Byzantium Endures

SEVEN

NOW I REACHED the most intense period of my whole creative life. During the week, I attended lectures. I read books years in advance of what was being taught on the official syllabus. In the early evenings I took the steam-tram home and made my own notes. Then, at around eight or nine at night and with some gesticulating and lip-pursing from Madame Zinovieff, I would join Kolya at his flat or at one of the cabarets we favoured. He would recite endless poetry in French, English, Russian and abominable German. I would tell him how a Zeppelin was constructed, or the principle allowing the tank to function, or how electricity is generated. I believe he sometimes paid as much attention to my lectures as I paid to his poetry. I had become a sort of mascot of the New Age for him, but he was always polite and never at any time was he rude and he would never allow anyone to offend me. At The Scarlet Tango and The Wandering Dog bohemian artists, foreigners, criminals, and the crème de la crème of revolutionaries who would soon be serving with Kerenski or Lenin, all met together to talk, to listen to music, to find sexual companionship and sometimes to fight. This particular admixture of experience was ideal for me. I at last discovered a source of women and Marya Varvorovna was forgotten. They were prepared to treat love as cheerfully as my Katya had treated it. I had male admirers and was flattered, but did not succumb to them. There were many girls or older ladies who found it exciting to quote the pornographic ravings of Mandelstam and Baudelaire at me, then take me to their wonderful beds. There I could lie upon silk. There I could wash myself with warm, perfumed water. I became increasingly self-confident again. I found it was possible to reduce the amount of my reading. Now there was hardly a field in which I was not profoundly conversant.

By the time the Summer Vacation came I was ready for a holiday. With Kolya, Hippolyte, a girl who called herself ’Gloria’, after the English fashion (though she was Polish), and a couple of ’poets’, we visited the Summer Gardens and broad quays of the Neva, took the rare steamer up the river, enjoyed picnics on the banks, or lunches at those magnificent wooden establishments on several floors, not unlike Swiss ski-lodges, which catered for the steamer-trade and by now were pleased to welcome any sort of customer.

Empty of the haut-monde, St Petersburg filled up with wounded soldiers and sailors, with nurses on leave from the Front who sought consolation in the arms of healthy civilians (there were all too few of us left). This wealth of femininity even distracted agitators like Lunarcharsky, who became Commissar of Education under Lenin, or Onipko, the notorious anarchist, who had helped spark the abortive 1905 revolution. For obvious reasons these were ineligible for the army. Happily, Kolya had few intimates in this latter group, though the proprietor of The Wandering Dog (one Boris Pronin who saw himself as a kind of Russian Rudolphe Salis, of Chat Noir fame), seemed only too pleased to welcome these incendiaries, bombs and all!

I should make it clear here that I was no hypocrite. I aired my own views frequently and often found others who supported me, particularly amongst the ‘Pan-Slavic’ group. Even those who disagreed seemed to treat me with the best possible humour. If I had not had the lesson of my father, I might have been caught up in their infantile enthusiasm for destruction and change. I drank absinthe in the company of beautiful whores. My compatriots were revolutionaries, vagabonds, poets. They nicknamed me The Professor or The Mad Scientist and bought me more wine and listened to me as few have listened to me since. These same people were to survive the Revolution only at the expense of their humour, their irony, their very souls. They became the grey men of Lenin and his successors. Some died early - Blok and Grin - and did not live to see the destructive consequences of their foolish hopes. Most, like Mandelstam, were to see all their visions decay, all their hope fade, all their courage and generosity become a weapon turned against them to insult and degrade them. This was, indeed, the last year of their Revolution, that year of 1916, for their enthusiasm lay in the dream of Utopia, not in the reality which was to trap me as much as it trapped them. I was lucky to escape. Some (Mayakovski, for instance) escaped only through suicide.

The Wandering Dog was closed by the police, but the bohemian life continued. The War appeared to be improving and victories were reported. British armoured cars and Russian Cossacks plunged through the mud of Galicia and forced the Uhlans and the Austrian infantry to retreat. But bread became harder to obtain. The lines of miserable working people, their faces shaded by caps and shawls, as if in mourning, became familiar irritations: to the poets who spoke of the pathos of it, to the revolutionaries who foretold the risings, to the ordinary middle-class public, called in Russian slang the ‘boorzhoo’, who had become increasingly the prey of thieves robbing them of their groceries and their money. The War was draining us. They should have spent money on food and distributed it free. Then we might have averted Chaos. But the Tsar’s ministers were too obsessed with War, and the revolutionaries actually wanted people to starve so they would rise. The boorzhoo could think only of their own families; they had been called upon to give up everything to help with the War, to supply the soldiers at the Front. There is no need here to go into the whys and wherefores of the Revolution. Too many émigrés; too many historians; too many Bolshevik revisers-of-the-past have done that already. We have had a thousand versions of Ten Days That Shook The World. Perhaps we should have at least ten versions of A Thousand Books That Bored The World. I shall not add to all that. What happened, happened. We did not really believe it would happen, though so many warned of it. Poetry, when it becomes reality, rarely pleases anyone, least of all the poets.

Pronin opened a new establishment called Prival Komendiantoff (The Retreat of the Harlequinade). It is difficult to translate the exact sense of the name. Comedian’s Halt, perhaps. We all found it very appropriate and praised Pronin when he appeared, leading a mangy mongrel by a piece of ribbon (‘all that is left of the Dog’) and promising that this establishment would be even finer than the last. It was certainly more elaborate. Negro boys dressed to look as if they had come from the Court of Haroun-el-Raschid served at the tables. Murals of a blatantly radical nature covered the walls and ceilings. From the walls stared negro masks, the lighting issuing from their eye-sockets. The same negro band played the same raucous music whenever we were not having to listen to another new poet or ‘petite chanteuse’, or watching the posturings of some Pierrot mime while a horse-faced woman in a long purple dress droned on about the moon. Black female impersonators sang jazz songs. Female impersonators were the rage of Café Society. At odds with all this avant-gardism were girls in peasant costume; table-cloths made of bright peasant hand-woven fabrics; ‘folk-art’ ceramics, to remind us that this was, after all, Russia; that we were not Frenchmen or even Germans. The cellos groaned and the mime-artistes twisted their silly bodies into parodies of the human form. The jazz-band wailed. The little songstresses sang in tiny, toneless voices about the death of birds and mayflies. We talked and drank and whored. Sometimes it would be dawn before I (nowadays wearing a velvet jacket, red Ukrainian boots, riding trousers and a Cossack shirt) would stagger out into morning sunshine over the Field of Mars.

Here, colourful soldiers still paraded above the heads of our ‘menagerie’ which, as usual, was in a series of cellars. Hussars and streltsi trotted and marched in polished leather, in carefully brushed serge, in brass and gold braid, and we would wander past, some of us hardly able to stand, staring in astonishment at these vestiges of the old world. We would be moved along by policemen who seemed, more frequently, to share our attitudes. Futurists would pause in their constant bickerings with Acmeists (there were as many opposing artistic camps as there were political). Social Revolutionaries would stop in mid-sentence in an argument with Tolstoyans and watch open-mouthed as a band struck up or a column of blue-coated, red-hatted soldiers wheeled and turned to the sound of patriotic marches. I was infected by the general cynicism. I think there was hardly anyone in Petrograd by that time who was not. I think if we had stumbled out of The Harlequinade one morning and seen German troops parading, we should scarcely have noticed. If we had noticed we should not have cared. The artists would have announced the coming of the Germans as the first sign of a ‘new age’ in Art. The revolutionaries would have said this was a sure sign the people would rise up at any moment. The cynics would have said that German efficiency was better than Russian incompetence. And that would have been the end of it. We half-believed that this strange dream would continue until we all died the early, romantic deaths we expected to die in a sufficiently distant future. Nobody took anything very seriously, I think, except Kolya, who, with Tolstoi, had faith in the natural divinity of the human spirit. My faith was in the triumph of Man’s ingenuity over all the vicissitudes of nature, including human nature. Both of us, I am sure, were as guilty as everyone of adding to the rhetoric of despair. It was easy to be smart and drink champagne and toast the triumph of the working-class. One forgot the slow transformation taking place everywhere. St Petersburg, an unnatural city, easily blockaded, cut off from her supplies by virtue of her physical geography, pretended to herself she was not under siege and that Victory was a month or two away. By the autumn, when it seemed we were completely beaten, as we had been beaten by the Japanese at Port Arthur, the fashionable carriages were fewer than ever in the Nevski. Merchants and landowners saw Moscow as a safer wintering place than Peter. And Kolya, with some amusement, quoted Kipling, of whom he was also very fond;

The captains and the kings depart!

Rome, he said, was being evacuated, for the Hun again threatened. ‘Byzantium! Byzantium!’ he sang, as he escorted me home in his carriage one late-August morning. ‘They are all fleeing East. Wait until the Tsar goes to Moscow, Dimka. Then you will know it is the end of us.’

‘The Tsar will never give up the capital.’

‘The Tsar scarcely occupies it now. How often have you seen the Royal Standard flying over the Winter Palace?’

‘Tsarskoe Selo is not too far from the centre,’ I reminded him.

‘There’s no proof he’s there. The rumours are that he, his family, Rasputin, are already packing their bags and plan to stay with the Kaiser. They’re related, after all.’

Our carriage stopped at an intersection as a marching column of cadets went past. The drums rolled, the trumpets blared, the fifes piped and the cadets moved as one creature. Kolya smiled sadly. He was as usual dressed all in black. The only white was the white of his hair beneath his hat. The paleness of his face was relieved by his slightly pinkish eyes. He put his chin upon his fist and shrugged. ‘Did you know I was once a cadet, Dimka?’

‘I suppose you must have been.’ It was natural for a member of the aristocracy to attend a military school.

‘I ran away. When I was fifteen. I ran away to Paris because I wished to meet poets. I met a good many charlatans and was seduced by a few of them, men and women. But I don’t think I met a single poet until I returned to Peter! Now all the Russian poets, all the artists, all the impresarios, are going to Paris! Is that an irony? Should we follow them, Dimka?’

‘The Germans will be beaten soon,’ I said. ‘The newspapers are confident. They haven’t been so confident for ages.’

‘A sure sign of impending defeat!’ He laughed.

‘Our allies won’t let it happen. England, France, Italy - even Japan - will come to help.’

‘They are no better off than we are. The Germans have all but taken Paris.’

‘Then we had better stay here,’ I said.

‘Until the War is over, at least. You should be reading only German science and philosophy and I should be studying Goethe. I shall go to - where? - Munich? Or study with the Moravian Brothers, as George Meredith did. There I shall become a proper, mystical German intellectual. In the new German Empire - the Holy Roman Empire - we shall become good Goths. We shall forget Paris. Paris and Petersburg alike will be provincial towns. Berlin will become the capital of the world. Art will flourish there, nurtured by our Russian genius, as it flourished in Berlin before the War. We will be like the Chinese, Dimka, and let ourselves be conquered, only to conquer secretly by means of our superior culture, our Slavic heritage. No longer shall we imitate the French and the English and the Italians. We shall become the architects of the new Empire. We shall present plans for a Kremlin in Berlin and our very energy and freshness will impress the German Caesar so that in time everything will take on a Russian tinge. Why should we worry about military victory when our greatest weapon lies in our Slavic genius! And you, Dimka, will show the world what Russian science can accomplish, because you are Russian at heart. As Russian as me!’

I presumed he was referring to my Ukrainian background. Sometimes he could make mysterious pronouncements which completely confused me. But I was never able to interrupt Count Nicholai Petroff in these soliloquies and rarely saw any point in trying. It was like listening to inspiring music. To interrupt him would have been like interrupting our Russian hymns, like shouting a contradiction in the Alexander Nevski Cathedral in the middle of a Kyrie Eleison or Pomychlayu deny a Strachnya. For all his absorption of foreign poets, his admiration of the foreign artists displayed by Shchukin and Morosoff, those two bizarre art-collecting figures, my friend was wholly Russian. He was the spirit of an incredible rediscovery of the Slavic soul which had begun in the nineteenth century. It would have continued well into the twentieth if it had not been aborted by little men with little Western ideas from Germany and America and England, carried by that carrier of all political diseases, the ubiquitous Jew. No wonder that the old Pale of Settlement was the most fought-over area of the Empire during the Civil War.

By September Kolya and I were possibly the closest we had ever been. I had returned to school to continue the impression of an attentive student. St Petersburg began to smell not of apathy any longer, but of fear. It was tangible, even as I travelled into the suburbs on the tram. Neighbour was beginning to distrust neighbour. Gangs of pinch-faced men in black coats and hats moved between factory and working-class suburb with a silence holding more menace than complaint. Madame Zinovieff became harsher in her criticism of me, of the girls and their fiancés, of the urban world in general. On my monthly visit to Mr Green I was warned to ‘tread carefully’ and advised to purchase a money-belt in which to keep my allowance. He said that Uncle Semya had written to him to ask him how my studies went. I said extremely well. I was bound to jump a year in my next class. Mr Green said I must soon use my gift for languages and my ‘knowledge of machinery’ to pay a visit abroad for Uncle Semya who was considering importing farm-machinery. I asked for more details. Mr Green would tell me nothing more, save that my education ‘would be put to some use at last’. Did Uncle Semya have a job waiting for me when I left the Polytechnic? I enjoyed the prospect of going abroad.

As if to counter the fear in the city, the military displays became grander. Golden banners, portraits of the Tsar, rattling drums, shrilling trumpets daily filled the city. The National Anthem was played on every possible occasion. It was at this time, to escape the empty display, that I took to wandering about the docks, a book under my arm, looking at the ships and gear which would begin to disappear as the Neva froze. I wondered where Uncle Semya was sending me. I watched the donkeys hauling fish from the little sailing boats. I admired the steam-launches with their short funnels and strange, busy motion. Beyond them the great ironclads and the few passenger ships of the Baltic Shipping Company lay at anchor, a picture of tranquillity, or stasis. Sometimes a wild, banshee wail would come from one or another of the ships. Occasionally it was possible to watch an old-fashioned brig or schooner in full sail, leaving perhaps for Finland or Norway, or even heading out towards England. I was sure that England would be my own destination. It was not more than two or three days away from here.

Surrounded by the bustle, the creak of the hauling gear, the putter of the engines, the shouts of the dockers, I found peace. The docks stretched for miles along the Neva. They were one of the few areas not radiating that peculiar atmosphere of terror found everywhere but in the bohemian cafés.

Yet even some of those girls, whose apartments I visited, no longer offered me quite the retreat and escape I had first found. They seemed neither so warm, so carefree nor so soft. The apartments themselves were as comfortable, cut off from the outside world; they still swam with the scent of Quelques Fleurs and were draped with Japanese silks and white towels. The girls broke the unspoken pact, and referred increasingly to their nervousness. Women are more sensitive to the Zeitgeist. They are the first to consider emigration during troubled times and they are nearly always right. They are the first to warn of treachery and cowardice in our ranks. They have this sensitivity, I believe, because they have more to lose than men. Sadly, I was too young to appreciate the feelings of these various Cassandras. I became, instead, impatient with them. I gave up sleeping with intellectuals and girls of good breeding. I sought the company of ordinary whores whose job was to mollify, to console, to keep the world at bay. I think quite a few of us dropped the beauties we had once courted and contented ourselves with brainless, good-natured creatures whose paint, dyes, cheap furs and cheaper satins became increasingly attractive as we grew tired of thinking. Thought meant considering the world and its war. The world was too full of fear to be any longer palatable. Because of this mood, I suspect, my second encounter with Mrs Cornelius did not develop into an amorous affair.

I had heard of the ‘magnificent English beauty’, a favourite of Lunarcharsky and Savinkoff and their radicals, but I had not associated her with the girl I had helped briefly in Odessa. The revolutionaries had their own haunts. It was those with literary or artistic pretensions who appeared infrequently at The Harlequinade.

On 5 September 1916, I saw her again. She was the only female at a table where bespectacled, mad-eyed men in ill-fitting European jackets plotted the reorganisation of the poetry industry. She seemed more than a little drunk. She was dressed in a beautifully cut and simple blue gown. On her blonde hair was a small hat of a kind just becoming fashionable. It matched her dress. It had a cream ostrich feather following the line of her hair and neck, half-curling under her chin. She was drinking the Georgian champagne we were all by that time substituting for the real thing, but she gave every appearance of relishing it. In a holder blending the colours of her hat and her feather, she smoked a Turkish cigarette. Her skirts were lifted a little so that her sheer silk stockings were revealed above blue suede boots. She was the only woman in the café who gave any appearance of enjoying herself. All the others wore the painted smile of the harlot or the nervous grin of the intellectual. I was sure she would not recognise me as I raised a hand. She frowned, sat back, asked something of her fiercely-arguing companion (Lunarcharsky, I think: he had one of those goatee beards they all wore). He looked up, glanced in my direction, shook his head and returned to the fray. I lifted an eyebrow and smiled. She grinned, saluting me with a glass of champagne. I heard her familiar tones drifting through the general din:

‘Ere’s lookin’ at yer, Ivan!’

It was Mademoiselle Cornelius to be sure. I began to rise, to join her. She shook her head and pointed at an empty table. It was close to the stage where the negro violinist squeezed discords from his instrument which would have horrified the maker. She joined me there. She still smelled of roses. She put a friendly hand on my arm with none of the ambiguity I had come to expect from Russian women. ‘Yore ther lad from ‘Dessa, ain’t yer?’ She spoke in her usual English. I bowed and said that I was. She commented that it was ‘a turn up an’ no mistake’. It was an even smaller world than they said it was. She was doing nicely in Peter and had learned ‘Russki’ enough to get by. When she gave me an example, it was perhaps the worst example of grammar and the most romantic accent I had ever experienced. I could see why she had so many admirers. I asked her how she had come to the capital and what she was doing with Lunarcharsky. Did she not know they were all wanted by the police?

She said they were a more honest bunch of crooks than some she had met. She had a feeling that they ‘knew what was going on’. This was not true, she added disapprovingly, of the rest of the idiots in this bloody country. She had left Odessa with one of Dr Cornelius’s patients, an aristocratic liberal who had been holidaying there. When their affair ended she had fallen in with the radicals, whom she found amusing and, as she put it, ‘good sports’. She also had an eye, I believe, to the future, but her taste in men, together with her sense of humour, would often bewilder me. I am the first to admit, however, that I have never understood many jokes and that her taste was to serve both of us well in the years which followed.

She told me that I was looking ‘peaky’ and if there was anything I needed in the way of grub I should ask her. She had a few contacts. I said I was eating better than most. I was studying hard for my examinations. She wished me luck. She said that she regretted she had not stayed at school, but there had not been much point ‘in the Dale’. She referred, I learned, to Notting Dale, her birthplace. She had later moved to Whitechapel where she had ‘met a lot of Russians’. These Russians were actually Jewish immigrants fleeing the pogroms. When Mrs Cornelius suggested we go ‘somewhere quieter’ so that I could tell her how I was getting on, I was reluctant to accompany her. I had been picked up by too many women during that period. I had become sated and wary, even of her. A whore asked only which part of her anatomy would be required; whether one wished to stay the whole night for an extra rouble or two. Moreover, I was not always charged by the whores. For a few days I lived completely free at a whorehouse near one of the main canals. I could have stayed there longer if I had not needed to return to school.

I said I needed an early night. She laughed. ‘Don’t we all? I’ll see yer abart, Ivan.’ She patted my arm and got up to return to her party. I immediately regretted not taking her up on her offer. I do not believe, now, that it was sexual. She had wanted exactly what she had said she wanted, a quiet chat.

My friends congratulated me on my ‘conquest’ and one of the well-bred beauties leaned over and asked me loudly what ‘the English whore is like in bed’. Offended, I left The Harlequinade’s Retreat.

The autumn term was remarkable only because we were allowed to wear hats, scarves and greatcoats in classes. There was no fuel allocation for heating the Polytechnic. The lectures were if anything duller than ever. As the world grew colder, life took on an entropic aspect. Social energy was running down. Within the first week of my return to the Institute the steam-trams were replaced by horse-trams. These were driven by haggard, pallid figures swathed in dark felt and serge from whose heads thin white fumes occasionally escaped. The men had been brought from retirement and were like the coachmen of the dead. Their horses, lean, sickly beasts, would eventually fill the stomachs, perhaps, of orphans - the first bezhprizhorni - who now swarmed about the railway stations and filled the parks. Displays of pomp and glory continued. We were advised to suffer all our discomforts because the War was almost won. More and more wounded men appeared on the streets. The theatres thrived, but many restaurants could not find enough food to make it worthwhile remaining open. Even Donan on the Moika Canal, that favourite of the jeunesse dorée and the Apollon group (who shared the building) had to close at lunch-time and became more of a bar than a restaurant. The sturgeon in mushroom sauce, the white partridges with klufka jam and bilberries, the other delicious Donan specialities, gave way to horse-meat in sauces which could not disguise the unpalatable odour of what Kolya called ‘long cow’. We would joke: recommending the ‘stuffed sparrow’ or the ‘Chat Meunier’, not quite realising what was to come. Together with the orphans and the wounded in the streets came a plague of rats. Newspapers reported the ‘scandal’ and suggested they originated from foreign ships, but the wild dogs and cats, released by owners no longer able to feed them, were unquestionably our own. In not much more than a year the same people who had let them go would be hunting them again for the pot. It would be like the days of the Paris Commune.

There was a steady decrease in our food supplies and an increase in illicit alcohol. Everyone lacked sleep. There was horrible tension in the air, a morbid sense of doom, longer bread-queues, longer rows of wounded waiting for transport or a hospital bed, larger crowds of beggars, hucksters and prostitutes on the quays and boulevards. So many aristocrats had left for Petrograd’s old rival, Moscow. Newspapers increasingly resorted to references to the Patriotic War against Napoleon as if preparing us for guerilla action with invaders on our own soil. Many people felt we were already defeated. The air of melancholia spread even to The Scarlet Tango. The negro band played ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ and ‘Nobody Knows The Trouble I See’, while thin young ladies with painted cheeks recounted gloomier jingles concerning death and the cooling of love.

I took to writing longer and more optimistic letters to my mother, to Esmé, to Captain Brown: life in the capital was full of good cheer; the Tsar and his family appeared in public every day; the Germans were bound to retreat soon; this winter would see the end of them. Because of difficulties with transport it was unlikely I would return at Christmas. They should not be surprised, though, if I did especially well at the Polytechnic. I wrote in cafés and restaurants. I wrote at school. I posted the letters sometimes twice a day. I was feeling homesick for the ordinary discomforts of Kiev. Petrograd’s filthy, uneven pavements, piles of refuse, menacing beggars, were all the worse for being unfamiliar. I received replies which were as optimistic. My mother said her health had improved. With God’s help and a mild winter she was looking forward to returning to the laundry. Esmé said she had applied to train as a nurse. She would soon leave the grocery. Captain Brown’s vaguely Anglified, sprawling letters, in which Russian characters took on the appearance of modified English ones, insisted that ‘Johnny Turk’ was on the run. He was only good at ‘defensive tactics’. ‘Fritz’ was useless without his officers and there were precious few of those left alive. British armour would soon shift the Hun from his ratholes. This would improve the morale of the ‘Frogs’, who had no real stomach for War, as they constantly demonstrated. He supplied maps in which military positions were described. He demonstrated how we would ‘smash through’ the German positions on a narrow front, with the Rumanians closing on them in a pincer movement. None of these battles ever came to be fought. Indeed the trench war was interminably boring. Larger numbers of men were killed and wounded. It seemed summer would never come again. Fimbulwinter and Ragnarok were actually with us.

Along the Nevski a few high-stepping horses still pulled fine carriages. As snow fell and rivers froze and ice formed on the streets some troikas appeared. But along the gravel walks between the main pavements and the roads, there hopped a variety of cripples. They had missing legs and arms, bandaged faces, peculiar, rolling limps; they wore uniforms and frequently paused as if expecting a friend to approach and offer help. They lined up beside newspaper kiosks. They stood talking in low voices as they leaned against the railings of parks and private gardens. The Petersburgskaya Vedomosti, a special copy of which was printed on vellum every day for the Tsar, always referred to these wretches as ‘heroes’ and would show pictures of them waving, smiling, saluting: the very essence of courage and hope. Charitable institutions could not deal with the numbers. Thousands of deserters sneaked back with the wounded. Some were caught and shot.

Stories of Rasputin grew increasingly bizarre. One afternoon Kolya took me to a great Petrograd house overlooking a more picturesque part of the river. Various members of the Mikhishevski family were gathered for tea. Clearly neither I nor the Count was particularly welcome. The over-furnished house contained a bewildering mixture of old, heavy sofas and tables and the very latest modern furniture from France and England. Here I met my first aristocrats ‘at home’. They seemed a rather ordinary group of people. They were richly dressed, had perfect manners and the china from which they drank their tea was very thin, but their conversation was not as brilliant as I had hoped.

When the older relatives had left, two girls and a youth, cousins of Kolya, who appeared to be their hero, gathered about my friend and discussed the Court gossip. Rasputin had strengthened his grip on the Tsarina. As a result the Tsar, who doted on her, was losing interest in the War. Only his honour, and the Rumanian alliance, made him refuse to consider making peace with Germany.

I paid very little attention to what was said, so I cannot report it faithfully. My interest was in the Fabergé objects: a frog carved from Siberian jade, several Easter-eggs, a little model of a policeman, also carved from stone and tinted with colours impossible to distinguish from the natural hues. The intricacy of the work intrigued me. The rest of the room had the usual naked nymphs supporting lampstands, mirrors, bon-bon trays and flower-vases, all of which might have been more suitable to a bordello. It was a sign, I suppose, of how decadent Russian aristocracy had become. Less liberalism, and we should have a Tsar on the throne to this day.

I was distracted by the voice of a pretty young girl with all the animation of a true ‘Natasha’, whose light auburn hair hung in heavy curls to her shoulders. She was dressed in a yellow silk day-dress trimmed with sable. ‘Anna Virobouffa says we must follow Rasputin’s example and find redemption through debauchery.’

Kolya was amused. ‘Really, Lolly, I don’t feel redeemed yet!’

‘Oh, Kolya!’ She brandished a cigarette which was lit for her by her brother, who wore the uniform of a lieutenant in an engineering regiment.

‘She says it was a wonderful experience. It freed her spirit.’

‘I’ve heard the phrase. I knew a political assassin who claimed the act of murder also freed his spirit? Have you been to Rasputin’s séances?’

‘One, yes. Mother wouldn’t let me go to another.’

‘Were you redeemed?’

‘Lolly’ simpered. ‘Of course not. It’s a salon, you know, full of wonderful perfumes and fabrics. You sit at an ordinary tea-table and have an ordinary afternoon tea. But he talks all the time to you. His eyes!’

‘What does he smell like?’ asked Kolya. ‘I heard he never bathes.’

‘He smells like - ‘ Lolly blushed.

‘Like a dirty peasant,’ said the young man. The girls laughed, ‘It’s true! He smells awful. Of sweat!’

‘Dishonest sweat. How valuable it can be.’ Kolya looked to me for appreciation of this, but I did not understand the witticism. The young engineer, however, laughed.

Lolly continued. ‘He talks about God and the world, you know. About our souls, our bodies, our need for experience not usually associated with the kind of lives we lead even - even with our husbands ...’ She sighed. ‘He’s so convincing. He’s in touch with the common people.’

‘He cured the Tsarevitch.’ This was the other girl. She wore a red dress.

‘The poor boy’s still dying,’ said Kolya.

‘While you’re with him,’ Lolly went on, ‘he transports you from all cares. We were allowed to ask him questions, you know. He was like a wonderful, simple father. And then he just took one of the ladies - I shan’t say her name - and they went into the next room. After a while he came back alone. The lady leaves by another door. Or stays on until later. Whatever he tells her.’

Kolya frowned. ‘You aren’t disturbed by this behaviour?’

‘It is spiritual, Kolya. He shows you Light in Darkness. The Divine Light.’

‘You’d give up everything for him?’

‘Everything. He’s holy, Kolya. He pretends to be a charlatan. He sometimes says he is. He has the most wonderful sense of humour. There’s something about him. I’ve studied Madame Blavatsky, of course, and the Theosophists. This is so much more real and intense.’

‘He hypnotises them,’ said the lieutenant. His name was Alexei Leonovitch Petroff and he seemed anxious to impress his older cousin. He ignored me and made me feel uncomfortable. ‘What do you think, Kolya? Anna Virobouffa says they obey him absolutely. He drugs them, I suppose. The more there are together, the more they vie to display their obedience to him. Haven’t there been some suicides?’ He touched his moustache and sought inexpertly for a fallen monocle.

Lolly dropped her head. ‘So Anna Virobouffa says.’

‘They kill themselves to show devotion?’ Alexei laughed. He sought Kolya’s approval. His eye caught mine and shifted.

‘I don’t think that’s the reason. It’s spiritual,’ said the girl in red.

‘The canals are full of young women who at this moment are discovering the truth of Rasputin’s spiritualism. Isn’t it a sin? Don’t they go to Hell?’ Alexei Leonovitch was goading her. I found his sneering tone unpleasant. He was only a year or two older than me but seemed to regard me at once as an inferior and an interloping superior.

Kolya stopped him. ‘Grigory Yefimovitch has abolished Hell in the after-life, Alexei. Hell has now come to Earth. Hadn’t you heard?’

‘You’re an abominable cynic, Kolya.’ The monocle was screwed, at last, into the appropriate eye.

‘I’m a realist. Why should people believe in the conventional God? There’s no evidence he any longer exists. Rasputin could well have the right idea.’

‘You’re being terrible, Kolya,’ said Lolly.

‘I’ll stop if you wish. I was speaking to a soldier only yesterday. Not a poor mouzhik who never knew why he’d been recruited, but a young man. He had been a cadet and had become a lieutenant. Like you, Alexei. He had only one arm, only one eye, only one leg and part of his right ear was missing - ‘

‘Kolya!’

‘I’m training to fly,’ said the lieutenant, ‘so this doesn’t really apply to me.’

‘I’ll stop,’ Kolya offered again.

‘Go on.’ Lolly used a tone, mixed sympathy and morbidity, typical of Russian women to this day.

‘He was glad he was out of it because he might have run away if he’d been returned to the Front.’

‘Not a gentleman, then,’ said Alexei Leonovitch.

‘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.

Later that evening, wearing my suit, I returned to the house overlooking the Kryukoff Canal. I was greeted this time by a simpering concierge who said Mademoiselle Vorotinsky was looking forward to entertaining me. If I went through the courtyard and took the staircase up to the first floor I would be welcomed by the young lady herself. She regretted, in a voice like poisoned honey, her duties made her stay at the front of the building or she would have been honoured to show me the way. I crossed a courtyard heaped on all sides with filthy snow. A skinny, tethered dalmatian barked at me. This was an older type of building and rather pleasant. I immediately felt safe here. I wished my own lodgings had the same air of security.

I found the appropriate landing and the door on which Marya Vorotinsky and her friend Elena Andreyovna Vlasenkova had placed their neatly hand-lettered name-plates. I turned the key which rang a bell on the other side of the door. I waited. Then a small girl, very pretty, with huge blue eyes and brown wavy hair, wearing a simple brown velvet dress we used to call ‘convent best’, offered me one of the widest, most open smiles I had ever received and bowed me into the apartment. ‘You must be M’sieu Kryscheff? I am Lena Vlasenkova and very pleased to meet you.’

I kissed her hand, ‘I am enchanted, mademoiselle.’ I spoke French.

She said in delight, ‘You are not Russian!’

‘I am Russian through and through.’

‘Your French is perfect.’

‘I have a talent for languages.’ I removed my hat and coat and gave them to her. We entered a light, airy room heated by a beautiful Dutch stove, each tile individually painted and fired, showing scenes of Netherlands country life. There were peasant fabrics everywhere. The pictures on the wall were fine, conventional prints of Russian rural subjects. The place was a wonderful haven. I immediately conceived a desire to stay there forever. Then from the next room emerged, in a dark green dress trimmed with French lace, my oval-eyed acquaintance from the Kiev-Petrograd Express. ‘My dear friend! Why take so long to call on us?’

She stepped forward and shook me warmly by the hand. She did this, I suspected, to impress Lena Andreyovna, whose face still wore the same broad, merry grin.

‘I have had reasons for not making myself too conspicuous. It has been impossible ...’

‘Of course. We understand absolutely.’

Both she and Lena Andreyovna seemed to know more about my ‘secret life’ than I did. I wondered if I had said anything on the train which I had now forgotten. I became fairly cautious.

‘The day is not far off now,’ Lena Andreyovna murmured as she seated herself on the couch, smoothing her skirt under her.

‘No, indeed,’ I said.

‘You will have some tea, M’sieu Kryscheff?’ asked Marya Vorotinsky. ‘I am sorry we have nothing else to drink.’

‘Tea would be most welcome.’

‘It’s ready,’ said Lena Andreyovna. ‘I’ll fetch the glasses.’ She sprang up and returned rapidly with a tray on which were three glasses in wicker holders. The big copper samovar steamed on the stove.

‘You look tired, tovaritch,’ said Marya. ‘You’ve been working hard?’ She used a term which was in general use at the time, but was particularly popular with revolutionaries of the Social-Democrat and Social Revolutionary parties. However, it had no particular significance. As I sat upon the couch and sipped the excellent tea, I nodded. ‘I have had a great deal to do.’

‘You know you can count on us for any help,’ said Marya intensely. ‘We’re entirely at your service.’

I was impressed by the generosity of her statement, the passion with which she made it. ‘I’m much obliged to you.’ I wondered if they shared a bedroom. It was likely. I found them both attractive not so much for their physical looks as for the quality of youthful enthusiasm and innocence I had been missing. They were already offering to help me when they had absolutely no idea what my work could be.

‘You must not be afraid to tell us to be quiet,’ Lena was earnest, ‘if we say the wrong thing. We respect what you are doing.’

‘I am obliged to you for your discretion.’

‘Have you been travelling abroad?’ asked Marya. She sat on the rug at my feet, her tea-glass beside her. ‘Or have you been in Russia all this time?’

‘Russia,’ I said, ‘chiefly.’

‘You can stay here if you need to,’ Lena said. ‘We have discussed it. We think we should let you know that. It could be of use.’

‘Again, I am much obliged.’ It did not really matter to me what they thought my work was. They were offering me everything I had hoped to find. I could not believe my good fortune. I guessed that they thought me some sort of special courier for the military, some engineer working on a mysterious secret weapon, or that I was an envoy for the Tsar himself. It did not matter. If I wished I could come here, spend whole days here. Possibly, in time, I should be able to spend nights here. I wondered to which girl I should show most attention. One should always be seen to be courting the girl one does not actually want. Both had their merits. I decided it would only be polite to pay most attention to my original acquaintance. It would be far safer for me then if Lena succumbed. She knew even less about me than her friend. I luxuriated in their attention for two or three hours. Then, remembering I had agreed to meet Kolya at The Harlequinade’s Retreat, I made reluctant excuses. I left their innocence, their security, their admiration, behind me. I walked on air as I headed for the cabaret. That night, I decided, I would take the best girl in the house and enjoy myself so thoroughly she would not be able to move a muscle by the morning. I felt like the Tsar as I descended the steps to be greeted by the usual friends.

I had some bad absinthe but a very satisfactory whore. With a new supply of cocaine in my velvet pocket, I returned to my lodgings, entering with the key Madame Zinovieff, after much persuasion, had given me. I found four letters of different dates waiting for me in the little black tin box, decorated with painted roses, which my landlady had hung on the wall for guests’ correspondence. I was replete and had not felt so physically well for days. In my room I tested my lamp to see if any oil remained. I decided to wait until morning to read the letters. I slept better than usual and I awakened early. I opened the letters, laid them before me on the quilt. The first two were from Esmé, the third was from my mother. The fourth, surprisingly, was from Uncle Semya. Esmé was at a hospital treating our wounded, as well as German prisoners on Darnitsa across the Dnieper from Kiev. She said they all seemed alike, pathetic and shocked. It was hard to feel the Germans were anything but wretched slaves, forced to fight by rapacious masters. Our own Russian soldiers, she said, were ‘splendidly courageous and always cheerful, true Russians through and through’. The letter from my mother said her health had improved. I was not to worry; she had a slight chill, but doubtless that was the winter. The river was frozen, she said. She hoped that food supplies were easier to obtain in Petrograd. Since Brusilov’s advances against the Germans she had expected improvements. I was to eat, she begged, anything I could. I was to eat ‘for her’. The letter from Uncle Semya was cryptic. Everyone in Odessa was fine. The War made things difficult but the ‘Rumanian decision’ (to change sides) had improved morale all round. There had been minor pogroms by private groups, but nothing like those of ten years before. Happily the wrath of the people was turned against anyone of German origin. It was surprising, he added with his characteristically dry humour, how many more Russians now occupied Odessa than before the War. Dr Cornelius had managed to leave the country. Things seemed to be improving, he said, but there must still be contingency plans. He might need me to journey abroad on his behalf. He would arrange all necessary papers. He knew he could call on me when the need arose.

I wrote back immediately. I owed everything to him. I was doing ‘brilliantly’ at school. When the time came for the end-of-term examinations I should impress everyone, as Pushkin was said to have impressed his teachers at the Tsarskoe Selo Lycee. He could expect an appropriate oil painting of me in due course! Naturally I was always at his disposal and would await news of the service I could perform. Mr Green had told me to expect something of the sort. I was looking forward to my first trip abroad. Could he, through Mr Green, let me have some hint of where I would go? In the meantime, I asked him to give my love to Aunt Genia, to Wanda, to Shura and my other friends and relatives in Odessa. I looked forward to seeing them all again. I asked him especially to apologise to Shura. I had become stupidly suspicious of him. This would show Shura, I hoped, that I was extending the hand of friendship.

I wrote a brief letter to Esmé. Things went very well in Petrograd. We made sacrifices with the rest of the country but very soon we should sweep the barbarian back to his lair for good. In the meantime she could help the prisoners by teaching them Russian. It might be the language they would be required to speak after the War! I wrote to my mother. I am ashamed to say I asked no specific questions about her chill. Instead I said I was glad she was ‘basically well’. I was sure she would soon be over her sniffles; besides she had a nurse about the place now. My mother, I should say here, was a woman of fundamentally excellent health. She complained of poor health, like so many of us, when she needed a little extra sympathy. I preferred to give her my love, respect and understanding. This was more dignified, I felt. She understood. She said that as an intellectual, I could not always display the ‘direct emotions’ of ordinary people. In this she showed her usual perspicacity.

If I were to travel abroad, I would have to study harder. I reduced my visits to the Tango and the Reireat. I stopped going to the theatre and the kino with Kolya. I cut down on my visits to the whores. Instead I went more frequently to the flat I called privately ‘the virgins’ nest’. Here I was allowed to read, to write, to remain night and day, if I wished, being fed with relatively wholesome food and with all the tea and coffee I could drink. Marya’s father had been a well-to-do beverage merchant originally situated in Yalta before moving to Moldavia. Lena’s father, she said with some disdain, was a ‘factory-owner’ in Minsk. My interest in Lena increased to the degree that I came close to proposing marriage to Marya. However, neither of these virgins was approached by me. Though they would often purr around me like cats wanting cream, I displayed very little amorous interest in them. I was keeping them for security and tranquillity. Their sexual favours could wait until I was ready for them. When I slept there, I slept on the couch. I rarely let them see either what I read or what I wrote. Not only did they humour me, they became confused if they should accidentally move a book or even glance at a page.

It was only bit by bit I began to realise they considered me a foolish young Bakunin, plotting the downfall of the Tsar (the event which they sometimes toasted in tea, in low voices), and in one sense I was delighted by their misconception. It gave me even less respect for them. I felt no guilt about making use of them. Knowing as much as I did I was able to drop the odd revolutionary’s name. This meant far more to them than it did to me. Here, some of those who had bored me so badly in the cafés were heroes to them. They were merely two typical middle-class Russian girls prepared like so many of them to throw away their careers, their freedom, perhaps their lives, for someone who was not only a worthless troublemaker but who coldly schemed their ruin. Better they should devote themselves to me, who had a genuine cause. The flat came to be full of Iskras and Golos Trudas and inflammatory pamphlets. They kept them about, I believe, to impress me. In the end I had to explain that it was bad to ‘call attention to certain facts’ and that it would be best if they kept their anarchist literature elsewhere. They were full of apologies. The ill-printed, ill-written manifestos and declarations soon disappeared.

My work continued. I visited Kolya, but more frequently at his home (where Hippolyte still resided) than at our old haunts. He was becoming distressed with the progress of the War. He claimed we were as good as done for. I think the Petrograd winter had brought an earlier than usual melancholy. He said the Tsar was doomed. Feeling against Rasputin was high. The Tsar’s running of the War (he had taken personal command of the army) was as inept as his running of the country. Many officers, including some of the ‘old guard’, felt Nicholas should be replaced. ‘The Revolution,’ Kolya said, ‘will not come from an uprising in the streets this time. It will come from within.’

I said that newspapers were full of our triumphs against Germans and Turks alike. Brusilov was a great hero. We should soon occupy ‘both capitals of the Roman Empire’. Brusilov was a new Kutuzov.

Kolya smiled at me. As usual he wore black. His face seemed paler than ever, his hair all but invisible against the white light from the window. ‘What we really need,’ he said, ‘is a new Napoleon. French or Russian. We have no generals of genius. They can’t understand the terms. They have no precedents and that, Dimka my dear friend, is what destroys them. They are so used to relying on precedent.’

‘You mean tradition?’

‘I mean precedent. Precedent is a simple-minded way of imposing apparent order on the world. Yet it robs whoever employs it of his need to reach a personal moral decision. A decision which suits the situation.’

‘You’ve been reading too much Kropotkin, Kolya.’

‘Even Kropotkin calls on “history” as a model. History will destroy every one of us, Dimka. Soon there will be no more history at all! Analysis, that might have saved us. The basis of all modern science, eh? Analysis, Dimka, not projections. You’re prone to project, as you know, when you get excited - ‘

‘What! I’m a pure scientist.’ I realised he was probably joking.

‘Marx, Kropotkin, Engels, Proudhon, Tolstoi - all use precedent and so they are completely unscientific. Kropotkin might be the most scientific. He has the proper training. But the radical young already treat him as some sort of Old Testament prophet, quoting his words rather than applying his methods. Is that all we are to have? Substitutes for past orthodoxies? Is the language of science to replace the language of religion and become a meaningless litany in support of authority?’

‘There are already such narrow-minded scientists,’ I agreed. ‘But there are others, as there will always be, who oppose them, who are constantly, as am I, generating new theories, new analyses.’

‘And they are accepted?’

‘Eventually. I’m staking my life on it.’

‘Eventually? When their words have been incorporated into the litany.’

‘Science is less subject to decadence. It thrives upon change. But is it a better world in which nothing is considered worthwhile if it’s more than a day or two old?’

‘It could not be more boring.’

But I was to live to see such a world during the days of the swinging sixties in Portobello Road, when the very ideas of Science became mere fads discussed for a few days in rubbishy papers and then dropped. At least in Russia people still respect the past. Science itself cannot cure the world’s ills. Did Aristotle manage to stop Alexander the Great laying waste to Persia? Did Voltaire restrain Catherine the Great’s reign of terror? I have done many positive things in my life, but many of my actions have been perverted or misused or at best misinterpreted. This was to be the complaint of another great Russian thinker. Georgi Ivanovitch Gurdjieff. He was a celebrity when I met him in Petrograd in the company of his ‘clan’. He was a life-long opponent of Bolshevism. He spent all his years, all his fortune, in an effort to stem the tide of ‘democracy’, ‘republicanism’ and ‘socialism’ sweeping across the world. He argued that Rasputin, for all his faults, gave better advice than many of the Tsar’s ministers. Rasputin at least understood there were higher worlds than the world which was then bent on destroying so much of value. I visited a house in Triotskaya Street, near the Nevski, one evening. Kolya wanted me to meet Gurdjieff’s most devoted follower, the journalist Ouspenski, who was at that time in the army. Gurdjieff, of course, was more concerned with the world of the soul than the world of material reality, but for a while, with a number of other intellectuals, I was impressed by him. Eventually I returned to the Orthodox Faith, which offers much the same as he offered and, if I may say so, asks a rather lower cash price. The price for a series of lectures from Gurdjieff, even then, was about a thousand roubles.

In the years between the wars Gurdjieff’s philosophy would attract many brilliant people who rightly saw it as a substitute for the current political creeds and fads. For a time a number of important politicians, too, were attracted to it. The world might have been a very different place today if Gurdjieff’s teachings had taken deeper root in the minds, say, of Hitler and Goering. Gurdjieff should have stayed on in Petrograd instead of returning to Tiflis in 1917. He might have changed the whole course of Russian history. He was a noble opponent of anarchism and socialism. He recognised them as a poor substitute for true mystical experience. Yet I saw him argue fluently with committed Bolsheviks and seem to be agreeing with them. But this was his way of turning their own logic against them to win them round.

In those months before the Tsar’s abdication, the streets became even worse. The broad pavements were dirtier and more depressing. Peter was a city of death and desolation. The war reports suggested tremendous advances until in early December, just before I was due to undergo my examinations, came the news of the taking of Bucharest. Rumania had capitulated. We had lost an ally overnight. Even more wounded filled the city. France and England were rumoured to be preparing to ally themselves with Germany against Russia. Even I, obsessed with my dissertation, could not ignore the fact that we were in great danger.

Then it came to me that all my examiners would be sharing this mood. In the course of speaking, I could tell them of certain personal inventions which might help win the War. I would not go into details which would frighten those poor, unimaginative souls. I would merely mention my ideas in passing. Psychologically, it would be a perfect moment to display my knowledge and ensure myself the highest marks.

It was not a plan conceived with cynicism (though, of course, I had the motive of wishing to startle both Professor Merkuloff, the rest of the academicians and the other students) but I knew it might stand me in good stead with my attempts to achieve a government appointment.

I tested some of my speeches out on the two girls. They were impressed, though most of what I said went well over their heads. I tested other ideas on Kolya who said that I was ‘brilliant’ and laughed with joy to hear me expound my scientific theories. I wrote letters home explaining I should soon be sending good news. I wrote to Uncle Semya. He would have a nephew of whom to be more than proud. To my landlady and her daughters I became, as they put it, ‘unbearable’ because my confidence was so great. I think they had preferred the shyer Dimitri Mitrofanovitch of his first year in St Petersburg. As the day of the main examinations came closer I grew more excited. The windows in the horse-tram were by now more than half-an-inch thick with frost on the inside. It was so cold that long icicles extended from the roof over my head, but I hardly noticed. I saw pictures of myself addressing the professors and examining board. I saw my fellow students listening with stunned wonderment or leaning forward with sudden, ecstatic understanding of what I was really saying.

In the first days, one merely saw various professors and answered simple questions. I went through the examinations patiently, letting drop hints that my knowledge extended rather further than the questions demanded. In the middle days, I began to lard in more information, making casual reference to certain modern inventions, to specific kinds of materials and manufacturers, to current research findings and advanced theories. On the last day, when it was my turn to give my main dissertation before the class, in the great hall, I decided to pull out all the stops. I had learned, like many others in those times, to inject myself intravenously with cocaine. I gave myself a strong solution shortly before I boarded the tram. By the time I arrived at the Polytechnic neither the cold nor the anxious looks of my fellows could touch me in the slightest. I was ready for everything. I remember flinging open my coat as I crossed the misty quadrangle to the main hall, showing the same contempt for the weather as I felt for them.

I waited impatiently (even some of the examiners noticed this) while four others gave their pathetic, faltering speeches on this or that tiny aspect of technology. Then at last my name was called and I strode up to the dais on which, around a curved table, sat the entire staff and governors of the Polytechnic. Over their heads was a large portrait of a benevolent Tsar Nicholas; before me were the assembled students. I noticed some of them giggling or making comments about me. I was able, with stern glances, to quell these easily.

Professor Merkuloff’s sarcastic tones came from the table. ‘Well, Kryscheff, and what are you going to speak about - assuming you have absorbed any of your studies?’

I turned and laughed in his face. It was not an insolent laugh. It was the laughter of one who shared a joke with an equal (or an inferior, in actuality), ‘I am going to speak on the ontological approach to the problems of science and technology,’ I told the examiners, ‘with a particular emphasis on technological aids to the winning of the present struggle.’

‘A rather large subject,’ said Vorsin, one of the senior professors. He was a small old man with a yellow, wrinkled skin, ‘for someone in your year.’

‘It is a subject, your excellency, I feel quite at ease with. I have been doing certain studies in my spare time. The reason I was sent to your Institute was in one sense simply to complete a formality. I required academic information not generally available. I also wished to learn something of academic disciplines. I believe that this is what impressed Professor Matzneff and aroused the animosity of certain other professors. I am deeply grateful to your excellency and to your staff for the help you have given me, however.’

Vorsin seemed impressed. He smiled at his colleagues.

‘Now, your excellency, if I could begin ... ?’ I bowed with considerable dignity.

‘Begin,’ said the old man, and he moved his hand in a gesture which displayed magnanimity and kindness. He leaned over to murmur something to Merkuloff. I knew that he was asking about me and that he would receive a biased opinion of me from Merkuloff. But I was amused by my professor’s stupidity and presumption.

I began my discourse almost at once. I disdained notes. I addressed the assembled students, (turned occasionally to speak to the professors, who almost at once began to show astonishment. It was as if Jesus had sat down with the Elders in the Synagogue. Indeed, I felt somewhat godlike. This was partly due to the effects, I suppose, of the cocaine. If I was not a Messiah to the Age of Science, I felt at least I might be His Baptist!

There was no denying the immediate effect of my words. I discussed the problems of Newtonian science in relation to modern knowledge. I discussed the most recent developments in the field of extra-strong materials, which would enable us to build entirely new types of machines: gigantic aeroplanes and airships. I drew their attention to the possibilities of rocket propulsion, as opposed to the limitations of the conventional internal combustion engine. I spoke of gas-operated aeroplanes. This would involve a system of super-heating by which certain gases could be brought to an appropriately intense temperature. I spoke of a kind of Gatling gun which could be operated by means of compressed air, which would shoot thousands of needles into the enemy’s ranks. Each needle could contain a hollow tip in which was concealed deadly poison. No matter where he was hit, the soldier would die almost at once. Failing that, a narcotic drug could be used and we should have wars without death. This would be far more efficient than gas canisters which anyway could be counteracted by means of gas-masks. I also described monster machines, a thousand times bigger than the largest tank. These could simply crush their way through the enemy lines, physically burying all who stood against them. I brought into question our whole understanding of current technological developments. I was about to go into more abstract matters, concerning electrical atoms, when Merkuloff - that jealous mental dwarf! - sprang up and cried:

‘I think we have heard all we need, Kryscheff!’

‘I have hardly begun,’ I said calmly. ‘There is much more.’

‘Sit down.’

I explained that they had not realised these were merely my opening remarks.

‘We realise all we want to realise.’ Evidently overwhelmed by his own conscience, knowing to what extent he had misjudged me, he was speaking gently. Perhaps he wished to spare my energies? At the time, however, I felt he was trying to thwart me.

‘If you are to award the appropriate marks,’ I said, ‘it is only fair I should give you a fuller picture. These are times when information itself is a weapon.’

The old man, Professor Vorsin, cut me off. ‘Possibly your ideas are of interest to an enemy? Any spy ...’ He gestured out into the hall.

I followed his meaning, but I had anticipated him. ‘That is the reason, your excellency, that I have made no specifications in this dissertation. If the government wished to see my plans, I should be happy to meet with the appropriate person at the proper time. I have only skimmed the surface here.’

‘We are much impressed,’ said Vorsin.

Merkuloff spoke. ‘You are dismissed from the hall, Kryscheff.’ Could the man still be envious? Was he determined to crush me. It was unbelievable. But I misjudged him, I think. I was not sympathetic to his own confusion. His senior forced him to resume his seat. Vorsin was plainly upset by Merkuloff’s attitude. He addressed me respectfully. ‘My dear Dimitri Mitrofanovitch, I am sure you have been doing a great deal of demanding work. But you have brought up so many fresh ideas that it is hard for us to digest everything at once.’

I nodded as I tried to hear what he said above the uproar from the hall. The students were acknowledging my genius. It was a great moment. I could see that the other professors, too, were stunned by my dissertation. I decided to ensure myself, there and then, of my future. ‘Can I therefore be certain of a diploma this year?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Vorsin. ‘We will make a Special Diploma for you.’

This was beyond anything I had hoped for. ‘A Special Diploma is not necessary, your excellency.’ I showed, I think, proper modesty and self-discipline.

‘It will have to be a special one,’ said Merkuloff, capitulating at last. Never have I experienced such wonderful elation. I had not really expected quite this success. It was very sweet.

‘Very well, your excellencies. I accept.’ I bowed to them. I bowed to the shouting, stamping crowd below. I raised a hand to silence them. ‘But I shall continue here at the Polytechnic, at least until I am offered a government post.’ I saw no point in crowing. They had had the grace to accept defeat. I would show grace in my victory.

‘Of course,’ said Merkuloff in a strained voice. ‘Next term, we shall sort all that out.’

‘And the Diploma? Is it to be presented before Christmas?’

I could guess there would be the usual red tape involved. I was not surprised when Professor Vorsin shook his head, ‘It will take time to prepare. We shall have it ready when you return.’

I was satisfied. And Merkuloff, judging by the way he sat with his head in his hands, was at long last thoroughly bested. Professor Matzneff was vindicated. How pleased my mentor would be when he, in his exile, learned the news.

Triumph was to be added to triumph. Vorsin personally led me from the stage. Students pressed around me, clapping, whistling, cheering, even laughing with delight. The senior professor raised his palm to silence them. But the noise continued. Behind me, like a conquered tyrant, crept Merkuloff. With his own hands Professor Vorsin put my cap upon my head. He ordered Merkuloff to ‘fetch the troika’. I asked if there was anything I could amplify for him. ‘All that will come later,’ said the generous old man, ‘when we both have more time and when you are rested.’ I assured him I had no need of rest. I had not felt so well for many a month. I suppose that it was impossible for him to believe that such mental expenditure was not automatically accompanied by physical exhaustion. Needless to say, I was sustained by the injection of cocaine and would eventually need to sleep, but not at that moment.

I was taken out into the quadrangle. Vorsin’s personal horse and troika stood ready. Students were still cheering. I heard snatches of their phrases: ‘It’s the great Kryscheff!’ ‘He’s Galileo and Leonardo rolled into one.’ I bowed. I waved. Again they cheered me. Again the kindly Vorsin tried to silence them. I was flattered by his thoughtfulness. He apologised for not being able to accompany me himself. My own professor would see me safely home. It was obvious that Merkuloff was reluctant. He frowned. He began to remonstrate. He was not ‘qualified’ to go with me. This was a change of tune! It was my turn to show magnanimity. It would be a pleasure, I said, to have his company in the troika. In awe, he climbed in to sit beside me. With a friendly acknowledgement to the senior professor, to the noisy students, I gestured for the driver to whip up the horse. Then we were off at the old St Petersburg lick, bells jingling, moving almost as swiftly as my thoughts, while I enlarged on my ideas to the open-mouthed Merkuloff. He could still not find the words to tell me how he had misjudged me.

‘The Special Diploma will, of course, be very welcome,’ I assured him. ‘But my future interest will chiefly be in government work.’

He said he was sure the government would supply my every need. I was pleased with his perspicacity, ‘It is materials and supplies I require. Then I can begin to build.’

He said I should try to look after myself. I was over-excited.

‘That’s hardly possible at the moment,’ I reassured him. ‘My dilemma is whether I should remain at the Polytechnic, perhaps to help with the teaching, or whether I should lend all my talents to the War Effort?’

This was something, he said, which had to be carefully considered. Perhaps it could be discussed next term ‘after I had rested’. I pointed out, again, that I was at my peak. It would, however, be convenient to have more time to myself. He agreed. He suggested I take a sabbatical while the necessary meetings were held at high level. There would not be time this term to go into every detail. The staff would have to meet government representatives the following term. He suggested I wait until I heard from the Polytechnic. This fitted in with my plans. I agreed, it will also allow time to prepare my Special Diploma.’

He had been thinking of much the same thing. We galloped through glowing mist. A white night was looming. As we neared Petersburg proper, he asked me where I lived. I decided not to give him my poorer address. I told the driver to go to the house by the Kryukoff Canal where my virgins lived.

At the entrance, I was greeted with more fawning by the old Polish woman. Now she addressed me as ‘your honour’. Evidently she astonished Merkuloff. He still had his cold, and was blowing his nose heavily. He explained that I was over-tired. She should make sure I rested. He said someone, perhaps himself, would come to make sure I was all right. I told him this would be unnecessary. The Polish woman was puzzled but said I might be her own son. Professor Merkuloff’s attitude towards me had at last completely changed. He said that she was a good, kind woman. I had delicate sensibilities. I must have every comfort. I must rest my brain as well as my body. If a doctor were needed, the Institute would send one. I patted him on the shoulder, to show that I appreciated his magnanimous acceptance of defeat. ‘The girls are like sisters,’ said the Polish hag. ‘They will know what to do.’

She escorted me to the apartment door. Lena answered the ring. Her face brightened when she saw me The ‘panye’ explained I had been brought in a troika. My professor asked that I be specially cared for. Lena led me into her feminine nest, assuring the concierge everything would be done. I was still, of course, on top of the world. We entered the main room. ‘Are you on the run?’ She was excited. I flung an arm round her shoulders and embraced her. ‘It has been the best day of my life.’ I realised she was mine. I could now celebrate. I kissed her gently upon the lips. She whispered that Marya was not yet home. She drew away from me, but I held her little wrist. I told her that I loved her. It was true. I loved everyone at that moment. I had astounded the school with my brilliance. I had come home in the senior professor’s own troika. The entire Polytechnic had been in an uproar. She asked if I had done anything ‘politically dangerous’. I laughed. ‘It depends what you mean, Lenushka. I showed them the Future. I showed them the Age of Science. I showed them all the possibilities for change in this old world of ours.’

‘And you convinced them?’

‘They applauded me.’

‘Everyone?’

‘Everyone.’

She could not quite understand. I embraced her again. I kissed her with more passion. I needed this culmination. This reward. Little Lena was ideal. A virgin. Her breasts began to rise and fall, her hands touched my back in an embrace. Then she had pulled away, blushing. She would make me some tea. I flung myself on the couch. It was covered with a peasant quilt of most intricate patterns. It was faintly, deliciously perfumed. I watched her body in its rustling frock as she moved about the apartment. At length she brought me a glass of tea. I accepted it, gesturing for her to sit beside me. Again that sweet, uncertain movement. Then she was with me, cradled in my arms. We sipped the tea together. I began to make love to her very slowly. I stroked her arms, her face, her thighs. A little later, I picked her up and carried her, weeping, into the bedroom. She made to resist, but no woman could have resisted me that day. My hands moved under her clothes and found flesh, then her sex, and she gasped. But, for all her feeble, birdlike flutterings, she was mine. I undressed her. Then I undressed myself. Her face was at peace, her eyes were like the eyes of a gazelle which has fallen in love with a leopard. She would willingly die for one touch of my paw, one movement of my mouth on her flesh. My body sang with the controlled agony of delicious passions and heightened senses. Then I was upon her. I took her fiercely. She wept and groaned and shrieked. I clawed her so that blood came. I bit her. I plunged into her and more blood came. And still I was not sated. I rolled away from her. Her eyes had turned to burning copper and her hair was a halo of flame, her body a lattice of scratches, of little bites and voluptuous, spreading bruises. Now she wept deeply, for the pleasure, for the release of her weeping, and I took her again.

As I rolled back, Marya entered the room. ‘Lena! Dimitri?’ She was horrified. She shivered in her little fur cap, with her muff still on her hand. She was gasping. I smiled. I gestured to her to join us. I could easily have satisfied them both. She closed the door and had gone before I could suggest it. I laughed. Lena lay there staring vacantly at the closed door. I took her for the third time. My sperm filled her anus like liquid steel. She was once more overcome by her passion. Marya was unimportant. Let her disapprove. Lena agreed. She had become wild; a wonderful animal. We kissed and nibbled and stroked one another’s warmth and youth. We were about to make love for the fourth time, when Marya again opened the door. There was gas-light now behind her. It had become quite dark. She had removed her street-clothes. She was in distress, ‘I thought you loved me,’ she said.

‘I love you both. Come.’ I offered myself.

‘This is wrong. Can’t you see?’

‘There is nothing wrong in being alive.’

‘We’ll be out soon,’ Lena told her. ‘We’ll explain.’

‘Your body! What has he done to you?’

Lena had not been aware of the love-marks. Now she looked at her breasts and her thighs and first she smiled, touching them, then she lost some of her elation. Foolish Marya had entered Eden. She had done what Lucifer did to Adam and Eve. She had made us suddenly self-conscious. The little idiot was the snake bringing sin to the Garden. I was furious. I leapt up. I jumped for her. I caught her by the hair. ‘Free yourself from all these preconceptions!’

‘This isn’t freedom - it’s - ‘ She burst into tears. She tried to struggle away from me. But I held her. ‘Join us, you bitch! Be a woman!’

Then it was like a wheel. A gigantic flywheel on which we were all spinning. And Lena was shouting. Dancing naked between us. I was tearing at Marya. At her clothes, her hair, her body. Round and round we whirled, unable to control anything. We were crushed in a machine which was white hot and yielding but which had the pressure of the hardest alloy. The cogs were ripping us to fragments. Blood sparkled. Slowly the squealing and wailing grew louder. It was unbearable. I looked at the girls. One was completely naked, the other had her clothes in shreds. One breast was exposed. Both were weeping and bleeding. They were begging me for something they refused to accept. They begged me for forgiveness, for death. They begged me for my love and for the ignorance they had lost. They begged me for the Faith I had given. Which now they thought they had lost. They begged for God, for the gentle, punishing Christ who had come to them in that hour of revelation. I was suddenly weary. I felt only contempt for them. They resisted everything they most desired. They resisted enlightenment. They refused to trust me. In that refusal they showed themselves for stupid little masturbating creatures. They had been prepared to entertain fuzzy romantic notions about free love and revolution, even assassination. Now they could not relinquish their poor, unformed identities. They would take no risks. I drew on my clothes. I laughed at them. They wept and bled in one another’s arms. They pleaded with me to become again the illusion I had let them create. I buttoned up my jacket. I owed them nothing. They owed me everything. My clothes became my armour. Their knight had offered them the salvation of their senses: the celebration of their own femininity, and of their primal sexuality. They had rejected the gift. I strode out of their apartment. They became Bolshevik whores, I believe, during the Revolution, and morphine addicts. Stalin doubtless cleared up what was left of them. It was only the stupid or the mesmerised who ever perished in those camps. Nobody was ever forced to die.

I paced through the night, beside the frozen canal. I pushed the crippled and the starving from my path. I hoped to see Kolya at The Harlequinade but they told me he had gone home. I went to his apartment and let myself in with my key. Hippolyte was in bed with him, lying amongst furs. Kolya himself was asleep. Hippolyte was petulant. ‘Get out.’

I crossed to the cabinet to pour a drink and look for more cocaine. I found some Polish tawny vodka and tossed it off. I opened the Pierrot jar and took a pinch of white powder. I tasted it, sniffed a little into my nostrils to experience the delicious numbness. Hippolyte had risen. He was whispering at me. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I came to see Kolya.’

‘What’s wrong with you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You’re mad.’

‘Inspired, perhaps. I’m not here to interfere.’ I reached out a hand to stroke him. ‘I love you, too.’ I loved the world.

Then Hippolyte grinned his little, mindless, harlot’s grin. ‘Oh, I see.’

Kolya’s naked body was gold crowned by silver as he came into the room. ‘Good evening, Dimka. It’s late, eh?’ He took the vodka bottle from my hand and poured some into a glass. ‘How was your dissertation?’

I had become calm. I had no wish to boast of my achievement. ‘I think it was successful.’

‘Good. I expected you would have come over to the cabaret.’

‘I had some women to see.’

‘Celebrating?’ said Hippolyte. He was confused.

‘Trying to.’

‘The women didn’t suit you?’

‘They were too young. I offered them the mercy of my body, the salvation of my pain, my triumph. And they refused it.’

‘Oh, I know what you mean!’ Kolya laughed with Hippolyte. ‘They’re timid little things, on the whole, girls.’ He leaned against me, as if drunk, and began to unbutton my coat. ‘Did they hurt your feelings, Dimka?’

‘Not at all. They made me impatient.’

‘They haven’t the stamina.’

Hippolyte loosened my scarf and the jacket of my uniform. I was feeling languorous. I yawned, appreciating the attention: enjoying the passivity. Kolya and Hippolyte led me back towards the bedroom, strewn with the skins of wolves and panthers, foxes and tigers. I was fully prepared to let them worship me. This was what I had wanted all along from the girls. Marya and Lena had not understood. Kolya and Hippolyte instinctively knew what to do. There was more vodka. There was more cocaine. I was magnificent. They told me so with every touch. I was a pagan god. I cannot explain. It was not perversity. I was Pan. I was Prometheus. I was Prometheus in a world which did not fear me. How those stupid little girls had feared me. Silly mice. I was a bronze Titan, a Lord of Thebes, an Etruscan nobleman, an Egyptian god-king. An Emperor of Carthage!

It is vague, the rest. I slept for a very long time. Kolya brought my clothes from my lodgings. He was very gentle with me. I do not think Hippolyte was present. I was tired. Kolya’s goodness was Christ-like. It was too much. For a while I attempted to emulate it. But his goodness was a virtue of the nobly-born, of the privileged. It was nothing I could afford, in the end.

There was a letter. I did not open it until I had slept again amongst the wolves and the foxes, with Kolya as my guardian angel. He did nothing that was unnatural. He helped me. I opened the letter on a morning. Much refreshed, I relived my moments of conquest. I felt a certain foolishness in exposing myself to the girls. I would not be able to return for a while, until they had calmed down. I knew they would not betray me because it would mean betraying their idealism. The packet was sealed with red wax. I broke the seas, and here was further proof of my victory over my past. A vindication of all I had been through. A passport. And a letter from Mr Green. I was to leave for England after Christmas. I was to go to Liverpool to conduct some business. I must call and see Mr Green as soon as possible. He would give me the details of my journey. I had a passport. I had a Special Diploma. I had recognition. And all in a rush. That is frequently how things happen, of course. Frequently, too, all the bad news comes at once. But I will not taint this reminiscence with any note of sourness. I am not one to brood on what might have been. My fate is in God’s hands. Heaven is my reward. I have sinned. I admit it. But I gave my knowledge and my innocence to the world, and if the world did not reward me as I hoped it was because it was temporarily conquered by my enemies. Few would disagree that they were God’s enemies, also. The world is in the power of the Antichrist. That is why I know I shall be received into the blessed arms of Christ, forgiven and acknowledged and honoured, to stand with the saints, to converse with the Lord, to kneel before the altar of His great love, His brilliance and mercy.

Kolya said that until I left for England, I should stay at his apartment. This suited me very well. After that first night I received no further attentions from Kolya and few from Hippolyte.

Rasputin was murdered. Shot, stabbed, poisoned and pushed under the ice, yet still he lived and roared. He was Russia. Tainted Russia, mystical and vibrant, and refusing to die. But for rejecting the cleansing of science and modern knowledge Russia paid a terrible price. She did not have to give up her soul. There must be equilibrium. Neither ‘salvation through sin’, nor the massive ‘Russian steamroller’ could rescue us. By then it was hopeless. We could not be redeemed by our divine irresponsibility under autocracy, by our magnificent Slavic wholeness of sentiment; by the careless bravery of our Cossacks, nor by our trust in a defeated Christ. Christ slept and Russia was stolen from Him.

There was no point in returning to Kiev for Christmas. The trains were in confusion. There was a threat of the enemy occupying White Russia and parts of Ukraine. My letters and telegrams reached my mother in time. To my mother: dissertation great success. have received special diploma. whole school celebrates. your loving son. Through the good offices of Captain Brown came the reply: congratulations, love from all. we are very proud, best wishes for the season. To Uncle Semya I sent a similar message, but I added a few extra words, govt, post likely. thanks for all confidence. will serve you any way I can. god bless the tsar and god save russia.

This meant that all members of my family were able to celebrate the season with great delight. I spent it quietly with Kolya. Happily we were able to find some decent food in our City of Disaster. The ghost of Rasputin, the threat of civilian strife, of Revolution, hung like mist over the streets and canals. The food was horribly expensive. Hippolyte did not join us. He had taken to leaving the apartment for days at a stretch. Kolya reassured me this was nothing to do with me.

We remained close, but not sexually. Indeed, that act on the night I had won my Diploma had not been carnal. It had been an act of love and celebration. I have sought religious advice on the matter. I have been reassured I committed no sin in the eyes of God. Never has God been better understood or more passionately loved than in Russia. Never has He been obeyed and honoured so thoroughly. Russia was God’s noblest creation. But He slept, wearied by War. Christ was betrayed by Lucifer. Russia was stolen. And nowhere else in the world, save in the Greek churches, have I been able to find Him. His gentle Son was accepted in Constantine’s Byzantium, which we call Tsargrad, the Emperor’s City. He saved the Roman Empire. His gentle son, crucified by resentful Jews, offered himself to Russia, and was accepted. Christ is Greek. Christ is God. They are a unity. The Jewish God is false. The Jews betrayed God and betrayed Russia. They brought us madness and despair and ruin. The Tsar drew a line across the map. He said ‘Jews, you shall not pass beyond this point.’ But they crept through and they pulled the Tsar from his throne. They killed him. They gave Russia to the Devil. Christ was distracted by so many dying souls. Christ was sleeping, lying with the millions killed by War. And when he woke, Russia had been stolen from Him. How can these be the opinions of a Jew? I reject that Jewish God. I accept Christ. No Jew could do that. Carthage came out of the Orient and threatened Rome. Carthage came out of Africa. Ancient, prehistoric, savage blood. Carthage was the ghost who rode with the Tatar Khans, who razed Kiev and brought Moscow to her knees. Those Khans will come again. Why else do honest Russians remain wary of their ‘Chinese comrades’? Do they share the same delusions? Perhaps. But they do not share a blood or a culture. Let the Chinese call us ‘foreign devils’, if they like. We know who the Devil is and who serves Him. Russia remains in readiness. She has turned her back on Christ, but Christ has not forgotten His Slavs. Let the Jews continue to lend tainted ideas as they have lent tainted money down the generations. Both will be destroyed. The signs are there already. Even under Stalin they began to get back more interest than they expected on their ideas. Stalin learned. Stalin would have begun the cleansing of Russia if he had not been poisoned. Do not think I forgive Stalin, that renegade priest. But in old age he came to understand his errors. He was gathering his strength for the war against the ghostly Semitic Empires, against Babylon and Tyre, Phoenicia and Carthage, against Israel, against the Eastern hordes who dreamed of the glories of Genghis Khan come again ...

Rasputin deserved his death. He preached ignorance, not knowledge. True Faith is gained through wisdom alone. He corrupted the Tsar. God punished them all, perhaps as they deserved. The Tsar was deceived. When he came back to Christ, Christ was sleeping. It was too late. In despair, the Tsar abdicated. His prayers had become garbled and thickened by the teachings of a womanising charlatan who was possibly in the pay of International Zionism. The Tsar was responsible only to Christ, and Christ could not advise him. So Nicholas abdicated, precipitating the Terror, destroying the Future, robbing me of so much.

Unaware of this, I was very excited about my forthcoming travels. I was in love with England. For me it was populated by beautiful ladies and fine, haughty gentlemen. All my impressions came from popular Russian stories and from my Pearson’s magazines. I knew poverty existed, from reading Wells, but it was not like our Russian poverty. It was a comfortable poverty. Nobody in Britain or America has ever witnessed true poverty as we knew it. I see nothing wrong with poverty, either. Give the baby too much milk, and he has nothing to strive for, as they say in Siberia.

I began to read everything I could find again in English. I spoke English with Kolya (whose grasp of ordinary speech was not so good, but who knew far more about literature). I polished my vocabulary and my grammar. Not a day went by without me taking out my new passport, which included my photograph, supplied by Uncle Semya (it was another of those which he had had taken in Odessa) and delighting in it.

The passport was in the name of Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski. Things had become rather over-complicated, but I was in such a good mood nothing really bothered me. As soon as possible I visited Mr Green. He told me I should be going to Liverpool, via Helsinki. I would take the train through Finland, get a ship from there, and probably return by the same route. I might have to travel via Gothenburg, or even Denmark. Merchant shipping was having trouble with German submarines.

I did not worry about the risks. The prospect of seeing my beloved England outweighed anything else. As it happened I would not see England until Bolshevism and Zionism, ironically, had taken root in the mental soil imported from my own country.

Throughout January I relaxed. Then I became concerned as no news arrived from the Polytechnic about my Diploma. I grew agitated. Next, Mr Green told me that the international situation had become difficult. The package he had originally wanted me to deliver was lost. It would be a little while before he could get another. Inaction distresses me. My attempts to see Lena and Marya were rebuffed. The silly minxes had become frightened of me. Lena had a bruise on her face. She told me I had caused it, but I certainly had no memory of hitting her there.

Mr Green at last informed me that another package was ready. I could not leave just then, because of a sea battle between the English and German fleets which might ease the blockade. He said it would be best to wait a couple of weeks. The package contained secret letters between my Uncle Semya’s firm, Mr Green’s office, and the firm of Rawlinson and Gold, who had a branch in Liverpool. Their main offices, I was told, were at Whitechapel, London. I wished I might be going to Whitechapel. Mr Green said it was important I got to Liverpool and returned on an early ship. I would be a ‘secret courier’ for him, travelling as a student searching for émigré relatives. Soon, of course, I expected secret couriers to be carrying my own plans between friendly governments. I wrote to Professor Vorsin asking about my Diploma. I received a courteous note telling me that the Diploma was in preparation. They were writing to my father to inform him of my success. My ‘father’ was, of course, the priest whose son was currently undergoing TB treatment in Switzerland. It was to be hoped he would know how to respond. Now I had a letter which at least confirmed my right to the Diploma. I began going out again with Kolya. But an increasing number of revolutionaries were taking over our favourite cabarets. I saw Mrs Cornelius once or twice. She said she was getting ‘fed up’ with everything and would like to leave Peter. I told her I would soon be visiting Liverpool. She suggested we travel together. She knew Liverpool, she said, ‘fairly well’. This was good news indeed. I told her what my route would probably be. I promised to find out about train- and sailing-times.

More and more strikes took place, particularly in the industrial suburbs. There were by now far too many voices raised in sympathy. I heard my landlady had had trouble (her house was on the Vyborg side where armed deserters were not above holding up ‘boorzhoo’ women and robbing them). Wounded soldiers with bitter faces talked quite openly about the state of the War, complaining against God and the Tsar, and nobody arrested them.

On 14 February 1917 I received another letter from Professor Vorsin. The Diploma would be prepared and sent to me. He was not sure the Polytechnic could teach me anything further. He would be pleased to meet me there or at my lodgings to discuss the matter. I wrote back saying I would appreciate the talk. It might be best if he recommended me for a government post at once. I received a rather brief reply, signed by his secretary. The contents of my letter had been noted. The professor was giving it his earliest possible attention. I was much cheered up. By the time the Tsar left for Mogilev, to supervise the progress of the War, I was as good as ready to hold the Petrograd fort for him.

There is no need for me to describe what happened later in February 1917. In spite of all, we were taken by surprise. Strikes, mutinies, the Tsar’s abdication, the setting up of Prince Lvov’s Provisional Government, the wild rumours, the wholesale chaos in the streets. Our enemies, Reds and Jews alike, celebrated their wonderful achievement while the people went on starving and the soldiers went on mutinying, and crime ranged the capital unchecked. Professor Vorsin fled Petrograd with half the staff of the Polytechnic. Mr Green was winding up his office. He told me he now planned to take the package to England himself, ‘not that there was a lot of point now’. Kolya joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party. I was left alone and bewildered.

Petrograd became an alien, crazy city. Every day there were demonstrations and meetings. People were openly rude to their superiors. Decent men and women could not go abroad without being molested. Here was democracy and socialism in action. Everything was pulled down. The Tsar was living in virtual exile with his family. Those who had any sense were already taking their money abroad. And still the Provisional Government claimed it could continue to fight a War. They were anxious, of course, not to lose the friendship or loans of countries like England and France. They knew Russia would fall apart without them.

I visited the Polytechnic and found Professor Matzneff back in charge. This, at least, was something. I told him of my problem. He assured me that he knew of my case and would do all he could to see I was properly looked after. Many records had become lost. He suspected some of the academics of destroying them. It would probably be better if I went home for a while until things became normal. Eventually the Institute would be functioning as usual. I could return and he would help me sort everything out.

‘I was promised a Special Diploma,’ I explained. ‘Can I still expect it?’

‘Of course. But the times are so uncertain. With the paper shortages it’s hard to get things printed.’

‘It is important to me. I had a letter from Professor Vorsin. He assured me the Diploma was being prepared. I had hoped to show it to my mother.’

‘Well, the letter will do, eh, for the moment?’

I agreed the letter was absolute confirmation. I would leave my address with him (I gave him my proper name) and would wait until I heard from him. I would be prepared to make a special visit to Petrograd to collect the Diploma. It would be unsafe to trust the mails in the present crisis. I had heard of postmen, for instance, dumping their bags into the snow or the garbage at the announcement of the Tsar’s abdication. I think my old friend Matzneff also had some intimation of the difficulties lying ahead and was trying to save me from the worst. Within a few months the Bolsheviks would be in control. Civil War would be laying our vast country waste, wreaking far more damage than anything the Germans might have done.

I shook hands with Matzneff, wished him luck, hoped he would be able to run the Polytechnic through what he termed the ‘interim confusion’. I repeated my offer, as I felt I should, to help teach if necessary. He said he appreciated this but that teachers of routine experience were what were currently needed. He was trying to attract Vorsin and a few of the others back. They had lost some of their nervousness and might return.

I am glad I decided to take his advice. If I had not, I should almost certainly, like Vorsin, have become a victim of the Cheka. I bade him an affectionate farewell. I returned to the apartment to say goodbye to Kolya. He promised to send for me as soon as things were stable. He had acquired sudden political influence. When he was Prime Minister, he said, he would appoint me Minister of Science. It was a consolation. Even if the revolutionaries had taken over, it was as well to have well-placed friends. Things might not be so difficult in the long term.

I went to The Harlequinade and asked after Mrs Cornelius. The place was packed. Some mixture of poetry-reading and political meeting was taking place. Red bunting was stuck everywhere. It was a madhouse. I pressed through the crowd (I had already learned to address all and sundry as ‘comrade’). I searched for Mrs Cornelius. She was not there. I left a message with a mutual acquaintance. My English trip was delayed. I would try to contact her soon. In the streets there, were groups of students waving huge red flags. The Marseillaise was being played on every sort of instrument, on gramophones, by military bands. Trams and buses trundled by, full of yelling students and drunken soldiers. It reminded me of the Paris Commune. I remembered what had happened to that particular ‘social experiment’. I prayed Kolya would have the sense to moderate his views and policies.

I stayed the night in Kolya’s apartment. There were political newspapers and posters, all the junk of Revolution littered about. My friend was attending a meeting of the Duma and did not return. In the morning I packed my bags, borrowed Kolya’s supply of cocaine, two bottles of Polish vodka and a few silver roubles, and walked to Mr Green’s. I found the office in complete confusion. Everyone was leaving. Only Mr Parrot was to remain. He looked unhappy. I told Mr Green I needed some money. He was evidently reluctant to part with what he had, but gave me some paper roubles. He said they would be enough to get me to Kiev. I must write direct to Uncle Semya if I needed any more. I thanked him for his help. I still had my passport and would be glad to act as his courier if he needed someone in the future. He nodded and said he would remember my offer.

Through misty snow I walked to the station. It was in complete chaos. Deserters, released prisoners, cripples, touts, pimps, honest artisans, bohemians, aristocrats, businessmen and students were all trying to flee the city. There was no question of a luxury journey home. By paying three times the proper price I was lucky to get a third-class ticket. I found myself crowded into a carriage which already had one window broken (‘for some fresh air’ as an unshaven soldier told me). There were tiers of smelly bunks. These were full of gypsies, Jews, Tatars, Armenians, Poles and drunks making the compartment reek of foul tobacco, cheap vodka and vomit. I clung on to my bags, forced myself to be agreeable to an old Jew in a black overcoat and a young soldier with one arm, who was also trying to get to Kiev, and squeezed in between them.

Eventually the train moved slowly from the station. St Petersburg was a miserable shadow, occupied at last by the forces of Chaos. We left it behind us. Then a white wind blew through the broken pane, making it impossible to see the countryside beyond. I consoled myself that, after all, I had achieved far more in the capital in a shorter time than I had thought possible. I would be returning home with some honour!