Suddenly the saloon door swung open and in rushed my landowner.
Hatless. Dishevelled. Eyes darting from side to side.
“Are you looking for me?” I called out. “I’m over here!”
But he didn’t hear me. He flung open the door of one of the little cabins and thrust his head inside. There was a wild shriek, then something like the bleat of a crazed goat—and the door slammed shut.
“He’s looking for me!” I thought. I tried to catch his eye.
But he didn’t see me. He rushed to the next cabin and again flung open the door and thrust his head inside. Again there was a crazed bleat and a wild shriek. This time I even made out a word: “Outrageous!”
He leaped back again and the door slammed shut. “He must think I’m in one of those cabins,” I said to myself.
“Nikolay Petrovich! I’m over here!”
But he was already at the third cabin. He thrust his head inside, bleated something incomprehensible—and was met by wild shrieks of feminine outrage.
“What on earth’s gotten into him?” I wondered. “Why does he keep bleating like a goat? Why doesn’t he just knock and ask?”
Then he thrust his head into the fourth cabin, nearer to where I was lying, and was immediately propelled back out again. Looking like death, he stopped, shouted, “For the love of God, where the hell is it?”—and rushed toward the fifth door.
At this point I understood. I hid my face in my scarf and pretended to be asleep.
By now the other women were getting indignant: “This is outrageous! Opening the doors of ladies’ cabins and—!”
“That gentleman’s traveling with you, isn’t he?” asked one woman.
“No, he most certainly isn’t,” I replied, sounding shocked and offended. “I’ve never even set eyes on him before now.”
I doubt she believed me, but she must have understood that I had no choice: I could hardly admit to having such a companion.
After equally brief visits to the fifth and sixth cabins, he shot out into the corridor, to the accompaniment of yet more furious shrieks.
When we reached Yalta, I found him by the gangway.
“At last!” he said in an unnaturally bright voice. “I was waiting for you all day long. It’s been wonderful up on deck! Open horizons, the incomparable might of the sea! The beauty of it all, the elemental power! No, no words are enough. I spent the whole time on deck—it’s been an almost mystical experience for me. But such things, of course, are not for everyone. The captain and I were the only people who managed to stay on our feet. The first mate’s got good sea legs but—though I’m sorry to say this—even he lost his nerve. And the passengers were all flat on their backs. Yes, a truly lovely, bracing trip.”
“I got myself a private cabin,” I said, trying not to look at him.
“Yes, somehow I knew things would be complicated with you,” he muttered, trying not to look at me.
25
HOW IT warms the soul to discover—amid naked rock, amid eternal snow, beside a cold, dead glacier—a tiny velvety flower, an edelweiss. In this realm of icy death it alone is alive. It says, “Don’t believe in the horror that surrounds us both. Look—I’m alive.”
How it warms the soul when, on an unfamiliar street in an alien city, when you are tired and homeless, an unknown woman comes up to you and says, with a delightfully Odessan accent, “Hello! Well, what do you say to my new dress?”
There I was—wandering around Novorossiisk, unable to find shelter—when an unknown lady comes up to me and, in the way of women all over the world, asks, “Well, what do you say to my new dress?”
Noticing my obvious bewilderment, she adds, “I saw you in Kiev. I’m Serafima Semyonovna.”
Reassured by this, I look at the dress. It’s made from what looks like remarkably nasty muslin.
“It’s an excellent dress,” I say. “Very nice.”
“But can you guess what it’s made of? And do you realize how impossible it is to find any kind of material here? You can’t even get hold of calico—not for love nor money. Well, what you see here is medical gauze that was being sold to make bandages.”
I don’t feel so very surprised. In Petersburg we had made underwear from tracing paper. We soaked it in something or other and ended up with something not far from batiste.
“Of course, this gauze may not be all that strong,” she says, “and it does tend to snag, but it’s cheap, and it comes nice and wide. But you won’t find any now—it’s all been snapped up. The only gauze left is the kind with iodoform. It’s a pretty color, but it smells rather nasty.”
I express my sympathy.
“You know,” the woman continues, “my niece bought some dressings at the pharmacy—very nice they were too, edged with blue—and she used them as trimmings on a dress just like this one. She sewed some strips along the hem and it really does look very nice indeed. And it’s good hygiene too—thoroughly sterilized.”
O sweet and eternal femininity! Edelweiss, living flower on the icy rock of a glacier! Nothing can break you. I remember how, as the machine guns rattled away, officials told people living in central Moscow to go down into their cellars. And there, while people wept or gritted their teeth, another such edelweiss, another Serafima Semyonovna, had heated her curlers over a small tin in which—since there was no methylated spirit anywhere—she was burning some foul-smelling anti-parasite solution.
And there had been another in Kiev, rushing out—under machine-gun fire—to buy herself some lace for a blouse. And yet another in Odessa, sitting in a hairdresser’s while panicked crowds besieged the ships.
I remember her wise words: “Well yes, everyone’s running for it now. But really! How can you run anywhere without a proper hairdo?”
No doubt, during Pompeii’s last minutes, there had been edelweisses hurrying to fit in a quick pedicure.
Calmed by these thoughts, I ask this unknown Serafima Semyonovna if she knows of a room anywhere.
“I do know of one, and it’s really not at all bad, but you won’t feel comfortable there.”
“Heavens—what’s comfort got to do with it? I’m hardly in a position to pick and choose!”
“No, I really do advise you to wait a little. There are two typhus patients living there. If they die, there’s a chance the room will be disinfected. You’d be better off waiting.”
I remember searching for a room in Odessa. Here—typhus; there—it had been that terrible Spanish influenza. I had been given a letter of introduction to an engineer who was going to let me have a room in his apartment. On reaching Odessa, I had gone straight to this address. I had rung the bell repeatedly. Finally someone opened the door a crack and asked in a whisper what I wanted. I passed him the letter and explained why I’d come. The door opened a little wider and I saw the miserable, exhausted face of an elderly man. It was the engineer.
“I can’t let you come in,” he said, still in a whisper. “I have got a room, but I must tell you that five days ago I buried my wife and two sons. My third son is dying now. My last son. I’m on my own with him here. I don’t even dare to give you my hand—I may already have the flu myself. You really mustn’t come in.”
Yes, there it had been Spanish influenza; here it was typhus. Serafima Semyonovna launches into the details with gusto: “One young lady goes to church for a friend’s funeral. Some woman asks her, ‘Why are you in such deep mourning?’ She replies, ‘I’m not in mourning, I’m just wearing a black dress.’ But the woman points at her skirt and says, ‘Then why do you have a gray band sewn onto your hem?’ The young lady looks down—and sees her dress is crawling with lice. Well, what do you think happens next? She passes out. They start trying to bring her round, but then they see the telltale signs. Typhus rash—all over her body.”