‘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.
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.
