Little Apple (22 page)

The officer turned his head and saw one of the prisoners tottering toward him like a drunken man. He raised his revolver, then lowered it again.

"You?" he exclaimed. "For heaven's sake, how do you come to be with these people? Have you turned Bolshevik?"

"Turned Bolshevik," Vit¬torin repeated. He couldn't grasp where Selyukov had gone or why another man had taken his place - a man whose face he knew. It was Captain Stackelberg, who had shared his quarters at Novokhlovinsk. What did he want, and where was Selyukov?

"Tell me the truth, for God's sake!" Stackelberg cried. "Did they compel you to go to the front? Why are you fighting against Russia?"

"I volunteered," Vit¬torin said haltingly. He gazed past Stackelberg in search of Selyukov but failed to find him. Selyu-kov had vanished.

"Very well," Stackelberg said, "you may go. A Russian officer keeeps his word, even to the likes of you. You may go, I haven't forgotten. You're free, understand? You may go."

Vit¬torin understood. He took a step forward, but the strength that had sustained him until now was exhausted. He swayed and fell headlong, and darkness and silence descended on him.

The sergeant ripped open his greatcoat and tunic.

"I thought as much, Your Excellency," he said. "The Reds are sending us typhus now. He's already got the rash on his chest."

Stackelberg turned away with a look of disgust.

"Contaminated inside and out," he said. "Typhus and Bolshevism, it's all the same. Take him away."

But a moment later he recalled that the human wreck on the ground at his feet had once, in days gone by, been his friend.

"To the lime pit, Your Excellency?" inquired the sergeant.

"No," said Captain Stackelberg, "to the hospital at Lebedin."

And the harsh, angry note in his voice was that of someone ashamed of an involuntary remark, a secret thought, or an unbidden tear.

WHERE THE APPLE ROLLED

From his bed Vit¬torin could see the bare branches of an acacia and a little patch of sky thick with snow clouds. His recollections were hazy: muddled, terrifying dreams, thirst, Sonyechka's death, agonizing sensations of fear, a tune played on a piano accordion, a red mist, a buzzing in the ears, piping hot bath-water. His encounter with the cavalry captain from Novokhlovinsk had completely vanished from his memory.

The nurse told him that he had been in the isolation ward for three weeks, that two Kuban Cossacks had brought him in at four one morning, and that a sealed envelope had been left for him. The doctors had predicted the very day on which his fever quickly subsided, she said, and the brown blotches on his hands were nothing to worry about. She also assured him that his clothes and papers would be returned in due course.

That was as much as she could tell him, nor did the envelope provide any explanation of the events immediately preceding his admission to hospital. All it contained were two hundred French francs in small notes.

In the days that followed Vit¬torin had time to debate his future course of action. The hunt for Selyukov was still on. He realized that he had gone astray - followed a false trail. Now he must begin all over again. Far from being disheartened, he knew precisely what he had to do and could hardly wait for the day when he would be discharged. It came sooner than he expected.

Russia's fate was sealed at the end of December. Red troops had captured Novocherkask in the east and Balta and Tiraspol in the west. Although the White front continued to hold out between Poltava and Kharkov, plans for a withdrawal were in preparation at General Denikin's headquarters.

The hospital was evacuated early in January. While the White regiments streamed south toward the Crimea and the Caucasus, there to make one last stand on behalf of their doomed cause, Vit¬torin headed for the village of Staromyena, which lay south of the Donets in the Government of Kharkov.

"Grisha, Selyukov's orderly," he had written in his notebook. "Grigory Osipovich Kedrin (Kadrin?) from the village of Staromyena, Glavyask Railway Station, Government of Kharkov."

It was late in the afternoon when Vit¬torin reached his destination. The village of Staromyena straggled interminably along both sides of the highroad, which was as wide as a river. Rooks fluttered over snow-covered vegetable gardens, cawing harshly. Beyond the houses loomed the kiln and smokestack of the brick works where Selyukov's orderly had worked before the war. Vit¬torin questioned the village headman, a lanky, bearded peasant.

"Grigory Osipovich Kedrin? Yes, I know him, but he isn't here. He's serving as some officer's orderly. Last year, on the feast-day of the Ten Holy Martyrs of Crete, he came back from the Great Patriotic War and kicked up a rumpus because Asya Timofeevna had married the blacksmith. He beat her and set about the blacksmith as well. Drink, that was the main reason - he turned up here drunk, so I stuck him in the lockup till his mother came to collect him. The less said about liquor the better, though. They all drink like fish in this place."

He went on to inveigh bitterly against the inhabitants of Staromyena, who had secretly elected a village council and were only waiting for the Bolsheviks' arrival to kick him out.

"Today they cross themselves, but tomorrow they'll be spitting on their icons. God sowed the world with ten bushels of evil, and nine of them were harvested by the peasants of Staromyena. Grisha's a ne'er-do-well like all the rest. Yes, his mother still lives here. He sent her a letter - maybe she knows where he is. I'll take you to her, Excellency."

They found the old peasant woman standing at her cottage door, feeding the hens. It being Sunday, she was wearing a headscarf. Her face lit up when she heard that a gentleman from the city had come to see her son.

"Yes, Grisha's my boy," she told Vit¬torin. "I brought him up to the glory of God. Be gracious enough to come in, Your Excellency."

The interior of the cottage smelt of sour milk and damp firewood, pickled herring and boiled potatoes. A startled goose emerged from behind the table and flew at Vit¬torin, craning its neck and hissing angrily. Fast asleep on top of the stove lay a grizzled old peasant with a hare-skin cap pulled down over his ears. A Kttle oil lamp of blue glass was burning in front of a faded picture of St Sergius.

'He wrote to me, but it was quite a while ago," the old woman said. "I saw the postman coming with his leather satchel. He called to me from a long way off. 'Agrafena Mat-veevna,' he shouted, 'there's a letter for you.' I went all weak at the knees as I took it. 'Where can he be?' I said to myself. 'He may not even have a corner to sleep and pray in.' Then I went and fetched Panteley, the sexton's son, who can read books and letters. He's the night watchman at the brick works."

She bent to pull up one of her red cotton stockings, which had slid down.

"My son Grigory Osipovich wrote in his letter that I was to sell the horse and the sleigh, but the officers had already taken the horse and the oats as well. They paid me in bad roubles. In the old days everything had its proper price, but today you have to take what you're given. 'Don't worry, I'll be back,' my son wrote, 'but not even I can tell when that will be. Look after the house, mother dear, and be careful with money.' He also wrote about the rain and the cold, and how there were Turks as well true believers in the city where he and his officer were living, and how the city was beside the sea, and he asked if I'd found his watch."

The old woman couldn't remember the name of the city. She opened the kitchen table drawer and proceeded to rummage in it for the letter. All that came to light were some slices of dried apple, a bunch of cockerel's feathers, a faded photograph of Grisha's father, a broken looking glass, a "Flight from Egypt" painted on wood, some copper coins, two clay pipes, a paper bag that emitted a cloud of plaster, a leather belt, and a battered frying pan.

"Holy Mother of God!" the old woman wailed. "It isn't here! Forgive me, Your Honour, I can't find it. I don't know where it can have got to."

The letter was eventually unearthed between the folds of a babushka at the bottom of a chest in which Grisha's mother kept tea, sugar and wax candles. One glance at the back of the envelope told Vit¬torin all he needed to know. Selyukov and his orderly were lodging with a merchant named Karabadian in the Kutaiskaya quarter of Batum.

"So that's where the Devil has taken him off to," said the village headman, wagging his head. "Batum? I've never heard of the place, Excellency, but you could ask the priest. He has a book that lists every city in the world."

Vit¬torin explained that he knew where Batum was and hoped to be there in three days' time. In his imagination he was already homeward bound. Russia lay behind him. Batum was just a minor detour, nothing more. Fate had smiled on him for once.

The old woman felt beneath the bolster on her bed and brought out a cheap copper-and-zinc watch.

"Your Excellency, gracious sir," she said, "if you see Grisha, give him this watch. It belongs to him. He left in a huff because he couldn't find it. I trust you to give it to him, Excellency. And tell him I can manage for hay and bread till March, but then I'll have to sell a sheep. The blacksmith's wife has run off, tell him, and tell him I sit here and pine for him.

I've bought a new sieve, but I don't have anyone to dig the garden for me. Tell him that too, will you?"

She accompanied Vit¬torin as far as the church, where his sleigh was waiting. The bell was tolling for evening service, and the women outside were crossing themselves. Vit¬torin climbed aboard and wrapped himself in a rug. It was twelve versts from Staromyena to the station. The village headman, who had been expecting a tip, scratched his neck and said nothing.

"His godfather, Gavrila Ivanich Shikulin, is dead. I don't have anyone to dig the garden for me. They took the blacksmith away for selling stolen horses. Tell Grisha I'm being careful with money ..."

It was noon, and the heat was becoming unbearable. The cries
of the street traders selling fruit, sherbets, baklava and pistachio
cakes had lost a little of their shrill persistence. Vit¬torin, standing on the Sultan Valide Bridge that linked Galata with Stamboul, had at last spotted the
Aurora,
a steamer flying the Greek flag, a white St George's cross on a blue ground. The
Aurora
was sailing for Trieste at seven tomorrow morning and
would be calling at Brindisi, so the shipping clerk had informed
him. A berth in steerage without food cost sixty lire. Steerage passengers aboard Greek steamers were expected to feed themselves.

Vit¬torin had neither money nor passport. He'd lost all his money at cards last night - seventeen francs and half a Turkish pound wouldn't have been enough in any case - but today he would win, he felt sure. Sixty lire were all he needed. You could survive quite well for a week on bread and cigarettes. He knew; he'd done it.

What worried him far more was how to get hold of his travel documents by seven tomorrow. He had two passports and a Russian refugee pass issued by the Entente Commission at Batum, but Lucette had taken charge of all his papers and refused to hand them over. When he'd mentioned yesterday that he might have to go away - only for a day or two, and it wasn't absolutely definite - she'd made a terrible scene: tears, reproaches, it would be abominable of him to walk out on her now, he was the cruellest man alive, et cetera. Every waiter in the damned hotel had gathered in the corridor to listen.

Lucette was young and pretty and a dancer. She could have found a hundred lovers to take his place, but she disliked the Greeks with their "twelve-sous cologne" and detested "all these Levantines, who never wash". She would never willingly let him go, that much was certain.

Vit¬torin had searched their room this morning, while she was still asleep. He'd found the walnut casket in the wardrobe and stealthily, furtively slid the key from under her pillow, but all it contained was the business correspondence of the three "Toledo Girls"; letters from their Milan agent, letters from the owners of seedy nightclubs in Galati, Smyrna, Athens, Alexandria and Port Said; newspaper cuttings adorned with pictures of the trio; crumpled ribbons; withered flowers; and a whole bundle of letters signed "Pancrace". Pancrace . . . Ethel and Adele, Lucette's fellow
danseuses,
had often mentioned a man of that name. Vit¬torin had no idea who he was or exactly what role he had played in Lucette's life; he only knew that the name was familiar.

His papers weren't there, however. Lucette had obviously hidden them elsewhere in the room. They must be wherever she kept her jewellery.

It was half-past twelve, and Lucette liked him to keep her company while she breakfasted. He would be late if he didn't hurry. The funicular would have got him to Pera in ten minutes, but he didn't have the twenty paras - last night had cleaned him out. Lucette rose at one. She smoked an Abra cigarette after breakfast, then took a bath. After that she played patience or amused herself with Ethel's pet parrot. Such was Lucette's day. If Lupescu called - the Rumanian owner of the Café Élysee, where the Toledo Girls were playing - she received him in a housecoat buttoned up to the neck. He didn't get to see much, poor man.

Vit¬torin had met Lucette in Batum. He'd earned just enough that day, by working as a porter at the dock, to treat himself to a meal at a cheap cafe on Mariinsky Prospekt. A sudden downpour had prompted the three Toledo Girls to take refuge in the same scruffy establishment, and that was his first encounter with Lucette. Now he was doing all right. His lean days were over. He played the violin at the Café Élysee. Lucette contrived to get him a job in the band wherever she was appearing. When the Toledo Girls danced at night - whether as Spanish gipsies, exotic butterflies, priestesses of the God Shiva, or monocled dandies in dickies - he would look up from his score and follow Lucette's every movement. Even after so many weeks in her company, it still amazed him to reflect that such a woman belonged to him and no one else. When they were alone together and he held her lithe, supple body in a close embrace, he had to keep telling himself that she was Lucie d'Aubry, the dancer on whom a hundred pairs of lustful male eyes rested nightly at the Café Élysee. And when she lay in his arms with her eyelids drooping and her lips parted, silent and drained of energy, her voice and laughter seemed to ring in his ears.