‘Perhaps not any longer.’ Kolya looked tolerantly at his cousin. ‘Just a wounded soldier. He said this kind of war is like one’s worst dreams. Terrible things happen but you can’t move. You can’t do anything to help yourself or anyone else.’
Again Alexei interrupted. ‘The air-war isn’t like that. Chivalry still exists - and action.’
Kolya continued patiently: it’s not the same as the old cavalry charges, the old advances, old battles like Borodino, where issues of some sort at least are decided. This war is strange. First you fear it; then you come to be mesmerised by it; then you become so tired by it you can watch a comrade die before your eyes and not believe it’s real at all.’
‘People mauled by lions are said to feel nothing but the most beautiful euphoria,’ said Lolly.
‘But what’s this stuff about the Front got to do with Grigory Yefimovitch Rasputin?’ said Alexei. He was distressed and awkward.
‘Oh, quite a lot, don’t you think?’ Kolya gave his tea-cup to a servant who had come to clear away. He stood up. ‘Make sure the mangy old lion doesn’t maul you,’ he warned Lolly. ‘You know I never agree with your mother about anything. But I agree with that. The starets is exploiting the grief we can’t admit and won’t admit until the War reaches its end.’
None of us understood my friend. He was in a peculiarly introspective mood as we left the grand house and took the carriage back to his apartment. I left him to himself. I had been disappointed by my afternoon in High Society. Perhaps the best of the family had not been present. However, I had been erotically moved by ‘Natasha’ and what she had been saying and realised how much I had come to miss the company of unspoiled, uncynical girlhood. I decided it was time to visit Marya Varvorovna. I walked to the building overlooking the Kryukoff Canal. On the canal, barges had been replaced by sleds dragged by emaciated mules. The towpaths were patrolled by so many policemen I began to suspect an important criminal was to be arrested. The concierge, an old ‘gentlewoman’ of Polish extraction and like most Poles thoroughly bad-tempered (they never got over the shock of being conquered first by us and then by the Germans) insulted me by making the sign to ward off the evil eye: ‘No Jews!’ she cried. When I pointed out loudly that I was Ukrainian, of Cossack stock, she complained what horrible people the Ukrainians were and what the Cossacks had done to her poor country. All her estates had been confiscated. Chopin himself had been a relative. A familiar enough litany. I listened as patiently as possible before losing my temper. ‘All I wish to know, Panye, is whether Marya Varvorovna Vorotinsky is at home.’ I had already noted the girl’s card, together with another lady’s, on the door of the building.
‘Of course she isn’t. She’s studying. She won’t be home until six. Who are you?’
I bowed. ‘I am Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff. I am currently staying with my friend Count Nicholai Feodorovitch Petroff.’ I gave Kolya’s address, ‘and can be contacted there.’
She was mollified. She apologised. Or rather she offered some unlikely rationalisation for her bad manners. She said she would give Marya Vorotinsky my message, if I wished to call again I should almost certainly find her at home. I could not be there that evening, since I had arranged to have dinner with Mademoiselle Cornelius and some of her friends. I said I would hope to call the next evening.
I dined at a place called Agnia’s, run by a hard-faced widow incapable of smiling at anything. It was the sort of café which had American-cloth on the tables and a general atmosphere the bourgeoisie like to think is working-class. It was, of course, occupied entirely by bourgeois revolutionaries plotting, without any evidence of irony, the downfall of their own kind. I was unhappy about going to the place, which was in the Petersburgskaya and not that far from my lodgings. There was a chance the place might be raided by the police. I found the food uneatable. The company (Lunarcharsky and his friends) was boring and rude and Mrs Cornelius was desperate for conversation which, much as I tried, I was unable to supply. My only interest was in Science. I had no casual conversation. Amongst Kolya’s friends I would be asked for information, for a scientific opinion, which I could always offer cheerfully, keeping silent when there was nothing to say. Mrs Cornelius was beautiful, of course, and I enjoyed her ambience, but my anger at the nonsense being spouted by her companions was countered only by natural tact. I left early. I hoped to see her again. She understood my situation, I think, and felt a little guilty. As I left she kissed me on the cheek, wafting roses, and said softly, ‘Ta, ta, Ivan. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.’
In some trepidation I walked back through the wretched streets of our besieged capital. I paused on the Sampsoneffskaya Bridge to watch men breaking holes in the ice, which was still too thin here to use as a thoroughfare. They were like tramps. The only thing which identified them as anything else was their uniform. Why they were smashing at the ice, with pieces of wood and old railings, I still do not know. Perhaps they were hoping to fish.
At school the next day I was singled out for attack by Professor Merkuloff. He had a horrible cold and his nose was bright red. His eyes glared from beneath a ridiculous woollen hat which reached to the top of his glasses. The lecture was on something simple, the construction of a dynamo. He sarcastically asked me if I knew what a dynamo was. I replied quietly that I did know.
He asked me to define an ordinary dynamo and the principles by which it worked. I gave him the usual definition. He seemed disappointed. He asked if I knew anything else. I described the various sorts of dynamo then in general use, who the manufacturers were. I then talked about current experiments with new types, the kind of power it could be possible to generate, what machines could be run off such and such a source, and so on. He became flamboyantly angry. He screamed at me, ‘That will do, Kryscheff!’
‘There is more, your honour.’
‘I asked a simple question. I need simple answers.’
‘You asked me to elaborate.’
‘Sit down, Kryscheff!’
‘Perhaps you would like me to prepare some kind of paper on the development of the dynamo?’ I said.
‘I would like you to sit down. You are either insolent or you are a bore, Kryscheff. You might simply be a literal-minded idiot. You are certainly a fool!’
This was exactly what my envious schoolmates wanted to hear. His sarcasm drew an easy laugh from them. I had it in mind to face Merkuloff down; to demonstrate his lack of intelligence and imagination. He was a time-server. He only had his job because of the War. But it would mean my dismissal from the Institute and I could not afford it. I would be spitting in Uncle Semya’s eye. I would kill my mother. So I sat down.
This was when I finally resolved to display the profundity and complexity of my knowledge. I would eventually show the whole school that I knew more than teachers and pupils together. I would wait for the best chance. When I did this I wished to show Merkuloff up for the opinionated cretin he was. Our examinations, as I have explained, were chiefly oral. There would be a main end-of-term exam before the whole teaching board of the Institute. That was when I would take my revenge.
I was oblivious of the snifflings and jeerings of the other students as I boarded the horse-tram for the slow, freezing journey home. I read an article on Freycinet’s work on reinforced concrete (he had built the famous airship hangars at Orly). I also found a reference to Einstein which I could not at that time completely comprehend. Now I know we were both working towards a very similar end. He was formulating his General Theory of Relativity while I was planning to astonish my professors with my own ontological ideas. Such coincidences are common in science.