The Laughter of Carthage - [Between The Wars 02]

by Michael Moorcock

  A moment or two later, when the anchor began to lift, Bragg returned to his duties, but I remained forward. As we steamed towards Sebastopol I soon made out the entrance to the harbour where a sinister line of buoys indicated her mine defence. Beyond the buoys I could see a few low, modern buildings, apparently empty. There was not a single human figure visible anywhere; not a vehicle, not a whiff of smoke; not a sound. The greatest military harbour of the Black Sea seemed completely deserted.

  Without a naval guard to warn us of potential danger or a pilot to guide us through the gate of the nets I felt the ship had little chance of getting in safely, but she continued to steam towards the buoys directly ahead. I gripped the rail, readying myself for the explosion which must certainly come, but somehow we passed into the harbour. A few minutes later we rounded the point to see the grey-hulled outline of a British man-o’-war at anchor: the only other ship in evidence. She did not acknowledge us and I began to believe she, too, had been abandoned. The same silence lay across the unpopulated hills and at the town below them. The sudden flap of a seagull’s wing was startling and unwelcome. Nothing, save for a few birds, moved on water or land: a desolation of snow and ice, it was as if the Winter King had passed through, leaving no soul alive which might have witnessed his presence.

  The Rio Cruz dropped anchor between the battleship and the huge main quay. By now a good many passengers were on deck, as affected as I by the silence. They spoke in low, puzzled voices. Jack Bragg passed me, grinning. ‘Rather better reception than the last time the British came to the Crimea!’

  The buildings of the main town rose as high as seven or eight storeys, mostly of the familiar neo-classical pattern, but here and there were signs of an older, more typically Slavic design, with the polished domes of churches and cathedrals, the baroque of ministerial offices, much of it in yellow limestone, reminding me of my own Kiev. Sebastopol’s fortifications were sturdy and not evidently breached, but she flew no standards. Shaking his head. Major Volisharof came up beside me. He stared intently shoreward, as if into a mirror, and automatically squeezed a small pimple on his left cheek; then he began to brush at his moustache with his index finger. He reminded me of a gardener at work on a favourite piece of topiary.

  ‘You know Sebastopol, major?’

  ‘Oh, very well.’ He pointed away to our left. ‘All the planes have gone. That was the aerodrome. Not so much as a windsock. And the signal station’s abandoned.’ His hands returned to tease his moustache. ‘I’ve seen this sort of thing before. Yet tomorrow both Reds and Whites could be back, fighting in the streets, and the quaysides choked with refugees.’

  ‘Do you still hope to go ashore?’

  ‘No, no. It’s Yalta definitely now. Isn’t that silence awful? When you get that, you can be sure there’s a mound or two of corpses not far away.’ He gave his moustache a pat. ‘As if the place has been visited by the plague. It will be like this everywhere in a year or two. The whole of Russia wiped out.’

  We listened to the light wind in the rigging, the flap of the bedraggled flags against their masts. Then the bell sounded for lunch.

  At about one-thirty there was a noise off to port and several of us, including Mrs Cornelius, left the saloon to look. Coming away from the vast yellow quay was an old steam launch. She wheezed and spat like the boats I used to see in the summer taking Odessa’s holidaymakers for trips, or the river-steamers I once serviced for the Armenian in Kiev. Her funnel panted out unhealthy black smoke and her machinery sounded as if it was held together only by ancient layers of congealed oil. In her stern was a middle-aged Russian officer wearing a green greatcoat and an astrakhan shako, his face pinched with cold, while in her bow a French infantry captain had on his regimental cap but was otherwise completely wrapped in fox fur. A British naval rating, in regular uniform, at the boat’s little wheel displayed considerable skill in bringing her alongside. The officers reached up for the ropes our crewmen threw down. When the boat was secured they climbed up the waiting ladder to be greeted by our captain. I had gained the impression these might be the only three survivors of Sebastopol. Some of our hands shouted questions to the rating, but I could not understand his replies. At that moment the British battleship, now lying aft of us and to starboard, came to life. She was half-hidden by mist so the sharp sound of her bosun’s whistle was all the more startling; this was followed by one single, deep note from her horn. The mood of desolation lifted just a little. People began to call out to the Russian officer, asking after relatives, for news of the Civil War, wanting to know what had happened to the port, but he merely shrugged and continued on to the captain’s cabin.

  A few minutes later the cook’s boy passed us with a tray of steaming food and took it in. ‘They ain’t ‘ad nuffin’ ter eat fer a week,’ he told Mrs Cornelius when on his return she seized him by the arm. ‘I don’t fink we’ll be ‘ere long, missus.’ She and I went to sit and drink vodka in the saloon while around us a small army of merchants and ex-Princes discussed the significance of Sebastopol’s silence. About an hour later I saw Mr Thompson. He paused long enough to tell me that the Whites were trying to hold off the Reds at Perekop. We had arrived a day too late or a day too early. The battleship, H.M.S. Marlborough, was supposed to offer covering fire to the Whites in attacking the town. But Sebastopol had been taken before she could reach the harbour. Then, at the rumour of a large Red force coming through, the Whites and the majority of civilians had left. Marlborough had no orders and was sitting it out until she heard what she should do. Meanwhile suspected cases of mumps on board meant that she was in quarantine. There were a few refugees still in the town. The officers had come aboard to see how many more we could accommodate. ‘We’ll keep our steam handy so we can leave at an hour’s notice. We’ll probably be taking on wounded.’

  Through Jack Bragg’s glasses Mrs Cornelius and I again surveyed the town. Shops had plainly been looted of everything; on walls I saw familiar posters, both White and Bolshevik, and occasionally an old person would scuttle from one doorway into another. I saw two dogs engaged in sexual intercourse on the quay, as if they had realized that here was the largest audience they would ever have. Though several buildings showed signs of shelling they were not particularly badly damaged. I had witnessed many a town devastated by War, but none whose population had vanished so completely. It was very difficult to understand where everyone could have gone. Later three horse-drawn wagons, crude red crosses painted on their canvas awnings, stopped wearily at the quay and crippled men were helped into the old steam-launch which had to make several journeys, eventually bringing some thirty wounded soldiers aboard. In the meantime grey mist descended on the town. Another hour passed. Then a wealthy Russian family and their servants were brought out. They were taken to the last available private cabin. These tall, dignified people had their faces hidden in their collars but there was speculation they were members of the Royal Family. Neither Mr Thompson nor Jack Bragg could discover their identities and Captain Monier-Williams would not tell. They had their meals served in their quarters. By nightfall we were apparently ready to sail again. The Russian soldiers were all youths; those who could walk dined with the rest of the passengers and were treated as heroes. They had evidently not eaten decent food for months. They said they had been fighting with the British Military Mission. There was still a division of Black Watch somewhere between Sebastopol and Perekop. Marlborough, in spite of her quarantine, would have to evacuate them if they ever reached the harbour.

  Mrs Cornelius as usual began chatting almost at once to the White soldiers, noticing whose wounds were not properly bandaged, who needed a letter written and so on. She also learned a great deal about the state of the forces. It became clear to her that the Whites were being badly beaten. Before we went to sleep that night she laughed, ‘I feel like Florence bleedin’ Nightingale!’

  By the time I got up next morning we were already lifting our anchor and preparing to leave. Sebastopol at dawn was still lost in mist
and all I could see was the main quay. As the sun rose, figures began to appear in ones and twos. They moved out of the mist like the spectres of the dead, wrapped in rags. Then came horses drawing wagons loaded with potatoes and other winter vegetables, for all the world as if their owners were about to set up a market. Creatures with hand-carts containing carrots and cabbages beckoned to the ship. I heard voices calling. It all seemed sinister to me, though they may well have been innocent peasants trying to sell us what they had. At any moment, however, I expected them to push aside the food and reveal machine-guns. We turned, heading for the gateway, and the figures became increasingly agitated, jumping and waving. The ship sounded her horn, as if in reply and then we were passing the still silent Marlborough, negotiating the buoys and moving out to sea.

  On the next stage of our voyage, we never lost sight of a coast seemingly as deserted as Sebastopol. By that afternoon we had reached Yalta, the Queen of the Black Sea, looking impressive in the thin sunlight, just as she had in her heyday. She was superficially unspoiled: a fashionable holiday resort out of season, backed by spectacular, wooded, snow-covered hills. She seemed to consist chiefly of solidly-built hotels and had something of the appearance of a small, more compact St Petersburg. Because we were only a short distance off I could easily see people of all classes, horses, motor-cars, soldiers. Yalta had not been shelled and remained able to feed her population. The hotels along her front presented themselves like a committee of dowagers, primly magnificent, perfectly groomed. Any poverty, anything untoward, was hidden in the back-streets and ignored.

  Soon white launches flying the Imperial standard came out to meet us and smart sailors, polite and practical, helped some of our passengers to disembark. Major Volisharof temporarily put his children in charge of a Ukrainian family and went ashore to find his sister-in-law and receive his orders. The wounded were taken off. My impression was that most of them were reluctant to leave the ship. The launches returned to the landing-stage and a while later, when the sun felt almost warm on our faces, began to bring out boxes, presumably of ammunition, which were loaded into our cargo holds. Next came the new passengers, mainly women of rank and their children, whose men had either been killed or had elected to remain to fight the Reds. Mrs Cornelius and I were especially impressed by a very tall couple who seemed unlikely companions - a Greek priest and a Roman Catholic nun. He was pale and haunted, but she was red-cheeked and full of smiles. ‘Looks like she’s gettin’ a bit o’ wot she fancies,’ said Mrs Cornelius with a wink to me. I was still young enough to be embarrassed and turned my attention towards the shore.

  Yalta had been visited by the Tsar and his family every summer. The idea that those wonderful villas, the tree-lined streets and parks, the palaces and gardens might eventually fall to Communist shells seemed impossible. Even Bolsheviks must respect such beauty, I thought. I was so sure they would not wish to destroy Yalta that I had the impulse again to take my baggage and leave the ship. Yalta had been under siege; she had known horror, yet she continued to look proudly insouciant; a great eighteenth-century aristocrat simply refusing to acknowledge the presence of Robespierre’s sans culottes on her premises. She was at once nostalgic past and hopeful present: a citadel of good taste and refinement. By her very spirit she must surely resist any attempt to conquer her. (In a few months, of course, Deniken and Wrangel would desert Yalta; the British and French would also abandon her to her fate, and Red Guards would urinate in her fountains, defecate on her flower-beds and vomit over her remaining furnishings. One might as easily have expected the Antichrist to acknowledge the sanctity of a village church.)

  Those Bolsheviks had a genuine will to destruction, an honest hatred of everything beautiful, an almost sexual lust to wreck whatever was most delicate and cultured in Russia. Just as they had brought it to Sebastopol, they would bring silence to Yalta. In another year they would strike the whole great country mute. Then Stalin would freeze speech and movement entirely, forbid birdsong in the forest and the bleating of lambs in the field.

  The Winter King would come. Stalin would breathe sleeping ignorance into the minds of his subjects and cool their hearts until feeling was impossible. The same men and women who had begun in 1917 by shouting in the streets at the tops of their lungs would, by 1930, be afraid even to whisper in the corners of their own rooms: the Winter King could bear no noise. Even the faintest creaking of an icicle startled him. Shivering in his ghastly isolation, terrified lest some vagrant murmur remind him of his crimes, suspecting all others of his own monumental ruthlessness, his rest could be disturbed by the breeze of a moth’s wing fanning his ruined face. Then he would awake, stifling a gasp, dictating a memoir to his expectant executioners: all moths were State traitors and must perish by morning.

  Major Volisharof returned to the ship with a dowdy woman of about forty; the aunt. She was introduced to us but I never heard her name and never again had occasion to ask it. He seemed to be paying even more attention to his moustache, as if anticipating the time when he need no longer feel his affections divided. He shook hands with me and begged me to continue pleading the White cause wherever I went in the world. I gave him my word.

  ‘This is worse than 1453,’ he said. ‘If Christendom had believed the Emperor and sent enough help, Constantinople would never have fallen.’ He looked back towards Yalta, seemingly impervious in her tranquillity. ‘This business is the responsibility of every Christian. Tell them that.’ I watched him kiss his children goodbye, give his moustache a couple of twirls, then follow the orderly, who had come with him to carry his kit, back to the launch.

  The mysterious family of aristocrats disembarked and their cabin was taken by a woman, her little daughter and her servant. The woman was remarkably good looking and I was immediately attracted to her. Shortly after she had been installed, the ship was on her way again and an hour later it began to snow. Yalta, I thought, had let us go regretfully, but without complaint.

  The Yalta refugees were altogether a better selection than those who had boarded in Odessa. Cheerfully, they made the most of their conditions, bringing with them a new atmosphere of camaraderie and good fellowship. The disappointed merchants and their complaining wives were soon shamed. After a day or so at sea the weather improved, the waves became less agitated and my own sadness at leaving beautiful Yalta to her fate was modified a little by the sound of children now able to play on deck; moreover, I at last had the opportunity to indulge in good conversation with people of my own intellectual capacity and there were women who, separated from their husbands, were only too pleased to enjoy a little mildly flirtatious badinage with a handsome young man. I began to entertain some hope that my appalling celibacy might soon be alleviated, if only briefly with one of their servants.

  To this end I became a great and popular builder of paper aeroplanes and boats. I took innocent pleasure in the delight of the children whose admiration of my handiwork also helped me forget personal problems. My friendships with the little Boryas and Katyas led to contact with their nanyanas and their mothers, most of whom told me how wonderful I was with children and asked me about myself. I hinted, tastefully, at my aristocratic connections, Petersburg education, military service and my special mission. It was unwise, then, to be over-specific. The Bolsheviks were already planting spies amongst the refugees. I chose not to wear either of my uniforms but made it clear that once I arrived in London my business would be of significance to the White cause. Lastly I let it be understood that Mrs Cornelius and I were related, but not husband and wife. I was, in fact, a bachelor. The only thing which marred this general improvement in my life was an incident on the second night out from Yalta. I was taking my usual stroll, had just passed the wheelhouse, returning to the saloon, when I saw a pale figure, a handkerchief pressed to its mouth, retreat suddenly into one of the private cabins, as if startled. For a moment I had thought it was Brodmann, the Jew who had threatened to betray me in Odessa and who had witnessed my humiliation at the hands of the anarchi
st Cossack in Alexandrovsk. I felt faint. My stomach seemed to contract. I even uttered his name.

  ‘Brodmann?’

  The door closed and was immediately bolted on the inside.

  Surely this treacherous coward had not followed me onto the boat? It was impossible. I had seen him arrested. Maybe I was experiencing a mild hallucination? I had dreamed once or twice about Brodmann. I had dreamed about most of the terrors of the past two years. Now, in my extreme tiredness, I might be imposing the dream onto my waking life. I reasoned that Brodmann could never have escaped in time to join the Rio Cruz. A kind of residual horror was getting the better of me. I went at once to my cabin and tried to sleep.