Without passports we could scarcely have found lodging or rations, for every non-Ukrainian in Odessa had to register with the Austrian authorities. Tom White, therefore, became Serge Feodorovitch Davidoff, originally from Turkestan, and I became Evgeni Nestorovitch Genko, a Lett from Riga. This origin suited me very well; for the Letts, although former subjects of Imperial Russia, can mostly speak the German patois of the Baltic Provinces. My passport made me a young bachelor, but White's allotted him a missing wife named Anastasia, aged nineteen.
There were still in Odessa a few British subjects who had remained through the dreadful days of the Bolshevist occupation and the more peaceful Austro-German régime. It happened that the professor's sister knew one of them, a leather manufacturer named Hatton. In his house we found refuge until other arrangements could be made. Like most people in Odessa, he showed us every kindness in his power, as did his Russian wife and her relations. It was, however, unwise to remain for long with an Englishman, for he himself would have been imprisoned if the Austrians discovered that he was harbouring two British officers.
The professor's sister played providence yet again, and produced another invaluable friend—one Vladimir Franzovitch B., a hard-up lieutenant in the Ukrainian artillery. Vladimir Franzovitch lived in two small rooms. The larger one he shared with us, there being just room enough for three camp beds placed side by side and touching each other. The second room was occupied by his mistress.
Obviously the situation had its drawbacks. It also had its advantages, as the rooms were in one of the city's poorest quarters. The neighbours, therefore, included no enemy soldiers, for the Germans and Austrians had naturally spread themselves over the more comfortable districts.
The dvornik was an old sergeant of the Imperial Guard, with a bitter hatred of Bolshevism and all its works. The tale which Vladimir Franzovitch told of us—that we were English civilians escaped from Moscow—was in itself a guarantee that he would befriend us. He took our false passports to the food commissioners, and thus obtained bread and sugar rations for Serge Feodorovitch Davidoff and Evgeni Nestorovitch Genko.
Our principal interest was now in the news from Bulgaria, for on it hinged our future movements. We visited Hatton each day to obtain translations from the local press. These I supplemented from the two-day-old newspapers of Lemberg and Vienna, bought at the kiosk.
The Bulgarian armistice was an accomplished fact, but the German troops had been given a month to leave Bulgaria. Our problem was whether to remain in Odessa until the end of this month and then try to make for Bulgaria, or to leave for Siberia at once.
Wilkowsky all but tipped the scales in favour of Siberia. He arrived suddenly from Constantinople, having hidden on a steamer that weighed anchor a few days after the Batoum's departure. From being a penniless prisoner, without even the means of corresponding with his family, he was now prosperous and comfortable; for his father was a wealthy lawyer living in Odessa, and his uncle Minister of Justice in Skoropadsky's Ukrainian Cabinet.
Among his friends was the local commissary of General Denikin, whose volunteer army, composed of Kuban Cossacks and ex-officers of the Imperial Army, was preparing to advance against the Bolshevist forces in the Caucasus. Every few days the commissary sent a party of ex-officers, by way of Novorosisk, to the volunteer Army Headquarters at Ekaterinodar. General Denikin was hoping for aid from the Allies; so that the commissary was delighted at the chance of enlisting two British aviators. His offer was that we should fly with Denikin's army for a few weeks and help to organize the Flying Corps, after which we could proceed by aeroplane to some Allied detachment in Siberia.
The adventure seemed attractive, and we hesitated over it. But illness took the decision from our hands. I was laid low by yellow jaundice, and unable to travel with the next party that left for Novorosisk. Weakened as I was by various forms of hardship, several days passed before I recovered, under the kind-hearted ministrations of Elena Stepanovna, Hatton's Russian wife.