Aetherial Worlds

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My grandfather Aleksey Tolstoy, a famous Russian writer, attended the Saint Petersburg Technological Institute in his youth, starting in 1901, thinking he would like to become an engineer. But he never became one. He described to my father how difficult it was for him studying there.

Here is his professor by the blackboard, addressing the students: “Let’s picture a cigarlike object….” And that’s it! My young grandpa is in a trance. He is picturing something cigarlike… he sees a cigar…. You need to clip the end of it before you can smoke it…. Golden cutters carefully trim away the dry brown leaves—what wonderful aroma wafts from quality Havana tobacco!… Out of nowhere appears a balloon-shaped brandy snifter full of heavy, red-brown cognac, casting golden reflections…. Oh, to grasp the glass in your palm, warming it… the undulating golden flickers… the bluish smoke… you inhale it, you tap the cigar to break off the ash. It’s dusk, the heavy drapes drawn back. Outside, through the window, there is a crepuscular early evening on snowy Saint Petersburg streets; a sleigh pulled by a courser silently whooshes by—who’s rushing, and where? To the theater? To a romantic rendezvous?

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