The Laughter of Carthage (65 page)

Why do they avoid me, when I am so ready to give them everything they desire? Am I a rapist or a lecher? My powerful feelings are a noble force for good. What we did in Petersburg in 1916 the world now celebrates as new and ‘liberated’. They tell us on television it is not a crime to love, irrespective of age or sex. That was how it was for us. Kolya taught me to love, without prejudice, every aspect of sexuality. It is not a love lacking in morality or without profound responsibility. How can those who have entrapped me even begin to understand? In their fear and their jealousy of my Promethean vitality they have bound me, gagged me and delivered me up to little birds which peck at my flesh. For thirty years I have been their prisoner, watched, checked, pursued by their idiot bureaucracies: and yet it was I who could have saved them! They put a piece of metal in my stomach.
Es tut mir hier weh.
They put iron into my womb and I refuse to forgive them. (‘Yo’re nuffink but an ol’ ‘ore at ‘eart,’ says Mrs Cornelius. She is affectionate . She means well. But who was it made me a whore? Who robbed me of everything, even my name?) When they confront me all they see is a miserable old stateless shopkeeper; but even in 1919 on the
Rio Cruz
Mrs Cornelius admired me. ‘Y’ve got a way wiv ther ladies, I’ll say that for ya, Ivan.’ I could have had a dozen of the loveliest Russian gentlewomen. I chose the Baroness because she was older. I believed she would be more sophisticated and allow no unwelcome complications. Also I knew there had to be an element of self-interest in her attraction to me: from Constantinople she needed a transit visa to Berlin and she guessed I would be the man most likely to help her obtain it. Her husband had not been a German national. His father had taken Russian citizenship in 1885. She, of course, was Russian. She had some second cousins in Berlin who had already offered her a home and she spoke moderately good German. The child’s security at least was assured there. All this I learned as at her suggestion we began to take coffee in the mornings and then tea in the afternoons. I still ate my meals at the officers’ table in the far corner of the dining-saloon, but tended to leave earlier, to stroll for quarter-of-an-hour round the deck with the Baroness before she went to bed.

Brodmann, if Brodmann it had been, remained in hiding and I became sure I had invented him. However, I should feel much easier after the ship docked in Constantinople and I was on the last stages of my journey to England. Here there were too many malicious tongues, let alone Brodmann’s; too many potential enemies prepared to lie about my past. To be fair there were also allies and the Baroness was one of these. She had an attractive, wistfully sad air, typically Russian and considerably comforting. Her voice was low and warm and musical; her sentences would tend to end on a falling, distant note. I understood such women and their romantic desires I was able to make her smile with my little dry ironies, at once sympathetic and philosophical. It was not long before we were on closer terms. ‘You are a disarming man, Maxim Arturovitch,’ she said one evening, as we stood listening to the lapping water. She smiled. ‘I suppose you also write poetry.’

‘My poetry, Leda Nicolayevna, is to be found in specific configurations of steel and concrete,’ I said. ‘In what can be achieved with cogs, levers and pistons. I am a scientist first and foremost. I do not believe Man can reach for perfection until his environment is properly under his control. For me poetry is a giant aeroplane able to leap immediately into the air and fly infinite distances without a moment’s danger, landing wherever its pilot pleases. Poetry is the freedom technology brings us.’

She was impressed. ‘I cannot claim such vision, Maxim Arturovitch, but I do occasionally write verses. For my own consolation.’

‘Will you show them to me?’

‘Perhaps.’ She squeezed my hand, flushed a little, then went quickly to the cabin she shared with her daughter and servant.

Involved with this gentle seduction, I scarcely noticed the ship reaching Theodossia, disembarking wounded and cargo and then taking on a group of Georgian officers who kept themselves apart from the rest of us, smoking monstrous meerschaums and talking in their own outlandish language. We were anchored amidst half-a-dozen other ships, well away from the shore. It was hard to make out details of the coast, let alone the port, yet every so often, when the wind blew towards us from land, there was a smell like new-mown grass, its origin impossible to identify. My Baroness was romantically inclined to ascribe it to ‘the first scents of spring’, but someone else said it was horse-fodder; another was convinced it was quick-lime. The Georgians, taciturn and impatient with all civilians, would not be drawn on the matter. In contrast to Sebastopol, here Russian and Allied ships came and went at a tremendous rate, reminding me of Odessa in her heyday. This was still one of the great centres of real resistance. Perhaps that was why the Georgians were so displeased to be leaving. They stood in a single surly rank at the starboard rail, leaning back and watching the smoke from a dozen great men-o’-war drifting low over the metallic water. I guessed they were unhappy with their orders. As we began to steam away, they all went aft to glare at the plumes of dark smoke which stretched into the sky like a barrier of birch trees which emerges suddenly from the Ukrainian steppe and which is at once a miracle of nature, a reassurance of human settlement. And when these were below the horizon, the Georgians moved about the ship in small groups, brushing at the spray which fell on their faded green uniforms, displaying resentment and downright rudeness when attempts were made to befriend them, as if we were responsible for their discomfort. Possibly they wanted to go to Batoum. To our relief, we learned they were to disembark, instead, at Novorossisk, our next port of call. In their uniforms, with their black astrakhan caps and their huge walrus moustaches they looked, as I said to the Baroness, like a converse of village postmasters. This made the Baroness laugh; she had no great liking for Georgians at the best of times, she said, but these seemed to have stepped straight out of the pages of an illustrated comic magazine. I wondered, years later, if this were not the secret of ‘Uncle’ Joe Stalin’s success. It is often hard to hate a particular kind of stereotype. It became an important element of Hitler’s astonishingly rapid rise, too. He looked so much like Charlie Chaplin many people could not take him seriously. The Georgians went off the next day in a lighter which came especially for them. They were glad to leave and the hands responsible for mopping their phlegm off the decks were no less regretful to see the back of them.

So many ships filled the Novorossisk sea-roads it was impossible for us to come anywhere near the port. Through Jack Bragg’s glasses I observed an unremarkable but busy industrial and military harbour apparently getting ready to defend herself against a large-scale attack. For the first time since we had left Odessa I saw numbers of aircraft coming and going. It was a mixed bag of machines, some of them Russian, some Allied, a good many captured from the Germans and Austrians. In less than an hour I saw Sopwith Camels, Albatrosses, a Pfalz DII, a whole squadron of Friedrichshafen G III bombers, an Armstrong Whitworth FK 8, a Breguet-Michelin IV, some cumbersome Sikorsky RB VZs, a couple of Caproni CA5s and many FBA Type H flying boats. These were a few of the planes I pointed out to my Baroness who was under the impression I had done most of my war service as a flyer. I saw no point in disillusioning her, since my work in aircraft research could have easily shortened the conflict and changed the course of Russia’s history. This familiarity of mine with so many aircraft confirmed her guess (she was to tell me later) that I must be a well-known Ace removed from active service to deal with even more pressing tasks. She received no lies from me. From what little I had said she invented her own Romance. Sympathetically she slipped her arm into mine. ‘Do you miss the freedom of the skies?’

‘It is the most wonderful experience in the world.’ I made a small, significant gesture with my hands, ‘If that damned Oertz hadn’t crashed I might still be up there with those lads.’

‘Perhaps they’ll let you rejoin the Service.’ She pressed her body against mine. She was trembling. The hare was ready for the hawk. ‘When you’ve done what you have to do in London.’

‘I shall certainly be flying again soon.’ My senses grew keener, ready for the strike. ‘But probably in an advanced machine of my own design.’

All around us in the pale morning half-light ships were sounding their sirens. A blue and white Hansa-Brandenburg FB patrol flying-boat came in low overhead, its engine making a sweet, steady drone as it circled over us. I felt my blood warm as she dropped closer. Her Austrian markings were painted out, but the new Russian insignia evidently had not been allowed to dry properly. Long streaks of paint could be seen on the bright undersides of her lower wings. ‘She’s beautiful.’ The Baroness congratulated me as if I were the plane’s creator. ‘Like a huge gull. Would you take me up some day? If the opportunity ever arose?’

I clasped her hand. I felt a rapid pulse. She was half-frightened, half-fascinated. ‘Of course.’

At anchor off Novorossisk we awaited our next cargo. Mr Thompson said he thought it was artillery spares for Batoum and there was some confusion over the marking of the boxes. That night I took my usual turn around the deck with Leda Nicolayevna, then, just before she returned to her cabin, I kissed her. Now she was not at all flustered. ‘I’ve been waiting for you to do that,’ she murmured. She had at last made up her mind to have a love affair with me. We kissed again. We were both breathing heavily, our legs shaking so much I thought we must collapse, yet there was nowhere we could go. ‘It will have to be tomorrow,’ she said. I forced myself back from her. ‘Tell the nanyana you have a headache and to keep Kitty out of the cabin until just before dinner,’ I said. ‘Will she suspect?’

The Baroness was amused. ‘What if she does? I am her employer.’

I had forgotten how assured of their authority the Russian nobility still were. I returned to my cabin. Probably Mrs Cornelius was in the saloon, for her bunk was empty. I lit a cigarette and relaxed, still in my clothes, feeling full of the conquest and the pleasures to come. Then I disrobed and went almost immediately to sleep. I remember waking momentarily at dawn, hearing Mrs Cornelius stumbling and cursing to herself as she got undressed. Once she fell against the bunks and hissed ‘Bugger,’ saw me open my eyes and shrugged. ‘Sorry, Ivan. Didn’t wanna wake yer.’ I grunted before I returned to my dreams; dreams far more settled and pleasant than any I had known in months.

By the next afternoon we were still at anchor, awaiting our cargo. A strong north-easterly blew, making us move in our moorings like a captive balloon. It did not matter to me where we were for I was stretched naked upon the body of a passionate baroness who stroked and scratched me while she whispered delicious, innocent obscenities into my ear. I discovered that she had all the astonishing passion of a virgin girl when to tell the truth I had expected to possess a cool, calculating and relatively experienced mistress: even a somewhat cautious lover.

The Baroness von Ruckstühl was neither cool nor cautious. Her experience had been limited, as was now obvious, but her will rapidly to learn all the arts of debauchery easily compensated for any awkwardness; indeed her awkwardness was itself attractive. I could not have asked for a more delightful understudy, as it were, for Mrs Cornelius. What was more, I reminded myself, as my greedy tongue licked her nipples and my fingers lightly touched her clitoris, she was well-connected; we could be of considerable use to one another. My depression vanished completely. As my first orgasm splashed across her thighs my future was suddenly golden again! For her part she was giddily amazed at my skills, if overly curious as to where I had acquired them.
Zolst mir antshuldigen,
as we say in Russia.

At the sound of the dinner bell we dressed hurriedly, grinning like happy dogs. I slipped from her cabin with my body singing, my brain full of tremendous new schemes, a thousand wonderful futures, a hundred fresh ideas for our love-making. And that night, during dinner, I was at my wittiest, so much so that Mrs Cornelius leaned over to wink at me and whisper, ‘Wassa matter wiv you, Ivan? ‘Ad a win on the ‘orses?’

Later my Baroness and I met on deck to share a parting embrace before retiring to our respective cabins. In the deep blackness beyond the lines of waiting ships we saw the occasional flicker of fire and heard a distant explosion. ‘Arsonists,’ I told her, ‘without a doubt. Red saboteurs. This is their idea of warfare.’

‘What cowards they are.’

I agreed. ‘The terrible truth, however, is that it is frequently the cowards who win the wars.’

She found this either too profound or too disturbing. After arranging to meet at exactly the same time in her cabin the next day, we went off in opposite directions.

I paused near the bridge to light a cigarette and watch the far-off flames as they subsided. When I looked up at the sky there was a figure suddenly on the narrow deck above me. It was pale and it plainly had no wish to be seen. A man, wrapped in a kind of shawl or short cloak, who coughed almost apologetically and nodded to me. I stared hard at him this time. Again the name came to my lips.