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Grishenko snorted. ‘Well, Katsupi and yids stick together. Good luck with him, Yermeloff. But don’t let him escape, eh? We’ve uses for him. He muttered a spell over our truck and she’s as good as new.’ He crossed to the church and, leading the two little girls by their hands, entered the doors, like, a father on his way to worship.

Yermeloff said, ‘You needn’t be afraid. I have Jewish comrades.’

‘I have Cossack blood,’ I told him. ‘It is my misfortune if I look Jewish to you. Is everyone who is not fair-haired, pink-skinned, a Jew? Is your leader a Jew?’

‘Everyone’s a Jew to Grishenko. It makes killing them easier. You don’t really talk like a Jew. I apologise.’

This well-educated man might be useful as an ally. I accepted his apology in the hope of encouraging his protection. The trouble with brutes is that they are suspicious of Reason yet become aggressive if you shout at them. God knows what their lives are like as children.

We had arrived at a house on one side of the broad, muddy, unmade streets, some distance from the church. It was a small house, built around a courtyard in which two ponies and a goat were tethered. ‘Are you really an engineer?’ Yermeloff asked. ‘Or were you just lucky?’ His cool eyes looked into mine with an expression of the mildest curiosity. He laughed. ‘I was a lieutenant in the Tsarist army. I’m a captain with our Ataman. Would the Bolsheviks make me a general, do you think?’

We entered the doorway. A black-clad woman of indeterminate age shuffled ahead of us along a dirty passage. The walls had patches on them where ikons and pictures had been. ‘That’s our hostess.’ Sotnik Yermeloff called out to her, is there any tea left, pani?’ She went into her room. Bolts were pulled. He was philosophical. ‘She pretends to be deaf. You’d be surprised how many deaf people there are in this district. Everywhere else we’ve stayed, too. At least three-quarters of the population. They go deaf at about nine years old. Before that, they’re dumb.’

We came to a square room with a stove in it. The stove had been decorated with primitive paintings. Most of these had peeled away or been blackened by soot and time. Three other officers, all in different uniforms, sat at benches around the stove. They shared a large piece of meat which they passed from hand to hand. There was black bread. Some vodka.

‘Do you mind if this comrade joins us?’ Yermeloff went close to the stove. They looked at me. One of them, with a dark half-beard and scarred forehead, chuckled. ‘Not at all. Have some bread. Have some pork.’ I had already had the herring and I did not look forward to mingling spittle with these ruffians. They probably had at least three kinds of venereal disease. I contented myself with a large piece of rough bread and a can of thick, acrid tea which had been left on the stove. I was offered no vodka. I had become very tired. I had had little sleep for nights and no opportunity of a reviving sniff of cocaine. I said I wished to urinate; was there a place? ‘In the yard with the horses. The real privy got damaged last night. We tried to pull Yuri out because he’d been in too long. But we pulled through the wrong hole.’ I left these jolly fellows and returned to the yard. It was so cold that any desire to answer the call of nature was instantly dismissed. With the house-door shut behind me, I stood looking at the ponies. The goat was now in the corner, being milked by a crazed-looking girl.

I reached surreptitiously for my cocaine, found a small ‘single-dose’ packet I had hidden, dragged out my handkerchief and pretended to blow my nose. It is not the best method of taking cocaine, but it was the only one available. I emptied the packet into the handkerchief. I sniffed first through one nostril, then the other, until I had inhaled everything possible. It was a large amount. I had come to over-use the drug while working on the Violet Ray. Even this dose had only a minimal effect. I still felt slow and drowsy. But my head had cleared a little.