by Dennis Parry
‘ “It would only distress them,” said Yee. “I shall make it my business to inform your wife that you submitted bravely to the decree of higher authority—even if the facts should not warrant that praise.”
‘I do not mind saying that I had begun to sweat. Do you know what I kept on thinking, Mother? I suppose it ought to have been about Serafina or you. But actually I thought “Father’s still alive. I counted at least on surviving him, and now I’m going to be done out of even that satisfaction”.
‘Two of the soldiers suddenly put their hands on my shoulders and dragged down so that I collapsed on to my knees. That is the position from which the Chinks usually take their heads off. Its disadvantage is that the victim sometimes starts hobbling about, and the executioner has to chase round taking a slice off where he can. I have seen some of it at the city execution ground.
‘There I was. I could hear the chap with the sword taking practise swings behind my back. It made a funny noise, as though the blade were somehow broad and wrinkled like a fan. Yee was looking at me with a serene benevolent expression like the old boy on the bench the time Jack Locksley and I broke the windows of that pub. Suddenly he said:
‘ “Do you believe that if a miracle were now to spare you, you would be able to respect your obligations to the State?”
‘ “Yes,” I said. Who wouldn’t?
‘ “It is a pity that we shall never know,” said Yee, and he made a signal with his hand.
‘The next thing I knew I heard the whistling noise for a fraction of a second, and then I stopped a sort of slap between the shoulder and the jaw. Just as if some woman had got fed up. Damn me stiff, I thought, Mother, if that’s all it feels to die! Then I realized I’d gone over on my side, flat against the tiles, but looking up I could still see old Yee, and even the executioner who was laughing like a horse. His blasted sword had bent double and caved in like a Harlequin’s smacker in a pantomime. And that’s just about what it was. Once I looked I could see that it was made of stiff paper, painted over to imitate steel.
‘Well, it wasn’t the first time that trick had been worked. I’d heard of the Chinks playing it before. So much the bigger fool me. I don’t know if you like your sons heroes, Mother, because, if so, you will have to make do with Cedric, which I think will be an uphill job. All I can tell you is that when I got back on my feet, I was shaking like a watch-spring.
‘Old Yee said, “Today one of my subordinates appears to have made an error of judgment. We will leave it at that. But you will appreciate how rarely such a thing recurs even in the lowest civilizations.”
‘Mother, I do not like being made a fool of. You know that. I have it in for Yee Chen Sung. . . .’
In a broad, breezy way Fulk must have been an inconsiderate man. This comes out in the style of writing to his mother. From other evidence I believe that his language in conversation was appalling. He moderated it greatly for literary purposes, but it is improbable that a woman of Mrs. Ellison’s generation much appreciated the residue of damning and blasting. More important, he never seemed to understand that the recital of danger and hairbreadth escapes was calculated to set up chronic anxiety in a loving parent. Yet the fact that his letters persisted throughout the long years of exile shows that he must have had a deep regard for his mother.
One thing about him which is unacceptable to contemporary opinion is his attitude to the Chinese. In his correspondence they are invariably referred to by the childish and derogatory nickname of Chinks. Hostility hardly excuses bad taste; but the truth was that Fulk, so much nearer to China than the average man, nevertheless saw it in a light far less likely to promote sympathy—namely, that of a colonial power, a role to which experts agree the Chinese have never been well fitted. They had made a mess of Sinkiang: they could not assimilate it, they could hardly hold it, but they would not let it go.
I have already spoken about the endless pattern of rebellion and reprisal which runs through the history of the province. Nobody who reads that history can doubt that the Chinese Government were chronically guilty of preferring reconquest to prevention, if only because it was financially cheaper. But as time went on the cost of this policy in human life rose steeply because of the infiltration of new weapons to Sinkiang. For instance, Fulk’s activities must have done a good deal to increase the rate of bloodshed.
A Russian traveller has left an account of a battle between the Tungan and Turki rebels and a Chinese army in the eighteen-nineties. It resembled a circus as much as a military operation, and more than either, a parade of weapons through the ages. Everything from Genoese crossbows to bronze cannon had drained down into that remote sump of warfare. On the rebel side there was even a detachment of men unarmed except for small pieces of paper wrapped round pebbles which they flung at the enemy; the paper was inscribed with highly damaging curses.
There was still an element of this glorious gimcrackery about the conflicts of Fulk’s day. But already, above the outlandish cries and the variegated explosions, one could begin to hear the quiet padding approach of the technician with his mass-produced instruments of slaughter.
The lack of letters dating from the first nine years of Fulk’s stay in Doljuk had various inconveniences. It would be interesting, for example, to know what originally decided him to settle in such an unlikely spot, how he established himself, and how the natives first reacted to his presence. But there was another disadvantage of more practical moment. No account existed of the period during which he either did or did not marry Serafina Filipovna, and their child was born. These were events which he could scarcely have avoided mentioning. But, alas, at the point where I came in all the characters were taken as introduced and familiar to his mother’s mind.
I found only one passage which might bear on Varvara’s legitimacy. In the summer of 1918 Doljuk was visited by a plague which must have been part of the great pandemic of Spanish ’flu. Varvara, then aged about nine, caught it and was likely to die. She was saved—or so at least Fulk thought—by her mother’s doctoring. Serafina had taken up this art, mixed with a little wizardry, under the influence of one of her servants, an old Kipchak woman, who, until she broke her thigh and became unfit for a nomadic life, had been the medicine woman of her tribe. (I suppose that Varvara’s similar pretensions and the stock of drugs with which she supported them were a direct inheritance.)
‘. . . You know the bit about “eye of newt and toe of frog”, those witches couldn’t have taught Serafina anything. Thank God eighty per cent of the population are strict Sunnis who’d as soon take medicine from a woman as out of a dog’s mouth; otherwise she’d kill someone, because she dearly loves a body to practise on. I stick to that, Mother, even though I now have to admit that her methods do come off at times. Well, about six on the second day the little girl was having a terrible struggle to breathe. There were black veins in her face as if the blood had gone stagnant like a pond, and with every gasp a big yellowish bubble came out of the side of her mouth. I’d seen a good many hop it in recent weeks and I knew that complexion and those bubbles showed that they were well on the road.
‘I sat by the bed feeling sorry for poor little Varvara. But you know how it is, you cannot hold it, unless you are a saint or something and before long I’d slid off into feeling sorry for myself. There I am, I thought, getting on in life, no son, soon not even a daughter by the look of it. In theory I suppose I might have other children, but Serafina seems to have lost the trick of it. I am too sensitive that way, the thought of not leaving any children makes me feel Time blowing down my neck. Of course, as you know, Mother, I have had one or two little accidents, and very good you were about them in spite of all the damned fuss Father made, but you cannot really count little accidents like your own children. . . .’
The italics of course are mine. At the risk of labouring the point, I would draw attention to the clear distinction which he draws between the by-blows of his youthful adventures and his child by Serafina. I don’t know what weight a Court
would have attached to the statement. Some certainly; but it would have been far from conclusive. For it might have been that Fulk merely meant that Varvara was the only child whom he acknowledged; or even that he was lying about her status to spare his mother’s feelings.
I think the story of Varvara’s illness is worth completing.
‘. . . Presently it seemed to get very quiet except for the child’s breathing and I realized that the women had stopped their row. I’d been down and had a look at them in the cookhouse and you never saw such a sight, the daughters of the Prophet banging their heads in the muck and one queer little heathen from the Altai nursing a woollen idol in front of a charcoal fire. I do not hold with all this mourning, when we die, we die and there is no sense in making a song of it, but I will say this, they love that child as if she were their own.
‘Anyhow I thought they’d given up hope, and Serafina like the rest. But suddenly she came in. She had old Daina with her and she was carrying a little earthen pot that gave off as foul a smell as I have ever smelt. They paid no attention to me, but Serafina got behind the bed and lifted the kid, and Daina from the front forced back her head and jerked the stuff down her throat. Damn me, Mother, if I have ever seen the like! After a couple of seconds that child sat up as if they’d put a thousand volts through her. You could hear her teeth rattle and her eyes opened and the eyeballs turned up till you could only see the whites looking like a couple of blood-alley marbles. That’s done it, I thought, that’s hastened the end. But as soon as I opened my mouth they both set on me and turned me out. . . .’
The upshot was that when he came back several hours later, Varvara was in a normal sleep and the strangling accumulation of mucus in her lungs had begun to dry up.
At the end of the letter he adds: ‘So it seems I may have to go on supporting your granddaughter indefinitely. She is not a bad little thing, only a bit crazy. I bought the servants a fat sheep, but I let them know that they hadn’t taken me in with their faked lamentations.’
Neither of the two letters from which I have so far quoted contained any enclosure. But there were photographs in several of the later ones. At first it surprised me that the necessary equipment should be available in the wilds of Sinkiang. But the more I learnt about Doljuk, the more I realized how unpredictably the amenities were distributed there. Almost anything could be obtained, provided that it was specially bespoken and the buyer did not mind waiting: ultimately the goods would trickle in by railway as far as Lanchow and thereafter by bullock cart through Kansu and the desert.
Similarly, traffic in the reverse direction was slow but fairly sure. The steady continuity of Fulk’s letters showed a transport system which continued to function even during rebellions. To judge from internal evidence, not more than two or three could have gone astray in the whole twelve years.
The pictures had evidently been taken with a good camera, but the development and printing were amateurish. The fading of the surface had a paradoxical effect in improving the portrait of Fulk, for it restored a dark, yellowish tinge which was near to the natural colour of his hair and his short wiry moustache. He was a big man, about six feet three inches, and he looked much as I had expected, bold, handsome, reckless, except that there was less good humour and more sensibility in his face. His appearance did not quite square up with the rollicking extrovert of the letters. He was neither a poseur nor yet the rumbustious ox which he sometimes pretended. I think, however, that he was well aware of his own image and when he looked in the glass he liked to see a rugged adventurer.
The photograph which I preferred showed him standing beside a pony, wearing a buttonless blouse with a high neck and a small fur hat. Behind him were some ruins stretching away into a waste of sand. His expression was watchful and slightly suspicious—the counterpart of one which I had several times seen on his daughter’s face.
There were also a number of pictures of Varvara as a child and of Serafina Filipovna. Despite her beauty the latter did not photograph well, principally, I thought, because the photographer never managed to catch her with her mouth shut.
7
After several more excursions with Andrew, Varvara received her new clothes. She came down to breakfast one morning in a frock which would have looked very well at the smarter sort of Chelsea cocktail party.
The fashions of that period did not favour large well-developed girls. Skirts were longer than a few years before and breasts and bottoms had made a tentative reappearance, but the basic design of most dresses still assumed a flat, epicene figure. However carefully Varvara put on her smart garments she always looked as if she had burst her way forcibly into them and was about to attempt an equally violent exit. Nevertheless she was improved by conforming with ordinary standards. Once the impression of eccentricity was removed people could concentrate on her basic natural advantages. She belonged to that small class of women who merit the description Junoesque, which is much abused by those who forget that it was not Jove’s wife but one of his mistresses who turned into a cow.
Andrew’s friend, Pam Kerrison, showed herself a shrewd or at any rate a well-advised woman. When Mrs. Ellison saw the new outfit she immediately insisted on paying for every stitch of it. So far from pluming herself on her generosity she was stricken with remorse because she had not thought of re-equipping Varvara before.
The feathers also reacted on the bird inside them. It seemed to me that from the moment when Varvara first outwardly approximated to a rich upper-class girl there was a noticeable change in her speech. She made a conscious effort to acquire the fashionable catch-phrases. Sometimes they floated strangely on the surface of archaism and formality which would take another year to eliminate. Not that I personally was anxious for that day, but Andrew clearly wished to hasten it on. One afternoon he came to tea at Aynho Terrace and spent most of the time urbanely correcting her on little points of idiom. What exasperated me was the submissiveness with which she received his instructions. Rather childishly I took advantage of superior academic knowledge to refute several of his remarks about the English language. The atmosphere was cool when Varvara received a message that her grandmother wanted to see her.
Andrew and myself eyed each other in silence for several seconds. Then with the absence of malice which was one of his more admirable traits he tried to re-establish good relations.
‘Extraordinary life she must have led before she came here! She’s told me some things that fair curled my hair.’
It was not a very fortunate opening. However absurdly, I had come to regard Doljuk as my own property and the news that Varvara discussed it with other people made me more jealous than any sexual rebuff. My reaction was to try to show Andrew how much better I was informed about the place than he. He listened politely for a while, then broke in:
‘You know, David, I can see that this really means something to you. You’re one of those chaps who has a feeling for the East.’
‘Perhaps,’ I said, simpering slightly.
‘You ought to get into some sort of practical contact with it.’
‘I can’t spend my vacs in Turkestan.’
‘No, but there are a lot more places in that direction which have a bit of the old magic about them. . . . India, for instance.’
I thought he was suggesting that I should visit my uncle and aunt and I started to explain that it would be ruled out by expense. But he waved this aside.
‘There’s no need to go there, when so many of them come over here.’
‘Who do?’
‘Indians.’
‘I know a couple at Cambridge,’ I said.
My lack of enthusiasm was not due to race-prejudice, but to the fact that my acquaintances had more affinity with Bloomsbury than Doljuk.
Suddenly Andrew said: ‘But do you know any Indian women?’
‘No. Do you?’
‘Since you ask me, yes. Actually she’s only half-Indian. She’s damned good value, David—ready for anything. Dentist’s receptionist, but definit
ely a cultured girl.’
‘Very nice,’ I said.
‘I wondered if you’d like me to introduce you?’
‘Andrew,’ I said, looking pointedly at Varvara’s empty place, ‘there wouldn’t be any motive behind your offer to pimp for me?’
‘Nobody but a cad would look at it in that way,’ he muttered sulkily.
I believe that Andrew is now in command of his father’s empire, and that he has made the historic transition from Income to Expenses with great adroitness. But in those days he still had something to learn about the art of negotiation.
Varvara and I had fallen into a routine of limited love-making.
We never indulged in any familiarity during the day, but most nights we went upstairs together at bedtime and I entered her room ‘to say good night’—a process which sometimes extended to early morning. We kissed and . . . But those dots mean nothing spicy, they merely indicate uncertainty about the word to use. Nobody could pet with Catherine the Great or neck Boadicea. Whatever their actual physique, their characters loom too massive in the mind. It was the same with Varvara. On the whole I think that the best term is the neutral ‘embrace’—though once again I must emphasize that it does not carry its more drastic sense.
She attracted me strongly in her courage and bodily sweetness and emotional violence. The last, however, also inspired me with a salutary caution. I had enough sense to see that anybody who stirred her deeply would be caught up by a temperamental cyclone in which discretion and propriety would vanish like two straws. I had no wish to be accused of repaying Mrs. Ellison’s kindness by seducing her granddaughter.
Though I was no Casanova, I had more experience than she. And it was just as well. Varvara’s idea of self-control was like that of a man who drives at sixty miles an hour straight for a brick wall, relying on his brakes to stop him in the last ten feet. She had her own method of halting the runaway machine. Sometimes she would leap out of the armchair or off the bed and fling herself on her knees and pray audibly for purity. I suppose it was all frightfully bad taste, but at the time I found it romantic and exciting. I had also discovered there was nothing like amorous byplay for bringing out reminiscences of Doljuk.
