Byzantium Endures (48 page)

‘I worked late into the night.’

‘And so has this fellow?’ It was the soldier with whom I had shared a cigarette. He looked bleak. Petlyura had evidently been screaming at him. There were various generals standing about in coats and elaborate frogging. Some had no insignia. Some had removed their epaulettes. I had learned to recognise such signs. It was almost as good as waving a white flag. From below in the church the priests were holding a service. It was the Kiev part-singing of Diletski. I think it was
Khvalite imyagospoderi, aliluya!
It was an omen, I thought. Church and Science were coming together to destroy the Red Jew.

‘My machine is as good as ready,’ I said with dignity, i was awaiting instructions.’

‘Antonov’s forces are moving in from all sides.’ Petlyura scowled. ‘We’ve no time to set up further stations. This is the only one we can use. Tonight we shall direct it over there.’ He pointed roughly towards my own home. I was glad Esmé and my mother had gone. There was no more sun. I blinked at Petlyura. He said. ‘You are certain the light is invisible?’

I reassured him.

‘It will weaken their morale. It will give us time to put the rest of our plan into action.’

‘You are going to counter-attack?’

‘Look after the scientific matters, professor.’

The soldier glanced cynically at me. I avoided his eye. I wanted no trouble. My head was aching. I had forgotten my cocaine. I asked permission to return to the hotel for medicine. ‘Have some of mine,’ said Petlyura. He handed me a small golden box containing cocaine. I was not surprised. That entire Revolution, that entire Civil War, was fought on ‘snow’. It was the fuel, far more than politics or gunpowder, of the entire affair. Revived, I noticed the soldier smiling at me in an insolent way. ‘You think I don’t know what I’m doing?’

‘I think you might be the only one who does, comrade.’

Petlyura said sourly: ‘You could be shot, corporal.’

‘I think I stand a fair chance of it today, comrade Supreme Commander.’ The corporal had no fear because he had become so tired. I felt sympathy for him. We were being outmanoeuvred. Even Scipio had needed an army to destroy the Carthaginian elephant. It was all sunshine in those days. The battles were fought in heat, not snow. Only Hannibal had known snow, and that was the kindly snow of the Alps, not Russian snow. Ragnarok come again. Entropy. There is so much evidence in Russia. We are lucky to have our brief moments of warmth and life. It is why we worship God.

Petlyura was mumbling at the corporal. He could afford to shoot nobody. His army might only now consist of the silent generals, the corporal and my ray machine. He said something in French to the only man apart from myself in civilian dress. But Petlyura’s accent was so abominable I think no one understood. The civilian might have been the French consul. He nodded. Petlyura asked me to position the lens towards the woods of Trukhanov. ‘Could you hit those trees?’

‘Of course. But I must have the power.’

‘It’s being diverted.’

I directed my machine towards the Dnieper ice. As I pressed the appropriate switch I drew a thin line of heat across the white surface. ‘I have melted it. Think of the civil applications of the machine.’

‘Cutting ice seems hardly the purpose...’ said one of the generals.

‘It could be of use on ships,’ said another. They all spoke like automata. It was as if they had drawn their energy and inspiration from Petlyura, a source which could no longer supply what they needed. My device meant little to most of them. They did not know why they were here.

‘You burned the ice?’ Petlyura borrowed some field glasses, ‘I see the crack. Excellent. In itself, this will be of use when they try to cross. It will be like Alexander Nevski. Our enemies will perish in our river.’

He gave me the field glasses. They were of no use to me. A general leaned forward and, with a peculiar smile, retrieved them. ‘Thank you,’ he said slowly, as if I could not understand Russian.

The priests were still singing for their congregation. The sound grew louder and louder. Petlyura found their voices disturbing; I was glad of them. Even then, without realising what I was doing, I was receiving God’s inspiration and not Man’s. I was to remember that moment, when I alone, in the assembled company, had strength.

‘Those peasants,’ said Petlyura. ‘They are brutes. They are treacherous, stupid. They betrayed me. They are primitive beasts.’

‘We’re all that, comrade,’ said the soldier. He leaned against the parapet, looking towards the window. ‘But some of us are innocent beasts. That’s the only difference. You didn’t spend long enough with the herd.’

Petlyura was sucking at his weak lower lip. His pale eyes looked from general to general and found nothing there but blankness. ‘Korishenko,’ he said, ‘you will ensure all power is directed to the professor’s machine.’

Glad to be on his way, Korishenko saluted and departed.

‘We’ll wait until nightfall,’ said the Supreme Commander. ‘Will there be any danger? No backlash from the machine?’

‘It is unlikely.’

‘And what if people get in the way?’

‘Tell everyone to stay in their basements,’ I suggested. ‘Just in case.’

‘We don’t want to slice some poor Jew in two,’ said the corporal.

Petlyura and his henchmen were already leaving the tower. Petlyura had begun to speak in his appalling French. I heard the civilian say: ‘What of the Jews? Is there another pogrom?’

‘Naturally, there isn’t.’

‘We have Jews in France.’

The men disappeared into the swollen voices of the chorus and I was left with my corporal.

‘Did he say anything to that Frenchman about retreating from Kiev?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘What did he say about the Jews?’

‘Nothing.’

The corporal lifted his arm as if to knock over my machine. ‘I have no prejudice, but I warn you ...’

‘What are you saying?’ His gesture continues to haunt me. Did the fool think me a Jew because I had an interest in science? I agreed with Petlyura and the peasants’ point of view on that score. The Jews in Ukraine and Poland turned the very earth white, they bled both countries. The black earth was drained so deep that only blood could bring it back to life. Blood and the sun and our wide rivers which the Reds claim to have harnessed. Who can tame a Russian river? It is eternally free. They tried to make European bourgeoisie of us all, but they failed. We are not naturally middle-class. We are intellectuals, we are workers, we are peasants. Let the Jews find their Zion elsewhere. They shall not have Russia. Only Slavs survive on Slavic earth. The Tatars failed to survive. The land destroyed their khanates. They are the same: Phoenician trader or Zionist fifth-columnist. I know this as I know the devil is in all men. As the devil is in me. I offered the soldier a cigarette.

The afternoon sun was beginning to sink. Kiev was silent. Everything was still. Trains steamed away from the city. I could see their smoke. I saw figures on the ice. I did not know who they were. The singing had stopped from below. I felt lonely. I could have wept. I wanted a girl. I wanted comfort of any kind. I remembered Kolya. Was he now in prison in Petrograd? Emigrated? With Korniloff or Deniken, fighting their way back to the centre of power? Why were Poles invading Ukraine? They wanted their Empire back. No wonder the Germans came to fear them, as they feared the Czechs. Czechs were famous for their courage and fighting skill. They fought their way home across Siberia. Teutons fear Slavs, just as the decadent Latins feared the Vikings. If only the Empire had stayed together. A Slavic Empire. We should have had a neo-Hellenic world by now. We are the inheritors of the Greeks. It is our Slavic blood, not Communism, which unites us. The Anglo-Saxons and the Chinese have had their day. They have achieved the stability of death. Negativity was never a Slavic trait. We would always rather be doing something than nothing. If the Poles had looked to Germany for their territory, we should not have had another War. Nationalism goes against all rational progress, all the findings of science, all the experience of mankind. Israel! A fresh joke, for now the Jew becomes a ‘nationalist’. That is when we have to fear the worst.

Warsaw and Prague and Kiev. They were beautiful cities. And who destroyed them? Bolshevik Jews. Hitler could never have done what he did if it had not been for their threat. He had to extend and maintain defences against them. Russia had always been a friend to the German people. And who broke that bond? The Jewish landlord, the Jewish intellectual, the Jewish politician. Is the world waking up to the threat? Not hysterically, as Hitler did, but sanely? Let them have Israel. Let them have the whole Middle East. And then let us build a thick wall around the Jew and say goodbye to him forever. He can wail inside his wall. I shall not listen to him.

As it grew darker I could tell the requisite power was being diverted. The corporal went to fetch us some food. He returned with the news that everyone had been warned to stay in their cellars. Some thought there was to be a Zeppelin raid, others had heard a story of my ‘Violet Ray’. It is astonishing to what extent information spreads in a city under siege. Gossip, as they say in Ukraine, takes the edge off hunger. My emergency Voltaic batteries were also prepared. I connected these to the transformer in case of a sudden failure of power. The darkness brought relief to me. My eyes were hurting. I could not dismiss the images of death, of blood, which filled them. At least Esmé and my mother and possibly Captain Brown were away by now, racing down the line to Odessa where French order existed, where there was hope. If things became worse, Uncle Semya could help them leave the country for a while. I assured myself that as soon as I knew exactly which way the wind blew I would use my ray to demonstrate its power, pack it up with the aid of the corporal, and be off with the basic apparatus to the French. The next train to Odessa would be carrying myself and my invention. The next ship out would be taking us to Paris.

There were no lights burning anywhere, but the artillery fire had begun. There were flashes of light from Trukhanov. I directed the projector at the island. The corporal asked me for one of my cigarettes. I handed him the case. He removed a papyrussa and put the case back in my pocket. He began to smoke. I wondered if any Bolshevik field glasses observed his red tip. If so, what did they make of the silence and darkness? The guns continued to fire from time to time. I heard a few yells, the sound of motor-engines, of horses’ hooves on the wooden blocks of streets where snow had melted beneath the wheels and feet of the Petlyurist army. I pressed the switch of my projector. I saw a flash of light. I think I destroyed a gun. I turned to the corporal so that I could enjoy my success with him. He had gone. The entire church was deserted. Kiev had filled up with ghosts. I trusted the corporal’s instincts more than Petlyura’s or my own. I called to him, but it was too late. He had gone to join the Bolsheviks or return to his village. I was about to dismantle my projector when I heard boots on the steps. I was in such a state of terror I was sure I should see ghosts or Antonov himself. But it was Petlyura, in his green uniform, with his black shapka on his head, a riding crop in his hands. He had a more dapper appearance than the Hetman. He sought an aristocratic image which simply made him look ridiculous. A character from
The Prisoner of Zenda.

‘Have you used the ray yet?’

I told him I had destroyed a gun.

‘One gun isn’t enough.’

‘The machine has to be aimed. It consumes a great deal of energy with every shot. I have done well so far.’

‘You raised my hopes. You betrayed them.’

Two generals stood behind him, together with a few soldiers of lesser rank. All wore different uniforms: some blue, some white, some green.

‘I told you what I could do. With another day or so.’

‘Antonov is almost in Kiev. He’s moving troops up rapidly. We’re going to have to evacuate the city. You’ll hold off their advance with your ray.’

‘Alone?’

‘You’re a major in the Republican Army, comrade. You can be shot for disobeying orders.’