In Search of the Miraculous

into the train. He had changed during those few seconds. It is very difficult to describe what the difference was, but on the platform he had been an ordinary man like anyone

else, and from the carriage a man of quite a different order was looking at us, with a

quite exceptional importance and dignity in every look and movement, as though he

had sud-

denly become a ruling prince or a statesman of some unknown kingdom to which he

was traveling and to which we were seeing him off.

Some of our party could not at the time clearly realize what was happening but they

felt and experienced in an emotional way something that was outside the ordinary run

of phenomena. All this lasted only a few seconds. The third bell followed the second

bell almost immediately, and the train moved out.

I do not remember who was the first to speak of this "transfiguration" of G. when we were left alone, and then it appeared that we had all seen it, though we had not all

equally realized what it was while it was taking place. But all, without exception, had

felt something out of the ordinary.

G. had explained to us earlier that if one mastered the art of plastics one could

completely alter one's appearance. He had said that one could become beautiful or

hideous, one could compel people to notice one or one could become actually

invisible.

What was this? Perhaps it was a case of "plastics."

But the story is not yet over. In the carriage with G. there traveled A. (a well-known

journalist) who was at that time being sent away from Petersburg (this was just before

the revolution). We who were seeing G. off, were standing at one end of the carriage while at the other end stood a group seeing A. off.

I did not know A. personally, but among the people seeing him off were several

acquaintances of mine and even a few friends; two or three of them had been at our

meetings and these were going from one group to the other.

A few days later the paper to which A. was contributing contained an article "On

the Road" in which A. described the thoughts and impressions he had on the way from

Petersburg to Moscow. A strange Oriental had traveled in the same carriage with him,

who, among the bustling crowd of speculators who filled the carriage, had struck him

by his extraordinary dignity and calm, exactly as though these people were for him

like small flies upon whom he was looking from inaccessible heights. A. judged him

to be an "oil king" from Baku, and in conversation with him several enigmatic phrases that he received still further strengthened him in his conviction that here was a man

whose millions grew while he slept and who looked down from on high at bustling

people who were striving to earn a living and to make money.

My fellow traveler kept to himself also; he was a Persian or Tartar, a silent man in a

valuable astrakhan cap; he had a French novel under his arm. He was drinking tea,

carefully placing the glass to cool on the small window-sill table;

he occasionally looked with the utmost contempt at the bustle and noise of those

extraordinary, gesticulating people. And they on their part glanced at him, so it

seemed to me, with great attention, if not with respectful awe. What

interested me most was that he seemed to be of the same southern Oriental type as the

rest of the group of speculators, a flock of vultures flying somewhere into Agrionian

space in order to tear some carrion or other—he was swarthy, with jet-black eyes, and

a mustache like ZeIim-Khan. . . . Why does he so avoid and despise his own flesh and

blood? But to my good fortune he began to speak to me.

"They worry themselves a great deal," he said, his face motionless and sallow, in which the black eyes, polite as in the Oriental, were faintly smiling.

He was silent and then continued:

"Yes, in Russia at present there is a great deal of business out of which a clever

man could make a lot of money." And after another silence he explained:

"After all it is the war. Everyone wants to be a millionaire."

In his tone, which was cold and calm, I seemed to detect a kind of fatalistic and

ruthless boasting which verged on cynicism, and I asked him somewhat bluntly:

"And you?"

"What?" he asked me back.

"Do not you also want this?"

He answered with an indefinite and slightly ironical gesture.

It seemed to me that he had not heard or had not understood and I repeated:

"Don't you make profits too?"

He smiled particularly quietly and said with gravity:

"We always make a profit. It does not refer to us. War or no war it is all the same to us. We always make a profit."

[G. of course meant esoteric work, "the collecting of knowledge" and the collecting of people. But A. understood that he was speaking about "oil."]

It would be curious to talk and become more closely acquainted with the

psychology of a man whose capital depends entirely upon order in the solar system,

which is hardly likely to be upset and whose interests for that reason prove to be

higher than war and peace. . . .

In this way A. concluded the episode of the "oil king."