In Search of the Miraculous

In all those schools which make use of this method experiments are carried

out only when they are really necessary and only under the direction of

experienced and competent men who can foresee all results and adopt

measures against possible undesirable consequences. The substances used in

these schools are not merely 'narcotics' as you call them, although many of

them are prepared from such drugs as opium, hashish, and so on. Besides

schools in which such experiments are carried out, there are other schools

which use these or

similar substances, not for experiment or study but to attain definite desired

results, if only for a short time. Through a skillful use of such substances a

man can be made very clever or very strong, for a certain time. Afterwards,

of course, he dies or goes mad, but this is not taken into consideration. Such

schools also exist. So you see that we must speak very cautiously about

schools. They may do practically the same things but the results will be

totally different."

I was deeply interested in everything G. said. I felt in it some new points

of view, unlike any I had met with before.

He invited me to go with him to a house where some of his pupils were to

forgather.

We took a carriage and went in the direction of Sokolniki.

On the way G. told me how the war had interfered with many of his plans;

many of his pupils had gone with the first mobilization; very expensive

apparatus and instruments ordered from abroad had been lost. Then he spoke

of the heavy expenditure connected with his work, of the expensive

apartments he had taken, and to which, I gathered, we were going. He said,

further, that his work interested a number of well-known people in

Moscow—"professors" and "artists," as he expressed it. But when I asked him who, precisely, they were, he did not give me a single name.

"I ask," I said, "because I am a native of Moscow; and, besides, I have

worked on newspapers here for ten years so that I know more or less

everybody."

G. said nothing to this.

We came to a large empty flat over a municipal school, evidently belonging to teachers of this school. I think it was in the place of the former Red Pond.

There were several of G.'s pupils in the flat: three or four young men and

two ladies both of whom looked like schoolmistresses. I had been in such

flats before. Even the absence of furniture confirmed my idea, since

municipal schoolmistresses were not given furniture. With this thought it

somehow became strange to look at G. Why had he told me that tale about

the enormous expenditure connected with this flat? In the first place the flat

was not his, in the second place it was rent free, and thirdly it could not have

cost more than ten pounds a month. There was something so singular in this

obvious bluff that I thought at that time it must mean something.

It is difficult for me to reconstruct the beginning of the conversation with

G.'s pupils. Some of the things I heard surprised me. I tried to discover in

what their work consisted, but they gave me no direct answers, insisting in

some cases on a strange and, to me, unintelligible terminology.

They suggested reading the beginning of a story written, so they told me,

by one of G.'s pupils, who was not in Moscow at the time.

Naturally, I agreed to this; and one of them began to read aloud from a

manuscript. The author described his meeting and acquaintance with G. My

attention was attracted by the fact that the story began with the author

coming across the same notice of the ballet, "The Struggle of the

Magicians," which I myself had seen in The Voice of Moscow, in the winter.

Further—this pleased me very much because I expected it—at the first

meeting the author certainly felt that G. put him as it were on the palm of his

hand, weighed him, and put him back. The story was called "Glimpses of

Truth" and was evidently written by a man without any literary experience.

But in spite of this it produced an impression, because it contained

indications of a system in which I felt something very interesting though I

could neither name nor formulate it to myself, and some very strange and

unexpected ideas about art which found in me a very strong response.

I learned later on that the author of the story was an imaginary person and

that the story had been begun by two of G.'s pupils who were present at the

reading, with the object of giving an exposition of his ideas in a literary

form. Still later I heard that the idea of the story belonged to G. himself.

The reading of what constituted the first chapter stopped at this point. G.

listened attentively the whole time. He sat on a sofa, with one leg tucked

beneath him, drinking black coffee from a tumbler, smoking and sometimes

glancing at me. I liked his movements, which had a great deal of a kind of

feline grace and assurance; even in his silence there was something which

distinguished him from others. I felt that I would rather have met him, not in

Moscow, not in this flat, but in one of those places from which I had so