‘And you have been to the casinos?’
I admitted that I had.
Uncle Semya became almost jolly, ‘I used to enjoy the casinos. The trick is never to play with your own money. Invent a system and then offer to cut someone in for half the profit. You’d be surprised how many investors you attract. If you win, they are pleased and continue to invest. If you lose, well, you have lost their money and must admit that the system needs improvement. It is how I got my first real capital.’
I was astonished at this frank revelation, even a little shocked. But I realised my uncle had relaxed enough to offer me ‘man-to-man’ advice. It was an announcement that, in his eyes at least, I had come of age.
Uncle Semya seemed distracted then. He sighed. ‘We had thought of emigrating. Less than a year ago we planned to go to Berlin where I have a brother. Now we shall have to wait and see what happens. I heard a rumour we were forming a new alliance with the Germans against the Turks. Yet they don’t fear the Turks in Peter as much as they fear the Germans. We should move nearer to the middle. Perhaps to Kharkov. It’s safer in the middle of any country. But there are reasons - ‘ He waved a mysterious hand. ‘Let’s see what your mother has to say.’ His sharp, mild features clouded. He said something, I thought in German, about the Jews, but he spoke so softly it was impossible to understand him. He reached into his desk. He took out a passport, smiled at it almost wistfully, then replaced it in the drawer.
Feeling that I had been given even more freedom than before, praying that my mother would not be alarmed by the news of the bombardment (though I knew she would), I returned to my room. After I had reinforced myself with a little of my own supply of cocaine I went to call on Katya, to see if she would come with me to Esau’s. When I arrived at her place (which was over a hardware shop) her mother, who occupied the back first-floor room and was also a whore, said that she was busy. With habitual tact I left a message and went on my own to the tavern. I had expected to find Shura there, but he was about some business, and I fell into conversation with a couple of dancers from one of the cabarets. A man and a woman, they had just done a tour of the provinces and were complaining about Nikolaieff which they described as a ‘one-tram town’.
Shura came in shortly afterwards. He greeted me with a slap on the back and one of his winks. ‘Going to Peter, I hear.’
I said that it still wasn’t entirely settled. He ordered a glass of tea and drank it thirstily. He nodded. ‘When you get there, you want to keep in with all those well-connected young ladies at the university. They’re the daughters of rich men. I talked to a girl yesterday. She’s on holiday at Fountain and liked the look of me. Her father’s a factory-owner from Kherson. He sent me packing when he caught me giving her the eye. But he’s the sort. An industrialist who’ll back your patents.’ Another wink.
I said that it sounded as if he were recommending a con-game, and he laughed, ‘Isn’t it all a racket, Xima, dear? What if the War lasts forever? What if this is to be the world we’ll know for the rest of our lives? We must protect ourselves.’
I shared the general opinion that Germany and Austria-Hungary had bitten off far more than they could chew. The Hapsburg dynasty, for a start, was rotten through and through.
‘And you don’t think it’s true of the Romanoffs?’
I had heard more scandal about the Tsar and his family in Odessa than previously I had heard in the whole of my life. I had to agree that it looked bad. The Tsarina and most of her court, I had heard, were drug addicts. The Tsar’s ministers and military high command were all corrupt. It was easy to believe these things in the atmosphere of Odessa. I let the subject drop, however, in deference to my mother. I merely said: ‘Russia has the strength to beat anyone.’
A group of our friends entered and made towards our table. ‘Oh, we certainly have more cannon-fodder than anyone else.’ As the boys and the girl seated themselves around us Shura looked towards the bar. There a young woman was singing a frenetic song to an accordionist’s accompaniment. She was slim and neurasthenic while her musician-friend was burly and dirty, looking as if he had come straight out of one of the more miserable shtetls I had read about and, thank God, never had to experience. ‘But, as the Vikings used to say, free men fight better.’
I told him that there was no such thing as freedom, that in my view it was a revolutionary’s idea of heaven. He was amused. Nikita the Greek (who was only Greek in name) pushed his workman’s cap back on his head and leaned across the table, giving one of his strange, menacing grins. ‘Only a man without a soul is a free man,’ he said, ‘It’s possible to live a free life, but only if you renounce your immortality. That’s what I think.’ Nikita had been trained for the priesthood until he had run away from Kherson. He added: ‘One cannot have God and freedom.’
It was pretty much what I had said. I glanced triumphantly at Shura, but he had lost interest and had his shoulder up. He was insouciantly chewing sunflower seeds and staring at the emaciated singer. Behind Shura’s back, Nikita widened his big eyes and jerked a thumb at my cousin, as if to indicate that Shura was showing unusual interest in the girl. I grinned. I was to remember that grin with some bitterness, but at the time I said: ‘All the Turks have done is to wake us up to the real danger. Now we’ll fight properly. Nothing can destroy Russia.’
Lyova, the painter, came back with a handful of drinks and lowered them to the table. His dark hair fell over his eyes and he pushed it back. ‘That’s what they said about Carthage. They were probably going about saying “Carthage is indestructible. It’s one of the oldest civilisations in the world.” Then look what happened. The Romans destroyed the whole thing overnight. And why? Because of a failure of imagination. They simply couldn’t conceive of their fate. If they’d been able to do so, they’d have been here today.’
‘They are here,’ said Boris the Accountant, tapping his round spectacles. ‘Why do you think there are so many Semites in Odessa? The New Carthage.’
‘The New Gomorrha, more likely,’ said Shura, turning back and draining his tea-glass. ‘Let’s have some vodka.’ He seemed gloomy. He wouldn’t look at me. I thought he must be upset at the prospect of our parting.
‘Nonsense,’ said Nikita. He sneered. ‘Russians and Jews are all too innocent. They are still serfs at base. We behave like kids, we’re cruel to one another, because we are kids. We treat our own children badly ...’
Grania, the curly-haired dancer with the heart-shaped face, would not have this. She made a disapproving sound. ‘Nobody loves children more than Russians!’
Boris said feelingly, ‘Cossacks aren’t too finickety about Jewish children...’
‘Careful what you say, Benya,’ Lyova warned him with a smile. ‘We have a Cossack hetman in our company.’ We all enjoyed this.
‘We are children,’ insisted Nikita. ‘We love our “Little Fathers”, our “Batkos”. And it’s why we’re such materialists. Because we are poor, most of us, as children are poor. We have no power, no wealth, no justice save the justice of the autocrat. We are always quarrelling about possessions. We must be the only race in the whole world to equate sentimental lyricism with emotional maturity. Our literature’s full of trees and naive protagonists. There are more trees in Russian novels than it took to make the paper they’re printed on.’
I do not think any of us followed Nikita’s wild arguments too clearly. It was the first time he had expressed them. He was to become a journalist on a Bolshevik newspaper and disappear in the mid-30s (I met his sister briefly in Berlin). Boris the Accountant seemed to agree with Nikita, however. ‘We are in the power of mad children,’ he said. ‘Russians will do anything to resist growing up. Thus they are easily ruled.’