In Search of the Miraculous

ebony with a Caucasian silver handle —he was carrying and one of us bent down,

picked it up, and gave it to him. G. walked on for a few steps, then turned to us and

said:

"That was astrology. Do you understand? You all saw me drop the stick. Why did

one of you pick it up? Let each of you speak for himself."

One said he had not seen G. drop the stick as he was looking another way. The

second said he had noticed that G. had not dropped the stick accidentally as happens

when a stick gets caught in something, but that he had intentionally loosened his hand

and let the stick fall. This had excited his curiosity and he had waited to see what

would happen next. The third said he saw G. drop the stick, but was very absorbed in

thinking of astrology, particularly trying to remember what G. said once before, and

did not pay sufficient attention to the stick. The fourth saw the stick fall and thought

of picking it up, but at that moment the other picked up the stick and gave it to G. The

fifth said he saw the stick fall and then he saw himself picking it up and giving it to

G.

G. smiled as he listened to us.

"This is astrology," he said. "In the same situation one man sees and does one thing, another—another thing, a third—a third thing, and so on. And each one acted

according to his type. Observe people and yourselves in this way and then perhaps we

will afterwards talk of a different astrology."

The time passed by very quickly. The short Essentuki summer was drawing to a

close. We had begun to think of the winter and to make a variety of plans.

And suddenly everything changed. For a reason that seemed to me to be accidental

and which was the result of friction between certain members of our small group G.

announced that he was dispersing the whole group and stopping all work. At first we

simply did not believe him, thinking he was putting us to a test. And when he said he

was going to the Black Sea coast with Z. alone, all excepting a few of us who had to

return to Moscow or Petersburg announced that they would follow him wherever he

went. G. consented to this but he said that we must look after ourselves and that there

would be no work no matter how much we counted on it.

All this surprised me very much. I considered the moment most inappropriate for

"acting," and if what G. said was serious, then why had the whole business been started? During this period nothing new had appeared in us. And if G. had started

work with us such as we were, then why was he stopping it now? This altered nothing

for me materially. I had decided to pass the winter in the Caucasus in any case. But it

changed a good many things for some of the other members of our group who were

still slightly uncertain and made the difficulty for them insuperable. And I have to

confess that my confidence in G. began to waver from this moment. What the matter

was and what particularly provoked me is difficult for me to define even now. But the

fact is that from this moment there began to take place in me a separation between G.

himself and his ideas. Until then I had not separated them.

At the end of August I at first followed G. to Tuapse and from there went to

Petersburg with the intention of bringing back some things;

unfortunately I had to leave behind all my books. I thought at the time that it would

be risking very much to take them to the Caucasus. But in Petersburg, of course,

everything was lost.

Chapter Eighteen

I WAS kept in St. Petersburg longer than I had thought to be and I only left there on

the 15th of October, a week before the bolshevik revolution. It was quite impossible

to stay there any longer. Something disgusting and clammy was drawing near. A

sickly tension and the expectation of something inevitable could be felt in everything.

Rumors were creeping about, each one more absurd and stupid than the other.

Nobody understood anything. Nobody could imagine what was coming later on. The

"temporary government," having vanquished Kornilov, conducted the most correct

negotiations with the bolsheviks who openly showed they did not care a hang for the

"socialist ministers" and tried only to gain time. The Germans for some reason did not march upon St. Petersburg although the front was open. People now thought of them

as saviors both from the "temporary government" and from the bolsheviks. I did not share the hopes based upon the Germans because, in my opinion, what was taking

place in Russia had to a considerable extent got out of hand.

In Tuapse there was still comparative calm. Some kind of soviet was sitting in the

country house of the Shah of Persia but plunderings had not yet begun. G. settled

down at a fair distance from Tuapse to the south a little over fifteen miles from Sochi.

He hired a country house there overlooking the sea, bought a pair of horses, and lived

with a small company of people. Altogether about ten persons were gathered there.

I went there too. It was a wonderful place, full of roses, with a view of the sea on