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soldier.
    Conversely, thousands of soldiers of all ranks from the Czar’s army had long been scattered into the least expected and most excruciating jobs at hotels, concert halls, cabarets, gambling houses, restaurants, bars, café chantants, movie theatres, beaches, nightclubs and streets. They washed dishes and carried trays in restaurants, worked as croupiers in gambling houses jam-packed with lies, peddled dolls at street corners, provided piano accompaniment to cabaret dancers in boisterous entertainment halls. Every corner was appropriated and each job filled. Amidst this chaos, Count General Pavel Pavlovich Antipov tried to find his way with steps as shaky as those of a new born foal learning to walk on its trembling legs. After looking around for weeks on end, the only job he could finally find was that of a checkroom attendant in a café chantant – a place frequented by arrogant French and English officers out with their delicate, sable-coated, cherry-lipsticked lovers; by sybarite Italian painters carving Eastern gravures with women always portrayed as being pasty and plump and streets as shady and snaky; by glum Jewish bankers in need of pumping loans to the palace so that they could get back the ones previously provided; by profligate Turkish young men satiated with the wealth inherited but insatiable in spending it; by spies not letting anything slip away even when blind drunk; by bohemians, dandies and all those lost souls in search of lust or adventure.
    The bald, flabby-cheeked, multiple-chinned, constantly gesticulating Levantine owner of the café chantant had been looking to hire someone ever since the previous checkroom attendant – whose sort he had not approved of from the start – got involved in a fight ending with his face smashed up. Observing the imposing appearance and majestic posture of Pavel Pavlovich Antipov, he did not hesitate even for a moment before offering him the job. Yet when the new checkroom attendant put on the red coat with shiny tasseled epaulets on the shoulders and diagonal yellow cords hanging in front, his admiration was replaced by disparagement:
    ‘Life is so strange, isn’t it Monsieur Antipov? We’re bothwitnesses to the demise of two glorious empires. You’ve started to Westernize at least a century before us. Peter the Great! It’s rumoured he would have those who didn’t learn Western etiquette whipped – is that true? He inspected women’s underwear and men’s beards, is that so? Peter’s city must be really pretty: a palace rising from the swamps. Take a look at Istanbul in comparison: open on all four sides, exposed to every breeze blowing from each direction. A rudderless, out of joint city! Did you know that until a decade ago, young and courageous intellectuals escaping from your mighty empire sat side by side at the same Parisian cafés with young and courageous intellectuals escaping from our mighty empire: plunging into zealous discussions to draw godknowswhat sort of short-sighted conclusions. The French waiters serving them would eavesdrop first at one table then the other. Imagine the contradictory things they must have heard! Those who fled from your empire would rave about destroying their state at all costs. Those who fled from ours would instead rave about saving their state from destruction at all costs. Within a decade, yours succeeded and ours failed. I don’t know which one to lament more? Life is so strange, isn’t it Monsieur Antipov? You escaped from a collapsed empire to seek refuge in one about to collapse. Could it be that your running away from the uniformed Reds to find yourself in a red uniform here is yet another one of Fortuna’s tricks?’
    That night, as Pavel Pavlovich Antipov held up the customers’ coats, he heard nothing other than the daunting echo of the things his boss had said. Only for three more accursed days could he stand that terribly ridiculous uniform. After that, he stopped working, stopped doing