The Silent Prophet

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On New Year’s Eve 1926–1927 I was sitting with some friends and acquaintances in Moscow in room Number Nine of the Bolshaia Moskovskaia Hotel. For some of those present this private mode of celebrating the New Year was the only one possible. Their views would clearly have permitted them a public expression of festive spirit. But certain considerations had to be taken into account, and to be feared. They could mix neither with foreigners nor with the local citizens and although each and every one of them had functioned long and often as an observer to further an idea, he rightly shunned becoming himself the object of observation.

In my room there floated the haze of cigarette smoke familiar to those acquainted with the novels of Russian literature. I opened intermittently the small transom of the window — my guests had restrained me from opening the entire window — and presently the door, which led into the corridor and through which entered the sounds of music, voices, glasses, footsteps, song.

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