We were in the region of Hulyai-Polye, a large village whose name was associated with Makhno as Alexandriya was associated with Hrihorieff. These places were fundamentally Cossack fortresses. We were a good hundred miles at least from Odessa. Possibly two hundred.
What wretches they were, these Jews. So poor. With that terrible, accusing humility they all affect. I had begun to shiver, in spite of myself. My self-control was slipping. I needed cocaine. Hardly any was left. It should not be wasted. Was Makhno at Hulyai-Polye? They did not think so.
‘He is away,’ said the youth, ‘fighting for us.’
‘For you?’ I almost laughed aloud. Even an Anarchist would not league himself with such creatures. They had no pride; they did not fight; they fell on their knees and they prayed and they cringed. I have seen them. They do it to frighten their enemies. They rob Christians, yet rely on Christian mercy. Christ said to forgive them. And Christ must be obeyed. It is not for the killing of Jesus I hate them. I am not simple-minded. I am not guilty. Jahveh, they say, destroy our enemies. But they will not do it for themselves. What is Israel but a landing stage for Europe? A landing stage rotting from lack of use. The Allies have forgotten. They court the Turk and African. Those Jews sit so proudly in their American planes, their British tanks. It is a sin. They beat me with their rods, but I do not whine. To whine is to die. Yermeloff taught me that. They offered me food. I would not accept. I pulled out my vodka and drank. I offered it. They refused. ‘Where is Makhno?’ I asked.
‘Fighting,’ said the youth. ‘How do you not speak Yiddishi?’
‘My father,’ I said, ‘was a revolutionary.’ The rabbi guessed my meaning and shook his head. He was ignorant. There was a damp, chilling smell of poverty attached to their priest and their tavern. To insult me so! I have never been in a poorer place. It was barren and old. It was falling apart. Did they not have enough dignity to mend their houses? At least I would have put up a fence. But their fences sagged. Their gardens were overgrown. The shuttered shops, with their Yiddish signs, were unpainted. Russian villages could look the same, but there was a reason for it: the peasant had been robbed. And who had robbed him? I shall say no more. The synagogue: that was clean. The synagogue had its share of gold and fine tapestries, no doubt.
‘These are bad times,’ said the youth. ’Here as every where. Which flag do you fly?’
‘Flag?’
‘Red or Black?’
‘I fly no flag,’ I said, ‘I am my own man. I am my own man.’ I felt weak, as if a chill had come to my stomach. It is still there. It has always been there. Like a piece of cold metal which can never be warmed, not even with blood. Like a spy. I do not know. The pennants fluttered above the smoke, the sheepskins, the shapkas, the stallions. Down they would come. All shades of flags; all fine Cossacks; all with good horses and modern machine-guns. Hrihorieff ignored commands, so in revenge Lenin and Trotsky unleashed Chinese, Hungarians, Rumanians, Chekists, Jewish commissars, upon Ukraine. The commissars attacked their own people. The Jews suffered worst. The Reds took fifty near the Polish border and sliced out their tongues: old men, little girls, youths. Ten million people killed. And only blood could quench the fires; blood mingled with ash; it became a hard scum on the surface of our soil. The smoke of burning flesh clogged the nostrils of the living; it stifled new-born children as they took their first breath. Wearily we sank into War, as hopeless victims of a shipwreck sink into water, glad of the oblivion. There was nothing left but smoke and flame, the din of machine-guns. The noise was too loud. Whole cities yelled in terror and in pain. Whole cities wailed in the night, drowning the sound of guns, of transports, of armoured trains, of hooves. The Apocalypse? Vietnam? Lidice and Lezaky? Nothing compares to what we suffered in Ukraine. Then Stalin came. Then Hitler came. Now German tourists visit the smiling land of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. They always leave their marks. The mountains no longer protect us. We know that we are a humane race. What have we attacked? Czechoslovakia? That was not the Russian people. Finland? It was always ours.
