‘Who let you pass?’ he demanded.
‘The frontier patrol,’ Grey Spats replied nervously. The man in the violet breeches was standing right next to the journalists’ cart.
‘They must’ve been staring into their own pockets!’ he yelled. ‘But did they bother to inspect your things?’
‘Yes, they did.’
‘And your documents?’
‘Yes.’
‘I say it again, they must’ve been staring into their own pockets! Right then, have at it, boys!’
The young men began throwing the luggage onto the ground. Grey Spats screamed. The man in the violet breeches smashed him in the mouth with the butt of his Mauser. ‘Want some more?’ he asked. ‘Then shut up, you bourgeois scum, or I’ll put a hole in that hat of yours.’
Grey Spats clutched a bloodied handkerchief to his mouth and lay stretched out in the dirt fumbling for his broken pince-nez. The men started slitting the leather suitcases open with their swords. They did it neatly and skilfully – two quick slashes, criss-cross. Apparently, there wasn’t enough time to break the locks and open the cases. They worked fast and kept glancing over towards the Soviet frontier. Our driver surreptitiously nudged his horse and moved his cart forward a few steps. The men were pulling things out of the suitcases, holding the shirts and sheets up to the light, taking what struck their fancy and tossing the rest in the dirt.
‘They’re distracted,’ the driver whispered to us. ‘Walk up ahead slowly, up to that bush. There’s a bend there, and we’ll be out of sight. I’ll move on ahead real quiet like and maybe they won’t notice.’
We walked on past the bush, and the driver nudged his horse forward a few paces at a time. He gave his horse a good smack with the whip once he caught up with us, and as soon as it was over the rise the horse took off at a gallop. We started to run and after a few minutes we caught up with the cart where the driver had come to a stop.
We lit cigarettes and the driver told us that a certain ‘Ataman Kozyuba’ and his gang robbed everyone trying to cross through the Neutral Zone. They were mostly after gold and jewels. They had to work fast because even though the Soviet border patrols were not supposed to enter the Neutral Zone, sometimes they crossed over and attacked the bandits. The patrols mercilessly shot everyone they captured. We stood there smoking, all of us glum, even though we had managed to escape the bandits.
The road wound along a clearing dotted with tree stumps. The sun was going down. Its reddish rays lit the crowns of the few remaining pines. I walked along lost in thought. Suddenly, I jumped at the sound of a harsh, metallic shout: ‘Halt!’
Two German soldiers in dark greatcoats and steel helmets stood in the middle of the road. One of them was holding our driver’s mangy horse by the bridle. The Germans demanded to see my entry permit. I didn’t have one. One of them, rather stocky, guessed at my plight from the look on my face. He walked over to me, pointed in the direction of Russia and yelled: ‘Zurück!’
‘Give him five tsarist roubles,’ said the driver. ‘That should get rid of the bastard. Then we can drive on to Mikhailovsky’s farm.’
I held out my hand with a ten-rouble note.
‘No! No!’ the soldier shouted, shaking his head and looking annoyed.
‘What are you doing giving him a tenner?’ the driver asked, angrily. ‘I told you to give him five. That’s the only thing they’ll take. It’s because for years tsarist five-rouble notes were printed in Germany.’
I gave the soldier the five roubles. He put a finger to his helmet and waved at us to get moving. ‘Fa-ahr!’ he shouted.
We went on. I turned round. The Germans, their legs spread wide and their sturdy boots planted in the sandy road, were laughing and smoking. The sun glinted off their helmets. I felt a lump in my throat. I was overcome with the sensation that Russia was no more, everything was lost and there was nothing left to live for.
The singer seemed to guess what I was thinking and said: ‘Dear God, what’s become of Russia? It’s like some horrible dream.’
Vadik also stopped and looked at the Germans, his lips began to quiver and he broke down sobbing like a little child.
‘Never mind, lad,’ the driver muttered. ‘Someday, probably not soon, but someday, we’ll pay them back.’ He shook the reins, and the cart creaked on through the deep red sand marked by the Germans’ steel-shod boots. To the north, where we had left Russia behind, evening’s pink haze was thickening over the clearing. Purple clover grew in clumps along the roadside. For some reason, this made me feel better. We’ll have to see who wins, I told myself. We’ll just have to see.
80
Our Rag-Tag Hetman
I stayed in Kopan until late autumn, when I moved to Kiev to find work and lodgings in preparation for bringing Mama and Galya to live with me. It took a while. Eventually, I landed a job as a proofreader for the city’s one fairly respectable newspaper, Kievan Thought. The paper had known better days. Korolenko had written for it, as had Lunacharsky and other progressive figures. Even under the Germans and the Hetman, Kievan Thought tried to maintain an independent line, though not always successfully. The authorities fined it constantly and several times threatened to close it down.
I rented two small rooms from an overly sensitive Swiss spinster, Amalia Knoster, in a modest house near St Vladimir’s Cathedral. I was not able to bring Mama and Galya to Kiev, however, for at that moment the city was besieged by Petlyura’s forces.fn1 My windows looked out onto the Botanical Gardens. I awoke one morning to the sound of cannon fire which ceaselessly swept the entire perimeter of the city. I got up, lit the stove, looked out at the gardens where the gunfire was knocking the hoar-frost off the trees, and then went back to bed to read and think. The icy winter morning, the crackle of the burning logs in the stove, the booming of the guns – all this induced in me an unusual and precarious but nevertheless undeniable peace of mind. My head felt clear. I washed in the icy water from the tap. For some reason the smell of coffee coming from Frau Knoster’s room brought back memories of Christmas Eve.
I began to write a great deal at the time. Strange as it may seem, the siege helped. The city was held in a tight ring, and so were my thoughts. The realisation that Kiev was cut off from the world, that no one could get out, that the siege was likely to last a long time, and that there was nothing to do now but wait, made life somehow easier and more carefree. Even Frau Knoster became accustomed to the cannonade as a regular feature of daily life. When it occasionally stopped, she grew fidgety and nervous. Silence foretold something new and unexpected and, hence, dangerous. But soon the low thunder ringing the city started up again, and everyone relaxed. You could read again, or think, or work and return to the familiar cycle of normal life: of waking up, work, starvation (or, more accurately, half-starvation) and finally blissful sleep.
I was Amalia’s sole lodger. She let rooms only to single men, although without any devious intentions. It was simply that she couldn’t stand most women. She quietly fell in love with every one of her lodgers, although she expressed this through nothing more than extra care and concern or sudden, deep blushes. These would flood her long sallow face at the uttering of any word that might possibly be construed as a subtle reference to the dangerous realm of love and marriage. She loved to talk about all her former lodgers and was sincerely disappointed when they became engaged, as if by conspiracy, to some cruel and greedy woman and moved out. Amalia had been a governess to rich Kiev families, saved some money and rented her present flat. She earned a living by letting rooms and sewing.