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It was then that she threw herself into one of the deep armchairs and let her kimono fall open. Her nipples were rouged. Her breasts were tiny. She had male genitals. It was a boy made-up as a girl. I became confused, then the cocaine helped me rally myself and I remained superficially unimpressed.

The creature drew his kimono about him. He said off-handedly, ‘I don’t think Seryozha and Kolya are on speaking terms. Are you a friend of Seryozha’s, then?’

‘We met on the train from Kiev.’

‘You’re not the little yid he tried to seduce?’

I smiled and shook my head. ‘That must have been on another trip. Is he staying here?’

‘He was. There was a row.’

‘He’s moved?’

‘Well, he isn’t here. What did you want him for?’

‘I have a snuff-box belonging to him.’

‘Any snuff in it?’

‘There was never any snuff in it.’

The youth gave a knowing sneer. Evidently this was a sophisticated ‘sniffer’. It was no part of my plan to aggravate a person who could help me find what, in all languages, cocaine users once called ‘snow’.

I said, ‘My name is Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff.’

‘You’re from the South.’

I modified my accent to give it the sharp, Petersburg sound. ’May I have the honour of asking your name?’ I bowed with the sardonic courtesy one might extend to a lady of easy virtue. This pleased him. He stood up, making a gesture which could have been an attempt to curtsey. ‘Enchanté. You can call me Hippolyte.’

‘You are also connected with the ballet?’

‘Connected, yes.’ Hippolyte giggled. ‘A drink? We have everything. Champagne? Cognac? Absinthe?’ Absinthe had just been banned in France.

‘I’ll take absinthe.’ I had never had it and was determined to sample it before the apartment’s owner returned. He might be more restrained in his hospitality.

With another artificially sinuous flirt of the hips, Hippolyte moved to a large cabinet and poured me some absinthe. ‘Water? Sugar?’

‘As it comes.’

Hippolyte shrugged. He presented me with a long-stemmed narrow glass in which yellow liquid shone. I do not believe I let my pleasure show on my face as I sipped the bitter drink, but from that moment I had found a new vice. It is one which, sadly, became harder and harder to indulge. Hippolyte was free with the absinthe. He brought me the bottle. It was called ‘Terminus’. Modern readers will not remember the old advertisements which might only have appeared in good Russian shops. I never saw one, I think, in Paris. ‘Je bois à tes succès, ma chère,’ says the Harlequin to his fin-de-siècle ‘Mucha’ lady, ‘et à ceux de l’Absinthe Terminus la seule bienfaisante.’

I settled patiently to wait to see what would happen. The worst would be an angry host who would give me some idea of Seryozha’s whereabouts before he dismissed me. I could also go to the Little Theatre in the Fontanka where the Ballet Foline was performing some piece of nonsense by that Grand Deceiver, Stravinski. We were entering an age of brilliant conjurors posing as creators. They took the techniques of the travelling sideshow and transformed them into art. In time they allowed every ’sensitive’ young person to become an artist: all that was required was a gift for self-advertisement and the persuasive voice of a Jewish market-spieler.

Hippolyte inspected his kohl and rouge. The silver frame of the mirror was, like almost everything here, fashioned to resemble naked nymphs or satyrs.

The door opened and the master of the house entered. He was very tall. He wore a huge tawny wolfskin coat. I was immediately admiring and envious. One would not wish to give such a coat up, even at the height of summer.

The wolfskin was thrown off. ‘Kolya’ was dressed entirely in black, with black broad-brimmed hat, black shirt, black tie, black gloves, black boots and, of course, black trousers, waistcoat and frockcoat. His hair was pure white, either dyed or natural. His eyes had that reddish tinge associated with albinism, but I think overindulgence and a natural melancholy had created the effect. His skin was pale as the snowdrops in the hands of Nevski flower-girls. When he saw me he drew back a step in mock surprise. With his black, silver-headed cane in one long-fingered hand, he smiled with such compassionate irony that, were I a girl, I should at once have been his.

‘My dear!’ he said in French to Hippolyte. ‘But what is this little grey soldier doing in our house?’

‘He came for Seryozha,’ said Hippolyte in Russian. ‘His name’s Dimitri Alexeivitch something...’

‘I am known as Dimitri Mitrofanovitch Kryscheff.’ I bowed. ‘I called to return this to M. Tsipliakov.’ I held out the snuff-box.

With an elegant movement of his arm (I could see whom Hippolyte imitated), Kolya plucked the box from my palm. He snapped it open. ‘Empty!’

‘It is, your excellency.’

I had flattered and amused this magnifico.

‘You are a friend of Seryozha’s?’

‘An acquaintance. I have been meaning to return the box to him. But my studies interfered.’