I grew alert. We entered another room. The place was a castle. Here were red and white German soup plates and a tureen of bortsch decorated with scenes of Danzig or Munich. There were two different kinds of bread, already sliced, and butter. I sat down at once, but Shura shook his head and said he had to leave.
I had learned never to refuse food. Also I was becoming so unable to distinguish reality from imagination by that time that I thought a meal would help bring me down to earth. It was wonderful bortsch. It was an Odessa bortsch, like drinking rubies. It was spicy and filling. While Aunt Genia continued to talk, I ate steadily. I was swollen by the time the macaw squawked again:
The dumpy girl with ginger hair and a good-humoured face reappeared. She was some sort of poor relation working as a servant. ‘Wanda. Take Maxim Arturovitch to his room.’
My case was picked up in one wet, red hand, while the other gestured to the door. I followed. Aunt Genia chirruped a goodnight and kissed me. I should ask Wanda for anything I required. Off we went, up flights of dark, heavily-carpeted stairs, with each landing smelling a little differently, until we were at the top of the house and Wanda opened a door. ‘I’m next to you,’ she said. She entered ahead of me into bronze half-light and reached to turn a tap to make the gas glow a little brighter. ‘Here we are.’
I had not realised I was to have an entire room to myself. A real bed, dressing-table, chest of drawers, blinds I could open or shut at will, a window: I went to my window. It looked out onto the square - a haze of yellow lamps and dark shadows. From one of the distant, mysterious houses came a high-pitched laugh, something of a wail, which echoed in the square, for it was late and even Odessa was half-asleep. Wanda’s warm, smelly body came up behind me. She showed me how to work the blinds. ‘Best keep ‘em shut if you’ve got the gas going,’ she said. ‘Moths.’ Her voice was lazy, soft and friendly. I was to discover later that this was a typical Southern voice, but I thought then that she was being especially pleasant. Even this heavy-featured creature rolled her ‘r’s with an emphasis which must surely be sexual. I had not heard her properly. ‘What?’
‘Moths.’
‘Aha.’ I was reminded of the moth on the Cossack sabre. I recalled the wonder of my trip, the swooning pleasure of my first impressions. I almost wept as I thanked Wanda and watched her leave. I had a bolt on my door. I had water in a jug on a washstand. I had a chamber-pot and a rug, and clean, white sheets and a patchwork quilt and two pillows in embroidered cases. What generous relatives. And how rich. I had had no conception of their wealth. Mother had told me they were well-off but she had never mentioned that they owned an entire building, possibly two (for there were the offices next door). Again I went to the window. The heavy scent of stocks and dying lilac ascended from the square. I felt a breath or two of the southern wind, of the warm, night sea. Then I went to bed. Determined to enjoy my freedom to the full, I masturbated for a short while, thinking of Wanda and her large, passive body, then of Zoyea and finally, when it was over, of ‘the little angel’, Esmé. How she would be impressed by my stories of Odessa. I lay on my back in the darkness looking out at the open window, enjoying the disquieting thrill of being in a room alone at night for the first time. I put my hands behind my head. I smiled with delight at the luxury. I addressed imaginary friends and told them of my luck. I realised as I went to sleep that in my half-dream I had been copying Shura’s confident gestures. I was already half in his power. And I was glad of it.
I AWOKE in the warmth of the sun’s rays, blinking. I listened for a moment and heard all kinds of alien sounds: the clanking of trams, the shunting ot goods-trains, horses’ hooves and cart-wheels on cobbles; shouts, laughter. And there was an astonishing smell: a mixture of the ocean and of deliciously rotting fruit and flowers, as if all the foliage of the Eastern seas had come in on the morning tide. I went slowly to my window. Many of the stately houses of the square were still shut up, for it was only a little past dawn. And Odessa had her autumn aurora. Each roof, railing, brick, tree, bush and wall gave off luminescence. The mellow colours shimmered almost imperceptibly in the city’s glowing air.
Kiev had its beauty, but it was a prosaic beauty compared to this glorious enchantment. Every outline, whether it be animal, vegetable, stone or wood, was surrounded by a faint radiance. A red and gold automobile crossed the square to stop outside a newly-opened grocery shop. It was like a car from fairyland. The men and women in it wore white suits, peacock feathers, Japanese silks, patent leather, and seemed to have come from a splendid performance of
