Byzantium Endures by Michael Moorcock, Alan Wall Page B

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 Odessaer-Zeitung. Many of the books I read while there were German. I also read the English Tauchnitz editions of W. Clark Russell, H. G. Wells and W. Pett Ridge.
     
    Eventually it was my cousin Shura, not Wanda, who came for me. He looked rather more respectable this morning, in a shirt, a bow-tie, a grey three-piece suit. He carried a straw boater in his hand. He was a kind-hearted youth and had realised I would feel strange in the new city. He entered without knocking, leaning against the door-frame and winking as usual. Then he closed the door and asked if the clothes I wore (a perfectly good dark jacket and pair of knickerbockers) were what I actually preferred. I pointed out that I had little else. He said ‘something would be done’, then advised me to part my hair with an English parting, in the middle, and offered me his comb, which smelled of brilliantine. I accepted and made a poor attempt at the parting. He sat me down in front of my little dressing table and, tongue between his teeth, produced a precise line. Then he ran the comb thoughtfully through his own cropped locks and nodded his satisfaction. I put on pullover and jacket. ‘I suppose