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At the time, helped by Kolya’s absinthe and his enthusiasm for what he called Modern Experience, I developed at least an ability to parrot the names of their pantheon: Stanislavski, Diaghileff, Kandinski, Malevitch and Chagall, Blok, Mandelstam, Akhmatova, Rabinovitch and others. Kolya, of course, could quote them all, could name pictures, even hum tunes if tunes they were. He had enjoyed the company of Sergei Andreyovitch largely because of the latter’s ability to interpret modern music. ‘But like most ballet-dancers he had only a limited imagination. You will find that a dancer has about six things he or she can do well: a good leap, perhaps, or a pas-de-deux or perhaps one of those writhing movements they favour so much. And they do them over and over again, in every ballet, whether “free” or choreographed with rigid discipline.’ I had to take his word for it. Ballet is another art which has never much attracted me. My experience of ballet-dancers has not been particularly happy. Their egos are such that they are quickly gratified with praise. Their talent becomes as stultified as their muscles if they do not exercise. There were a good many dancers to be found at The Scarlet Tango.

Later, we went on, full of absinthe, arm-in-arm, to another, less impressive place called The Wandering Dog, where Kolya had friends with whom he seemed more intimate and relaxed. My own recollections are vague. I had become almost incapably drunk. Doubtless I made a horrible fool of myself. I recall a small, not very pleasant young Jew lisping lines about Ossian and Scotland, moon and blood. Though in Russian, they might as well have been English, they were so derivative. A few lines remain with me, for they are the lines which always come out whenever I am inebriated (which is rarely, these days):

If ever I was going to develop a taste for modern poetry, I would have done so in Kolya’s company. Very late into the first night I found myself on the doorstep of my lodgings watching a carriage jogging off back towards the twinkle of the city while I fumbled for the bell. I was admitted by a desolate Madame Zinovieff who exclaimed about the state of my uniform and then, realising I was drunk, cried out that she had betrayed me and let me fall into bad company. I explained to her I had been dining with a famous Count and this, of course, mollified her a little. When I could not recall his name, she began to mutter and complain. She was not angry with me, but she had promised Mr Parrot I would come to no harm. She was responsible for my moral welfare. I assured her this was a unique occasion. I had had to accept the Count’s invitation. It would have been bad manners to have done otherwise.