtier, noisier aspects of their fortunes as possible. It was not long before the villas grew further apart and I saw what I took to be a farmhouse, with a herd of goats nearby. I remarked that I had assumed we should find Siniutkin’s principal in Scutari itself. He shook his head. ‘We Europeans are particularly noticeable in Scutari. He thought it best we meet where it is more private.’