On April 1st 1921 the city had begun to turn green and luminous. There were early blossoms appearing like blemishes upon the perfectly manicured body of the Luxembourg Gardens and citizens emerging from their winter cocoons walked with a livelier step. Pretty girls put on spring paint and glanced at my handsome car as I drove past but I barely noticed them. I was immersed in my anxieties. I had decided at last, as letters began to arrive from creditors and I was regularly abused by people on the street outside our deserted offices, that I could wait no longer. Either Brodmann and his Chekists would sense I was unprotected and strike, or the French Fraud Police would arrest me. Matters were worsening daily. There was no doubt I was to be sacrificed by de Grion and his high society friends so they could claim to have been duped by a foreign adventurer. Some of the newspaper stories in the conservative press undoubtedly had their source in de Grion. Kolya and I, together with most ordinary shareholders, were the only real dupes, but there was no way to prove it. Everything was on de Grion’s side: more than he knew, in my case. I read the reports: it was suggested I was a Bolshevik agent fraudulently gathering gold for Moscow, that I represented German Zionist interests, that I was a wanted criminal in Italy and Turkey. I knew enough about such campaigns to predict the outcome of this one. I was a perfect scapegoat, as Kolya had told me. I must forget any hope of continuing my fight in France. It would only mean imprisonment. I would go abroad and there clear my name. With my French passport I would have no great trouble getting to England, but I was still too close to the source of danger. Kolya, as always, gave me the best advice. I would spend some time in America, meet Esmé and Kolya there, then enter Britain later, when the publicity was forgotten.
As I drove home that afternoon I made up my mind to tell Esmé my intention of taking the ship from Cherbourg to New York. Kolya would keep her safe until she followed me. I had no choice. In America I would swiftly redeem my name. By the time she arrived I would be well on the way to re-establishing myself. The naïveté and optimism of Americans now looked attractive. Obviously they had money for new ideas. They had not yet realised how successful the War had been for them. They were now, for the first time in their history, a major international creditor, still with no notion of their enormous power in a world where almost every other nation faced bankruptcy. Once in the United States, my earlier press cuttings would prove my credibility. These were the interviews which chiefly mentioned my earlier successes in Kiev and Constantinople.
I arrived at the house to find it completely empty of people. A week before, the servants had left but now Esmé, too, was gone. Since the foundering of the company she had been frequently absent. She had been forced to find a social routine to relieve herself of boredom in my absence, now she used it to help her forget the terror of renewed poverty. I promised myself to make it up to her before I left. We should have a marvellous few days until I boarded the Mauretania, the liner I had chosen for my voyage. No longer the greatest ship afloat, she was rarely fully booked, but everyone said she had a pre-war elegance lacking in Cunard’s recent vessels with their emphasis on contemporary decor and pastel colours. At my desk, I wrote a letter to Mrs Cornelius. My last, describing my successes, had not been answered. Now I must tell her of my change of fortune. I would not be visiting England for some time. I had a visa permitting me six months in America and might even renew it if necessary. I would first stay in New York, then travel to Washington. There I intended to contact government officials and show them my patents. I wished her luck with her stage career. I suggested she might find the film medium suitable to her talents. I asked to be remembered to Major Nye.
Esmé was still not home by eight. I left her a note and went to see Kolya. He insisted on visiting the nightclub in the Rue Boissy d’Anglais and eating ‘hot dogs’ - ‘So you know what kind of food they serve in America and will not appear unsophisticated on arrival!’ He seemed in high spirits but was, I am sure, merely presenting a good front, to cheer me up. Leaving him was, in a different way, as painful as leaving Esmé. He said he would probably follow in a couple of months, as soon as the scandal died. For all he knew he would bring Esmé to me himself. I had only this hope. I was in danger of falling back ‘within the nightmare’, scarcely able to think clearly around emotional matters. I had no wish to leave my two dearest friends or to desert Europe. The United States seemed so far away. It might have lain beyond the edge of the world. But that was also its attraction.
At our little table under an archway smeared with bright yellow and crimson grotesques, Kolya and I watched a negro dance band play for ballet girls twisting themselves in parodies of classical movements. My friend had more information for me. ‘Stay at the Hotel Pennsylvania. Everyone insists it’s magnificent. It’s so modern an underground railway leads directly into the basements, just for the convenience of guests. I’ve made reservations for you through Cook’s. Your passport describes you as an engineer, so you’ll have no difficulty. Engineers are national heroes in America. Next time you come to Paris, you’ll be aboard your own air liner. Never fear, Dimka, you’ll prove the lie to the press!’
We drank to my success, but I remained fearful. In Russia I had been swept along by profound historical forces, but in France mere financial trickery had dictated my fate. (Yet the Shadow World of Carthage, the Fifth Dimension, exists on the fringes of our own, preparing to engulf us, and its modern weapon is money, the stock exchange. It lies in the East yet at the same time is everywhere, for it intersects our own dimensions on levels conventional science cannot as yet define.) That night, too, Kolya and I made our private farewells. Having given up the little place at Neuilly, we took a hotel room in Rue Bonaparte. It was a sweet goodbye and we both wept. We were fated to be together, just as Esmé and I were fated. His delicate features in the light from the street was the moon haunted, tragic face of a nineteenth-century pierrot. We were to meet again, of course, before I left for Cherbourg, but this was the true time of our parting.
I arrived home to find Esmé still dressed. Her hair was dishevelled. In her white and silver evening gown she resembled a frantic Christmas fairy fluttering about the empty rooms. She was drunk. She had returned, she said, to find me gone. Believing herself deserted she had taken a taxi to search the streets. I showed her my unopened note where I had left it for her. She looked wildly at it, shaking her head dumbly. For a moment her eyes had the flat glow of a puppet’s, without expression or consciousness, then she lowered her lids while at the same time shrinking into a chair, as if her entire body folded in on itself; as if her mind were being sucked into some unfathomable secret place. I became alarmed that I had caused this condition. When I tried to rouse her she shivered, looking up at me only once with an expression of terrified anticipation. I stepped back from her. ‘What’s happened?’
She could not move. Her lips closed, then remained partly open. Eventually I picked her up and carried her to the bedroom where I undressed her. She lay with the sheets to her chin, her eyes following me as I moved, preparing for bed. She made no response to my questions. I decided I was worrying too much. Drink and the late hour were responsible for her behaviour. I went to sleep, determined to tell her my plans in the morning.
At breakfast she was herself again, unusually bright, happy as a canary. She had arranged to lunch with her friend Agnes in the Champs Elysées. I did not know Agnes. Would she object if I accompanied her? But Agnes had a secret to discuss and a man would not be welcome, ‘I, too, have an important secret, Esmé. Something I wanted to say last night.’