‘Nonetheless, I will thank him for what he did,’ I said.
‘If yer like.’
I left her to finish her toilet and returned to the saloon to buy Mr Thompson a nightcap. He could see I was greatly relieved. We stood by the bar listening to the strains of the Kamarinskaya played by one of the loyalist soldiers on his accordion. A few children still made attempts to dance while their mournful parents murmured of death and torture, of injustice, destruction of their hopes for the future. ‘Will Jack Bragg be all right?’ I asked.
‘The old man’s pretty peeved with him. But no great harm’s been done. The captain’s hated this run since we began. He’s more sympathetic if a chap steps over the line a bit. A tongue-lashing and double-duty for a night or two won’t do Jack any harm.’
We wandered out onto the deck. The rain had stopped and the sky was clearing. The distant flames had died down. ‘The weather should improve on our way back to Varna,’ said Mr Thompson. He saluted me. ‘Well, goodnight, old man.’
I was left alone. I walked once round the deck, then returned to the cabin, got into my bunk, smoked a cigarette and listened to Mrs Cornelius as she sighed and twisted. I knew she was dreaming what she liked to call her ‘nice dreams’. For once I was not much disturbed by her and was soon asleep.
I met Jack Bragg on deck next morning as I took my usual exercise. The hadacka with the green face was dealing her cards. She had evidently found a new pack. She was laying out the full deck as I passed. The Russian ship had left in the night and there was a two-masted schooner in her place. The sun was bright. Batoum seemed cheerful again. I moved to the rail and looked down at the schooner. Her ragamuffin crew were still asleep on deck. Armenians, Turks, Russians, Greeks, Georgians, they looked like pirates from a nineteenth-century storybook. They had pistols and knives all over their bodies and were dressed in a crazy mixture of uniforms, of Western and Asian clothing. They reminded me a little of Makhno’s anarchists. Jack and I paused on the poop. He had been on his watch duty since midnight. His eyes were red, his chin slightly unshaven. ‘Mrs Pyatnitski told me the truth last night,’ I said. He showed some alarm until he saw I was not angry. ‘About your getting them out of prison,’ I said.
‘Oh.’ His voice was hoarse, it was nothing. A few English sovereigns work wonders these days.’ Even as he spoke he began to look more ghastly than ever. ‘You must think me an awful blighter, leading your wife astray like that.’
I was able to smile. ‘Nonsense. If I know her, she did the leading! How did the captain take it?’
‘Not too badly, really. I say, do you think those chaps are smugglers?’ He indicated the schooner.
‘Very likely. They’re from all over the place, aren’t they? Doubtless they’re taking advantage of the present situation while they can.’
‘These waters are still supposed to have corsairs in them, you know.’ Jack Bragg swayed at the rail. The sun caught his bloodshot eyes and dirty fair hair, made his skin look even greyer. ‘What about it, Mr Pyatnitski? Fancy walking the plank?’
‘You’d better get to bed.’ I was jovial. ‘I promise to warn you if I see the skull-and-crossbones on the horizon.’
He stumbled sleepily down the deck and almost fell into the seeress as she reshuffled her pack. I continued to study the schooner. She was a filthy vessel. Her furled canvas was tattered and patched. I had no idea where she came from but made out a Russian word on her side: Phoenix. Probably she had begun life as a fishing vessel. Some of the sleeping men wore bits and pieces of Tsarist Navy uniforms. Others had on army coats, expensive cavalry boots, artillery caps. They were doubtless moving regularly between the Turkish Black Sea ports and what remained of free Russia. Very likely, too, they would take passengers for a high price. I could not blame them. They had no future at all if the Reds won. In the distant streets I heard the noise of a window breaking and turned to look. The bell in the Cathedral began to toll. An old horse hauled a creaking, overladen cart along the road beyond the quay. Then two big army lorries pulled up outside the barrier to unload more passengers: wounded White Army soldiers in dirty English greatcoats; peasant women with babies; old men who might have come straight from the most backward and remote regions of Georgia; grandmothers in black shawls and skirts. They flocked, bemused, towards us. I was horrified, certain the ship must sink under their weight. I watched Mr Larkin run down to meet them. The other officials, Russian and English, began to assemble at their posts. I could look no longer. The smugglers (or pirates) were waking as if, hearing the refugee babble, they scented sustenance. I made my way into breakfast. This might be my last peaceful meal before we reached Constantinople. An hour or so later the ship’s engines turned and I cheered up at the prospect of being at sea again.
We were pulled from Batoum by a little tug. When she released her lines they twanged and glittered in the crisp air. The sun was hot on my face; Batoum was apparently at peace, though smoke from the burning tanker still occasionally drifted over the harbour. With a more knowing eye I looked back at the palms and bamboos, the malachite houses and shady streets, bitter that my hoped-for idyll on Russian territory had been so savagely interrupted, hating Hernikof for his vulgarity and the horrible manner of his dying. Into smooth water, her old machinery complaining, the Rio Cruz turned towards the farther shores of the Black Sea. Her last port of call before Constantinople was to be Varna in Bulgaria, a country which would show considerable hospitality to its Slavic brothers. The peasants sat in groups near the forward hatches. They had spread carpets and bundles everywhere and were eating food they had brought with them. We were loaded almost beyond safety point, but Captain Monier-Williams had his instructions. All we could do, he said, was pray for good weather. Whatever I thought of the poor creatures on deck I was deeply moved when one of the bearded peasants rose to look back at Batoum, removed his cap and began to sing in a high, pure voice Boje Tzaria Khrani. ‘God Save The Tsar’. Almost unconsciously I found myself joining in our National Anthem. Soon it seemed the entire ship was singing.
First Batoum disappeared and then eventually the white tips of the mountains. The Rio Cruz was again alone on a grey sea under an overcast sky. Fortunately for the refugees on deck it did not rain, but the waves grew gradually more agitated. I became afraid we would never lift above the steep watery walls as the ship, groaning and wheezing, trembled in the water, moving ungracefully through cold Limbo.
It was almost a relief to resume my strict daily routine with the Baroness, though perhaps I fucked with a little less enthusiasm as I detected in my sweetheart a certain frantic desperation, the consequence, I suspected, of Hernikof’s murder. She no longer made a pretty pretence of refusing my cocaine. Now she would nag at me until I prepared it. If her love-making became more experimental, it was also less joyous. I was sympathetic. I held her tightly for long moments. More than once that first day out from Batoum we cried softly together, listening to the random bumps and thuds on all sides of us, wondering if we should ever be as happy as we had been during our time when Russian passion had bloomed unchecked on Russian soil.
Mrs Cornelius also seemed particularly happy to return to her habitual pattern. That night she sang and danced her way through a score of favourite songs. Jack Bragg was on duty again, but Captain Monier-Williams remained to sing a chorus of My Old Dutch. Mrs Cornelius said he was a great sport. She sat on his knee, coaxing a chuckle and a smile from his stern Welsh features. In the far corner of the saloon a group of Russians gathered around an accordion and we shouted at them to give us something cheerful. The player, a young, fair-haired, one-legged soldier from Nizhny Novgorod, began the Kalinka. Soon Mrs Cornelius crossed to join a dozen middle-class dowagers in a boisterous dance while we men clapped and stamped our feet. Again the captain was persuaded to join in for a while before murmuring to me: ‘If there’s much more stamping, I’m afraid we’ll all go through to the bilges.’ He straightened his cap, leaving the room with almost a jaunty swagger. When Mrs Cornelius pulled me into the circle to dance I found I had become rather mournful, as if Hernikof s memory haunted me. I had nothing to be ashamed of. A Jew was a Jew. I had not been cruel to him; but now I recalled his drunken eagerness for friendship. Had it been in quest of friendship that he had disappeared into the streets of Batoum to be knifed and robbed and branded?