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
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!
