I have had exactly that happen to me, with my inventions. Thomas Alva Edison’s reputation was based on the brainchildren of his assistants. Since this commonly happens in the scientific field, it is not surprising it should also happen in business and in politics. Many Germans have told me that Einstein stole all his ideas from his pupils. There is a young man in the pub who tells me he wrote all the Beatles songs and received not a penny in royalties. Even Sikorski’s much-vaunted helicopter experiments were preceded by the Cornu brothers’ successful French attempt of 1907: but you did not read much about them in the Kiev newspapers two years later. In the worlds of science and politics it is the man who has the most luck, seeks the most publicity, meets the right people, who gives his name to cities and to great companies. I am reconciled to obscurity, but at least these memoirs will set the record straight.
Obscurity seemed impossible to the boy who told Esmé of his plans for the future; of his visions of great, elegant skyscraper blocks rising above the ruins of the slums; towns with moving pavements and covered streets, with aerial transport, food dispensers, genetic selectors ensuring that all children were in perfect health. We were developing the technology. That was how we should use it.
Esmé for her part talked of when she would be old enough to become a nurse. ‘It will be too late, soon,’ she said, ‘the War will be over.’
‘Pray for that.’ What would she do in the event of peace? She would still go into nursing, ‘I want to do something useful with my life.’
I squeezed her hand in gratitude as we sat on a bench in the winter sunshine, looking down over Babi gorge, ‘In the meantime you are keeping a brave woman alive. I owe everything to Mother, Esmé.’
‘When one only has a single parent, one appreciates them so much more,’ she said.
I agreed. She had become sad, thinking of her dead father.
‘He was a brave man,’ I said.
She became bleak. ‘Brave enough. But will there be justice in this clean, scientific world of yours, Maxim?’
‘Justice is a scarce commodity,’ I said.
She smiled. ‘You could be a great teacher.’
I had considered this, ‘I might decide to run my own laboratory, with assistants to whom I can pass on my knowledge.’
‘I shall become your resident nurse.’
‘We shall each do our best, in our different spheres, to improve the world.’
It was rare for me to make the mistake of believing knowledge could be used in the service of sentiment. It is no more the job of the nun to be ‘of the world’ than it is for a pure scientist to design more efficient soup-kitchens. It is mere intellectual arrogance to believe that science can cure human ills. But in Esmé’s company I was often temporarily infected with her own feminine sentimentality. And I am the first to admit that without such creatures, the world would be an even less tolerable one than it is.
On my birthday I received suitable gifts from my little family. Books, pencils, paper, a rare German pencil-sharpener and a proper attaché-case, all of which I should need in Petersburg. My mother wept and coughed and lay on her couch, looking at me through sleepy eyes and begging Esmé and Captain Brown to tell me to be sure I did not fall in with Reds and loose women.
I told her they were very strict at the Polytechnic Institute. I had looked it up on the map. It was not even in Petersburg proper.
The next day I had a letter and some silver roubles from Odessa. My uncle told me to make the most of myself in Peter, to meet the right people and to make a good impression on my professors. He told me I should be known there as Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff and he enclosed a passport in that name. My own photograph was on it. This was a shock. Because of the War he had evidently had to pull strings, but I had not expected to enter the Institute under an assumed name. I might have to use this name for the rest of my life. It would be on all my diplomas. I had not at this time become used to the idea of changing names as one changed clothes. The Revolution soon familiarised me with that particular procedure. I knew from Shura that many people had identity papers in different names. Some had changed a dozen times. But these were criminals, radicals, who were forced to do such things. The passport was authentic. Uncle Semya reminded me to let my mother know the name I would be using.
