In the main any political talk would send me away at once, unless it was the simple irreverences of Odessa small-talk, but when my engineering experience and scientific skills became known I was courted by more than one socialist. There was a particular scoundrel who might have given me trouble: a morose and introverted Georgian ‘on leave’, as he put it, from Siberia. He wanted me to make him some bombs for an attack he planned on the Odessa-Tiflis mail train. I trembled with terror at the very idea of being overheard, let alone involved. If my mother had known, it would have killed her. But I could not merely walk away from him. This sinister bandit with the unlikely name of ‘So-So’ had a low, persuasive voice and smouldering eyes staring from a heavily unshaven and pockmarked face. These aspects alone were enough to make me address him with at least superficial politeness. I said I would look into the problem of producing the bombs. I planned to complain next time I saw him that it had been impossible to obtain the materials. I thought it wise to return to the tavern when I had promised, but to my huge relief he was not there. I never saw him again. Perhaps he was arrested. Perhaps he was shot by the police. It was even possible that, like the man who had double-crossed Misha the Jap over some morphine supplies, he wound up being fished from the Quarantine Harbour. There was only a certain, limited sort of honour amongst the thieves of Moldovanka. Anyone who broke his trust was submitted to sudden, swift justice of a kind which, if the Tsar’s police had been prepared to dispense it in a similar fashion, would have at once put paid to any revolution, Bolshevik or otherwise.
It is even possible that the Turks saved me from So-So’s furious mouth. It was just the next day, when I was lying with Katya, that I was awakened from a wonderful, drowsy half-dream, by a whistling scream and the sound of a distant explosion. I thought there had been an accident in one of the factories or that a ship had blown up. But the screams and explosions became regular and, as I ran downstairs with Katya, a skinny friend of mine called Nikita the Greek dashed past in the street shouting that the Germans were shelling the city. Into the fog we. went, with some idea that it was dangerous to stay inside, through a tiny, tree-lined plaza like an impressionist’s painting of autumn, and still that unreal, fascinating death (such things were new to us then) went whistling on. Everyone was panicking. It was terrible to see so many frightened people appearing and vanishing in the fog. Most of the shells had been intended for the harbour and the Allied ships there and soon Odessa’s defences came into action. The damage was chiefly in Persuip, the industrial district by the sea where the shipyards were. The enemy was driven off with comparative ease. The following morning we learned it had been the Turks who had shelled us. Turkey was not at that time officially at war with Russia. A couple of days later we declared war on the cruel and cunning Moslem.
Until this raid I had been entertaining thoughts of remaining always in Odessa and going to the engineering school there (which was very good, though it did not have the prestige of St Petersburg). I do not think Uncle Semya would have objected had it not been for that bombardment, which showed how vulnerable Odessa was. ‘The sea is reminder enough of our death!’ he said feelingly, that evening at dinner. For the first time I was allowed to join him and two of his guests. One was a local police-chief and the other the captain of a French ship which had been slightly damaged during the shelling. He regretted, Uncle Semya said, that he could not take his whole family to Kiev or even to Moscow. His business affairs were so complex that they could not safely be left to other hands. This made the police-chief laugh. My Uncle Semya was displeased, but gave a faint smile. He said that he had thought of going into the entertainment business, into kinema-displays. It was the sort of thing people wanted during wartime. Everyone agreed that the ‘kino’ was the business of the future. In America fortunes were already being made. ‘It would suit me,’ said Uncle Semya, ‘to be at least in one respect a patron of the arts.’ He had considered opening a theatre, but the investment in these troubled times was a bit uncertain. Kinema equipment could be moved, however, from place to place. You could give shows in barns, in the open air at night if need be. He visualised himself and Aunt Genia in a horse-drawn caravan - ‘a gypsy life on the open road’ - with his projector and stock of films, going from town to town. ‘How popular we should be. How pleased people would be to see us.’
‘People are always pleased to see you, Semyon Josefovitch,’ said the police-chief. ‘You perform so many important services to the community.’
