As I stood at the window I saw a shadow appear at the far end of the corridor and a young woman, wearing a red and green robe, with her dark hair bound on top of her head, came walking slowly towards me. She was a little older than me, round-faced and pleasant, with oval brown eyes and large even teeth. She smiled at me. ‘You can’t sleep?’
‘I seemed to be stifling.’ I nodded back at my coupé.
‘I’m travelling with my awful old nanyana,’ she whispered. ‘She’s a peasant, really, though she’s from Scotland. But she has all those habits. Ugh!’
‘Habits?’
‘She speaks in English all the time. In her sleep.’
‘Scarcely a peasant habit.’ I was amused.
‘In England, surely, it is?’
This encounter began to seem as illogical as the one I had just escaped. ‘They have peasants in England,’ I told her. ‘Although they are more refined than ours.’
‘You have been to England?’
‘I am familiar with that country.’ This was true. I owed my familiarity primarily to
I had impressed her. ‘This is the first time I have travelled. We are from Moldavia, you know. We have some land there. A house. The country is very pretty. Do you know it?’
I regretted that I did not.
‘You’d love it. But it’s dull. Father retired there. Before that, he had travelled, too. In England. That’s where he found my nanyana. She’s not a proper Scottish governess. She looked after me because Mother was frequently in poor health.’
‘Your mother is dead?’
‘Certainly not. She’s as fit as a fiddle. She had anaemia. Now she’s cured. She rides a great deal. She has started an English hunt. With dogs and horses and red coats and all that. But I think you need a different sort of fox.’
‘The English fox is a wary little beast,’ I said. ‘And much admired.’
She drew a pendant-watch from her bosom, it’s gone midnight.’
I was anxious to keep her company. ‘You are travelling on from Peter?’ I asked.
‘No. I’m to go to university there.’
‘At the Koyorsy?’ I had familiarised myself with most of the other seats of learning in the capital. The Koyorsy was for women.
‘Yes!’ She was delighted.
‘I am also a student,’ I said. ‘I shall be at the Polytechnic. Although rather younger than most, I have a special medal.’
She was not impressed. Many people in those days saw a Polytechnic as a rather low-grade sort of academy. Science and engineering are still not regarded, in many walks of life, as suitable subjects of study for gentle-people.
‘The War,’ I said, ‘requires new kinds of weapons. And new kinds of men to develop them. That is why I have been called to Peter.’
She giggled. ‘You’re a boy.’
‘I have already flown my own aeroplane,’ I told her. ‘Perhaps you read about it last year? In Kiev. I flew for some minutes in an entirely new type of machine which I designed myself. It was in all the papers.’
‘I remember something about a new kind of flying machine. It was in Kiev, yes.’
‘You are speaking to its inventor.’
I had won her over. She said with some coyness, ‘I can’t recall your name ...’
This, of course, was difficult. I hesitated.
She raised a hand over her mouth, ‘I am so sorry. You are not allowed, perhaps ... The War?’
I bowed, ‘I am not at this point my own master. I can only give you the name by which I am known in the world.’
‘Spies?’
‘There is some slight chance of it, mademoiselle.’
‘My name is Marya Varvorovna Vorotinsky.’
I bowed. ‘You may call me Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff. It is the name under which I will go in St Petersburg.’
She was delighted by the romance. Quite without deliberate deception I had learned how to appeal to a lady’s sense of mystery. I had turned my whole dilemma to my advantage, with this young girl, at least.
‘Will you be able to visit me in Peter?’ she asked.
‘If you will write down your address, I shall try.’
‘Wait here.’
I waited, my imagination making designs in the frosted windows, my breath adding a further layer to the cotton-wool whiteness surrounding us. Soon she returned with a piece of paper torn from the fly-leaf of a book. I accepted the paper, bowed, and put it into the pocket of my dressing-gown.
‘You must not feel obliged,’ she said, ‘to visit. But I have hardly any friends, you know, in Peter. I hope to make some, of course, at the Koyorsy.’
‘I will do my utmost,’ I told her, ‘to make sure that you are not lonely.’
‘You will be very busy.’
‘Naturally. However, a beautiful, intelligent lady is forever irresistible.’ I flattered her partly from natural courtesy (I have always had a sense of courtesy towards the fair sex) and partly because I remembered Shura’s advice to make contacts with young ladies whose fathers could finance my inventions. This motive might seem ignoble, but in one sense it was absolutely noble. I was prepared to sacrifice myself to further my work in the field of science.
She smiled as I kissed her hand. ‘Nanyana Buchanan is awake,’ she said. ‘She heard me tearing the paper. I must go.’
‘We shall meet again.’
‘I hope so’ - she dropped her voice - ‘M’sieu “Kryscheff”.’
