Since then, I told him, I had given up such vices and was concentrating on my studies. I mentioned my new problems. I was determined to succeed in spite of all. To this end I had begun to use a stimulant again. My work was proceeding well on all fronts. I had developed theories which would astonish any true scientist. I did not expect them to impress the staid and orthodox hacks currently teaching at the Institute. I had hoped to get more cocaine from Sergei Andreyovitch.
‘You are not a friend of Seryozha’s?’
‘An acquaintance, that is all.’
‘So your interest is in “la neige” rather than the place from which it falls?’ He smiled kindly.
‘Exactly.’
‘Well, it will be nothing to find you some. Particularly with the War on. God knows how they can supply all the warriors, poets and scientists with what they need to get them through this conflict and famine. You’re not interested in morphine?’
‘I’ve never indulged myself with the distillation of poppies. The world of dreams is not an escape for me. I intend to impose my dreams upon the world.’
He was pleased by this turn of phrase. He poured me the dregs of the absinthe. ‘I hope you will not disapprove of me if I say I have injected the occasional dose. When I have needed to retreat from society. The drugs can be complementary, you know.’
I did not fully realise then what I know today: cocaine is a stimulant, but morphine is a killer. I have never made use of depressants. It is not a very large step from the world of sleeping hallucinations to the cold world of Death; from Heaven on Earth, as it were, to the genuine article. The road away from Hell, as the Poles say, is the road that leads there.
I sipped the last of the absinthe. ‘I must point out that I do not use the drug for pleasure. I need it to keep my brain alive and my body working.’
‘Are you not afraid you’ll go mad with so much work?’
‘It is possible, but I have the necessary control.’
‘Inspiration and madness are very similar, I think.’ He crossed to the cabinet where he kept his drinks and opened a porcelain dish whose lid was in the shape of a white pierrot peering at a half-moon. ‘I have some here. I think it is good quality. These days one must be careful. So many customers. As a consequence, so many rogues who will dilute the crystals with anything which comes to hand. You must be careful. In Odessa, before the War, you would not have known such dangers, eh?’
‘There are a few crooks in Odessa,’ I joked.
‘So I have heard.’
He was bringing me alive again, as Shura had brought me alive. More. For Kolya was a sophisticated man of letters, a theatre-critic, a writer of essays in the thick journals, a man of taste, dignity and discrimination, who recognised intelligence and creativity. I was to discover that he saw himself more as a publicist of talent than as a talent in his own right. He was one of those great and necessary people who encourage others to aspire to do their best, whatever that best may be.
His whole name was Count Nicholai Feodorovitch Petroff and he was related to the famous Mikhishevski family, one of the chief aristocratic Petersburg clans, whose ancestral estates were in my native Ukraine. Nicholai Feodorovitch had visited rural Ukraine occasionally but had no experience of the cities or of that particular shore. He knew the Crimean coast well, however, it is even warmer. ‘We should go there,’ he said, ‘this summer. If the War ends.’ I enjoyed the fantasy. I asked if he had not stayed even briefly in Kiev or Odessa. He laughed, ‘I find them both attractive as ideas, Dimka, but that is all. The dark, romantic Jew has always intrigued me as a character, you know. I have every sympathy with Shylock. Haven’t you? Or even poor Fagin, who is the liveliest of Dickens’s characters? Or the noble Isaac in
I was familiar with none of these English books then. Of course I had seen reference to them in my set of
