Читаем Byzantium Endures полностью

For the first time since I had arrived in Odessa, I felt depressed and homesick as I went to sleep. I thought of lilacs in the summer rain, of smoke hanging over the steep yellow streets, of my mother’s kindness and attentiveness, something which even my lovely Katya could not replace. This mood had left me when I awoke the next day, but it was to recur from time to time. However, I was determined to stay in Odessa as long as possible, even though winter was drawing on and the heavenly, unreal summer and autumn were giving way to a more prosaic, colder life.

I thought that Shura guessed my slight depression. He took to inviting me to parties (private houses tended to be the meeting places in winter) and to introducing me to different girls. It became harder to see Katya. At first I did not realise that I was seeing her only two or three times a week when before I had seen her every day. I became suspicious of her. I missed her comforting warmheartedness. I became increasingly homesick.

There was a little light snow in November. It seemed to me that the whole of Odessa had been covered with cocaine. By early December I was using about two grams a day, most of it supplied by Shura. My mother had written to me to say that she thought I should return. I had written to say that the news had been sensationalised and that I was safe. I would go home ‘at about Christmas-time’. She did not write to Uncle Semya and I was able to tell him my mother was reassured. Then, on the morning that the first real snow came I received a letter from Esmé telling me my mother had influenza and that Esmé had moved in with her, since her father’s pension had stopped with his death and she could not, anyway, afford the rent on his apartment. This seemed an ideal solution. I was glad that my mother had companionship and someone as competent to look after her as Esmé. I wrote back to say that I would visit Kiev ‘some time after Christmas’, that studies and so on were keeping me in Odessa and Uncle Semya was anxious that I should get the maximum benefit from my stay. None of this was a lie, but the prospect of poverty and simple food over the holiday was too much to contemplate. I could have done very little for my mother in Kiev. Indeed, with myself and my mother to look after, Esmé would have been hard-pressed. Of course, I did not know that the influenza was a very bad attack or I should have returned home at once.

A day or so later Shura asked me if I would like to go aboard an English steamer. I said that the idea was very attractive. Shura needed an interpreter in some business he was transacting with the mate of the ship. The captain was not aboard. He had gone sick and been put ashore in Yalta. I assumed that because of this the mate was interested in off-loading whatever his cargo was and taking on something else. There were fewer and fewer foreign merchant ships in Odessa, due to the winter and Turkish control of the Straits. I believe, too, they were taking different routes, to avoid German submarines. There were, from time to time, Australian warships in the harbour, but we rarely had any contact with their crews. I was glad of the rare chance to try out my English. That night we went down to Quarantine Harbour and showed passes Shura had obtained. Then we were met by two seamen with a ship’s boat and rowed to where the S.S. Kathleen Sisson was anchored, beyond the mole. She was not much of a ship; typical of the tramps trading along the coasts from the Aegean to the Sea of Azov. After Turkey entered the War, these began to disappear so rapidly that as a mercantile city Odessa went from riches to rags almost overnight. I think the Kathleen Sisson had been recalled to her home port of Piraeus and possibly her officers, who were the only Britons aboard, wanted to get out of the theatre of war. The rest of the crew consisted of Greeks and Armenians who would have made a company of laskars seem savoury.