The head of the department spent two hours in the semi-basement apartment by the Nikitsky Gates, and left, saddened that his student had abandoned the actual (according to his notions) field of mathematics and leapt into a realm where those damaged by the burden of highly developed intellectual capacities grazed. These were the professional risks of being a mathematician, and the professor had already witnessed two such breakdowns in his life. Regrettable. A very capable young man, perhaps even with a dash of genius, Vitya had completed all his coursework but now refused to defend his dissertation. No job, of course. No means of subsistence. What could the professor do for him? No, there was no way he could help him.
But in this case the professor was at least partly mistaken. For six months, Vitya gnawed at the lock and bars of the theorem, and managed to wriggle out of the seemingly hopeless situation in an unexpected, almost miraculous way. He sat down and wrote a paper. Then he called Nora. She received him, somewhat bewildered but quite glad. He spent three days with her, and a glimmer of tenderness even appeared in their relations.
As he was leaving, he asked Nora, “Maybe we ought to get married for real? Things are going so well.”
“But where are they going? We’re already married,” Nora said, laughing. “Live together, you mean? At your place?”
“Well, no,” Vitya said, imagining life with Nora and Varvara under the same roof. “Perhaps if we live at your place?”
“Here? I’m sorry, that’s not going to work.”
Nora was surrounded by people of all stripes and colors—a most varied assortment of artists, actors, people with one foot in the theater or none at all, gifted, fascinating people who adored being on display. Not one of them was truly unique, or free of at least a touch of vulgarity and superficiality. They all aspired to be geniuses; but geniuses they were not. Vitya came closest of all of them to being a genius. Nora had already guessed this when they were still in school, and required no evidence or proof of the fact. But she couldn’t very well keep him in the house!
Vitya had a few mathematician friends who knew his worth—his trusty friend Grisha Lieber, and Slava Berezhnoi. Who needs lots of friends, anyway? Vitya was not fine-tuned emotionally, and was incapable of conversation on subjects of general interest, so he was condemned to a life of strictly mathematical friendship.
It was Slava Berezhnoi—who had been expelled from the university over the “carrot affair,” afterward graduating from evening courses at the Moscow Higher Technical University and taking up computer programming in the early days of the field—who found a position for Vitya in the computing center. The work suited Vitya down to the ground. From the theory of algorithms to programming was just a short leap. Mathematics had never promised to be of any practical use to Vitya; it was a captivating mental game. On the other hand, algorithms written in an artificial, simple, and logical language facilitated the solution to the most various problems, problems that were actually not connected to mathematics at all.
The directors of the center valued him, and Slava took more pride in Vitya’s achievements than in his own. For the first time in his life, Vitya received a salary, which he spent on books about mathematics and on expensive sweets. He had more than just a sweet tooth—he was addicted to glucose. Couldn’t live without it.
His work left him some spare time. He moved away from the strictly defined tasks of programming, solved several problems that he, in part, created, and even wrote two papers for a scholarly journal. One of them, however, the one Vitya considered to be the more successful, was returned to him with a negative review, very rude in tone. This offended him, and he took back both articles. Faced with this unfair criticism, Vitya, after a moment’s consideration, sent the papers off to an American mathematical journal. He only found out they had published them a year later.
At the same time, thanks to Vitya’s blunt honesty, he became embroiled in a conflict with the director of the center, Bogdanov. By the standards of the day, Bogdanov was a decent man, but a careerist. Not long before, he had received a secret award from the government—part of the work of the computing center was classified, involving sensitive military matters—for a new program that was intended to put the West at a disadvantage, with the aim of not merely catching up to it but outstripping it altogether.
Bogdanov was the nominal head of the project, but he took no part in developing or implementing it. He could not have done so even if he wished to, because he understood almost nothing about computer programming. A Party man, not a scientist, he compensated for his inadequacies by insisting on adding his name to the collection of authors.
A group of five people were involved in the project, including Vitya as the senior member, and, as the junior member, Amayak Sargsyan, who was a student intern from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He had a fine mind, it must be said.
There was a great deal Vitya did not know about the administrative organization of the computing center. The computer itself took up an entire building. It was filled with punch cards and young women, who were in charge of delivering them from point to point, so computations, among other things, involved their rushing energetically between floors to the rhythmic clip of their high heels. Vitya did not even suspect the existence of another, invisible level, that of relations between people. In short, at a certain moment, when the program was ready to be sent to the higher-ups for final approval, Vitya noticed that the name of Bogdanov, who had made no contribution to developing the program, headed the list of authors, while the name of the highly competent student, who had helped Vitya a great deal, especially in debugging the program, was missing altogether.
Vitya went to see Bogdanov during his office hours. Perhaps if he had begun the conversation more diplomatically the matter would have had a different outcome. But Vitya began by saying that it was unjust for Bogdanov to put his own name first on the list of authors, since he didn’t have a clue as to the merits and faults of the program, whereas the name of Sargsyan, who had taken part in the project and made a genuine contribution, for some unknown reason was absent. Bogdanov answered dryly that he would look into it.
After this meeting, Vitya could no longer gain admittance to Bogdanov’s office. He showed up at the weekly office hours time after time, until the secretary whispered to him that he should just give up—it was pointless. Vitya then forced his way into the office and caused a bona-fide scandal. He even shouted something about the interests of the state, which the director wasn’t taking into account. Poor Amayak Sargsyan was immediately fired from the computing center. He was not permitted to defend his honors thesis, and, being an exceptionally thorough and conscientious person, he wasn’t able to write a new one in time. Vitya’s hunger for justice resulted in a great deal of misfortune for Amayak, but it strengthened his faith in humanity.
A month and a half later, Vitya himself lost his job. He felt both indignant and dejected—not so much because his name was also removed from the list of authors as because he did not understand the first thing about this whole predatory and cruel operation.