Stanley Stewart - In the Empire of Genghis Khan - A Journey Among Nomads

Below in the nightclub Rasputin was singing a Russian version of My Way. Despairing of me, Anna had transferred her attentions rather theatrically to the singer, and was now gyrating suggestively in front of the tiny stage. The purple lighting did Rasputin no favours. His eyes and cheeks were malevolent pockets of darkness.

I found Kolya alone at a corner table nursing a double brandy.

‘Anna seems to be enjoying herself,’ I said taking a seat.

He looked at me without speaking then turned his eyes back to the dance floor and the figure of Rasputin in its purple haze.

‘He is not exactly Sinatra,’ I said.

‘He is a shit,’ Kolya said.

The boy seemed to have diminished on his stool, sinking deeper into himself. He simmered with resentment. He felt Rasputin was displacing him in Anna’s affections, that the arbitrary tides of the adult world had shifted without any reference to him. He glowered at the singer from his corner table like a child gangster.

I retired and when Kolya arrived later in the cabin, he was sullen and uncommunicative. We played cards in a difficult silence. Half an hour later, Anna arrived with Rasputin, trailing all the forced merriment of the nightclub. She seemed to need to show off her acquisition to me and to Kolya in some act of petty revenge.

They sat together on the bunk opposite. Anna stroked his thigh. They chattered together in Ukrainian. The boy watched them coldly. Rasputin tried to draw him out with bantering exchanges. The nightclub had closed and the two were trying to press Kolya for his usual hospitality. Anna had delved into one of Kolya’s bags and produced a bottle of vodka which she proposed they drink. Rasputin held it up and made to open the screw top, looking teasingly to Kolya for his response. He was laughing open-mouthed, a barking ridicule emerging from between rows of long yellow teeth. Then he closed his mouth suddenly, and his expression changed. Anna and Rasputin were suddenly rigid.

I looked round at Kolya. The boy was pointing his gun at the singer. He swore at him, under his breath, as if he was speaking to himself.

‘Put the gun down, Kolya,’ I said.

He did not respond. For what seemed like long minutes no one moved. We were transfixed by the gun.

‘Put it down, Kolya.’ I forced myself to stand up. Kolya’s gaze flickered toward me for a second then returned to Rasputin. His face was flushed. I felt my heart pounding and my legs felt watery. I stepped between the two.

‘Get out,’ I said to Rasputin.

The singer seemed about to protest, but Anna silenced him. She stood up and pulled his arm. I herded them out of the door then closed it after them.

Kolya had lowered the gun. He picked at the barrel absentmindedly, childishly, with his middle finger. He pursed his lips, affecting a casual expression, as if the sudden terror that still stiffened the air in the room had nothing to do with him.

‘You’re an idiot,’ I told him. I wanted to shout at him; my own tension needed an outlet. He sat chewing his lip, gazing at the floor, then threw the gun on his bunk.

‘You’ll have to get rid of it,’ I told him. He said nothing. ‘The singer will tell the Ukrainian customs about the gun. They will search you. He might even be telling the captain now. You need to get rid of it. Immediately.’

He sat staring at the floor. Then with the surly grace of a child who had been ordered to clean his room, he picked up the gun, opened the porthole and dropped it into the sea. Then he lay down on his bunk and sobbed into his pillow.

Perched on the southern shores of the old Soviet Union, Sevastopol was a window on more tolerant worlds. There is a Mediterranean feel about the place, some tang of the south, some promise of escape, a lightness borne on the sea air and reflected in the pinkish hue of the stone façades. Built by Black Sea traders who had seen Naples, it has touches of architectural grandeur and a southern desire for colour. Side streets were full of flower boxes and haughty cats. Flights of stone steps connected avenues of plane trees and trolley buses. Vines trailed between the mulberry trees in walled gardens. In the midday sun cafés spilled onto the pavements, and people grew animated and gregarious.

It is easy to understand why the Crimea was the envy of the rest of the Soviet Union. Dour people from Moscow used to come to Sevastopol and Odessa just to look at the vegetables. In those days the Politburo holidayed on the Black Sea. In this easy southern climate it was a simple matter to believe that things were going well. Every other year the first families of the East, leaving their overcoats and their worries at home, gathered at a resort near Yalta just along the coast – the Brezhnevs, the Honeckers, the Zhivkovs, the Ceausescus, and the Tsendbals – to compare growth rates and grandchildren.

Though virtually unknown outside his own country, Tsendbal’s survival eclipsed them all. For forty-four years, as general secretary and then president, this obscure figure ruled the People’s Republic of Mongolia, the world’s second Communist state and the oldest of Russia’s allies. To keep tabs on him, the KGB had managed to marry him off to one of their agents, the boorish Filatova, a Russian from Soviet Central Asia. The Crimea was one of her passions and the Tsendbals came to the Black Sea at least twice a year. If any folk memories of the Mongol Hordes lurked in the Crimean subconscious, Tsendbal must have confused them. The heir to Genghis Khan was a small mousy man, the epitome of the faceless bureaucrat, obsequious to his domineering wife and his masters in the Kremlin.

In the afternoon I wandered through the park where Crimean War monuments were deployed between the flower beds. Todleben, who organized the defence of Sevastopol in 1855, towered serenely over strolling naval cadets in hats so ridiculous they might have been dressed for a children’s party. At the far end of the park a fat man reading a newspaper sold me a ticket for an empty Ferris wheel.

Ten years ago Sevastopol was the most closed of the Soviet Union’s closed cities, and spies in every Western nation would have considered a ride on this Ferris wheel as the pinnacle of their careers. Now the operator hardly cared enough about the presence of the former enemy to look up from the sports pages. With a series of creaking shudders I rose above the city. Beneath me, in the long protected harbour, lay the great Black Sea Fleet. It looked like a vast naval scrap yard full of rusting hulks. Economic collapse appeared to have done for the fleet what the naval strategies of Nato failed to do – keep much of it in harbour. Russia and the Ukraine had argued over the disposition of the ships when the latter declared its independence, though neither of them can afford to maintain its share of the naval loot.

Back at my hotel the lobby was dominated by a flashing sign that read El Dorado. Beneath it a cabal of young venture capitalists in baseball caps worked the slot machines. Upstairs in my room the television offered two Russian channels. On the first, old Russia survived. Rectangular men in grey suits were making interminable speeches. On the other channel, new Russia was in full cry. Encouraged by a deranged game-show host, housewives were performing a striptease. The applause levels of the audience determined which one would win the kind of washing machine I remember my mother throwing out in the 1960s. It was not difficult to guess which channel was winning the ratings war.

The finest part of Sevastopol is the esplanade along the seafront which stages the evening passeggiata. A series of neo-classical buildings – naval academies, customs houses, municipal offices – lines the long promenade where the inhabitants stroll arm in arm taking the sea air as swallows dive between the rooftops. Like the promenaders most of the buildings appeared to have lost the security of state employment and now struggle to make ends meet. Corner rooms in the old academies have been rented out as bars and restaurants. As the soft southern night fell, noisy discos mushroomed between the Corinthian columns where visiting leaders, including the Tsendbals of Outer Mongolia, once reviewed the naval fleet that was the pride of the Soviet Union.