IT WAS LIKE A FLOOD of brown and red mud in that wide, cold street. Remorseless and orderly, it flowed to the drone of engines and the trotting of horses; it flowed into the buildings, as disciplined as Germans and as fearsome as Haidamaki. I was looking at a real army, at last, and I was terrified. This was what Trotsky and Stalin and Antonov had built from our old Tsarist army: they had fuelled it with Bolshevik fanaticism and fired it with promises of land and Utopia. A dream worth killing for. And it was a Russian army. It was singing. The men on horseback, or in cars, or those who were marching, they were laughing in that easy, desperate way Russians have when they fight. Not a single Nationalist or Republican flag could be seen in the whole of Kreshchatik. Not a single shop was opening into the thin sunshine of that February dawn. There was only ice and Bolshevism in the streets. Without much hope, I began to finish packing. I dressed in my old ‘classless’ suit of black and white. I was able to light a cigarette before the doorhandle rattled and a tired voice asked who occupied the suite. I went to the door and opened it immediately. ‘Good morning, comrade,’ I said. ‘I’m glad to see you at last. I am Pyatnitski.’
It was a Chekist commissar in the leather jacket they all wore (many still wear such jackets, as easy to spot as Special Branch anoraks). He had yellow hair and a wide, prudish mouth. There were three Red Army guards behind him. They wore sailor uniforms, with red stars and bandoliers. They carried long rifles with fixed bayonets. The Chekist held the hotel register in his hands. He turned the pages. ‘You have stayed here frequently, citizen. Is this your home?’
‘I lost my own home,’ I told him. ‘It was looted by the Hetman’s people and by Petlyura.’
‘You don’t seem to have lost much.’ He came into the room.
‘I was poor. I worked with the Soviets. Pyatnitski?’ I hardly knew what lies to tell. I was desperate to talk my way clear of this terrible man.
‘You’ve stayed here and left, stayed here and left. Why’s that?’
‘I was in prison,’ I told him.
‘What had you done?’
‘Nothing. Bolshevik sympathies are enough to get you jailed in Kiev.’
‘You weren’t here during our previous occupation?’
‘I was in Kharkov, visiting comrades.’
‘And who do you support? The Kiev group?’
I knew no more about the different factions of the Party than I did about the sorts of flowers one might discover on a country walk. ‘I was non-aligned,’ I said. ‘My sympathies are with Moscow. I had made attempts to get back there.’
‘Have you any papers?’
I knew better than to give up my real papers, but I still had a spare set in my luggage. I opened my suitcase and took them out. ‘You’ll see I’m a scientist.’
‘Doctor Pyatnitski, is it? You’re very young.’
‘I did well at Petrograd, comrade.’
‘Your degree is from Kiev.’
‘I was transferred. That’s why I found myself here in the first place. You’ll discover that Comrade Lunarcharsky is an acquaintance of mine. He’ll vouch for me.’
‘You’re well-connected.’ He was sardonic. ‘One meets a lot of well-connected overnight Bolsheviks.’
‘I knew many comrades in Petrograd. Before the Revolution. I had a reputation. There are people there who know me.’
The Chekist sighed and scratched himself under his chin with my papers. He replaced a wide-brimmed hat on his head and looked at me through green, almost sympathetic eyes. They were the eyes of a man who was about to kill me. He turned away. A ritual had begun. ‘You’ll let these comrades search the rooms?’
‘If you think it necessary.’ There was a growing scent of death. I had smelled it once or twice before. I would learn to identify it easily in the months and years which followed.
‘You’ve been living very well.’
‘I’ve been lucky.’
‘How have you earned your money?’
‘As a mechanic.’
He sniffed. I wished I had stayed at Mother’s or had risen early enough to catch that Odessa train. ‘My working clothes aren’t here, of course.’
He removed his hat again. One of the sailors found an envelope in a drawer and brought it to him. ‘We still need skilled mechanics, comrade.’ He emptied all the Petlyurist military insignia into his hand.
I began to laugh.
He rounded on me. He was one of those unimaginative men who finds laughter baffling. I stopped, ‘I was offered a commission. Of course I refused it. That’s a souvenir.’
‘A major?’
I would normally have become impatient at this school-masterly malice, the stock-in-trade of so many Chekists and, indeed, policemen everywhere. They have no wit, but they have power. The worst abuse of that power, in my view, is in its employment to make bad jokes.
‘Is it major? I’m impressed.’ I was frightened.
‘Why did they offer you a commission?’
‘They wanted my help with their industrial problems.’
‘Running factories? Or motor-cars? Or what?’
‘Advice. I’ve helped keep most of Kiev going.’
