The podporuchik was hardly older than I. He listened carefully, then escorted me into a hallway crowded with ordinary domestic furniture, including a stuffed bear. Alexandriya was a town fond of stuffed animals. There were one or two deer-heads on the wall. The place had evidently been a small hotel. We entered an office where young ladies, like young ladies in any office in the world, were at work with typewriters and ledgers. One used an abacus to help her compute figures which she transcribed rapidly onto a large sheet of paper. She reminded me of Esmé. Hrihorieff was no simple bandit. Here was an efficient military headquarters. We passed through that hard-working throng, through a waist-high wooden barrier, up to a tall desk. An officer in a torn jacket from which epaulettes had been removed looked at me through tired, mild eyes. He fiddled at his heavily-waxed moustache. He moved some papers in his fingers. He was about fifty. ‘Comrade?’ He spoke awkwardly, taking note of my suit. ‘You are from Kherson? Are the supplies here already?’ He consulted a typed list.
‘I’m not a supply officer. I’m Major Pyatnitski.’ My youth and rank had a peculiar effect. He thought it was an impossible combination. But this was now a world of impossibilities. If I was so young and yet a major, I must therefore be an important political person. The cocaine quieted my stomach-pangs, as well as my nerves, though my bowels were constricting uncomfortably, ‘I have to send a telegram to Odessa.’
He put weary arms on his desk in despair. ‘Have we taken Odessa?’
‘Not yet. But we have agents there.’
‘A telegram would have to go via Ekaterinoslav.’
‘I don’t care how it gets there, comrade.’ I spoke quietly, ‘It will naturally be in code, as a personal message.’
He was baffled. ‘Perhaps we should have the advice of the political officers.’
‘I am a political officer.’
‘I have no authority.’
That was the cry which resounded through Russia. It echoes on to this day. Once authority came from God, via the Tsar, to his officials. They knew where they were. Their authority was God’s. Now, in the name of Communism, they slither away from authority. I should have thought a Communist’s first duty was to accept his own responsibility and that of his fellows. Perhaps I am too stupid to understand the complicated reasoning of Marx.
‘Where are the political officers?’ I asked. It was a dangerous game, but it was the only one to play now. ‘This is of utmost urgency.’
‘Upstairs, comrade.’ He pointed as if to heaven. ‘Didn’t you know?’
‘I’ve only just arrived.’
‘There has been no train.’
‘I came, my friend, in a truck. I was abducted by an undisciplined bandit who should be punished as soon as possible.’
‘I do not understand, comrade. Who was this?’
‘Sotnik Grishenko.’
This meant something to him. He frowned. He wrote the name down. He circled it. He dipped his pen in his ink and underlined the circling. He pursed his lips. ‘Grishenko can be over-enthusiastic.’
‘He abducted me from a train taking me to Odessa. Now do you follow me?’
These military clichés rang from my lips like little bells. They pealed for me. I did not have to think. Everyone spoke like that if they had any education. Only the illiterate and stupid used original phrases in Hrihorieff’s army. Those in command did nothing but ape the officers they had killed and robbed in their various mutinies and desertions. I had learned this instinctively. Such instincts are of considerable use, but they can complicate a life.
‘You’ll deal with Grishenko?’
‘I’ll report it to the appropriate division-commander, comrade major.’
‘Many other comrades were inconvenienced. Some were killed. I was captured. Is that serious enough?’
‘It is very serious.’
‘Grishenko should be severely reprimanded.’ I would have my vengeance. ‘Reduced to the ranks.’
‘He’s a useful field-officer,’ began the man at my side. I rounded on him. ‘Useful? At shooting comrades?’
All the women were looking up. Some were pretty. They were like innocent nuns working quietly, unthinkingly, in Hell. We returned through this pleasant warmth of femininity to climb wooden stairs carpeted with red pile. On the landing a group of men were talking in intense, grumbling tones. They stopped as we appeared.
‘Pyatnitski,’ I said. ‘From Kiev.’
None of these were partisans. Some were dressed as I was. Others wore smart, featureless uniforms of the kind affected by Trotsky and Antonov. They had the fresh-minted Bolshevik insignia: metal stars on their caps, carefully-sewn felt stars on their sleeves. The Reds were manufacturing such things on a large scale. Half the people in Bolshevik-occupied Russia were employed running up fresh red flags and pressing out brand-new metal stars.
They greeted me. Some put their hands forward to be shaken. ‘I was on my way to Odessa. Party business. I was kidnapped, literally, by one of those bandits from the railway yards.’
