“What didn’t you like about those young men? One of them was my brother, and the other his close friend! You have a funny way of beginning an acquaintance!”
Still smiling, she stepped to the side a bit, and I understood she was not there by herself, but in the company of a formidable woman, no longer young, wearing a queer-looking net over her gray hair—by all appearances, a schoolmistress.
I was terribly afraid that everything would fall through, that she would leave and I would never see her again. I clutched at her sleeve like a madman and held her back. She was not in the least alarmed, just brushed away my hand and said she had to go back up to the top balcony, and she hoped I would get even more pleasure out of the second part of the concert.
It’s over, it’s all over—now she will go away, forever, and that will be the end of it! “I beg you, I beg you, don’t go upstairs to the balcony. My father gave me a ticket in the orchestra seats, for my birthday, you see … I beg you, change seats with me; it’s the fifth row, in the middle, seat number eleven.”
She looked at me with great sympathy and began nodding her head: “Please, don’t worry yourself, I’ll gladly take your seat—especially since not only can I not see anything from mine, but the sound is also bad there. I am very grateful to you for your kindness.”
She waved to her companion and said, in French, “Madame Leroux, I’ve just run into an acquaintance who offered to exchange his seat for mine. It’s in the orchestra.”
The girl clutched the ticket a bit uncertainly, as though offering it to the Frenchwoman, but the woman became very animated, pushed her hand away, raised her eyebrows, and said, laughingly, something along the lines of “Run along, Marie … And keep your eye out for another acquaintance of yours in the orchestra.”
And we exchanged our tickets, and I led her to my place and seated her, and she nodded to me gratefully, but without constraint. She was no doubt a girl of exceptionally good upbringing—that kind of simplicity of behavior is only common among well-bred people.
By the time I rushed up to the balcony, Rachmaninoff was already seating himself behind the piano. He played the first chord—and I was lost! I have already managed to get hold of the musical score from Filimonov, a clarinet player. I looked it over, and will study it for a long time to come, but I am left with the feeling that the first part is simply unattainable. It is the principle of conversation in a higher and middle register, and the lower F in the contra-octave, the very beginning, and the mighty theme, and the introduction of the strings and clarinets … The concert was enormous in its content and meaning; there was not a single empty phrase, nothing merely decorative, only the essence itself! The audience was in a state of nervous rapture, but Rachmaninoff himself was calm and unflappable, a giant among men, a giant! Everyone applauded rhythmically, then got out of phase, then picked up the rhythm again!
Oh my God! I forgot, I completely forgot about the marvelous girl. When the audience had grown tired of the ovations and started to disperse, I remembered about the girl and realized that I had lost her. She had already left, never to be found again. I practically flew down the stairs, and, truly, the crowd was already departing. I rushed to the coat check for my things, and although the magic of the music had still not left me and I was still happy, I was sad at the same time, because I understood that I had lost what I would never again find. I grabbed my coat and, pulling it on as I walked, made a beeline for the exit, so that I might, if I was lucky, run into her on the steps or at the trolley stop … Then I stepped on the hem of a coat belonging to some lady who was sitting on the velvet bench, putting on her boots. I apologized—and it turned out to be her! Her face looked both solemn and troubled by the music, and also radiant. She had, of course, forgotten all about me, and didn’t even recognize me at first.
I walked her home—she lives on Mariinsko-Blagoveshchenskaya Street, a five-minute walk from our house. Her name is Maria. Maria. Maria.
8 The Garden of Magnitudes
(1958–1974)
When they were still in the eighth grade, Grisha Lieber and Vitya Chebotarev went to the Department of Mathematics and Mechanical Engineering at the university to enroll in study clubs. About twenty boys and two (chance) girls began to live there in a unique, highly rarefied atmosphere. But even in this hothouse of young talent, Vitya stood apart. That year, he took first place among all the Moscow school-age children, and, what was most surprising, he also came in first among the ninth-graders. One year later, he won a prize at the first Math Olympiad of schoolchildren in Bucharest—true, only second place. This was more of a surprise than a disappointment to him. By that time, he was already used to being the best and the brightest in his age group. But he was not conceited, because he was a natural-born scientist, and there was no greater reward for him than solving a task or problem.
In the autumn of the ninth grade, Grisha took a book over to Vitya, who was home sick with tonsillitis. The book was Hausdorff’s Set Theory, a prewar edition, somewhat battered and dog-eared, which had passed through many hands and minds before coming to Vitya and changing his life in the most profound manner.
In the evening, after he had taken his prescribed pills and gargled before going to sleep, Vitya sprawled out on the divan, picking up the little book Grisha had brought over with instructions to guard it carefully—it was valuable. He had never seen anything like it! His sleep, and his tonsillitis, and his very sense of reality deserted him. He was hooked. With every page he read, he felt he changed, even physically. For several years, he had been trying to solve the most disparate and intricate problems, thinking he was doing mathematics; but it wasn’t until this night that he felt he had set foot in the realm of true mathematics. It was a whole new world of wondrous and varied sets. In the morning, he looked out the window and noticed that the world had not changed a bit, and it was incomprehensible to him how buildings could even remain standing, and not collapse in a heap, when there were such wonders in the world as he had discovered in this little book.