I expected to hear music at any moment but this was the only sensation lacking. I craned over the small, wrought-iron railing and peered in what I hoped was the direction of the sea. All I saw was pavements, trees, possibly a park. I smelled coffee. I saw girls in black and white uniforms come out into the street bringing jugs to be filled from a milkman’s cart. I smelled fresh bread and identified the source, a baker’s shop at the far corner of the square. A postman went slowly along the street, delivering his letters. Women called to one another from house to house. This was how I had imagined a city like Paris, but never our own Odessa. It was possible to understand why many Russians found the town vulgar, and why so many writers and painters loved it. Pushkin had chosen to live here, for instance.
I was at once stimulated and relaxed. I was on holiday. The conception had not dawned until that moment. A holiday, for instance from school, was when one worked at home. But here, as far as I knew, I had no work to do. I was a guest. I was to be entertained. I began to feel hungry.
Wanda was knocking on my door and calling to me. I realised I was naked and felt ashamed of my body, perhaps for the only time (though I remained ashamed, all my life, of my father’s mark on my penis). Possibly I remembered my dream of Wanda. I called out to her to wait and I pulled on my trousers and shirt. I unbolted the door and she entered, laughing. ‘Modest little boy.’ She was only a year older, but all Odessans are far older, it seems, than Kievans. They give the impression of being possessed by some ancient, sardonic wickedness. Perhaps it is the admixture of blood. There are strains of every country in the world in the Odessan blood. But most typically from the Near East. Odessa itself is named after the Greek hero Odysseus and about half its population at that time was Jewish or foreign. It is probably why the pogroms were so severe there in the early years of the century. People were jealous of the power of the interlopers, though I would be the first to admit Odessa owed its atmosphere to its exotic population. By no means only Jews and criminals lived in the Moldovanka. Fiction has coloured the area, particularly in the work of Isaac Babel who lived there for no more than a week and was driven out by angry residents who resented his prying and his distortions. They say someone was murdered as a result of a lie he had written. My Uncle Semyon was a respectable merchant, for instance, trading with dozens of foreign countries through his shipping office. He undertook the import or export of goods of every sort. He had twenty or thirty clerks working full-time in his office next door and never once was there a hint of scandal about his activities. Neither, I should add, did anyone ever attempt to raid him and steal the wages-money in his safe.
They say the Russian disease is a poor sense of what is real and what is not, that we think we can talk anything into reality. This may be so. I personally can distinguish readily enough between truth and fiction.
Wanda had brought me a ‘small breakfast’, some coffee and a roll, on a tray. The luxuries were continuing. She seemed brighter this morning and her words had less sexual significance. Perhaps her voice had been tired the night before and I had mistaken weariness for mystery. I was able to greet her quite normally and accept the tray. ‘What am I supposed to do after I’ve eaten this?’
‘I’ll go and find out.’ She twisted ginger hair at her neck. ‘Madame’s in a good mood. M’sieu, too.’
I was to become used to the frequent use of French in Odessa. The city thought of itself as half-French already, though in fact the greatest number of foreigners had been German, publishing their own newspaper
