‘Bed!’
The dumpy girl with ginger hair and a good-humoured face reappeared. She was some sort of poor relation working as a servant. ‘Wanda. Take Maxim Arturovitch to his room.’
My case was picked up in one wet, red hand, while the other gestured to the door. I followed. Aunt Genia chirruped a goodnight and kissed me. I should ask Wanda for anything I required. Off we went, up flights of dark, heavily-carpeted stairs, with each landing smelling a little differently, until we were at the top of the house and Wanda opened a door. ‘I’m next to you,’ she said. She entered ahead of me into bronze half-light and reached to turn a tap to make the gas glow a little brighter. ‘Here we are.’
I had not realised I was to have an entire room to myself. A real bed, dressing-table, chest of drawers, blinds I could open or shut at will, a window: I went to my window. It looked out onto the square - a haze of yellow lamps and dark shadows. From one of the distant, mysterious houses came a high-pitched laugh, something of a wail, which echoed in the square, for it was late and even Odessa was half-asleep. Wanda’s warm, smelly body came up behind me. She showed me how to work the blinds. ‘Best keep ‘em shut if you’ve got the gas going,’ she said. ‘Moths.’ Her voice was lazy, soft and friendly. I was to discover later that this was a typical Southern voice, but I thought then that she was being especially pleasant. Even this heavy-featured creature rolled her ‘r’s with an emphasis which must surely be sexual. I had not heard her properly. ‘What?’
‘Moths.’
‘Aha.’ I was reminded of the moth on the Cossack sabre. I recalled the wonder of my trip, the swooning pleasure of my first impressions. I almost wept as I thanked Wanda and watched her leave. I had a bolt on my door. I had water in a jug on a washstand. I had a chamber-pot and a rug, and clean, white sheets and a patchwork quilt and two pillows in embroidered cases. What generous relatives. And how rich. I had had no conception of their wealth. Mother had told me they were well-off but she had never mentioned that they owned an entire building, possibly two (for there were the offices next door). Again I went to the window. The heavy scent of stocks and dying lilac ascended from the square. I felt a breath or two of the southern wind, of the warm, night sea. Then I went to bed. Determined to enjoy my freedom to the full, I masturbated for a short while, thinking of Wanda and her large, passive body, then of Zoyea and finally, when it was over, of ‘the little angel’, Esmé. How she would be impressed by my stories of Odessa. I lay on my back in the darkness looking out at the open window, enjoying the disquieting thrill of being in a room alone at night for the first time. I put my hands behind my head. I smiled with delight at the luxury. I addressed imaginary friends and told them of my luck. I realised as I went to sleep that in my half-dream I had been copying Shura’s confident gestures. I was already half in his power. And I was glad of it.
THREE
I AWOKE in the warmth of the sun’s rays, blinking. I listened for a moment and heard all kinds of alien sounds: the clanking of trams, the shunting ot goods-trains, horses’ hooves and cart-wheels on cobbles; shouts, laughter. And there was an astonishing smelclass="underline" a mixture of the ocean and of deliciously rotting fruit and flowers, as if all the foliage of the Eastern seas had come in on the morning tide. I went slowly to my window. Many of the stately houses of the square were still shut up, for it was only a little past dawn. And Odessa had her autumn aurora. Each roof, railing, brick, tree, bush and wall gave off luminescence. The mellow colours shimmered almost imperceptibly in the city’s glowing air.
Kiev had its beauty, but it was a prosaic beauty compared to this glorious enchantment. Every outline, whether it be animal, vegetable, stone or wood, was surrounded by a faint radiance. A red and gold automobile crossed the square to stop outside a newly-opened grocery shop. It was like a car from fairyland. The men and women in it wore white suits, peacock feathers, Japanese silks, patent leather, and seemed to have come from a splendid performance of The Merry Widow.
I expected to hear music at any moment but this was the only sensation lacking. I craned over the small, wrought-iron railing and peered in what I hoped was the direction of the sea. All I saw was pavements, trees, possibly a park. I smelled coffee. I saw girls in black and white uniforms come out into the street bringing jugs to be filled from a milkman’s cart. I smelled fresh bread and identified the source, a baker’s shop at the far corner of the square. A postman went slowly along the street, delivering his letters. Women called to one another from house to house. This was how I had imagined a city like Paris, but never our own Odessa. It was possible to understand why many Russians found the town vulgar, and why so many writers and painters loved it. Pushkin had chosen to live here, for instance.
I was at once stimulated and relaxed. I was on holiday. The conception had not dawned until that moment. A holiday, for instance from school, was when one worked at home. But here, as far as I knew, I had no work to do. I was a guest. I was to be entertained. I began to feel hungry.
Wanda was knocking on my door and calling to me. I realised I was naked and felt ashamed of my body, perhaps for the only time (though I remained ashamed, all my life, of my father’s mark on my penis). Possibly I remembered my dream of Wanda. I called out to her to wait and I pulled on my trousers and shirt. I unbolted the door and she entered, laughing. ‘Modest little boy.’ She was only a year older, but all Odessans are far older, it seems, than Kievans. They give the impression of being possessed by some ancient, sardonic wickedness. Perhaps it is the admixture of blood. There are strains of every country in the world in the Odessan blood. But most typically from the Near East. Odessa itself is named after the Greek hero Odysseus and about half its population at that time was Jewish or foreign. It is probably why the pogroms were so severe there in the early years of the century. People were jealous of the power of the interlopers, though I would be the first to admit Odessa owed its atmosphere to its exotic population. By no means only Jews and criminals lived in the Moldovanka. Fiction has coloured the area, particularly in the work of Isaac Babel who lived there for no more than a week and was driven out by angry residents who resented his prying and his distortions. They say someone was murdered as a result of a lie he had written. My Uncle Semyon was a respectable merchant, for instance, trading with dozens of foreign countries through his shipping office. He undertook the import or export of goods of every sort. He had twenty or thirty clerks working full-time in his office next door and never once was there a hint of scandal about his activities. Neither, I should add, did anyone ever attempt to raid him and steal the wages-money in his safe.
They say the Russian disease is a poor sense of what is real and what is not, that we think we can talk anything into reality. This may be so. I personally can distinguish readily enough between truth and fiction.
Wanda had brought me a ‘small breakfast’, some coffee and a roll, on a tray. The luxuries were continuing. She seemed brighter this morning and her words had less sexual significance. Perhaps her voice had been tired the night before and I had mistaken weariness for mystery. I was able to greet her quite normally and accept the tray. ‘What am I supposed to do after I’ve eaten this?’
‘I’ll go and find out.’ She twisted ginger hair at her neck. ‘Madame’s in a good mood. M’sieu, too.’
I was to become used to the frequent use of French in Odessa. The city thought of itself as half-French already, though in fact the greatest number of foreigners had been German, publishing their own newspaper Odessaer-Zeitung. Many of the books I read while there were German. I also read the English Tauchnitz editions of W. Clark Russell, H. G. Wells and W. Pett Ridge.