It wasn’t until the next morning that our train was able to leave for Golta. The priests were quiet and spent the entire day reading in whispers from their prayer books. Lyusena lay on her bunk, silent and staring at the watery sky through the open door. Khvat sat alone, frowning to himself. Nazarov was the only one who tried to make conversation, but he soon realised no one cared to talk and gave up.
We arrived in Golta a few hours after a pogrom. We heard that many Jews had been killed and were lying dead in the streets. We never found out who was responsible. None of us wished to go into town and see for ourselves.
In the middle of the night, Lyusena began to cry, softly at first, then louder and louder until she was sobbing hysterically. Towards dawn she calmed down. Later that morning, when we awoke at some halfway halt, Lyusena was gone. We searched the whole train but didn’t find her. No one had seen her. She had vanished and left behind her bundle in the Gypsy shawl – it seemed she had no more use for it.
87
Firinka,
Running Water and a Bit of Danger
Firinka, a small Black Sea fish about the size of a large safety pin, was always fresh because it was the only fish for sale in the shops and all Odessa ate (or, as the more polite Southerners preferred, ‘dined on’) this little insignificant creature. But sometimes even firinka ran out. It was eaten raw, lightly salted, or minced and fried as fishcakes. The fishcakes could be eaten only when the alternative was starvation and, as the Odessans said, were best served ‘with a garnish of tears’.
Nazarov and I (we were neighbours) were nearly broke. We lived on nothing but firinka and soggy maize bread. It looked like a grainy biscuit but tasted of pure aniseed. We had to thoroughly rinse our mouths to get rid of the intense taste of that bread. Once in a while I bought roast chestnuts. They were sold by weary old women in heavy fringed shawls who sat on low benches along the pavement, slowly stirring the nuts cooking in the braziers. The chestnuts crackled, burst and gave off an aroma of burnt bark, although sweeter and more fragrant.
Odessa was dark. The street lamps were lit very late or not at all, and so on many quiet autumn nights the only light was the fire of these braziers. The low-slung glow creeping over the pavements lent the city a certain magical quality. The old women wrapped themselves in shawls, while Odessa wrapped itself in fog. The whole autumn passed in this sea-fog shroud. I must admit, I’ve loved foggy days ever since, especially in the autumn when they are infused with the languid lemon yellow of fallen leaves.
It was extremely difficult to find lodgings in Odessa, but we were lucky. On Cape Langeron, in quiet, peaceful Chernomorskaya Street overlooking the sea, stood Dr Landesman’s private sanatorium for nervous diseases. These anxious, unsettled times had produced a great rise in nervous disorders, but nobody had any money for treatment, especially in an expensive private clinic like Dr Landesman’s, which is why it had been closed.
Nazarov had run into a woman he knew from Moscow, a neurologist, and she arranged for us to live in the empty sanatorium. Landesman, a majestic and exceedingly polite gentleman, offered us two small rooms with white walls in return for our acting as caretakers. It was our job to make sure no one chopped down the little orchard for firewood or dismantled the house and carted it away.
The central heating didn’t work, and the little metal ‘burzhuika’ stove could not warm my room with its exceptionally high ceiling and large windows. Firewood was almost impossible to come by. Now and then I managed to buy some acacia logs, which were sold by the pound. The most I could afford was a few pounds’ worth. It was bitterly cold, especially when the winds blew out of the north. The sanatorium’s walls of glazed white tiles made it feel even colder.
Once again, I got a job as a proofreader for a newspaper (I’ve forgotten its name). It was published by Academician Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky.fn1 I worked every third day and earned very few ‘bells’ – the popular slang for Denikin paper roubles engraved with an image of the Tsar Bell in the Kremlin.
I enjoyed living in the echoing mansion by the sea. I liked the total solitude it provided and even the cold grainy air that smelled of salt. I read a lot, wrote some, and for lack of anything better to do, studied the fog. In the mornings, I went out into the garden and stood on the edge of the cliff over the sea. The invisible surf slowly rolled over the shingle. The foghorn blew dolefully and the bell tolled on the Vorontsov lighthouse. Small grey drops of dew shone on the long-withered grass and the branches of the acacias.
Ever since, fog has been associated in my mind with solitude, with a quiet life of concentration. It reduced the world to a small, visible circle, leaving only a few things available for observation – some trees, a gorse bush, a column of rough stone, an iron gate and an anchor chain lying for no apparent reason in a corner of the garden. It forced me to look at them longer and more carefully than we normally do, and I discovered in them many hitherto unnoticed details. The porous yellow stone was encrusted with tiny seashells and on the gorse a few flowers remained, sitting on straight, stiff branches like so many drenched, wrinkled golden butterflies waiting patiently for the sun. But it seldom showed through the fog and then only as a smudgy white blur that provided neither warmth nor shade. Under the one old plane tree, lemon-yellow splotches on its trunk, lay piles of leaves that looked as though cut from dull green velvet. Columns of ants scurried along the iron gate, carrying the last load of winter supplies to their underground granaries, and beneath the anchor lived a timid little toad.
The fog had its own sounds. They appeared shortly before it melted away. It began with a vague rustling. The watery dust of sea spray merged to form drops which collected on the dark tree branches and then fell to the ground with faint plops. Next, a clear, echoing thunk was added to this soft music – the first drop of condensed fog had fallen from the roof and landed on the bottom of the upturned zinc tub below.
I loved the smell of fog as well, which carried with it a scent of coal smoke and steam. It was the smell of railway stations, of docks and ship decks – everything that spoke of travel, of long journeys over land and sea, of voyages through violet-blue light to distant pink islands bathed in the sweet aroma of lemons, of the raw wind and warning lights in the English Channel, of the rhythmic clatter of a train rolling through our slumbering Russian forests, of everything that captivates our frail human hearts.
In Odessa, I was seized by the idea of spending my whole life travelling so that I might live whatever years were granted me in the discovery of new things and people, and to use whatever talent I possessed to write books about my experiences and then give these books – books filled with the whole world in all its variety – to the young woman, as yet unmet, who would fill my life with joy and pain and wonderment at the beauty of the world, the world as it should be but so rarely is. At the time, I was certain that this would be my future. For a writer, to give to the beloved is to give to all humanity. I was convinced of this ill-defined law of generosity and of the need to give of oneself freely and completely. To give and not expect or ask for anything in return, no matter how small, this was all that mattered.