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Next we tried making red ink. It left indelible stains on hands, clothes, walls, and the dirty-white coat of my dog Jack, but when put to paper it displayed a watery quality we could not explain. Our written lines faded and died out and we began to think we must have discovered by chance a “sympathetic” ink; unfortunately it did not completely fade out.

The dazzling example of Pavlik’s uncle made us obdurately pursue a science foreign to our very natures. We ruthlessly broke test-tubes and wasted chemicals; retorts exploded like bombs over our Bunson burner, throwing the tenants into a panic, until at last Pavlik had the courage to declare: “Enough of this! All we do is turn retorts into ground glass.” With that we dropped experimenting in chemistry.

We took up physics, the science of the future. We attended lectures by famous physicists, tried to understand the theory of relativity under the encouraging eye of Einstein himself, whose photograph we pinned up on the wall, we argued about the quantum theory without understanding the first thing about it, we sweated over books by Knowlton, Eddington, Bragg, and at the same time we could hardly cope with the physics covered in school because neither of us were any good at mathematics. We were brought to our senses by none other than Pasternak. In his Safe ConductI read of the tortures the future poet endured in his efforts to become a composer. He did not have a perfect ear for music, and when he discovered that Scriabin, whose genius he worshipped, also did not have a perfect ear and hid the fact as something deeply shameful, Pasternak gave up his efforts in the field of music. When I told Pavlik this in meaningful tones, he did not at first get the point.”Mathematics is as essential for a modern physicist,” I explained, “as a perfect ear is for a composer.”

“Right you are,” he exclaimed and instantly yanked the plug out of the Wheatstone’s bridge he was assembling.”To hell with physics !”—adding, after a moment’s reflection: “And yet Scriabin became Scriabin without a perfect ear!”
The answer was that Scriabin could not live without composing and Pasternak could. And we could live without physics.

In a similar way we spent incalculable time and energy, but not much love on: geography—studying maps, and globes, reading books about Livingston, Stanley, Miklukho-Maklai and Przhevalsky, making excursions about Moscow, for the sake of learning the names of all places; on botany—collecting herbariums with their delicate odor of dried herbs, flowers and leaves and pooling our funds to buy a weak microscope; electricity, resulting in innumerable blownfuses and one sizable fire, which produced a red fire-engine, the frightening ringing of fire-bells, the unrolling of a hose that first was flat, then bloated like a boa-constrictor, and bustling firemen in shiny brass helmets.
The recreation we chose as a means of resting from our hard labors cost us no less exertion.”Time out!” Pavlik would cry, and at the same moment place a billiard cue, or a chair, or a broom, or even a flower-pot on his nose. I would follow suit.

We were bent on developing our balancing powers after having seen a famous Austrian juggler and magician perform at the Music Hall. Standing on a rope that was not drawn taut, he balanced on the end of his flat nose a five-foot steel rod with a tray on top holding a boiling samovar and a tea service.”We could learn to do that,” said Pavlik. The declaration sent cold chills down my spine.

I knew Pavlik was as good as his wor
d. My ribs and a slight concussion of the brain had taught me this. When awards were made to the first girl parachute-jumpers, Pavlik resolved that male honor must be defended by having us execute a jump from his kitchen window with two umbrellas. Happily it was his kitchen window that male honor dictated and not mine, one storey higher.