Odessa boys had dark eyes and white teeth and brilliant scarves. They wore painted ties, displayed a great deal of cuff with elaborate cuff-links, sported stick-pins and monstrous rings and cocky hats and chocolate-coloured spats; their waistcoats were of yellow mohair or Chinese brocade. Odessa girls wore feathered hats and dark, Ukrainian shawls, crisp, white blouses and light, swinging skirts. They patrolled the promenades in little, giggling gangs during the day and occupied the gardens, lit with strings of tiny electric bulbs, in the evenings. Then the huge Odessa moon would make the sea look like mercury, as volatile and indescribable as the Odessan character, while accordions or orchestras would play the tunes of the moment, as well as the latest songs from France, America, even England and Germany. Through the crowds would stroll soldiers and sailors, arm in arm with their lady-friends; gigolos on the look-out for the wives or widows of self-satisfied merchants; merchants on the look-out for girls; pick-pockets, confidence-tricksters, photographers, hurdy-gurdy men and postcard-sellers. Here, too, were families of Hasid Jews, conspicuous in their dark clothes, shawls, pe’os and other paraphernalia, who were an embarrassment to all, bourgeois Jew and Gentile alike. Yet they were tolerated, these fanatics, as they would not be tolerated elsewhere, in spite of the fact that members of the Black Hundreds, who had begun the pogroms ten years before, almost entirely comprised Odessa’s city council.
Shura introduced me to girls. They kissed my cheek and said that I was ‘lovely’ and ‘a duck’, which was not quite the impression I had hoped to give them. I was learning the rich, elusive speech of the city, however, as I had learned other foreign languages, and was soon proficient in it. It was this ability, which I gradually lost as I grew older, which helped me in many of my future situations. Where language was concerned, I was a chameleon.
Shura was very pleased with my progress. He took me up to the limans, those strange, dark, emerald-green shallows, full of mud and minerals. They are half-wild: the haunt of game-fowl and blind fish, where reeds wave and peculiar shadows move beneath the glinting, agitated surface. They are half-tamed where the large hotels and health-resorts crowd close together. Here I learned to run errands for rich women. There was a great deal of commission involved, for one was tipped by all parties involved in the transactions. At other times we would engage in business by the docks where there were always ships: steamers, sailing boats, schooners, loading and unloading. Cargoes of fish, fruit, wine, cloth or even coal were often sold directly they were landed. Traders were omnipresent and would pay for information of many kinds. Shura was well-known and I became almost as familiar to them by my slightly Frenchified nickname of ’Max the Hetman’. Also my relationship with Shura guaranteed me a place in the bohemian inner circle. There was already a small legend which suggested I was ‘something hot in Kiev’. Soon it was possible for me to wander freely about the district without Shura to guide me and I made acquaintances of my own. I never went to the docks without him, however. That grey world of overhead railways, derricks and worn-out dray horses had a sense of danger to it. It was where most of the revolutionaries came from.
In the meantime, of course, I tried to obey my mother’s wishes. I continued to study in the evenings (though they became shorter as my days grew longer) and to stay in the fresh air enough to show an improvement in my skin colour, so as to placate my aunt. Uncle Semya seemed to expect nothing of me save that I ‘learn a little of the world before going back to school’. I am grateful to his philosophy and experience which made me appreciate education all the more. But the wine and the euphoria could not sustain me indefinitely and sometimes I was forced to spend whole days in bed recovering from the excesses into which my enthusiasm led me. On one of these days a grinning Shura came to see me. ‘I heard you weren’t too well. I warned you about that rich Armenian wine, didn’t I?’ He picked up one of my journals. His lips moved as he tried to read the German words in the text. ‘What’s this?’ He pointed to a paragraph about Oddy’s work on chemical isotopes. It was the beginning of the end for practical science. Together with Bohr’s atomic theories, Oddy’s came to seem more like the mad abstractions of ‘modernist’ paintings, whose authors were part of the same mutual admiration society. I explained to Shura that it was probably nonsense. His reply was to laugh and say, ‘I see. You can’t understand it, eh?’
‘Well enough to see through it,’ I replied. ‘Why are you here?’
Shura rubbed his nose. ‘I thought you might like to come out to Arcadia today. You need to get yourself a girl.’
‘I’ve no energy,’ I told him. ‘I can’t even think.’
‘You need a doctor.’
‘Nonsense.’
