Another big street, more like Kreshchatik it seemed to me. It was very wide and lined with trees (elms, I think). Luxurious shops, shaded by blue-and-white blinds; kiosks like miniature Gothic cathedrals; little wooden stands where veterans sold newspapers to fashionable ladies carrying sunshades of white brocade or Japanese silk. Horse-cabs - the open four-wheelers with smartly-uniformed drivers - izvoshchiks, we called them in which you could recline, if you wished, like an Oriental prince stood at kerbs waiting for customers to come from hotels, restaurants, shops and offices. In those days there were almost always more cabs than customers. These days there are more cabs, but almost anyone thinks they can use them. I have seen working-class women with four or five children hailing London taxis.
The streets of Odessa went on forever. By the time we caught a glimpse of the sea, between two tall buildings, I was almost exhausted. Then we climbed iron steps and stood on a railway bridge looking out towards the harbour and saw green water and all the ships, and I became incapable of speech.
Shura was certain I was disappointed. ‘Wait until you see it further up. That’s where the pleasure boats are. Look back.’
I turned to stare at the curving expanse of the great stone mole which stretched, it seemed to me, for miles out to sea. I looked beyond the mole to the horizon. It went on and on, as wide, as holy, as the steppe. The rest of the world became suddenly far away and at the same time more real to me. Beyond that horizon lay China and America and England and the ships I saw (some were warships coaling up) had been there, could take me to them. I saw little tugs chugging about the harbour, turning the green water white; the indolent smoke of the big liners; the red hulls of the tramp-steamers; all through a luminous network of cranes and derricks.
‘I’ll admit,’ said Shura, ‘that it’s probably just what I’m used to. I grew up with it. That’s why I love it.’ He began to move across the bridge. ‘We’ll go to the steps. You’ll be impressed with those. And we could take a tram down to Fountain or go to the limans. Have you heard of the limans?’ I knew of Odessa’s salty inland lagoons where the well-to-do went for their health. But I had no wish to see them. I wanted only to stand on that bridge, while trains grunted back and forth below my feet between the main railway station and the harbour station, and dream of Shanghai and San Francisco and Liverpool as I had never dreamed. I was reluctant to take even one more step forward until pulled by Shura. ‘Listen, there’s lots more. Better.’ I did not, at that moment, have the will to speak and reassure him, but I let him drag me along, down to the harbour, past sheds and warehouses and the noble funnels of the great ships, past another mole and an entirely different harbour (Odessa had many), past all the fascinating machinery of loading and unloading, of coaling and repairing, past stores which sold tackle and provisions, until later the road alongside the sea became a promenade, with trees and green-painted wrought-iron instead of cranes, and it was possible to make out another harbour, where little yachts and paddle-steamers sailed rapidly about. Shura brought me to the bottom of the famous granite staircase, scene of the distasteful ‘Odessa Steps’ episode in a Bolshevik film called Warship Potemkin.
To me it looked like the stairway to heaven. Behind us was the Nicholas Church, with its golden dome. I wanted to carry on along the harbour, but Shura insisted we cross to the right-hand side of the steps. Here a small ticket-office accepted four kopeks for us both and admitted us into a little funicular carriage. As soon as the guard thought there were enough passengers to justify the ascent, we began to move up the cliff. I watched the sea become greener and the horizon grow wider as we climbed to the top and emerged into the warmth and privilege of the Nicholas Boulevard. Here, Shura said, the fashionable people of Odessa were always to be seen during the summer. Here were restaurants and hotels looking out to sea. Immediately below was the Coaling Harbour where two frigates and a gunboat of the Imperial Fleet flew an impressive number of colours. On one side of us were neo-classical buildings and on the other were trees of the pleasure-gardens. We heard the sounds of a band. Private carriages came and went. Elegant ladies and gentlemen strolled the promenade. The noises of the harbour were muted, almost courteous.
I was very glad now that I wore Vanya’s suit, for here everything was light: white silks and ostrich feathers and pale frock-coats and cream-coloured uniforms. The steps actually did lead to heaven.
‘Now we go down again.’ Shura took my arm. Slowly we descended past souvenir-sellers, newspaper-vendors, hawkers of toys and photographs. Shura bought us ice-creams and pointed far away to the right. There was Fountain, with its summer datchas and its parks. You could look in one direction at the sea and back in the other at the steppe. But the ‘really rich pickings’ were on our left, the limans and health-resorts. ‘There are lots of silly old ladies who have nothing to do but cash cheques all day, or get someone to cash them for them. There are casinos, too. I have friends in the casinos. We’ll go there one evening.’ In the distance were more fine buildings, churches and monuments (Odessa was full of them) and more green spaces. ‘A lot of really rich people live up there. They live in impregnable fortresses. They’re only vulnerable when they go strolling on the Nickita, or go shopping in Wagner’s.’
I could not quite come to understand what Shura meant. Was he envious of the rich? Did he have revolutionary sympathies? He never displayed them openly. Perhaps it was the way all Odessans thought and spoke?
Shura led me back into the city. I had hoped to eat lunch in one of the small cafés overlooking the harbour. He told me that they were too expensive. The food was poor. ‘We’ll go to one of my regular places. You’ll meet my friends.’ This prospect alarmed me. I had never been able to mix very well with other people. But my mood was far more relaxed than usual. I walked with Shura through pink sunlight admiring all the advertisements, even those which suggested I join the army. Most of the foreign signs were in languages I could read, though some were in Greek or in Asian script which was meaningless to me, in spite of my Podol-learned smattering of Hebrew. Odessa seemed at once the oldest and most modern of cities. Like New York she combined all nations in one. The streets were crowded with soldiers and sailors from the harbour. There were French, Italians, Greeks and Japanese. There were also some Turkish sailors, mainly from merchant ships, together with Englishmen of all ranks. The Turks and Japanese stuck together in larger numbers. They were regarded as the next best thing to German belligerents in a town so closely involved with the War. We were not so far from the Galician front and since our initial successes in East Prussia we had had some setbacks.