‘It’s not true, mother. Uncle Semya has given me the names of his agents. They are a respectable English firm. From Messrs Green and Grunman I’ll draw my allowance and I can go to them any time I am in difficulties.’
‘Petersburg is the centre of revolutionary schemes. Everybody knows that. Your father was never political until he went there. They started all the trouble. The arrests. The pogroms. It’s easy for them. They’re the sons and daughters of the rich. If they’re caught, they get exiled and have to go to live in Switzerland. But we get shot.’
‘I shan’t get shot, mother.’
‘You must promise to do nothing to put yourself under suspicion,’ Esmé begged me.
‘I’ve no time for Reds.’ I laughed at their fears. ‘Cadets or Social Revolutionaries or Anarchists. I hate them all.’ In those days the Social Revolutionaries, as opposed to Lenin’s Social Democrats, were regarded as by far the most fanatical radicals. Lenin, needless to say, hiding away in some luxury chalet, had never been heard of by anyone. It was only later, confident that his dirty work had been done for him, that he was paid to come back to Russia by the Germans and claim the Revolution as his own. People like that exist in all walks of life. They let the real workers exhaust themselves, then stroll in to take the credit.
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.
I could not speak of this at once either to her or to Esmé. I put on my English topcoat and wandered out towards the park. Here, on the hill, I thought the problem over. I could see how it had all come about, of course. With the War on, places at the Polytechnic were hard to come by. Many Ukrainians wished to study in Petersburg. Obviously there were too many applicants. Presumably this Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff had given up his place so that I could go. Possibly he had died. He might have joined the army. There were a dozen possibilities. If I wished to learn I should have to learn under a pseudonym. It would make no difference to the quality of that learning. Perhaps later I could admit my real name and get my diplomas properly inscribed.
I have hated hypocrisy and deception all my life, yet all my life I have been victim to it. That is the terrible irony. Here I was having to live a lie not because I had done anything wrong, but because my Uncle Semya had been willing to go to any lengths to ensure me a good education. I had learned that the world is made up of lies.
I informed my mother. She was not surprised. She had had some hint, she told me, in Uncle Semya’s recent letters. Kryscheff was a good, respectable name. It had a ring to it.
I think that she was distressed, however. It could have been part of her general distress. In some ways it was bad for her that I had remained so long at home. Even Esmé was of the opinion that although my mother’s spirits and health had improved her nerves had deteriorated.
On my last evening, Esmé and I went for a walk. I told her that I was to pose as Dimitri Mitrofanovitch and that she must keep the secret of my real name. That secret was my parting present to her. She smiled and said she would treasure it. She was not especially puzzled by this sudden change of identity, either.
We held hands, like brother and sister, and Esmé reassured me that she would look after Mother, that I must dedicate myself to becoming a great engineer. If I became famous as Kryscheff, what did it matter? My mother would still be proud and I would still be able to look after her.