My mother hurried about laying the table, heating the soup, cutting the bread, complaining it was like sawdust. She had found two cockroaches in the last loaf. She had had to queue for those cockroaches the best part of an evening after work, in the freezing cold. She knew of several women who had caught bronchitis or pneumonia and died in bread queues. It was ridiculous when everyone knew Ukraine was the bread-basket of Russia. This sounded almost like the cry of a nationalist. I said we were luckier than people in Petrograd, but there were some living better than the Tsar in parts of Siberia and the Caucasus. Supply trains had been diverted and they had to eat their produce or let it rot. (All those nationalists ever aspired to was fat bellies and brainless contentment. I still see them with their silly banners and hunger-strikes near the Russian Embassy. I laugh at them. If I were in the Embassy looking out I would think what idiots they were. Their ‘nation’ is more independent now than it ever was. I wonder why they will not return. Could it be they prefer life in a country where they can complain freely as they fill themselves up with soup and meat every day? At home they would not see so much as a cabbage or slice of goose from one week’s end to another. I long to be buried in my native soil. It is Russian soil. But the Bolsheviks have long memories. They hanged Krassnoff, then over seventy, because he had been Hetman of the Don Host. They found him in Germany in 1945. They had his name on their list of enemies. He had done nothing except lead his Cossacks into honourable battle and write good books about the Russian problem. But the Reds took this doddering, harmless old fellow from his flat and hanged him. I, too, have attacked Bolshevism.)
Captain Brown woke to seat himself at the far end of our table. He stared for some while at the bowl of soup before he picked up his spoon and then, as one unused to the exercise, began to eat. My mother watched him affectionately. ‘I haven’t been able to feed him properly.’
Considering her long hours and hardships, I thought she looked well. She agreed. Something had brought out the best in her. She had gathered her strength. Doing the work herself was easier than supervising those girls. She had been more like a Mother Superior, sometimes, than a laundress. Captain Brown laughed at this and splashed some of his soup. He apologised. Placing his spoon neatly in the plate, he lapsed into sleep again. ‘He has not been well,’ said my mother. ‘The drink’s at the root of it. I’ve been too tired to cook for him every day, you know. We eat our main meal at the laundry to save time. I come home,’ she shrugged, looking about her, ’as you see, to sleep.’ It was true the flat had a neglected air, but I preferred it. Flat and mother both seemed more relaxed. ‘Of course, I miss Esmé.’ She sighed. ‘Such a beautiful girl.’ She asked me when I intended returning to Petrograd.
‘I was advised to let things settle down a bit,’ I said. ‘A month or two and I can collect my Special Diploma. It will be useful. I’d hoped to serve the government, but now I’ll try for a job, perhaps in Kharkov, with a good firm. I have plenty of ideas to be patented. It’s even possible I could work independently.’
‘What shall you do until you get your Diploma?’
‘Sleep.’ I patted her shoulder and bent forward to kiss her cheek .
‘You shall have Esmé’s bed,’ she said.
I WAS SOON more at ease in a chaotic Kiev than I had been in Petrograd. I knew my city’s streets, its alleys, its short-cuts between buildings. I knew the areas hooligans preferred and where I could avoid the worst of them. I knew houses where I could hide. Our district, being a suburb, was relatively undisturbed. It was poor, offering very little for the wandering riff-raff. We were also lucky in that Podol was a main target for the looters. As the Dnieper ice began to break up, sending huge creaking, groaning and snapping sounds echoing throughout Kiev, I found I had developed something of Mother’s resilience. The ghost of my father had been laid to rest. My mother, as the widow of a martyred revolutionist, could not now be more respectable. Things might get worse, but it would make a change, as we used to say. In fact things improved for me. I decided to try taking over some of Sarkis Mihailovitch Kouyoumdjian’s old customers. Engineers were in short supply. I had met one or two people who had asked desperately after my ex-boss. Since he had left Kiev half the local machine-shops no longer operated. I had only a tenth of the Armenian’s practical experience and his feeling for broken-down engines. Even so, I knew I should have plenty of business.
