Whether it was the work I had been doing, or the effects of the cocaine, I was, I admit, inspired by Kolya’s words. He said in poetry all that I had been thinking. He inspired me to dreams of even greater intensity. I saw us, the Poet and the Scientist, changing the whole world. Those marching Futurists were only bragging journeymen. They had little in common with this wonderful individual.
‘I should like to read your poems,’ I said.
Kolya laughed. ‘You can’t read them. Sit down. Drink some more absinthe. I burned all my poems this winter. They were simply not up to standard. They were in imitation of Baudelaire and Laforgue. There was no point in adding second-rate verse to the mountain already immersing our city. I shall wait for the War to end, or for the Revolution to come, or for Armageddon or the Apocalypse. Then I shall write again.’
He seated himself upon a great divan in the centre of the room and reached for the bottle. ‘Would you have the last of the wine?’
‘If there is no more ...’ I put a hand over the top of my glass.
‘Enjoy it. Why shouldn’t you? If this war continues, if the Apocalypse really comes, then we’ll have no more absinthe anyway, merely the wormwood itself, if we are lucky.’ A black sleeve extended towards me, a black glove clutched the neck of the Terminus flask. Yellow liquid poured up to the rim of the slender goblet. ‘Drink it, my scientist friend. To the poetry you will inspire.’
‘And to the science you will inspire.’ I was fired by his mood. I drank.
Hippolyte vanished and, tut-tutting, emerged, it seemed only moments later, in a fairly ordinary, if somewhat dandified outfit, and said that he was ‘going down to the Tango’ to find some company. He was bored, he said. Kolya wished him an amiable farewell. Then, pausing by the door, Hippolyte said: ‘You’d better let me know when you want me home.’
‘Whenever you like, my dear!’ Kolya was casual. ‘Dimitri Mitrofanovitch and myself will be discussing matters of science.’
Hippolyte scowled, hesitated again, then left.
A moment passed. He was back. ‘I might go on somewhere,’ he said.
‘Just as you like, Hippolyte.’ Kolya turned questioningly to me. ‘Would you like to visit The Scarlet Tango? Or are you bored with such places?’
I suspected The Scarlet Tango would be like the bohemian cafés I had frequented in Odessa, where cocaine was always available. I must have seemed eager when I replied that I did not think I would be bored.
Kolya said to Hippolyte, ‘We’ll see you there in an hour or two.’
The door slammed. Kolya sighed. ‘Beauty is cheap in Peter, these days, Dimka. But it seems always to be accompanied by bad manners. It’s a pleasure to meet a scholar for a change.’
I was fascinated by this black-clad ghost, this Russian Hamlet. I had relaxed completely. Doubtless the absinthe made me reveal, almost at once, the nature of my quest.
‘You are a sniffer!’ He was amused. ‘Well, well, the good things of life are spreading amongst the people. The Revolution is with us, after all!’
‘I should point out,’ I said with some dignity, ‘that I am a rather unusual student at the Polytechnic, and an unpopular one. My experience of life has not been entirely of the schoolroom.’
He apologised with grave good manners. ‘And where were you, before the Polytechnic?’
‘In Kiev,’ I said, ‘where I flew my own machine.’
‘And so young? Where’s the aeroplane now?’
‘It was not an aeroplane as such. It was an entirely new design. It was reported in the papers.’
‘And you flew to Peter?’
I laughed, ‘I crashed. I still need time to perfect the design. But perfect it I shall.’
‘And after that? Where did you go?’
‘To Odessa for a while. I had already gained some practical engineering experience. In Odessa I developed a liking for cocaine and the pleasures of the flesh.’
I must have seemed a little naive to him, but he did not show it.
Since then, I told him, I had given up such vices and was concentrating on my studies. I mentioned my new problems. I was determined to succeed in spite of all. To this end I had begun to use a stimulant again. My work was proceeding well on all fronts. I had developed theories which would astonish any true scientist. I did not expect them to impress the staid and orthodox hacks currently teaching at the Institute. I had hoped to get more cocaine from Sergei Andreyovitch.
‘You are not a friend of Seryozha’s?’
‘An acquaintance, that is all.’
‘So your interest is in “la neige” rather than the place from which it falls?’ He smiled kindly.
‘Exactly.’
‘Well, it will be nothing to find you some. Particularly with the War on. God knows how they can supply all the warriors, poets and scientists with what they need to get them through this conflict and famine. You’re not interested in morphine?’
‘I’ve never indulged myself with the distillation of poppies. The world of dreams is not an escape for me. I intend to impose my dreams upon the world.’
He was pleased by this turn of phrase. He poured me the dregs of the absinthe. ‘I hope you will not disapprove of me if I say I have injected the occasional dose. When I have needed to retreat from society. The drugs can be complementary, you know.’
I did not fully realise then what I know today: cocaine is a stimulant, but morphine is a killer. I have never made use of depressants. It is not a very large step from the world of sleeping hallucinations to the cold world of Death; from Heaven on Earth, as it were, to the genuine article. The road away from Hell, as the Poles say, is the road that leads there.
I sipped the last of the absinthe. ‘I must point out that I do not use the drug for pleasure. I need it to keep my brain alive and my body working.’
‘Are you not afraid you’ll go mad with so much work?’
‘It is possible, but I have the necessary control.’
‘Inspiration and madness are very similar, I think.’ He crossed to the cabinet where he kept his drinks and opened a porcelain dish whose lid was in the shape of a white pierrot peering at a half-moon. ‘I have some here. I think it is good quality. These days one must be careful. So many customers. As a consequence, so many rogues who will dilute the crystals with anything which comes to hand. You must be careful. In Odessa, before the War, you would not have known such dangers, eh?’
‘There are a few crooks in Odessa,’ I joked.
‘So I have heard.’
He was bringing me alive again, as Shura had brought me alive. More. For Kolya was a sophisticated man of letters, a theatre-critic, a writer of essays in the thick journals, a man of taste, dignity and discrimination, who recognised intelligence and creativity. I was to discover that he saw himself more as a publicist of talent than as a talent in his own right. He was one of those great and necessary people who encourage others to aspire to do their best, whatever that best may be.
His whole name was Count Nicholai Feodorovitch Petroff and he was related to the famous Mikhishevski family, one of the chief aristocratic Petersburg clans, whose ancestral estates were in my native Ukraine. Nicholai Feodorovitch had visited rural Ukraine occasionally but had no experience of the cities or of that particular shore. He knew the Crimean coast well, however, it is even warmer. ‘We should go there,’ he said, ‘this summer. If the War ends.’ I enjoyed the fantasy. I asked if he had not stayed even briefly in Kiev or Odessa. He laughed, ‘I find them both attractive as ideas, Dimka, but that is all. The dark, romantic Jew has always intrigued me as a character, you know. I have every sympathy with Shylock. Haven’t you? Or even poor Fagin, who is the liveliest of Dickens’s characters? Or the noble Isaac in Ivanhoe?’