Byzantium Endures: The First Volume of the Colonel Pyat Quartet Page 23

  Any idea I had of serving my country as cannon-fodder rather than as a cannon-maker disappeared when I returned to the Institute after Easter to find a third of the students vanished and three professors summarily dismissed. The Okhrana had visited the principal. They had had a list of ‘undesirables’ likely to damage the War Effort, who could be potential spies for the enemy. The outspoken Reds had all gone and for this, of course, I was grateful, but it was when I went into Dr Matzneff’s class I realised my own bad luck. Dr Matzneff had gone. In his place was his rival, the black-bearded, bulky, dark-uniformed Professor Merkuloff, who told me to take a seat at the back of the room and pay attention, for I would be receiving no favouritism from him. My ‘friend’ Matzneff was out of a job and lucky not to be in prison. I was shocked by the open aggression shown by Merkuloff. ‘You will have to study very hard if you want any sort of pass at the end of this year, Kryscheff,’ he added. He knew very well that I was the best student in the whole Institute, that I could discourse on virtually every subject taught there, and many more besides. But now I was faced with his blatant opposition to my advancement. Professor Merkuloff hated Dr Matzneff and hated anyone whom Dr Matzneff seemed to like.

  Leaving school that evening, feeling utterly downcast, beginning to wonder if I had been foolish in all my ambitions, I considered going to see Dr Matzneff at his gloomy flat. I knew this would be stupid. The ‘brown-coats’ would be on the look-out for any student who seemed to be hob-nobbing with a suspected traitor. It would mean the end of my own schooling.

  I returned to my lodgings where Madame Zinovieff handed me a letter. It had arrived, she said, shortly after I had left. The post, along with all other services, was in a state of partial breakdown due to the War.

  The letter was from Dr Matzneff. He told me he had been dismissed because in his youth he had shown sympathies with the ideas of Bakunin and Kropotkin, the anarchist-intellectuals. His son, as I knew, was in exile in Switzerland, still a violent and outspoken Social Revolutionary. It was only by a miracle he had escaped imprisonment or exile to Siberia.

  Dr Matzneff advised me not to contact him unless I was desperate. If I needed to borrow books I should try to borrow them through an intermediary. Then suspicion would not fall upon me. He knew I had no interest in politics. He would be with me in spirit. I should not be down-hearted. If I worked hard there was no reason I should not still be the star pupil at the Polytechnic, triumphing over all difficulties.

  It was a touching and heartening letter. I determined to show Professor Merkuloff that Dr Matzneff’s ‘favouritism’ had been no more than recognition of outstanding talent. I would study all the harder, night and day if necessary, and win diplomas in every subject. I would cause them all to eat their words.

  The days grew lighter. Fashionable people began to leave Petrograd not for the seaside, for the Crimea, as they had once done, but for their datchas in the country, closer to Moscow. I trained myself for the exams due at the end of the year. I would make it impossible for the authorities not to notice me. I began to ignore everything and everyone in pursuit of those studies. Of course, they became harder, the deeper into them I went. I had no great difficulty mastering the ordinary set problems, but I wanted to do better. I wanted to do so well they would have to promote me at least a year ahead, possibly grant me my diploma immediately. It would free me from Merkuloff. I would receive a higher standard of tuition from teachers who would not share his bias towards me.

  I gave up fiction. I gave up my outings with the Zinovieff’s. I gave up most of my sleep in order to study. I stopped thinking about Marya Varvorovna. I studied every textbook we had been set. I studied the advanced textbooks listed in the bibliographies. I began to understand whole areas of science, whole principles of engineering, as my mind made intellectual leap after intellectual leap. I had, of course, to resort again frequently to my cocaine, but this aided me in making unique connections. I began to see the very structure of the universe. Whenever I slept (which was infrequently) I saw every planet in the solar system circulating about the sun; I saw the other planetary systems, the galaxies. The whole universe was pictured to me. And the world of atoms was mirrored in the picture. Into this great conception I could fit an ontological understanding of the world encompassing the sum total of human knowledge: and more. These were the visions, I realised with excitement, which had led Leonardo and Galileo and Newton to their discoveries. I was party to the secrets of Genius. I knew I must not reveal too much at once to my teachers, particularly Merkuloff. He was an ordinary man with an ordinary mind. Others at the Institute had good minds, but even they would not recognise the value of my innovatory theories. I was party to the knowledge of the Gods: I could write it down, but I could not, at that time, communicate it to the world.

  Madame Zinovieff began to worry about my ‘burning the candle at both ends’. She said I was looking pale, that my eyes were bloodshot, that I was not eating properly. I was a little impatient with her. This distressed her. I immediately apologised. I explained I was working hard on my examinations and a great deal depended on them. She was mollified. Olga and Vera no longer noticed me. They were in the process of making marriage plans with their chandler and their mineral-water salesman, preparing to settle into the life of good little Hausfraus, putting their childish romanticism behind them. Already their obsessions concerned the quality of winter coats and the price of furniture. I would scarcely have known them for the two girls I had met barely fifteen months before.

  I walked to and from the tram-stop and felt like a giant striding between buildings barely reaching my knees. It was still very cold. The weather meant nothing to me. Before me I saw the stars and the lines of force combining to produce what we call ‘the universe’. The nature of matter itself was just within my grasp. At school I attended lectures but I already knew their substance. I listened with polite impatience to Professor Merkuloff. He was a fool. I ignored the remarks of my fellows. I returned home and I studied more and more. But my supply of cocaine had begun to shrink. I knew I would need more if I were to continue with my work, which was now filling a number of bulky notebooks. I was at the peak of my powers. I could not afford to lose time. I hunted for the scrap of paper on which Sergei Andreyovitch Tsipliakov had written the address of his friend, where he would be staying. I decided to take the last of the cocaine and return the snuff-box. It would be an ideal excuse. I could tell him the box had been opened and all his ‘medicine’ had been scattered. He would be grateful for the box, which looked valuable. I would find out where he bought his cocaine and I would buy some, too. I would spend the money on it which I would otherwise have spent on expensive imported fiction.

  I took two trams to a street off the Nevski, near the Mikhailovski Gardens. I at last found the apartment building. It was not quite as grand as I had imagined, but far grander than anything I had visited before in St Petersburg. The porter stopped me from entering until I gave the name of Seryozha’s friend, Nicholai Feodorovitch Petroff. The porter made something of a grumble about the ‘succession of ruffians’ he had to deal with and told me where to go. It was across the courtyard, near the top of the building, occupying a whole floor. It was very quiet and felt extremely prosperous. I rang the bell of the apartment. The door was opened by a young girl wearing little more than a Japanese kimono. She had a vaguely oriental cast to her heavily made-up features and moved with peculiar gliding grace which was at once stiff and natural. Perhaps she was also a dancer. She said nothing after she had admitted me, but began to glide away towards the inner rooms. I took off my cap, closed the door and followed her. I found a large chamber furnished in the ‘Arts and Crafts’ style, a kind of Russian art nouveau then fashionable. The place was full of peacock feathers. I experienced a slight superstitious frisson. I had been taught it was unlucky to bring peacock plumes into a house. ‘Are you a friend of Kolya’s?’ the girl asked.

  ‘I had hoped to see Sergei Andreyovitch Tsipliakov.’

  It was t
hen that she threw herself into one of the deep armchairs and let her kimono fall open. Her nipples were rouged. Her breasts were tiny. She had male genitals. It was a boy made-up as a girl. I became confused, then the cocaine helped me rally myself and I remained superficially unimpressed.

  The creature drew his kimono about him. He said off-handedly, ‘I don’t think Seryozha and Kolya are on speaking terms. Are you a friend of Seryozha’s, then?’

  ‘We met on the train from Kiev.’

  ‘You’re not the little yid he tried to seduce?’

  I smiled and shook my head. ‘That must have been on another trip. Is he staying here?’

  ‘He was. There was a row.’ ‘He’s moved?’

  ‘Well, he isn’t here. What did you want him for?’

  ‘I have a snuff-box belonging to him.’

  ‘Any snuff in it?’

  ‘There was never any snuff in it.’

  The youth gave a knowing sneer. Evidently this was a sophisticated ‘sniffer’. It was no part of my plan to aggravate a person who could help me find what, in all languages, cocaine users once called ‘snow’.

  I said, ‘My name is Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff.’

  ‘You’re from the South.’

  I modified my accent to give it the sharp, Petersburg sound. ‘May I have the honour of asking your name?’ I bowed with the sardonic courtesy one might extend to a lady of easy virtue. This pleased him. He stood up, making a gesture which could have been an attempt to curtsey. ‘Enchanté. You can call me Hippolyte.’

  ‘You are also connected with the ballet?’

  ‘Connected, yes.’ Hippolyte giggled. ‘A drink? We have everything. Champagne? Cognac? Absinthe?’ Absinthe had just been banned in France.

  ‘I’ll take absinthe.’ I had never had it and was determined to sample it before the apartment’s owner returned. He might be more restrained in his hospitality.

  With another artificially sinuous flirt of the hips, Hippolyte moved to a large cabinet and poured me some absinthe. ‘Water? Sugar?’

  ‘As it comes.’

  Hippolyte shrugged. He presented me with a long-stemmed narrow glass in which yellow liquid shone. I do not believe I let my pleasure show on my face as I sipped the bitter drink, but from that moment I had found a new vice. It is one which, sadly, became harder and harder to indulge. Hippolyte was free with the absinthe. He brought me the bottle. It was called ‘Terminus’. Modern readers will not remember the old advertisements which might only have appeared in good Russian shops. I never saw one, I think, in Paris. ‘Je bois à tes succès, ma chere,’ says the Harlequin to his fin-de-siècle ‘Mucha’ lady, ‘et à ceux de l’Absinthe Terminus la seule bienfaisante.’

  I settled patiently to wait to see what would happen. The worst would be an angry host who would give me some idea of Seryozha’s whereabouts before he dismissed me. I could also go to the Little Theatre in the Fontanka where the Ballet Foline was performing some piece of nonsense by that Grand Deceiver, Stravinski. We were entering an age of brilliant conjurors posing as creators. They took the techniques of the travelling sideshow and transformed them into art. In time they allowed every ‘sensitive’ young person to become an artist: all that was required was a gift for self-advertisement and the persuasive voice of a Jewish market-spieler.

  Hippolyte inspected his kohl and rouge. The silver frame of the mirror was, like almost everything here, fashioned to resemble naked nymphs or satyrs.

  The door opened and the master of the house entered. He was very tall. He wore a huge tawny wolfskin coat. I was immediately admiring and envious. One would not wish to give such a coat up, even at the height of summer.

  The wolfskin was thrown off. ‘Kolya’ was dressed entirely in black, with black broad-brimmed hat, black shirt, black tie, black gloves, black boots and, of course, black trousers, waistcoat and frockcoat. His hair was pure white, either dyed or natural. His eyes had that reddish tinge associated with albinism but I think overindulgence and a natural melancholy had created the effect. His skin was pale as the snowdrops in the hands of Nevski flower-girls. When he saw me he drew back a step in mock surprise. With his black, silver-headed cane in one long-fingered hand, he smiled with such compassionate irony that, were I a girl, I should at once have been his.

  ‘My dear!’ he said in French to Hippolyte. ‘But what is this little grey soldier doing in our house?’

  ‘He came for Seryozha,’ said Hippolyte in Russian. ‘His name’s Dimitri Alexeivitch something … ‘

  ‘I am known as Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff.’ I bowed. ‘I called to return this to M. Tsipliakov.’ I held out the snuff-box.

  With an elegant movement of his arm (I could see whom Hippolyte imitated), Kolya plucked the box from my palm. He snapped it open. ‘Empty!’

  ‘It is, your excellency.’

  I had flattered and amused this magnifico.

  ‘You are a friend of Seryozha’s?’

  ‘An acquaintance. I have been meaning to return the box to him. But my studies interfered.’

  ‘And what are you studying? I see you are enjoying the absinthe. Sip it slowly and drain the glass, my dear. It is the last bottle.’ He spoke neutrally. There was no sidelong glance of disapproval at Hippolyte as I might have expected. I was in the presence of a real gentleman, a dandy of the old English sort, rather than a debauchee of our Russian kind. ‘Your French is good,’ he said. ‘Your accent is almost perfect.’

  Hippolyte was scowling, evidently not following the conversation.

  ‘I have a talent for languages.’

  ‘And languages are what you study? Where? At the University?’

  ‘No, no, m’sieur. I study science. I have already produced a number of inventions and designs for new vehicles. Methods of bridging oceans. Well, all kinds of things … ‘

  ‘But you are exactly the sort of fellow for me!’ Kolya seemed genuinely delighted. ‘I am obsessed with science. You read Laforgue?’

  I had never heard of him.

  ‘An exquisite poet. The best of all of us. He died very young, you know. Of the usual sickness.’

  ‘Syphilis?’

  He laughed. ‘Tuberculosis. My dear sir, I am ignorant. Will you give me lessons in the secrets of the internal combustion engine, the electrical landaulette, the composition of matter?’

  ‘I should be happy to … ‘

  ‘You will become my tutor? Really? You will supply me with images?’

  ‘Images, m’sieu. I am not sure … ‘

  ‘The symbols of the twentieth century, my dear Dimitri Mitrofanovitch. It is in science we must find our poetry. And we must give our poetry to science.’ He spoke, I must admit, as if he had rehearsed this speech more than once. I was in the presence of a Futurist, but not one of the vulgar fellows I had seen demonstrating in the Nevski. There was something about ‘Kolya’ which impressed me in a way the Futurists and other modern confidence tricksters had not. Kolya had magnetism. Kolya knew at least a little of the sciences. If he was rich—and he seemed to be—he might pay for private lessons. In turn these would pay for the cocaine he would be able to supply.

  Hippolyte was glaring at me now. I think he suspected a rival for Kolya’s affections. This was ridiculous. I have occasionally been forced to indulge in certain minor affairs with members of my own sex. Who has not? I know this will not shock an English audience, for such things are the norm here. But my relationship with Kolya was to be one of the warmest friendship and regard. I had in fact found a patron!

  ‘Are you fond of Baudelaire, Dimitri Mitrofanovitch?’

  ‘The poet?’

  ‘The poet, indeed!’ Kolya strode to the window and drew back the shutters, letting in thin, Petersburg light. ‘Les tuyaux, les clochers ces mats de la cite!’ He smiled. ‘The celebration of urban life. The greatest poets were never Arcadians, your singers of shepherds and their lasses. The greatest poets of the world have always cried the virtues of the streets, the slums, the alleys and the bu
ildings, the things created not by God but by their fellow men. To be a true poet is to sing of the city. To sing of the city is to be a true revolutionary!’

  It seemed a safe enough way of being a revolutionary. I was not unduly alarmed, although I began to have doubts concerning Kolya as an employer. I was already associated in the minds of the police with one radical and here I was falling in, it seemed, with another. But I needed the cocaine if I were to continue with my work, to win my diploma, to begin my career, to give the world the benefits of my brain.

  ‘Villon, Baudelaire, Laforgue—even Pushkin, young Dimka. All celebrated the city. The innocent abroad in the gutters of the world, eh? It is our natural environment and it is natural for us to sing of it. Nature is the factory, the apartment building, the gas-holder, the locomotive. Are they not more beautiful than fields and flowers? More complex than cows and sheep? If Russia is to rise: If the Scythians are to display their glory to the world: then we must cease our celebration of the veins on the leaf of the beech; the wonder of the crushed poppy beneath the foot; the subtlety of sunsets over Lake Ladoga. We must describe the yellow fumes of the factories distorting the bloody rays of the sun: making human art of what we always believed was the work of the Gods alone.

  ‘Have you watched the sunsets over the docks, Dimka? Have you seen how red light is made more beautiful by the smoke and steam from the ships? How it illuminates the bricks of the buildings, the rusty sides of the ships, the wooden hulls, the sails? How it reflects from the oil lying on black water, producing a thousand images within one image? Have you noticed how a steam-locomotive brings roaring life to a dead landscape, as the great primeval beasts once brought it similar life? How golden sun streams through fine coal dust? Do not all these things excite you, make your blood pound, your heart beat with joy? You, a scientist, must understand what so many of my fellow poets do not! For all they rant of rods and engines, they have no true imagination and therefore cannot see that these things are not the objects of their satire, but the inspiration of their humanity!’