The Polyglots Read online

  Sylvia hesitated dangerously. ‘I don’t think I want as much as a whole chicken. I’ll have a wing,’ she uttered at last. I breathed freely.

  ‘But the wing is larger than the chicken, madam,’ said the fiend. I longed to ask him to explain that curious mathematical perversion, but a latent sense of gallantry deterred me. I felt like clubbing him. But civilization suffered me to go on suffering in silence. ‘Go away,’ I whispered inwardly. ‘Oh, go away!’ But I sat still, resigned. Only my left eyelid began to twitch a little nervously.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll have the whole chicken, then.’

  Five hundred roubles! £2 10s. for a solitary chicken! My dead grandfather raised his bushy eyebrows. And I already pictured to myself how under the removed restraints of matrimony, probably in my braces and shirt-sleeves, I would exhort my wife to cut down her criminal expenditure.

  There was a variety of ice-creams at ‘popular prices’, but Sylvia ordered a silly dish called ‘Pêche Melba’—and proportionately more expensive.

  ‘What wine, darling?’

  ‘French,’ she said.

  ‘But what kind?’

  ‘White, darling.’

  The waiter bent over the wine list and pointed to the figures which were double those he did not point to. ‘But what kind?’

  ‘Sweet. The sweetest.’

  And, according to the waiter, the sweetest wine concorded with the highest figure on the list.

  How I hate extravagant drinks! How I hate extravagant food! What I really wanted now, if I could have my way, was eggs and bacon and hot milk.

  ‘Yes, that will do,’ she said.

  The waiter, bowing, whipped his napkin under the arm and retired with the air of one who has his work cut out. The band struck up a gay waltz, but in my soul was darkness.

  ‘Whatever is the matter, darling?’ she enquired.

  ‘This soup,’ I said. ‘It’s damned hot. And why should I eat soup?’

  ‘You eat soup at home.’

  ‘At home I eat it—whether it’s there or not—I mean I eat it—I don’t care—because it’s there. Automatically.’

  ‘Well, eat it here as you would at home,’ she said. ‘Automatically.’

  ‘But here—oh, well, never mind.’

  Spreading the table-napkin on her knees, quickly she brought her fingers together and bending a little and closing her eyes, hurriedly mumbled grace to herself. Then she began to eat the soup, dreamily rolling her eyes.

  Meanwhile, the waiter had returned. ‘I regret, madam, but no more whole chickens left. Only the wing.’ And that moment the music seemed exhilarating.

  ‘Cheer up,’ I said.

  ‘In that case,’ said she, slowly recovering from the blow, ‘I’ll have something else.’

  In front of us were two women of twenty. ‘Look at those two grannies there,’ Sylvia called out aloud.

  ‘Sylvia!’

  She smiled a beautiful bashful smile: her mouth was closed, only the lips withdrew and revealed a portion of her teeth. A delicious smile.

  She rolled her eyes and talked a lot to herself, cooing like a dove. I felt she wanted that I should propose marriage to her, but she was shy to ask. ‘Major Beastly,’ she said, and blushed, ‘thought that—that—that we were—you were—my, as it were, in a word, my fiancé.’ And she blushed crimson.

  ‘He’s a good man, Beastly,’ I said. And she blushed again. Sylvia had brought with her to dinner a letter from a man who had proposed to her once in Japan. ‘Read this,’ she said. The letter, which struck a devil-me-care tone, ended with the words: ‘If the price of rubber goes down by one jot, I’m a ruined man.’

  ‘He is in the rubber trade now,’ she explained, ‘somewhere in Canada, some place called Congo or something——’

  ‘You mean in Africa.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘What is he? English? American?’

  ‘A Canadian.’

  ‘Where did you meet him?’

  ‘At the dance in Tokyo.’

  ‘And——?’

  ‘He wanted to marry me.’ She lowered her lashes. ‘He loved me.’

  ‘And you——?’

  She did not answer at once. ‘He was rather like you.’

  ‘No excuse.’

  ‘Only worse.’

  ‘Still less.’

  ‘I wanted somebody to love me. And you were away.’

  ‘And you let him?’

  ‘Only one kiss—one evening.’

  ‘I am not listening! Not listening!’ I cried, covering my face with the table-napkin.

  ‘Darling, listen——’

  ‘No!’

  ‘You’re not listening,’ she laughed. Her laughter was a lovely thing.

  ‘I am not.’

  There was silence except for the sound I made in eating the soup. She beamed at me with her lustrous eyes. ‘Tell me something.’

  ‘You’re Cressid—I mean Chaucer’s, not Shakespeare’s, of course.’

  Like Cressida, she knew neither Chaucer nor Shakespeare.

  ‘When did you see him last?’

  ‘As we left Tokyo. He caught me while maman had turned away. We stood on the platform. He went in—and gave me a cocktail.’

  ‘Did you like it?’

  ‘Yes. He drank and looked at me. “Marry me, Sylvia,” he said. “I will go away, make a lot of money on rubber, and then come back for you.”

  ‘ “I can’t,” I said. “I love another.” ’

  ‘Whom? Whom?’ I asked in alarm.

  ‘You. Or I liked to think so.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘ “The blackguard!” he said.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘I said to him that you used to kiss me without being engaged to me. “The cad!” he said. “I’ll punch his head for him.” I said you wrote very short letters. “The rotter!” he said, “taking a mean advantage of you. The scoundrel!” ’

  ‘That will do,’ I said. ‘I’ll punch his own silly head for him. Who is he, anyhow?’

  ‘ “I’ll break him in two,” he said. “The scoundrel! The blackguard! The cad!” ’

  ‘Now, that will do, that will do. What did you say?’

  ‘ “I love another,” I said. Then I held out my hand to him, like this: “Good-bye, Harry; you will probably never see me again.” And there were tears in his eyes as he turned and walked away quickly.’

  ‘Never mind. Eat your soup, darling.’

  She did not eat but stared in front of her.

  ‘You’re not thinking of him?’ I asked, with suspicion.

  ‘No.’

  ‘H’m!… Who’re you thinking of?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘Only me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She took a few spoonfuls and then asked, ‘Have you by any chance seen in the Daily Mail what the price of rubber——’

  ‘Look here,’ I said, with some ill-controlled impatience, ‘never you mind about the price of rubber. Eat your soup.’

  ‘Oh, when you were away I came across an ideal menu in the Daily Mail. It was supposed to be the ideal dinner for young people just engaged. And I thought then: if Alexander comes back and takes me out to dinner I must have this menu.’

  ‘What was it, darling?’

  She looked unhappy as she strained her memory. ‘I can’t remember,’ she said.

  ‘Well, but some of the dishes surely?’

  She strained her memory and again looked as unhappy as she could be. ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘Well, then, one single dish out of the blooming lot,’ I cajoled. I waited. ‘Out with it!’

  She strained her face again. ‘No, I can’t remember.’

  ‘But this is remarkable,’ I said, laying down my spoon in astonishment.

  ‘Eat your soup, darling, or it will be cold,’ she said.

  I ate, and she ate, and we looked at each other as we ate.

  Yet in a way it was all very nice. Dîner à d
eux. Shaded lights. Her charming profile. Her fragile young body. Her beautiful gown. Her scent of Cœur de Jeanette. And the music was so loud that we shouted at each other as though in a gale at sea. And she laughed. Her laughter was a lovely thing, like dingling silver bells.

  After soup (consommé double) there was lobster mayonnaise; noisettes of veal with tiny carrots and sauté potatoes; omelettes en surprise; and Pêche Melba. The enormous head waiter evidently did not catch our order: the wine on being opened turned out to be red. ‘Have this, it’s just as good,’ I advised.

  ‘No, no. I must have white wine.’

  And it had to be changed.

  She drank one glass.

  ‘Darling, some more wine?’

  ‘No, thank you, darling, I couldn’t. I must have strawberries,’ she added.

  I looked round. We were alone in the room. ‘No, you mustn’t.’ A kiss. ‘This is the dessert.’

  In due course, I ate ice-cream, and an enormous concoction on a silver dish of Pêche Melba costing a fortune arrived for Sylvia. She tasted a little—and left it all.

  ‘Have some more, darling,’ I said, in despair.

  ‘No, thank you, I couldn’t.’

  ‘Will you have liqueur?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you ever had a liqueur before?’

  ‘No. Only a cocktail.’

  ‘What will you have? A crème de menthe?’

  ‘Oh, no!’ She wrinkled her nose—just like her mother. ‘That’s what all the flappers always have.’

  I arched my eyebrows and then looked at her steadfastly straight in the eyes. ‘You’re not a student of Arnold Bennett’s works, surely, are you?’ I asked.

  She listened, blinking. ‘Why, darling?’

  I did not say why.

  ‘I’ll have a cherry brandy, dear.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘And amber cigarettes.’

  ‘I have cigarettes.’ I opened my case.

  ‘No, darling, I want amber ones.’

  ‘All right,’ I sighed, ‘all right, all right.’ And as time drew out and the courses were removed one after the other, we drew closer to each other, and I felt the warmth of her silk-stockinged leg against my own, and fleeting images flew by from that electric touch.

  We ordered coffee. The enormous savage-looking head waiter arrived and said that coffee was no easy matter in these days—that coffee must be made. He put down everything to intervention and the blockade. And so he kept us waiting for our coffee quite three-quarters of an hour, and then when he brought it, upset it all over my lap.

  And while he removed the tablecloth and dried the table he referred disgruntledly to the political situation as an excuse. ‘Things are not what they used to be, sir. Everything is upset. Intervention—blockade. The country is no longer what it used to be. People are upset.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, wiping my soaking knees with the table-napkin, ‘I can quite believe it.’

  I talked eagerly while I settled the bill—partly to conceal my natural suspicion when dealing with waiters—partly to conceal my apprehension at the cost. Still, it could have been even more expensive.

  ‘Let me see,’ Sylvia said. (She would ask to see every restaurant bill when we dined out together. The heavier the bill the greater her pride, the more her enjoyment.)

  She noted the figure—and seemed content.

  We walked a little down the Kitaiskaya before we could hail a cab. On the way Sylvia stopped at a lighted shop window—a jeweller’s. I tried to take her away.

  ‘Wait, darling,’ she said.

  ‘How well these imitation necklaces look!’ I observed dispassionately.

  ‘I prefer these small and short ones: they are more convincing.’ She stared at the glittering objects within.

  ‘Or would you like to buy me a little bead bag instead?’

  My grandfather stirred in his grave.

  ‘Come away from there. Some day—when I am rich. Or let me send you one later. Come away now.’

  ‘Let us go to the cinema,’ she said.

  We hailed a cab, and nestling to each other drove in search of a movie. The north wind blew a wet drizzling snow into my face, and it was dim and dreary out of doors: but in my heart was gladness.

  We settled down in a dark cosy box, and turned our eyes on the screen. Harbin was a speck on the globe of the earth, and I was a speck in Harbin; but that moment my love circumscribed and encompassed the earth and all living creatures upon it: and I blessed them all. The orchestra was a large one for a cinema. Hebrews they were, all—dark as Spaniards, twenty-one strong: and I blessed them all, the one-and-twenty. Good old Judaea! Blessed be the Jews! What emotion. How the violins sobbed. We sat back in the box. Sylvia clung to me, but did not speak. The ‘cellos wept bitterly, they wept for those who were dead, and for those who were living. And I discovered a thing utterly new to me: I discovered that they all had souls independent of mine, and I saw those souls, and I blessed them. We nestled close, close to each other, and that all this—our love—besides being ineffably glorious was also absurd did not detract from it. And I remembered my mother, saw her when she was a young girl with eyes very blue, and I blessed her dear memory and her love for my father, as fragrant as ours. And I laughed with happiness. I thought of old men who, bidding us carry on, had stepped into their graves, and I perceived that each soul asked only for a working modicum of happiness, and my mind’s eye went out into the street and blessed them all. And I thought of Sylvia at my side, without passion, through a film of laughter and tears and my pure love of her, and of my uncle and aunt, of Berthe and Mme Vanderphant, of winter and summer and autumn and spring, and of the sheer joy of being alive. I wanted to do for them, build up their happiness by my overpowering strength. I wanted to harness my thoughts, to imbue the world with ideas. I wanted to preach to a multitude from street corners, from a very high hill, to bless babies; I wanted mothers to bring them to me, for if any man had I had, that moment, the pure power of blessing them: legitimate, illegitimate, all, I would bless them, consecrate marriages, with the holiness that was in me but which was not mine. The orchestra wept. The broad rays beat on the screen and projected a sort of gala pitch-battle. Bang! bang! Men and women were shot, turned head over heels, multitudes scrambled, pushed forward, unloading revolvers in the flesh of their brethren: bang! bang! bang! tumbling over each other—Red Indians, cowboys, tigers, leopards, horses, giraffes. The orchestra, merely twenty-one strong, played something—it didn’t matter what—my own ears made up the deficiency, adding twenty bass instruments, thirty trombones: sixty fiddles sobbed in my heart. But the people who died in the pictures I had no sympathy for—a sure indictment of the screen! Had there been a real play with real actors I would have felt the same human pity for them as for all living things, and would have blessed them. I looked at Sylvia, so silent at my side, and the heart in my bosom went wild. I wanted to shout, yell at the top of my voice, aiding the orchestra, crack whips, roar with the lions and leopards, fire off maxims! Such was my love.

  When it was all over, I hailed a cab and helping Sylvia to step into the vehicle, stepped into a ditch. ‘Asia!’ I swore. And driving home I had a very nasty feeling: a soaking sock in the left shoe, which meant, of course, that I would catch a chill. There are fifty-two weeks in the year, during thirty of which I have a sneezing cold. And, of course, so it was.

  At home I found a telegram for me: ‘Regret misunderstanding. No coats ordered. 50,000 fur caps instead. Arrange transportation and return forthwith with caps. Urgent.’

  19

  THERE ARE TIMES WHEN, AFTER FEEDING MY MIND and soul upon ideas of our most hopeful evolutionists, I suddenly experience a spiritual relapse and think that after all, perhaps, human beings are a race of biped rats—that human destiny on earth doesn’t greatly matter. I meditated thus as I recalled the 50,000 caps intended for 50,000 soldiers intended to restore by their commanders some of that ‘law and order’ in the land and so preserve
the continuity of our glorious humanity. This nonsense was hatched by strong silent men, men ‘with no nonsense about them’. Rats, I thought, 50,000 rats in fur caps, sacks of flesh and disease, bundles of incoherent urgings, rapacious beasts. The rats had crept out of their holes and went for each other. All out of silliness. Rats, I thought, rats.

  In the drawing-room as I entered stood a Russian officer whom I had seen before, so far as I could remember, at the local censorship department. And indeed the officer looked like a rat on its hind legs—a rat in khaki. At my approach he clicked his heels, introducing himself: ‘Captain Negodyaev.’ What a passport for a man! The name translated into English would read Captain Scoundrelton or Blackguardson—ominous enough. Yet Captain Negodyaev was meek and servile, humble and very timid, but was said to bully his wife. He had a long narrow head with a scanty growth of yellowish hair and a small scraggy moustache with wrinkles round his mouth, and eyes as if he had stolen somebody’s cuff-links and feared to be found out. His chin was shaven—I mean on days when it was shaven; on other days one could surmise that this at all events was roughly what he aimed at. He had a wooden leg which he liked to pass off as an honourable war wound. But everybody knew that he had fallen off a tram at Vladivostok while the ground was slippery and broken his left leg which later, owing to blood-poisoning that had set in, had been amputated for him. He was always spurting scent on his handkerchief, and every time he opened it to blow his nose there was an all-pervading odour in the atmosphere.