It was a touching and heartening letter. I determined to show Professor Merkuloff that Dr Matzneff’s ‘favouritism’ had been no more than recognition of outstanding talent. I would study all the harder, night and day if necessary, and win diplomas in every subject. I would cause them all to eat their words.
The days grew lighter. Fashionable people began to leave Petrograd not for the seaside, for the Crimea, as they had once done, but for their datchas in the country, closer to Moscow. I trained myself for the exams due at the end of the year. I would make it impossible for the authorities not to notice me. I began to ignore everything and everyone in pursuit of those studies. Of course, they became harder, the deeper into them I went. I had no great difficulty mastering the ordinary set problems, but I wanted to do better. I wanted to do so well they would have to promote me at least a year ahead, possibly grant me my diploma immediately. It would free me from Merkuloff. I would receive a higher standard of tuition from teachers who would not share his bias towards me.
I gave up fiction. I gave up my outings with the Zinovieffs. I gave up most of my sleep in order to study. I stopped thinking about Marya Varvorovna. I studied every textbook we had been set. I studied the advanced textbooks listed in the bibliographies. I began to understand whole areas of science, whole principles of engineering, as my mind made intellectual leap after intellectual leap. I had, of course, to resort again frequently to my cocaine, but this aided me in making unique connections. I began to see the very structure of the universe. Whenever I slept (which was infrequently) I saw every planet in the solar system circulating about the sun; I saw the other planetary systems, the galaxies. The whole universe was pictured to me. And the world of atoms was mirrored in the picture. Into this great conception I could fit an ontological understanding of the world encompassing the sum total of human knowledge: and more. These were the visions, I realised with excitement, which had led Leonardo and Galileo and Newton to their discoveries. I was party to the secrets of Genius. I knew I must not reveal too much at once to my teachers, particularly Merkuloff. He was an ordinary man with an ordinary mind. Others at the Institute had good minds, but even they would not recognise the value of my innovatory theories. I was party to the knowledge of the Gods: I could write it down, but I could not, at that time, communicate it to the world.
Madame Zinovieff began to worry about my ‘burning the candle at both ends’. She said I was looking pale, that my eyes were bloodshot, that I was not eating properly. I was a little impatient with her. This distressed her. I immediately apologised. I explained I was working hard on my examinations and a great deal depended on them. She was mollified. Olga and Vera no longer noticed me. They were in the process of making marriage plans with their chandler and their mineral-water salesman, preparing to settle into the life of good little Hausfraus, putting their childish romanticism behind them. Already their obsessions concerned the quality of winter coats and the price of furniture. I would scarcely have known them for the two girls I had met barely fifteen months before.
I walked to and from the tram-stop and felt like a giant striding between buildings barely reaching my knees. It was still very cold. The weather meant nothing to me. Before me I saw the stars and the lines of force combining to produce what we call ‘the universe’. The nature of matter itself was just within my grasp. At school I attended lectures but I already knew their substance. I listened with polite impatience to Professor Merkuloff. He was a fool. I ignored the remarks of my fellows. I returned home and I studied more and more. But my supply of cocaine had begun to shrink. I knew I would need more if I were to continue with my work, which was now filling a number of bulky notebooks. I was at the peak of my powers. I could not afford to lose time. I hunted for the scrap of paper on which Sergei Andreyovitch Tsipliakov had written the address of his friend, where he would be staying. I decided to take the last of the cocaine and return the snuff-box. It would be an ideal excuse. I could tell him the box had been opened and all his ‘medicine’ had been scattered. He would be grateful for the box, which looked valuable. I would find out where he bought his cocaine and I would buy some, too. I would spend the money on it which I would otherwise have spent on expensive imported fiction.
I took two trams to a street off the Nevski, near the Mikhailovski Gardens. I at last found the apartment building. It was not quite as grand as I had imagined, but far grander than anything I had visited before in St Petersburg. The porter stopped me from entering until I gave the name of Seryozha’s friend, Nicholai Feodorovitch Petroff. The porter made something of a grumble about the ‘succession of ruffians’ he had to deal with and told me where to go. It was across the courtyard, near the top of the building, occupying a whole floor. It was very quiet and felt extremely prosperous. I rang the bell of the apartment. The door was opened by a young girl wearing little more than a Japanese kimono. She had a vaguely oriental cast to her heavily made-up features and moved with peculiar gliding grace which was at once stiff and natural. Perhaps she was also a dancer. She said nothing after she had admitted me, but began to glide away towards the inner rooms. I took off my cap, closed the door and followed her. I found a large chamber furnished in the ‘Arts and Crafts’ style, a kind of Russian art nouveau then fashionable. The place was full of peacock feathers. I experienced a slight superstitious frisson. I had been taught it was unlucky to bring peacock plumes into a house. ‘Are you a friend of Kolya’s?’ the girl asked.
‘I had hoped to see Sergei Andreyovitch Tsipliakov.’
It was then that she threw herself into one of the deep armchairs and let her kimono fall open. Her nipples were rouged. Her breasts were tiny. She had male genitals. It was a boy made-up as a girl. I became confused, then the cocaine helped me rally myself and I remained superficially unimpressed.
The creature drew his kimono about him. He said off-handedly, ‘I don’t think Seryozha and Kolya are on speaking terms. Are you a friend of Seryozha’s, then?’
‘We met on the train from Kiev.’
‘You’re not the little yid he tried to seduce?’
I smiled and shook my head. ‘That must have been on another trip. Is he staying here?’
‘He was. There was a row.’
‘He’s moved?’
‘Well, he isn’t here. What did you want him for?’
‘I have a snuff-box belonging to him.’
‘Any snuff in it?’
‘There was never any snuff in it.’
The youth gave a knowing sneer. Evidently this was a sophisticated ‘sniffer’. It was no part of my plan to aggravate a person who could help me find what, in all languages, cocaine users once called ‘snow’.
I said, ‘My name is Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff.’
‘You’re from the South.’
I modified my accent to give it the sharp, Petersburg sound. ’May I have the honour of asking your name?’ I bowed with the sardonic courtesy one might extend to a lady of easy virtue. This pleased him. He stood up, making a gesture which could have been an attempt to curtsey. ‘Enchanté. You can call me Hippolyte.’
‘You are also connected with the ballet?’
‘Connected, yes.’ Hippolyte giggled. ‘A drink? We have everything. Champagne? Cognac? Absinthe?’ Absinthe had just been banned in France.
‘I’ll take absinthe.’ I had never had it and was determined to sample it before the apartment’s owner returned. He might be more restrained in his hospitality.
With another artificially sinuous flirt of the hips, Hippolyte moved to a large cabinet and poured me some absinthe. ‘Water? Sugar?’