Poet's Pub

by Eric Linklater

  “Boris?”

  “My husband.”

  “Oh, the Cossack. And the other word?”

  “The Komintern is the Communist International. Boris worked for it. He was an idealist and one of its most trusted servants.”

  “I see,” said Quentin doubtfully.

  “Boris was there and so was Sakhalin, the Commissar for Internal Development. There had been a full meeting of the Zik in the Kremlin, and the chief of the G.P.U. in Irkutsk—”

  “Just a minute,” said Quentin. “I want to be quite clear about this. You say there was a Zik in the Kremlin. Is that serious?”

  “People never understand Russia. The Zik is the Central Executive Committee, and the G.P.U. is the Political Department. It used to be known as the Cheka, or the Terror, but when things became more settled they called it the Political Department.”

  “Of course,” said Quentin.

  “Well, the chief of the G.P.U. in Irkutsk submitted a report which was considered sufficiently serious for Sakhalin to go in person and investigate. The G.P.U. was at odds with the local branch of the Komintern.”

  “That was rather rough on Boris, wasn’t it?”

  “Boris did his duty as a Russian should. When Sakhalin came he avoided him. But nevertheless suspicion fell on him when Sakhalin was murdered.”

  “In the fog?”

  “In the fog. The drosky-drivers of Irkutsk are notorious. They are garrotters by birth and education. When the fog comes they drive up and down looking for a likely victim. They see someone who appears richer than his fellow men—a prosperous citizen, as prosperity goes in Russia, seen in the dim glow of a lamp—and like a flash a noose is thrown over his neck, the drosky-driver whips up his horses— standing up, shouting to them, lashing them furiously with his whip—and races through the almost empty streets with the body dragging behind. Once outside the town the drosky is halted, the driver gets down, rifles the body, strips it, and flings it in a ditch.”

  “And goes back to look for more?” suggested Quentin, horror-struck.

  “That was how Sakhalin was murdered. Think of it: a drosky careering through the fog, the mad clatter of hooves, the thunder of wheels and the heavy drag of his body behind. A savage mujik thrashing his horses, rejoicing over his luck, eager to find what wealth he had got. And because the Komintern was in bad odour poor Boris was suspected of the murder. Word was brought to him secretly that the G.P.U. was going to arrest him, and he fled just in time.”

  “But of course he hadn’t done it really?”

  “Do you think I would marry a garrotter? Boris was as innocent as you are. But because the Cheka is all-powerful he had to flee, and naturally he tried to come to me.”

  “And where were you?”

  “In Batum. It was May, and Batum used to be one of the favourite summer resorts on the Black Sea. We were going to have a holiday there as soon as his work in Irkutsk was done. Imagine my horror when one day a message was brought to me that Boris was a fugitive! He had got as far as Novorossisk, but it was not safe for him to come any further. ‘Wait,’ he said, ‘wait till this shadow has passed and I will come to you, and we will have a new, a sweeter honeymoon between the mountains and the sea.’”

  “Did you?” asked Quentin jealously.

  “No,” said Nelly sadly. “He never came. Day after day I walked to the pier and looked out at the blue sea, the white snow-mountains to the north, waiting for the ship that would bring Boris to me from Novorossisk. The narrow harbour; the old men sitting at little tables on the quay, drinking their coffee; the long shingly beach where loafers slept in the sun; and always that white mountain barrier to the north. They became hatefully familiar as day after day I waited there alone. And then one morning something happened that almost made me regret those days of waiting; something that robbed me of the hope I had lived on. A policeman came up to me, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, ‘Come with me.’ I was helpless. He was a tall man in a green cap and he carried a revolver. I went with him.”

  “The brute,” said Quentin sympathetically. He edged a little nearer and put his arm round Nelly’s shoulders. She seemed grateful for the support.

  “He took me to Nitchevon, the head of the Cheka in Batum. Nitchevon said, ‘Your husband is a traitor to the Soviet. He has been arrested and is in prison in Novorossisk.’ I fainted. When I recovered consciousness, Nitchevon was bending over me. A fat man with eyes like stone and a big round head shaved all over. ‘They will probably shoot him,’ he said, and I was on the point of fainting again when Nitchevon added, ‘Unless you like to save his life.’ I looked at him with horror dawning in my eyes.”

  Quentin held her a little closer. The moon was peaceful. The moon was an old ship sailing on calm seas. The ground it lighted with its great stern-lantern of silver was England, a peaceful land. A piano, played somewhere in “The Pelican,” was like an urbane dream of music. To all this accompaniment of peace Nelly sang an air of danger. A Russian song to a Purcell setting. Quentin heard his heart beating.

  “What Nitchevon had to propose was this: that I should serve the Soviet in the outer ranks of the G.P.U., and by my service purchase Boris’s freedom. They were not sure of his guilt. They did not want to stir up the Komintern unnecessarily by executing one of its most trusted members, and so this chance of freedom was offered him—or offered me. The G.P.U. is quick to see its chances, and someone was wanted who spoke French and English, someone who—a woman, in short—and I was in their power. I consented. What sort of a wife would I have been had I refused? They sent me to Constantinople first.”

  “What did you do there?”

  “Watched people, spoke to people, listened to them. American engineers working on manganese concessions in the Caucasus, Americans who were interested in the oil wells at Baku, Americans who wanted to build railways for the Soviet. Then I was sent to Paris, because there are more Americans there, though not all of them are interested in Russia.”

  “What did you talk about to them?”

  Nelly Bly turned to him, smiling in the moonlight, and said: “The Soviet was interested in what the concessionaires told, in their unguarded moments, of the things they had seen in Russia; in their opinions of Russian problems; in their private admissions of the profit they were likely to make out of their oil and mining rights. And I was working for Boris.”

  Quentin was restless. “It must have been dreadful,” he said.

  “Some of the Americans were very nice.”

  “But, Nelly, you don’t mean to say that you enjoyed it?”

  “I was working for Boris, Quentin.”

  Quentin was inclined to be rude about Boris, a maladroit Cossack who got himself arrested because there had been a fog in Irkutsk, and left a beautiful girl to work miserably to release him from the prison which was obviously the best place for him. Damn Boris. He stood up and looked gloomily at the ghostly tennis-courts.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Still working for Boris,” said Nelly with a pathetic smile.

  “Why? Do you still love him?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think that I do. He’s probably changed in prison. But surely that is all the more reason why I should work for him. It means that my labour is pure and selfless.”

  “You are an angel,” said Quentin, suddenly kneeling in front of her.

  “The grass is wet. Sit down again and let me tell you why I am here. Do you know Mr. van Buren?”

  “Yes, a little. What has he got to do with it?”

  “He has discovered something that may have the most important effect on the oil fields. What it is we don’t know. It may only be a new drill, but we think it is something much more important. My chief in the G.P.U. says that he must know. Van Buren’s company has interests in the Baku field. It may be necessary to take those interests away from him. It may even be to the advantage of the Russian oil fields that van Buren’s discovery should never be used. I must find out what it is.”
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br />   “You don’t mean that van Buren is in danger, do you?”

  “Lenin once said, ‘Be always on guard, because you are always surrounded by enemies.’ His life is in no danger—yet. It will be in no danger if I can find out what his discovery is.”

  “This is terrible,” said Quentin. “He’s the most likeable old man. He tells funny stories. You simply can’t make plots against him. Oh, damn the G.P.U.! Can’t you escape from them, slip away and say nothing? You’re in England now. You’re safe here. Everybody is safe in England.”

  “And leave Boris in prison?”

  Quentin groaned. “How did you know van Buren was coming here?” he asked.

  “He made his plans in New York and cabled for rooms. Another cable went to Moscow three minutes later. I was warned for duty. My name was entered on a servants’ registry in London and I came here a week before van Buren.”

  “But why did you come as a maid? Why not as an ad—why not as an ordinary person?”

  “I have been called an adventuress in Paris. In Downish they would shout it. But as a maid I am unsuspected.”

  Quentin was exceedingly unhappy. Here was action, such as he demanded for his contemplated novel. Here was drama. And he did not like it. Strange forces of intrigue were thrusting darkly into peace, destroying peace, devouring peace to satisfy the ravening hunger of drama. Here was adventure. And he was going to be asked, unless he was vastly mistaken, to share it with Nelly Bly. Beautiful as she was he wished that he had never seen her. Did all adventure look so mean and nasty from the inside? Was action a good thing, when action must mar serenity?

  “I’m not going to steal van Buren’s pocket-book if that’s what you’re considering,” he said.

  Nelly laughed. “Of course not,” she said. “That must not be disturbed. Nothing must be done to make him suspicious. But you know him and you can talk to him. You can ask him about his discovery. You are clever and well-known. He won’t suspect you. And when you have found out what it is you can tell me.”

  “That’s the dirtiest piece of work I have ever been asked to do.”

  “Quentin! It’s the kind of thing I have done for the last year. The thing that I have had to do. It’s easy to be scornful of dirt when you are not compelled to work.”

  “But I’m not concerned about Boris.”

  “I thought you were a little concerned about me.”

  Malachite in argentine, beryls in the milky way of the moon.… What were the ethics of the moon? Insubstantial things, lunar myths, the shadow of a leaf. Quentin was lost and bent his head to the Scylla and Charybdis of her breast. “Besides,” she whispered, “once his secret is known he won’t be bothered any more.”

  “You only want me to talk to him?”

  “And then to me.”

  Solemn and melodious the great bell of St. Saviour’s beat twelve. Twelve for midnight, twelve for the twelve apostles, twelve for ghosts to come out and Cinderellas go home.

  “You will?” Nelly asked.

  “Must you go?” said Quentin.

  Like a moonbeam, he thought, as she sped over the dewy grass. My God, he thought again, I’ll call myself a fool to-morrow.…

  In his room, Saturday stacked neatly his typewritten sheets and clipped them into their black leather portfolio.

  “And that’s that,” he said aloud.

  Then he considered the untidy heap of manuscript. Sheets of paper, all sizes, written on, drawn on, blotted. When inspiration failed he would draw little geometrical patterns on the margin, or fantastic heads, gargoyles and Julius Cæsar and charwomen. An undignified habit. Some of his couplets were written vertically on unoccupied edges, because correction and re-correction had left no room for them in their proper place. Arrows indicated their true position. Only the typewriter had produced order out of the chaos in which his poem was conceived.

  I had better burn all this, he decided.

  He picked up the mass of paper and stuffed it into the empty grate. A line caught his eye, boldly written on an otherwise empty page. “Ship Tellus will Proceed to Apogee for Orders.” He struck a match. Whatever people say about it, he thought, there’s a devil of a lot of work in it. His eyes and ears had been active, his brain had been strenuously taught and strenuously set to labour, blood had been pumped into his brain to feed it, food packed into his belly to make the blood, cattle killed and crops gathered to supply the foods, seeds had been sown and farmers got up at dawn to grow the crops and tend the cattle, invaders held off and soldiers drilled to keep safe the farmers, Romans, Danes and Normans bred into our native bone to make the soldiers—“Hell!” he exclaimed as the match burnt his finger.

  And there was a consequence of all this breeding, fighting, growing and learning: a mass of scrabbled lines on crumpled paper. Lines which set in order told a story of the ship Tellus… how it started in wind and rain from an estuary beyond the stars… of the mad captain who called himself God, and carried a full press of sail through inter-planetary tempest, and drove headlong in the night… of the ship itself, little younger than Time, sun-scarred, foul-bottomed, groaning as it lifted to the sea… of the rats in the hold who made love, talked politics, discussed art, stole the grain and ore and silken fineries of which the hold was full… rats curiously like human beings, commonplace rats and rats who thought poetry was important and rats who made corners in the stolen grain… while the ship drove on, sometimes in calm seas, oftener in storm… rats who pretended to know all about morality, decadent rats, and rats who had large families almost without noticing it… rats who made houses and other rats who made war and knocked them down… but the mad captain, who laughed at the storm and shouted enormous jests to the bigger stars didn’t worry much about the rats, because he was going to Apogee for orders, and he was a sailor first, not a rodentitarian. It was a good story, if he had told it well, for to all the frantic busyness of the rats, their strenuous self-importance and the noise of their theories, the sound of the sea was a burden, and every now and then their love-making and money-making were stilled by the wrath or the laughter of the captain who called himself God; laughter that they did not understand, wrath whose beginning they could not comprehend, and the footsteps of a commander who walked alone because he, and he alone, knew where his ship was going. Even the wisest rats, who saw clearly the folly and vice of ordinary rats and took pleasure in pointing them out, had no knowledge of their destination, could not think what hands had loaded the ship so richly, nor could suggest to what people the wheat and the silk were being carried.

  “I think it’s good,” said Saturday for the hundredth time, and struck another match.

  The flame spread, the papers crackled, untwisted themselves, turned black as the flame passed over them, and crumpled into tiny flakes. Saturday poked them with his fingers, and as he did so, a line or two shone brightly in the quick fire. “The corposants burnt blue on every mast,” he read. Here a couplet came to light:

  “‘God save the Queen’ a faithful people said,

  When Henry took Nan Bullen to his bed.”

  It was a pessimistic, humorous, historically-minded rat who had said that. And a reactionary-militaristic-Malthusian crony of his was responsible for

  “I’ve got no patience with these theories

  That Fingal’s dog was sorry for his fleas”—

  another couplet to which the flames gave prominence before they consumed it. “The blackbird of a flute among the strings”—that was part of a musical, sentimental rat’s conversation; and here was a line even more obviously poetical: “On Popocatapetl bright with flowers.” How did that come in? Saturday couldn’t remember the passage in which, perhaps, it had been carefully inlaid. Here, too, momentarily lurid, was vulgar commonsensical, unsympathetic old grandpa rat:

  “‘You’re right,’ said grandpa rat, ‘that love is blind

  When it seeks inspiration from behind.’”

  The papers crackled. They were nearly all burnt. A last line shone briefly—“A sil
ver lane that led through cloudy steppes”—and nothing remained but ashes which curled and uncurled themselves as though the ink had given them life and they felt their death-pangs.

  Saturday walked up and down. Legible and whole, his poem was safe in its portfolio and he thought of other things against a background of excited satisfaction. It was finished, done, ready like a prophet prepared for speech, waiting only for the last darkness to go and the sun to rise. Like Byron he might wake and find himself famous. Against that golden screen of optimistic suspense he thought of Joan; Joan all alone, though the cautious shadow of her father reached her feet. Only for a minute had he spoken to her after his interview with the professor. No particular chance for conversation had offered itself and Saturday was too tired of inconclusive argument to make an opportunity for explanation which could not be any more satisfactory than the argument had been.

  “All clear?” she had asked him.

  “Not quite,” he had answered. “There’s a little fog in the channel, but it won’t last long.”

  “You mean that father wasn’t pleased?”

  “He didn’t show any particular joy.”

  “I’ll speak to him in the morning,” Joan had said with an air of determination. And then Mrs. Waterhouse had borne down on them with a vulpine smile, and Saturday had escaped.

  It was humiliating, he thought, that a poet who had the power of life and death on paper should have so little control of actual issues. On paper he could make men—or rats—after his own image, put masterful words in their mouths, make lesser men bow to them, and women fall in their path like ripe fruit. He could, when he was tired of them, kill them or forget them or drive them mad. He could explain their actions, make them do logical things, or laugh at them for cutting silly capers. He could give to Cæsar what he chose and to God as much as he cared. But in life itself he was as powerless as other men. He was subject to the same loves and fears and indignations, and acted as foolishly as people who were not poets. Perhaps even more foolishly, though that was unlikely for an obvious reason. Even his intellect, under the stress of a common-place emotion, was reduced to a common stature.