Dante driven into exile inspired Liszt to create those painful Bolshoi voices, those Russian girls singing in Latin. What do the English know of exile? They cannot bear it. Everywhere they go they create another Surrey. New Zealand mutton and mint-sauce. And throbbing, terrible Australia, with its two-legged lizards, even that they have attempted to turn into some spiritual Torquay. The Romans left roads and villas. The English leave cold cups of tea and stale crumpets and ‘guest houses’ littering the world from China to Rio de Janeiro. They cannot abide emotion. They cannot face death, any more than can the Americans. So they smooth it away with polite voices and coffee-mornings. And because death is so unpleasant, because they cannot look Terror in the eye and smile back at him, they let their Law decline, their Empires fade - and they, too, have lost their honour. Phoenicia went sailing. What can save the world? Not the Jewish-Moslem God. We have had our taste of the power of the rabbi and the Khan. Our Cossacks dealt with them and will deal with them again if need be. Only the Son can save us. Christ is a Greek. The Greeks knew that. They laughed at the Jews when they spoke of strange new ideas. The Greeks took those ideas to Palestine. They were welcome again in Byzantium. Defend Greece. How did the English defend Cyprus? They let Turkish peasants foul it. Those sons of Islam knew nothing. They could not look after the houses they stole. They could not look after the olive groves or the vineyards. The Greeks lost everything. Islam is rising. Zion is rising. And from the East the Khans are galloping again, with skulls for banners, but now it is the skull of Mao who grins down at us from the lance-poles. Must Russia defend the West alone? Still? Must Ukraine drown in fresh blood? I worship Him: Kyrios, the Lord. The Christ of Saint Paul. The Greek Christ. I worship Him. Plato, Archimedes, Homer and Socrates were created by God to be the first prophets of Jesus, the Greek Messiah. That was why the Jews hated him. He spoke for Reason and Love. Their envious black eyes looked across the waters of the Middle Sea and saw Light glowing. Ah, Jerusalem. Oh, Carthage. They should put a wall across the world. What is race? Nothing. A description of the spirit. Christ is a Greek. Islam and Zion turn hot, black eyes towards the West. The light is too strong for them. It was alien to them. They crucified him. Those ancient devils, those primitive souls. What do they know of humility, with their Korans and their Talmuds? All they know is vengeance. Watch them fight. All they know is vengeance. What have we done to them? Fires burn through the Middle East, through Africa, through Asia. They are the smoking fires of ignorance. God tried to kill his own Son and failed. His Son returned from exile to Byzantium and there He shelters still. Where East and West blend in harmony, there is Christ. And that is the knowledge every Russian holds within him. It is what Tikhon tried to tell us; our martyred Tikhon. Herod. Nero. Stalin. They sought to kill the Shepherd. All they slaughtered was the sheep. The bandit-kings come and go. They die perplexed, wondering why they have won nothing, defeated nothing. And the generosity of the Shepherd is greater than ever. He is our protector, our comfort and our hope.
As night fell and the train became colder I was forced to share the chicken and salami from my very obvious hamper. They were all grateful. Even the woman ate with unfeminine greed. The train was moving very slowly. Since we had not yet passed Vinnitza, it would be a long time before we reached Odessa. Once or twice we heard firing, or saw flashes of rifles and artillery in the distance, but nobody was able to speculate with any authority as to the identity of the antagonists. Marusia Kirillovna suggested it was probably just Haidamaki fighting amongst themselves. I think she could have been right. There were thousands of petty warlords seeking to hold smaller and smaller territories as the major participants moved closer together for the decisive battles of our Civil War. Sometimes shots were fired from the train. We had a Red Army escort which would disembark when it reached a territory occupied by bandits who (like Vietnamese today) found it politic to declare themselves Bolsheviks. Thus they received arms and money to achieve their own petty ends.
Potoaki became bored. He kept leaving the carriage, presumably to use the lavatory (although there was one in the adjoining cubicle) and returning, stamping his feet and clapping his gloved hands together. The woman looked at him with considerable intolerance. ‘Trying to make the train go faster, comrade?’
‘I’m supposed to be at the docks by tomorrow morning,’ he explained. ‘There’s a French ship arriving.’
‘What will you do?’ Another occupant took Marusia Kirillovna’s lead. ‘Speak to each French sailor as he comes ashore? Explain he’s hampering the course of world revolution?’
