She was just that quarter of a shawl away from total comfort.
It’s true, everything is relative. Her neighbor could not help feeling envy—she herself had only a garland of garlic with which to protect her home from vampires, disease, and prying eyes.
I went on into the city, where passengers from the Shilka were already wandering about in unshepherded flocks, looking for people they knew and finding out about rooms, prices and—most important of all—the Bolsheviks.
It was here that we first heard about the “Greens.”
The Greens were new, and a little hard to understand. Where had this new color come from? Had it emerged from the Whites or the Reds?[119]
“They’re over there,” people would say, gesturing toward the tall white mountains to the right of the harbor. “Beyond Gelendzhik.”[120]
“They live and let live…”
What kind of lives were they living there? Why were they hiding, and who from?
“Even White officers are going over to them.”
Dismal gray groups of passengers from the Shilka hung about at street corners and crossroads, talking dismal nonsense.
“Well, gentlemen,” said a deep businesslike voice, “it’s clear as daylight. We must go to Trebizond.”[121]
“Trebizond?”
“Yes, gentlemen, Trebizond. Apparently butter is very cheap there.”
“Don’t be so stupid. The Bolsheviks will be gone within a week, two at most, and it’ll be quicker to get back home from here in Novorossiisk.”
But the butter lover was intransigent.
“Excellent,” he said. “Let’s say they will be gone in two weeks. But isn’t it better to find a way to enjoy those two weeks? And we’ll find it hard to do that here in Novorossiisk.”
“What with the journey, what with this and that, we’ll barely have time to spread your cheap butter over a slice of bread before we have to make our way back here again.”
“Well, what do you think we should do?”
Other groups were talking about the typhus epidemic. Apparently the whole city was in a state of terror. People were dropping like flies.
The pharmacies were selling all kinds of patented remedies, ointments, liquids, and even amulets, to ward off infection.
People said we should tie the ends of our sleeves tightly around our wrists to prevent anything from crawling up our arms.
The general mood of the city was indeed dismal.
24
YES, NOVOROSSIISK seemed very dismal indeed.
We wandered around for a long time, asking about apartments. Everywhere was full; every last room—every last little corner—was jam-packed.
I met a woman I knew from the Shilka—a former lady-in-waiting.
“Relatively speaking,” she said, “we really haven’t done at all badly for ourselves. We’ve found a room and the landlady’s put several more mattresses down on the floor. There’ll be eleven of us altogether, but as far as living space is concerned two are just little children, so really they don’t count at all. Of course they’ll probably cry, these little ones, but all the same it won’t be any worse, actually, than being on the Shilka, and moreover there isn’t the slightest danger of feeling seasick.”
This lady-in-waiting feared seasickness more than anything in the world. But in that respect the Shilka had done us proud—there had been only one episode of pitching and rolling and it had not been severe, even though I myself was one of the passengers. Until my voyage on the Shilka, every ship I had ever set foot on had, almost at once, begun pitching and rolling—no matter what the atmospheric conditions beforehand.
What seas had not tossed me about! The Baltic, the Caspian, the Sea of Azov, the Black and the White Seas, the Mediterranean, the Sea of Marmara, the Adriatic… And not only seas! Even Lake Geneva, when I was doing the half-hour trip from Saint-Gingolph to Montreux, had turned so rough that all the passengers had felt sick.
My power to conjure up storms had never particularly troubled me. I enjoyed storms at sea and suffered little ill effect from them. But in the Middle Ages I would certainly have been burned at the stake.
I remember the sufferings of a landowner from Orlov who had refused to believe in my powers.
I was traveling from Sebastopol to Yalta and this landowner gallantly offered to accompany me. I thanked him warmly but felt it my duty to caution him: “It will be a rough trip.”
The landowner didn’t believe me—the sea was like a mirror and there was not a cloud in the sky.
“Wait and see!” I said darkly, but he just shrugged his shoulders. The weather was divine and, anyway, he was a heroic sailor. He understood, of course, that I would need looking after, but he had no concerns about himself.
“Well, so much the better.”
We boarded the steamer.
Everyone was thrilled that the weather was so divine, but the captain said unexpectedly, “Let’s have breakfast as soon as we can. Once we’re past the lighthouse, it might turn a little choppy.”
I gave the landowner a pointed look.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said, “I have no concerns about myself. And as for you—well, don’t worry, I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”
During breakfast this landowner of mine talked unstoppably, advising everyone about the right way to sit, the right way to lie, the importance of sucking a lemon, of chewing on the rind along with a little salt, of trying to arch your spine while pressing your head back against your chair, and heaven knows what else.
I felt surprised that a man with so strong a connection to his land should also be so impressively au fait with matters maritime.
The other passengers listened attentively and respectfully. They asked for still more advice. The landowner’s answers were prompt, sensible, and detailed. I did of course, for all my surprise, listen carefully. It would have been wrong for me to ignore the advice of so experienced a man.
What he emphasized most of all was the importance, unless it was very rough indeed, of staying on deck. And so, straight after breakfast, up on deck I went. My landowner followed.
The captain proved right. No sooner had we rounded the lighthouse than the ship adopted the gait of a camel, dipping its nose and then raising first its right side, then its left side, high into the air.
I was chatting merrily away, holding the ship’s rail. I was looking at the horizon and the distant flashes of lightning between the blue-gray clouds. I was enjoying the moist salty air.
But then two or three of my questions went unanswered. I turned around to find nobody there. My landowner had disappeared. What could have happened? The few passengers who had come up with me after breakfast had also disappeared. At this point I realized I was feeling very dizzy indeed.
I needed to lie down.
Walking was rather difficult, but somehow, holding onto the railings with both hands, I negotiated the stairs. I then found that all the places in the ladies’ saloon had been taken. Everyone was lying down.
I found an empty corner and somehow managed to settle myself there, my head on someone’s suitcase.
But where was my landowner? It was specifically to look after me that he had come along. The least he could do was to bring me a lemon or find me a pillow.
I lay there, feeling puzzled, mulling over his advice and instructions.
As well as the large saloon, there were six little cabins that opened onto it. These cabins were, of course, also all occupied, so I decided to stay where I was and try to sleep.
119
The Greens were armed bands of peasants who, at one time or another, fought both Whites and Reds as they tried to protect their villages from reprisals and requisitioning. After the defeat of the Whites, they constituted the last remaining military challenge to the Bolshevik regime. In late 1920 a Green army under the leadership of the Socialist Revolutionary Alexander Antonov numbered as many as 50,000 and controlled a large part of the province of Tambov.
121
Now known as Trabzon, this town in northeastern Turkey was occupied by the Russians at the end of World War I.