Steel Tsar marching from the South-East; from the sloping city of goats; ancient ruins. Steel pressed them back to the ruins. To old, alien seas, washing rock that was rotten. Adrift from their homeland. Down into dishonour; bereft of God. Where could they go? These noble people had fought too long for their land; too long for memory. Why did they fight? Why do they not fight now, those Russians? The stars were destroyed. To hell with the yashmaks. The stars marched into that vast, dark sun. The sun set over Russia; and Chaos and Old Night reigned dreadfully. We were just learning subtlety. From the mountains, from the sloping city of goats and ruins, came the black, Georgian Tsar, wailing for a Russia his master had destroyed: praising the Devil but longing for God. Praying for the vibrancy, the silence, the secrets of old times; and yelling at pious eyes, at old beards, their stinking superstitions: their khans and their pharisees: and shooting in the back of the head any who reminded him, in word or deed, of what he had lost. Mad, steel man; spoiled priest, you brought a religion of vengeance and despair to Russia. Two heads, two souls, two wings. Doomed king of the crushing hammer, the reaping sickle. Disguised and deadly, those tools. I have seen the peasants with those weapons in their hands. They are the weapons of the brute. I have seen them advancing on the Jews. They were robbed of their innards and made a virtue of despair. They put a piece of metal in my belly. They bled me. They drank my blood. They polluted it. And the metal is a cold foetus, and I shall not let him come to life. Not until I die shall the world know what I carry; my little, dancing, agreeable, grinning tin doll. It threatens my whole being. I will not let him grow. I shall not let him jig. I shall not let him bow. In his turn he will not let me bend. Is this pride? Conscience? I have no conscience, save my duty to God. I have no duty to Man. Only to Science. I follow no flags. I am myself. Why do they make of me more or less? What can I not possess? God is my father. My father betrayed me. Christ is Risen. Why do they punish the people of the Lamb? The Greeks came in to the city of Odysseus. The French, the Australians, the British and the Italians. In those days they had recalled the nature of the Turk. They were still fighting him. And Islam was being crushed. Britain fell in love with Islam and let her rise again. Britain and her romantic stupidity, her Jewish prime-ministers, her bankers and her brothel-masters. She lied to me. She was not raped. Educational trains. Happy kulak husband. Dead husband. Oh, Ukraine, heartland of our Empire, bastion against Islam. Did you die with so much dishonour, turning on your own flesh, rending your own children, attacking all who loved you? The hyena laughs over your churches. The Greek went away from Odessa. He had been hiding in Moldovanka. The old houses were in the place they had been in before the war, but they smelled of moisture and mould. Nobody had bothered to come out as far as Arcadia, except a few Jews. It was a Jew who took me to a house which could not possibly have been his. It was too fine. It was in good taste. He walked easily and his sadness was open; his touch was friendly. He was quite young. He had a job writing for a newspaper in Odessa, but now he had lost it. He said the newspaper came and went, with different conquerors. And you are safe? I said. I am safe enough, he said, but I am fascinated by terror, aren’t you? It could be the end of me. I lay in a little white bed. The sheets were damp.
‘No,’ I said, ‘I have had my fill of it.’
‘You have been in there?’ He pointed towards Kiev.
‘I have.’
‘That’s what I shall have to do.’
‘They’ll kill you. You’re a Jew.’
‘Jews survive.’
‘Some do,’ I said. I had to be polite to him because he had helped me. Besides, I always had a soft spot for the cosmopolitan Odessa Jew who is a different type altogether: A Jew of the better kind, we used to say.
He laughed as if I had made a joke. He laughed appreciatively, unlike Petroff; but I was thinking the whole world was convulsed. It was possessed. I became wary. And I had fallen in love with him, this southerner, this soft-mouthed sardonic Jew. I wanted him. I admit it. I am ashamed. I admit I trembled as he brought me broth, ‘It’s made of sea-weed,’ he said, ‘but it’s good for you. Not that you’ve been starving. Are all the stories wrong?’
‘I was with a tank unit.’
He had dried my clothes. He had polished my guns. The silver was bright. They lay on the seat of the chair, with the military kaftan behind them. He had found a shapka to match.
‘You were in that plane,’ he said.
‘An observer.’
‘So they’re attacking.’
‘Well...’ I wanted to kiss his long hands. He fed me the soup with a dull wooden spoon. ‘Well...’
‘You’re not allowed to say, of course. There goes my job. As I guessed.’
‘You’ll get out?’
