Читаем Byzantium Endures полностью

‘I’m training to fly,’ said the lieutenant, ‘so this doesn’t really apply to me.’

‘I’ll stop,’ Kolya offered again.

‘Go on.’ Lolly used a tone, mixed sympathy and morbidity, typical of Russian women to this day.

‘He was glad he was out of it because he might have run away if he’d been returned to the Front.’

‘Not a gentleman, then,’ said Alexei Leonovitch.

‘Perhaps not any longer.’ Kolya looked tolerantly at his cousin. ‘Just a wounded soldier. He said this kind of war is like one’s worst dreams. Terrible things happen but you can’t move. You can’t do anything to help yourself or anyone else.’

Again Alexei interrupted. ‘The air-war isn’t like that. Chivalry still exists - and action.’

Kolya continued patiently: it’s not the same as the old cavalry charges, the old advances, old battles like Borodino, where issues of some sort at least are decided. This war is strange. First you fear it; then you come to be mesmerised by it; then you become so tired by it you can watch a comrade die before your eyes and not believe it’s real at all.’

‘People mauled by lions are said to feel nothing but the most beautiful euphoria,’ said Lolly.

‘But what’s this stuff about the Front got to do with Grigory Yefimovitch Rasputin?’ said Alexei. He was distressed and awkward.

‘Oh, quite a lot, don’t you think?’ Kolya gave his tea-cup to a servant who had come to clear away. He stood up. ‘Make sure the mangy old lion doesn’t maul you,’ he warned Lolly. ‘You know I never agree with your mother about anything. But I agree with that. The starets is exploiting the grief we can’t admit and won’t admit until the War reaches its end.’

None of us understood my friend. He was in a peculiarly introspective mood as we left the grand house and took the carriage back to his apartment. I left him to himself. I had been disappointed by my afternoon in High Society. Perhaps the best of the family had not been present. However, I had been erotically moved by ‘Natasha’ and what she had been saying and realised how much I had come to miss the company of unspoiled, uncynical girlhood. I decided it was time to visit Marya Varvorovna. I walked to the building overlooking the Kryukoff Canal. On the canal, barges had been replaced by sleds dragged by emaciated mules. The towpaths were patrolled by so many policemen I began to suspect an important criminal was to be arrested. The concierge, an old ‘gentlewoman’ of Polish extraction and like most Poles thoroughly bad-tempered (they never got over the shock of being conquered first by us and then by the Germans) insulted me by making the sign to ward off the evil eye: ‘No Jews!’ she cried. When I pointed out loudly that I was Ukrainian, of Cossack stock, she complained what horrible people the Ukrainians were and what the Cossacks had done to her poor country. All her estates had been confiscated. Chopin himself had been a relative. A familiar enough litany. I listened as patiently as possible before losing my temper. ‘All I wish to know, Panye, is whether Marya Varvorovna Vorotinsky is at home.’ I had already noted the girl’s card, together with another lady’s, on the door of the building.

‘Of course she isn’t. She’s studying. She won’t be home until six. Who are you?’

I bowed. ‘I am Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff. I am currently staying with my friend Count Nicholai Feodorovitch Petroff.’ I gave Kolya’s address, ‘and can be contacted there.’

She was mollified. She apologised. Or rather she offered some unlikely rationalisation for her bad manners. She said she would give Marya Vorotinsky my message, if I wished to call again I should almost certainly find her at home. I could not be there that evening, since I had arranged to have dinner with Mademoiselle Cornelius and some of her friends. I said I would hope to call the next evening.