‘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!’
Whether it was the work I had been doing, or the effects of the cocaine, I was, I admit, inspired by Kolya’s words. He said in poetry all that I had been thinking. He inspired me to dreams of even greater intensity. I saw us, the Poet and the Scientist, changing the whole world. Those marching Futurists were only bragging journeymen. They had little in common with this wonderful individual.
‘I should like to read your poems,’ I said.
Kolya laughed. ‘You can’t read them. Sit down. Drink some more absinthe. I burned all my poems this winter. They were simply not up to standard. They were in imitation of Baudelaire and Laforgue. There was no point in adding second-rate verse to the mountain already immersing our city. I shall wait for the War to end, or for the Revolution to come, or for Armageddon or the Apocalypse. Then I shall write again.’
He seated himself upon a great divan in the centre of the room and reached for the bottle. ‘Would you have the last of the wine?’
‘If there is no more ...’ I put a hand over the top of my glass.
‘Enjoy it. Why shouldn’t you? If this war continues, if the Apocalypse really comes, then we’ll have no more absinthe anyway, merely the wormwood itself, if we are lucky.’ A black sleeve extended towards me, a black glove clutched the neck of the Terminus flask. Yellow liquid poured up to the rim of the slender goblet. ‘Drink it, my scientist friend. To the poetry you will inspire.’
‘And to the science you will inspire.’ I was fired by his mood. I drank.
Hippolyte vanished and, tut-tutting, emerged, it seemed only moments later, in a fairly ordinary, if somewhat dandified outfit, and said that he was ‘going down to the
‘Whenever you like, my dear!’ Kolya was casual. ‘Dimitri Mitrofanovitch and myself will be discussing matters of science.’
Hippolyte scowled, hesitated again, then left.
A moment passed. He was back. ‘I might go on somewhere,’ he said.
‘Just as you like, Hippolyte.’ Kolya turned questioningly to me. ‘Would you like to visit
I suspected
Kolya said to Hippolyte, ‘We’ll see you there in an hour or two.’
The door slammed. Kolya sighed. ‘Beauty is cheap in Peter, these days, Dimka. But it seems always to be accompanied by bad manners. It’s a pleasure to meet a scholar for a change.’
I was fascinated by this black-clad ghost, this Russian Hamlet. I had relaxed completely. Doubtless the absinthe made me reveal, almost at once, the nature of my quest.
‘You are a sniffer!’ He was amused. ‘Well, well, the good things of life are spreading amongst the people. The Revolution is with us, after all!’
‘I should point out,’ I said with some dignity, ‘that I am a rather unusual student at the Polytechnic, and an unpopular one. My experience of life has not been entirely of the schoolroom.’
He apologised with grave good manners. ‘And where were you, before the Polytechnic?’
‘In Kiev,’ I said, ‘where I flew my own machine.’
‘And so young? Where’s the aeroplane now?’
‘It was not an aeroplane as such. It was an entirely new design. It was reported in the papers.’
‘And you flew to Peter?’
I laughed, ‘I crashed. I still need time to perfect the design. But perfect it I shall.’
‘And after that? Where did you go?’
‘To Odessa for a while. I had already gained some practical engineering experience. In Odessa I developed a liking for cocaine and the pleasures of the flesh.’
I must have seemed a little naive to him, but he did not show it.
