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Shura asked the naval officers how they thought the War was going. What was the atmosphere in Moscow? They said everyone was confident, from the Tsar downwards. Our allies were predicting that ‘the Russian steamroller will crush the Germans in weeks.’ Tannenberg had been an untypical set back due to our over-confidence. We had learned our lesson over Japan and were now the strongest we had ever been. We would play the game of war more cautiously but more effectually. ‘Particularly,’ one of them pointed out, ‘now that Japan is our ally!’ This created further trumpetings from the gentleman in the homburg.

‘And the Turks?’ I said. ‘When shall they be beaten and the Tsar attend mass in the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople?’

‘Just let them start something now and they’re as good as finished,’ said Captain Bikadorov. ‘Though there isn’t a better enemy than your Turk.’ It would be good to free ‘Tsargrad’ (Constantinople) but it was the French he was unsure about. They had gone soft, since Napoleon. They had already been beaten over and over again by the Germans. Moreover he was not sure that the English were reliable allies ‘since they’re almost Germans themselves.’ But the French were the real weak link. The naval officers agreed that in their experience of the French they had met in Odessa ‘the frog-eater is as effete as he is grandiose.’ It was impossible, the older one added, for a Frenchman to think of himself as mortal. The moment the conception impinged (usually when the real fighting started) he became outraged. ‘They are not cowards. They are merely possessed of a divine pomposity!’

The gentleman behind Neeva rose, bowed to the naval officer, and said that he was a native of Odessa and that he had the honour of bearing a French name. His grandfather had been French. He sat down again, raised his Neeva, then, as if upon reflection, lowered it to add: ‘Napoleon was defeated not by our soldiers, my friends, but by our snow. And for our snow we have only God to thank.’

‘And I say thank God for our soldiers as well,’ said Shura.

At this second mention of the divinity the Greek priest clapped his hands together while the nuns turned their heads with one accord towards the windows.

Asking the nuns to speak up if they objected to his smoking, Captain Bikadorov took out a large pipe and began to fill it, while Shura, encouraged by his example, offered some of his papyrussa round the carriage. The naval lieutenants accepted, the old gentleman of French origin refused with a snort (but drew out a cigar as soon as everyone else was smoking) and soon the carriage was full of tobacco fumes. Happily the window was open, which meant that neither the nuns nor myself were greatly inconvenienced. Now I associate the smell with the pleasantness of the occasion. So euphoric did I feel that, later, after we had enjoyed a shared picnic in which all but the nuns and the old gentleman joined, I took my first puff at Shura’s cigarette. I regretted the sausage, bread, pieces of crumbed veal and chicken and even the tea we had bought at the station. My discomfort was mingled with a rather pleasant, dizzy sensation. I disembarked at the next station. I think it was Kazatin, a very pleasant place with willow trees and carved gables and pillars. I took another cigarette at Shura’s insistence. Always get back on the horse as soon as you’ve fallen off, he said. Under his charming influence (and he had a very persuasive manner) I began to experience, for the first time in my life, a sense of the joys of sin. We rushed back, with everyone else, as the train began to move. We flung ourselves past the knees of the nuns. Reseated, Shura offered me a sip of Bikadorov’s vodka. I winked and accepted.

I think I was a little drunk by the evening. I watched the red and black clouds roll by on a wide horizon silhouetted with the occasional steeple or dome, the outline of an entire whitewashed village, by slender poplars and cypresses on the estates of kindly landowners who might have been those described by Tolstoy before he went mad. As the sun set, the Cossack captain began to sing a melancholy song about a girl, a horse, a river and a shroud. He tried to get us to join the chorus, but only Shura seemed able to learn it: