‘Jew-lover?’ He laughed. ‘And why not? Do you know what our name originally was?’
‘Your father’s you mean? I’m surprised you know it.’
‘Coming from you, that’s rich.’
We were hurting one another quite unfairly, as only those who have been close can wound. It was I who turned my back first, refusing to continue. If Shura was going to flaunt the fact of being half-Jewish, that was his own affair. It only confirmed what I thought.
‘I feel sorry for you,’ he said. ‘You could have been happy here. You could have had friends here. People liked you. But not now. I advise you to get out of Odessa as quickly as possible.’
Was it a threat? I said, ‘Odessa has no further attractions for me.’
He opened the door, drawing his moth-eaten fur about him. ‘You won’t say that when your sneg runs out.’ Sneg was the slang term for cocaine, meaning ‘snow’.
Then he was gone. Did he think he had turned me into a drug fiend? I became alarmed, then reassured. I was not the type to become addicted. I have gone for months without touching the stuff. Indeed, in recent years, with prices the way they are, I have all but given it up. It is possible to burn the candle at both ends sometimes and feel the results of that, but as for withdrawal symptoms, I have never known them. One has to have withdrawal symptoms to be an addict. They made cocaine illegal after the First World War. It was one of the silliest things they did. They should have made asprin and gin illegal at the same time.
On the morning of Christmas Eve I was called again to my uncle’s study. Concerned that he had not heard from her, he had sent my mother a telegram. A reply had reached him from Captain Brown. My mother had bad influenza. She was worrying about me. It seemed that providence had given me a perfect excuse to leave Odessa and escape any attempted vengeance from Shura. Uncle Semya agreed I should rejoin my mother as soon as the Christmas holiday was over, when the trains would be running as normally as could be expected in wartime. A place had been found for me at the Petrograd Polytechnic Institute. I would begin there in January. A full wardrobe would be provided for me. I would draw a small allowance from his agents in the city. They would also find me accommodation. In return, I might be called upon to translate in matters of business or carry small parcels to other agents of his. I told him I would be honoured to serve him.
He had confirmed my place, he said, by telegram. A number of telegrams had gone back and forth in the past twenty-four hours. He had spoken to Shura and had received Shura’s faithful promise not to engage in acts likely to embarrass the family. My revenge was frustrated. There was no time to plot a fresh one. At least, I thought to myself, Katya would be opening her spiders by now.
I went back upstairs to tell Wanda what was happening. We decided to make the most of our time together. I gave her a little of my cocaine to help her stay awake. We spent as much of the Christmas holiday as possible in an orgy of love-making.
When my suitcases were packed and my first-class ticket (a gift from Aunt Genia) was in my pocket, I realised I would miss Wanda. I told her I would come back to Odessa as soon as possible. She must visit me in Kiev. I never did see her again. She became pregnant, gave birth to a son, and was looked after by Uncle Semya until she vanished three or four years later in the terrible days of famine and revolution.
Wanda and Aunt Genia saw me to the Kiev train. The station was crowded with uniforms. I was already missing Odessa, with her docks and shops, her fog and coal-dust and her vital, noisy life. I believe I wept a little. Wanda certainly wept. Aunt Genia wept. The train began to move away from the platform, heading inland once more. I thought I saw Shura standing near the gate, raising his hat sardonically, Katya at his side.
It was snowing heavily as the train pulled into open countryside. I sat back happily in the padding of the heated carriage. This was more comfortable than the last trip. I was already making progress. I wore a Petersburg suit, a good quality fur cap, an English top-coat with a fur collar, and black, patent-leather boots. Over the course of a few months, I thought, I had become not only a man. I had become a gentleman.
In the main I received good service from the train staff. With my first-class ticket I was able to sit in a deep plush armchair with my books and magazines close by on a little folding table. Soon after we left Odessa we ran into a blizzard. The further north we went, the deeper the snow became. All I could see was undulating banks of whiteness, interspersed with the roofs, smoke and domes of villages, the silhouettes of trees, the occasional snow-drenched forest. I could almost smell the snow through the windows, though of course the carriage was insulated and the motion of the train so regular one might not have been travelling at all. Just for the pleasure of it I took the ‘large breakfast’ in the restaurant car. I ate cheese and cold meats and watched the snow clinging to the windows. Sometimes it built up a layer before the speed and heat of the train melted it away, to reveal the steppe again. I strolled into the saloon-car which bore the sign of the Romanoffs, the two-headed eagle, over the door. Here I remained, in a small chair close to the ornate stove, listening to the murmurings of generals and priests, aristocrats and fine ladies; they were already drinking, many of them, for prohibition extended only to the lower classes. Their well-bred tones would from time to time be broken by sudden, loud laughter. They were cynical, in the main, about the War news.
Being in the saloon and unable to join the occupants depressed me. I returned to my carriage, where an old lady dressed all in black took a fancy to me. She began to tell me how she was the widow of a certain general killed in the war with Japan.
She spoke in the slightly Frenchified accents of St Petersburg. I was soon able to catch the sound and reproduce it. She decided I was well-educated, a well-bred boy. She shared some of her chocolates with me. She asked where I was bound. I told her Kiev. I was to go on almost immediately to St Petersburg. She said I should come to see her and wrote down an address in a small notebook. The other travellers in the carriage were a high-ranking military man who said nothing, studied maps, read The Voice of Russia, and sometimes left to go to the saloon-car to smoke a cigar; a theatrical, rather haughty, young woman who claimed she acted in Moscow and was soon to tour the provinces. She smelled of the same perfume as Mademoiselle Cornelius, whom I still remembered with great pleasure. This actress had none of that lady’s character; she was a typical, neurotic Moscow ‘beauty’. I doubt if she was an actress at all. Probably a general’s mistress, travelling separately to avoid scandal. Her brocades and furs had the look of trophies rather than familiar clothing.
The snow did not stop. It became dark quite soon and the gas was lit in the carriages. So comfortable and warm was the train that I was more and more reluctant to have the journey end. I hoped for delays on the line, some minor disaster which would extend the adventure for another day at least. Lunch came and went, and dinner. I talked to my old lady, telling her of my ideas, my plans, my expectations of ‘doing good for Russia’. She said I would love Peter, ‘It is really Russian there, not like this awful province. This is a land of Jews. They are impossible to avoid.’
Feelingly, I agreed with her.
‘But in St Petersburg,’ she said, ‘there you will find the embodiment of all that is best in Russia.’
The actress claimed that Moscow was ‘more Russian’ than the capital. There were too many Europeans in Peter. The place had been founded by a Tsar who had looked to Germany for inspiration. See, she said, where that had got us. Attacked by the very people we had courted, to whom we had shown hospitality. Half the Royal Family was German. They were the scourge of the Earth. She wished she could remain in Moscow all her life. No socialists there. No nihilists. No assassins. There were no Jews and no Germans, either. It was a true Slav city, not some imitation Berlin or Paris.