The man in charge of the Bogunsky Regiment at the time was named Shchors. He soon became a legend. I first heard of him from his men, who told me ecstatic stories of their commander’s uncompromising bravery and talent. What amazed me the most was the men’s devoted, almost childlike, love for Shchors. For them, he embodied the best possible qualities of military leadership – steadfastness, resourcefulness, fairness, admiration for the common man and inexhaustible and, if one can put it so, sober romanticism. The men of the Bogunsky Regiment were young, and so was Shchors. Their youth combined with their faith in the victory of the revolution had transformed this military unit into a sort of brotherhood, strengthened by a shared enthusiasm and by the blood they had spilled together.
No external events could slow the sap rising in the trees. And so, at the appropriate moment, spring returned, the Dnieper overflowed its banks, the weeds in the fields grew taller than a man’s head and the battle-scarred chestnut trees put out their plump leaves and, for some reason, bloomed with unusual splendour. It seemed to me at times that these trees were the only thing left untouched in the world. Just as before, their leaves rustled over the pavements and cast deep shadows. Just as before, their shapely candles of pink and yellow-flecked flowers blossomed gently and discreetly on the branches. But no more dreamy-eyed schoolgirls strolled in these shadows, and among the dried blossoms that had fallen to the pavement lay shell casings that had turned green over the winter and stiff, grubby rolls of bandage.
Spring glistened over Kiev, steeping the city in vibrant blue. At long last, the lime trees blossomed in the parks, and their scent filtered into the houses sealed up tight over the winter and forced the city dwellers to throw open their windows and balcony doors. Soon after, summer stole into the rooms, bringing warmth and light breezes, and all our fears and troubles dissolved in its drowsy peace. It’s true, however, that we had no bread, and survived on nothing more than last year’s frozen potatoes.
I got a job at a strange organisation. It was almost impossible to pronounce the abbreviation for its name. I only recall the beginning: ‘Obgubsnabchuprod …’ The rest was so complicated that even the organisation’s director, a fat Armenian with a black imperial and a Mauser slung around his neck (just as one would carry a camera), snorted and frowned every time he signed a piece of letterhead. It’s hard to say what the organisation dealt in exactly. It was mostly calico. The corridors and rooms were all piled high with bales of calico. They were never sold or given to anyone under any circumstances. Rather, the bales were being constantly delivered, then taken away to the warehouse, then dragged back and stacked up again in the corridors. This perpetual back and forth and back and forth drove the employees out of their minds.
I had a good deal of free time. I tried to track down my old schoolmates, but no one was left in Kiev other than Emma Shmukler. I rarely saw him. He had become quiet and sad, perhaps because his family had forced him to give up his dream of becoming a painter. Emma’s father had become ill, and so all the responsibilities fell on Emma. He alone had to protect his relations against famine, requisitioning, eviction, Petlyura’s pogroms and raids, and what was called at the time uplotnenie, ‘consolidation’, when whole families moved into a single room and the rest of their flat was handed over to strangers.
Once again, as in my schooldays, I went to evening concerts in the garden of the former Merchants’ Club. The roses and canna lilies were all gone, replaced by mint and wormwood. Quite often extraneous sounds found their way into the music – distant explosions, the crackle of gunfire – but no one took the slightest notice.
During those days in Kiev I became consumed by the works of that great French writer and literary mystifier, Stendhal. I never gave much thought to the nature of his mystifications, for I considered them perfectly legitimate, as I still do, since they testified to an inexhaustible store of ideas and images so varied that it was unthinkable to combine them under one name. No one would ever believe that one person was capable of penetrating so deeply into so many and such different areas of life – painting, the steel trade, daily life in the French provinces, the fog of war at Waterloo, the art of seduction, the rejection of the bourgeois age, the work of the quartermaster, the music of Cimarosa and Haydn.
When I learned that his extensive diaries, so full of exciting events and rich with ideas, were largely fictitious, but so convincingly written that even the most knowledgeable experts of the era were fooled by them, I could only bow before the genius and literary courage of this mysterious and solitary figure. Ever since he has been my secret friend. It is difficult to say how many times I have strolled through Rome and the Vatican, how many trips I have taken to the provincial towns of France, how many operas I have seen at La Scala, and how many brilliant conversations among the great minds of the nineteenth century I have overheard in the company of this clumsy, puzzling man.
Soon my luck changed. The writers Mikhail Koltsov and Yefim Zozulyafn2 arrived in Kiev from Moscow. They began to publish an art magazine, and I was taken on as its literary editor. The work was light. The magazine was quite meagre, something along the lines of a school exercise book with half the pages torn out. Self-confident, ironical and witty, Koltsov rarely came by the office. I spent my days in the single room with Zozulya, who was so short-sighted, kind and accommodating that he could never be mistaken for the popular ‘man of steel’ from Moscow.
I showed Zozulya the beginning of my first and still unfinished novel, The Romantics. He genuinely liked it but did say that I had overdone the self-analysis bits and that, besides, it was too wordy. Zozulya was then writing a series of stories no longer than half a dozen lines each. He liked to say that every story was ‘shorter than a sparrow’s beak’. They resembled fables and had a clear moral. He considered literature to be a form of teaching, a sermon. For me, literature possessed something much greater than this narrow utilitarian function, and so we quarrelled constantly.
By then I was already convinced that genuine literature was the purest form of expression for a free spirit’s heart and mind, that only in literature could an artist reveal all the complex richness and power of the human soul, and in that way redeem us, in a sense, of the many sins of our commonplace lives. I thought of literature as a gift, given to us by a distant and precious future, that reflected humanity’s dream over the centuries for perfect harmony and undying love on this earth, a dream that is born and dies every day but refuses to expire for good. As the quiet hum of a seashell awakens our desire to behold the still expanse of a misty sea, or the silver smoke of clouds flying across the sky, or the oceans of cleansing air rising from a damp forest, or a child’s ringing voice, or the profound silence of the world, so literature draws us closer to the golden age of our thoughts, our feelings and our actions.
Meanwhile, as Zozulya and I sat arguing about literature, Atamans Zelëny and Struk were prowling around Kiev and making raids here and there on the outskirts. Once Struk managed to occupy the entire district of Podol, and it took a great deal of effort to dislodge him. Denikin’s army was advancing from the south.fn3 On the steppes beyond Kremenchug, Makhno and his men raped and pillaged. But few people in Kiev talked about such matters or bothered to take them seriously. There had been so many false rumours that no one even believed in real facts anymore.