Читаем Byzantium Endures полностью

I did a few small jobs for the Podol Jews who had been Kouyoumdjian’s main customers. They were overwhelmingly grateful. They paid almost anything I asked. Like my former master, I became a jack-of-all-trades, fixing electrical equipment, steam-engines, internal combustion engines, all devices not powered by man, child or beast. Indeed, I was willing to do what I could with anything containing cogs or levers. Thus, I soon had a fair bit of money with which to buy myself more sophisticated tools and some to set aside at home (the banks were not trustworthy). I used Captain Brown as a part-time assistant. With a job to do he became more sober during the day. My mother could have given up her laundry work, but she, too, was enjoying herself. It would have been pleasant to have seen Esmé from time to time, since we had been such good friends. She would have relished my success. There were more than enough women to satisfy my sexual needs. With money in my pocket, I became a very popular fellow in the cabarets where I spent an evening or two a week. The only shadow on my mind was the fact that I still had not heard from Professor Matzneff about my Diploma. Until I had it, I could not write off to the important engineering concerns applying for the job which would also help keep me out of the army. I had reduced my cocaine consumption to almost nothing, though our ‘Mother City’ became one of the main supply centres. Several of the women I saw were old friends from Petrograd. There were poets here, and painters and entertainers who knew me. My social contacts became very wide and useful. I took to dressing in expensively fashionable suits. Spring grew warmer. I bought myself a straw boater with an English-style band, and a silver-topped cane. I could go into any shop in Kreshchatik and purchase what I wished. I could hire carriages. And all this with honestly earned money. By day, and sometimes by night, I was a mechanic, in dirty blue cotton covered in oil. When I visited the centre of Kiev, I became the most elegant of youths. I always took the precaution of keeping only a minimum of money about my person and I preferred to travel in company. Many new little theatres and cinemas had opened up in the city, just as they had done earlier in Petrograd. The Foline Ballet Company arrived in Kiev and with it my old friend Seryozha Andreyovitch Tsipliakov. He greeted me elaborately when he came, at my invitation, to a private room of The Hotel Arson. The place had been renovated and taken over by Ulyanski. It was decorated in bizarre, explicitly sexual murals which never could have been tolerated a few months before. I found it convenient for a number of reasons. I chose to turn a blind eye to its vulgarities. It had become one of the main artistic and émigré meeting places in Kiev. Seryozha was impressed by my elegance and surroundings. He hugged me to him. I returned his embrace with affection. If it had not been for him I should never have met Kolya. We sat down to dine. I asked him if he had seen our mutual friend recently.

He told me Kolya had become too proud and had dropped everyone, that he was now a Prince and involved in the Arts Ministry but was unwilling to look after his old friends. Seryozha said he was planning to leave the Foline and go to America at the first chance. He asked where he could find some little boys and some cocaine. I told him and we parted. I had become oddly homesick for Kolya and Petrograd. I even considered returning there. But the fanatics were steadily gaining the upper hand in the government. The ‘Bolshevik coup’ of October was a natural consequence and everyone had expected it. Kerenski unleashed the whirlwind and was consumed by it. It is a shame Stalin could not have taken over at once, but History, that mystical force Bolsheviks invoke in place of God, was against him. He would never be able to rid himself of the Tatar Lenin and the Jew Trotsky sitting on his shoulders, whispering into his ears, even though he had killed them both.