Byzantium Endures

She had nightmares, the woman I must call Yelisaveta Filipovna (a name I have borrowed from one of the neighbours who showed kindness to us; but her real name she shared with a prominent princess). Frequently I was awakened in the middle of the night, hearing her mumbling feverishly on her couch. I would peer over the edge of my shelf and see her rise like a corpse at the Last Judgement. Then she would scream: a long, piteous sound. And she would sometimes cry out: ‘Forgive me!’ Then she would pray in her sleep, or wring her hands and weep silent tears, her unbound black hair standing around her pale head like a demon’s halo. I know that I should have shown more sympathy, but I was always terrified. It seemed she felt guilty (perhaps because she was not at her father’s bedside when he died), but whether that guilt had any real foundation I do not know. She would return to sleep often without realising what had happened, but sometimes I would wake her if she seemed in danger. In time I became used to these nightmares and, as I studied harder, could often sleep through them. An ability to sleep through the wildest disturbances has been both an advantage and a disadvantage to me. My mother’s nightmares came more frequently in the autumn and winter. It was because of them that I ceased to invite Esmé to stay with us when her father was sometimes taken to the hospital; my mother refused to let me go to ‘the revolutionary’s house’, but Captain Brown would look after Esmé when he could. Captain Brown began to drink more frequently and it was occasionally my mother’s sad duty to ask him to leave our apartment because of his inebriation. He never, however, made any improper advances.

Mother had further cause for concern from the Odessa branch of the family. Many of the more distant relatives were in trouble with the law over purely petty matters. This was the ‘black-sheep’ side. With the exception of my Great-Uncle Semyon, they were all cousins or second cousins of my mother’s. Sometimes they would come to Kiev and very rarely one of them would stay overnight at our flat, much to my mother’s dismay. We would always receive some luxury by way of payment for our hospitality: scented soap, or canned food of foreign origin, or a bottle of French wine. Mother would sell the stuff whenever possible, even give it away rather than keep it in the house. I think the young men from Odessa were smugglers. They were certainly well-to-do compared to their poor Kiev relatives. Uncle Semya was a successful shipping agent, far more respectable and wealthy than the shady ‘spivs’ who made such cynical use of their blood-ties, but he claimed to be unable to control them. It was to Uncle Semya that I think my mother chiefly appealed for help with Herr Lustgarten’s fees.

As well as studying literature, languages and mathematics, I learned geography and basic scientific principles. A true scientific education was beyond the kindly German’s range. I read a good deal and was particularly impressed by an American book, obtained from one of my Odessa cousins, describing current methods of building flying machines. Those were the days when one could not only learn to fly without need of special instructors or licences, but one began by constructing one’s own aircraft. The book was full of carefully made line-drawings, complete with hand-lettered captions which would be mysterious to anyone not au fait with the modern flying machine: Optimum Angle of Incidence - Centre of Gravity - Centre of Drift - Wash-in to Offset Propellor Torque - and so on. That book was also a victim of Revolution and Civil War. From it I could have built an entire aeroplane (with the exception of the engine), from frame to the treatment of the canvas.