Michael Moorcock
Byzantium Endures
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DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski (Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff) - Narrator
Yelisaveta Filipovna - His mother
Captain Brown - A Scottish engineer
Esmé Loukianoff - A friend
Zoyea - A gypsy girl
Professor Lustgarten - A schoolmaster
Frau Lustgarten - His wife
Sarkis Mihailovitch Kouyoumdjian - An Armenian engineer
Alexander (‘Shura’) - Maxim’s cousin
Evgenia Mihailovna (Aunt Genia) - Maxim’s great-aunt
Wanda - Her poor relation
Semyon Josefovitch (Uncle Semya) - Maxim’s great-uncle
Esau - Slobodka tavern-keeper
Misha the Jap - Slobodka gangster
Victor the Fiddler
Isaac Jacobovitch
Little Grania - Denizens of Esau’s tavern
Boris - The Accountant
Lyova
M. Savitsky - A drug-trafficker
Katya - A young whore
Katya’s mother - A whore
H. Cornelius - A dentist
Honoria Cornelius - An English adventuress
‘So-So’ - A Georgian revolutionary
Nikita the Greek - Maxim’s friend
Mr Finch - An Irish sailor
Sergei Andreyovitch Tsipliakov (‘Seryozha’) - A ballet dancer
Marya Varvorovna Vorotinsky - A student
Miss Buchanan - Her ‘nanyana’
Mr Green - Uncle Semya’s agent in St Petersburg
Mr Parrot - His assistant
Madame Zinovieff - Maxim’s landlady in St Petersburg
Olga and Vera - Her daughters
Dr Matzneff - Tutor at the Petersburg Polytechnic Institute
Professor Merkuloff - Another tutor
Hippolyte - A catamite
Count Nicholai Feodorovitch Petroff (‘Kolya’) - A Petersburg bohemian
Lunarcharsky - A Bolshevik
Mayakovski - A poet
‘Lolly’ Leonovna Petroff - Kolya’s cousin
Alexei Leonovitch Petroff - Her brother
Elena Andreyovna Vlasenkova (‘Lena’) - Marya’s flat-mate
Professor Vorsin - Head of the Polytechnic
Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskya - A puppet dictator
Ataman Semyon Petlyura - Effective leader of Ukrainian Nationalists
General Konovalets - Commander of the ‘Sich Riflemen’
Vinnichenko - Ukrainian Nationalist leader
Potoaki - Ukrainian Bolshevik
Marusia Kirillovna - Ukrainian Bolshevik
Sotnik (Captain) Grishenko - Hrihorieff officer (Cossack)
Sotnik (Captain) Yermeloff - The same
Stoichko - Cossack officer
Brodmann - Socialist ‘liaison officer’
Nestor Makhno - Anarchist leader
Captain Kulomsin - A White infantry officer
Captain Wallace - Australian tank commander
Major Perezharoff - A White commander
A Jewish journalist In Arcadia
Madame Zoyea - An hotelier
Captain Yosetroff - White Intelligence officer
Major Soldatoff - Maxim’s CO
Chief Engineer of the Rio Cruz - A fellow spirit
OTHER CHARACTERS INCLUDE
Korylenko (a postman); Captain Bikadorov (a Cossack); whores and entertainers in Odessa; whores, entertainers and artists in St Petersburg; revolutionaries in St Petersburg; Cossacks (Red, Black, White); policemen, Chekists, naval officers, army officers, ‘Haidamaki’ soldiers, beggars, a drunken couple, the Jews of a shtetl near Hulyai-Polye, the inhabitants of a village in the Ukrainian steppe, and, off-stage, Leon Trotsky, Deniken, Krassnoff, Ulyanski, Prince Lvov, Kerenski, Putilov, Josef Stalin, Stolypin, Lenin, Antonov, sikorski, savinkoff, catherine cornelius, H. G. wells.
INTRODUCTION
THE MAN WHO was known for years in the Portobello Road area as ‘Colonel Pyat’ or sometimes simply as ‘the old Pole’, and who, in the 60s and 70s, was Mrs Cornelius’s regular evening consort at The Blenheim Arms, The Portobello Castle and The Elgin (her favourite public houses), collapsed during the August 1977 Notting Hill Carnival when a group of black boys and girls collecting for Help The Aged in Caribbean fancy dress entered his shop (one of the few open) and demanded a contribution. His heart had failed him. He died at St Charles Hospital some hours later. He had no next of kin. Eventually, following a great deal of unpleasant publicity, I inherited his papers.
In the previous two years I had come to know him well. He had found out that I was a professional writer and had, in fact, become hard to avoid. He pursued me. He insisted we could turn to a profit his reminiscences of Mrs Cornelius, who had died in 1975. He knew that I had already, in his terms, ‘exploited’ her in my books. He had recognised my deep interest in local history when he had seen me, some years earlier, photographing the old Convent of the Poor Clares as it was being pulled down. Much later he had come upon me filming the slum terraces of Blenheim Crescent and Westbourne Park Road before they, too, were destroyed. That was when he first approached me. I had tried to ignore him but when he spoke familiarly about Mrs Cornelius, referring to her as ‘a famous British personality’, I became curious. (I had my own interest in that extraordinary woman, of course.) Pyat became persuasive: the world would be eager to read what he had written about her. She was probably as famous as Queen Elizabeth. Amiably, I pointed out that she was merely a local figure in a tiny area of North Kensington. My own accounts of her were considerably fictionalised. Nobody thought of her as a ‘personality’. But he insisted there must still be money to be made from what he believed to be a massive public eager to read ‘the true accounts of Mrs Cornelius’s life’. He had approached the Daily Mirror and the Sun in an attempt to sell them his story (a terrifying collection of manuscript, hand-written in six languages on almost every possible size and colour of paper, collected in eleven shoe-boxes) but became suspicious of their suggestion that he submit it by post rather than in person to the editor. He trusted me, I was told, as he had trusted nobody but Mrs Cornelius herself. I reminded him, apparently, of Michael VIII, ‘the last great saviour of Constantinople’, and it was even possible that I was a reincarnation of that Byzantine emperor. He showed me a black and white reproduction of an ikon. Like most ikons the figures depicted could have been anyone. They all wore beards. His main reason for trusting me, I suspect, was because I humoured him. I did this from genuine curiosity about his own career as well as Mrs Cornelius’s (she had always been hazy concerning her past). Here, of course, I was moved by self-interest. Colonel Pyat’s was not a pleasant personality, and his intolerance and passionately-held right-wing views were hard to take. I bought him drinks in the same pubs he had attended with Mrs Cornelius. I hoped to gain raw material for new stories; but he had different plans. Without reference to me he decided I should be his literary adviser for ten per cent of his advance. Together, he told me, we should prepare a manuscript. I would then submit it to my usual publisher; my name and influence (as well as the fame of Mrs Cornelius) would enable us to sell the book for ‘at least fifty thousand pounds’.