The Polyglots

by William Gerhardie

  In the dining-room was Natàsha—so pretty, so fragile, so happy in her new white and pink frock. ‘Look me! Look me!’ she said, turning round. ‘Shut your eyes and open your mouth.’ And I ate a chocolate. ‘There will be trifle cakes, vinaigrette, meat, tea, pastry, cocoa!’ she said roguishly.

  ‘What nice shoes you have.’

  ‘4.25,’ she said.

  ‘Shanghai dollars?’

  She shrugged her shoulders, sucking a sweet the while. ‘I don’t know what’s it means. Daddy bought them.’

  She stood on, wondering why I was not admiring her new frock. She had curled her hair with paper overnight so as to enhance the effect upon Harry. ‘Oh, I wonder what will Harry say when he sees me in my new dress! He will say, “Oh, Natàsha, isn’t it beauty!” ’

  Harry came in, and Natàsha waited for him, a little confused, to notice her frock. But taking no notice, he said, ‘Where’s that peddling-motor?’

  There wasn’t one. Father Christmas up the chimney flue had played him false.

  ‘Oh, damn!’ he said—and smiled.

  When Sylvia came up, like a China rose, in her champagne georgette, Natàsha relapsed into ecstatic delight: ‘Look, look! What a beauty thing! Oh! Oh! Look!’ And, indeed, Berthe’s present could not have been more welcome.

  ‘Ah! little Nortchik!’ Natàsha cried as soon as she saw her, and at once began hopping about—and then lifted her by the waist, which you could see was no great satisfaction to Nora, to judge by her face. ‘Leave me alone! Leave me alone! Stop it!’ she said.

  There she stood—like a little mushroom, red-cheeked, awfully appetizing.

  ‘Isn’t she just a little apple dumpling?’ said Aunt Teresa. ‘Come on your old auntie’s knees, you little applie-dumplie.’

  Nora climbed up Aunt Teresa’s knees and putting her small arms round her neck tenderly—‘Auntie Terry,’ she said, ‘have you bought me something?’

  ‘Have you seen my dress, Harry?’ Natàsha ventured.

  ‘H’m … yes!’ he said, looking at her, while she beamed all over. ‘Have you seen Nora’s pom-poms?’

  ‘Shut your eyes and open your mouth,’ she said.

  Which he did at once.

  ‘That’s not a sweet!’ he cried, spitting out the silver paper, while Natàsha laughed aloud her gurgling, bubbling laugh, hopping and clapping her palms together in ecstatic mirth.

  While we were at our Christmas dinner, the virgin called, and Uncle Emmanuel went out to speak to her, and she pestered him for a Belgian certificate. His Christmas pudding was quite cold when he returned.

  At four o’clock the tree was lighted. Uncle Emmanuel, who had donned his made-up Belgian uniform and waxed his moustache with especial care, gave Harry a toy motor which, being wound up, ran across the room and up against the wall. But Harry was very peevish and could not be prevailed upon by Uncle Lucy to take the slightest interest in the toy motor. ‘Look here, Harry, look here,’ Uncle Lucy urged—to save his own face and possibly to spare Uncle Emmanuel the sense of humiliation. But Harry would not look and turned his back to it. ‘It’s no good! I can’t get inside it,’ he said—when Slap! his father landed him one over the ear. Not at once, but as if on mustering enough self-pity, Harry began to cry softly. ‘Come, come,’ said the people surrounding him. ‘I want a peddling-motor,’ he sobbed, drying his tears with his fist. And thinking of it, he cried louder and louder and louder, until he had to be given the little cupboard Aunt Teresa had given Natàsha, my aunt promising to get Natàsha another one exactly like it immediately the holidays were over. Natàsha was reluctant. ‘No, s’mine! s’mine!’ she said. But Captain Negodyaev, out of deference to his hosts, at once ordered her to give it up.

  ‘To keep?’ asked Harry, incredulous, accepting the gift, with the old man’s smile coming over his tear-stained face.

  Natàsha cried softly.

  ‘I will get you another one, Natàsha, a better one,’ drawled Aunt Teresa. And Aunt Molly gave Natàsha a copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, intended for Harry, to placate her for the temporary parting with the cupboard. Natàsha smiled through her tears at the book. ‘No give back?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  And she smiled away the rest of her tears.

  Meanwhile the candles were flickering, rapidly burning down … Melancholy life. How it passes! even while it seems to hang so heavily on your hands. A little more, and we shall join the throngs who went before us. Then why don’t we make haste and live? But how? How make the most of life? If you grip it, it runs through your fingers. While music played hilariously, life seemed to have stopped. Ah, if it were never to move on again I’d bear it: but it’s stopped—and then, next moment, it will slip away—into the dustbin … What the deuce was the matter with life? I liked, for instance, spending Christmas in other people’s homes because then I liked to think of my own home; but I never liked being at home. The children, who were between the ages of ten and fifteen, were all shy and reluctant, and I think looked on this Christmas tree as a nuisance. ‘What extraordinary, unnatural children!’ demurred Aunt Teresa. ‘You should enjoy yourselves like everybody else!’ Alas! You either do—or else you don’t—enjoy yourself. There is no ‘should’ about enjoyment. Uncle Lucy was shy, too. Aunt Molly alone was sending forth sounds of ‘Green grow the leaves’ at the top of her not very agreeable voice, to her own not very efficient accompaniment on the piano, and urging us to join in. But no one did—at least not for some time. We stood around the wall sulkily and shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other, and perhaps regretted that Jesus Christ was born at all. Besides ourselves there were Stepan’s little nephews and nieces—evil smelling things with hair greased with butter—who also stood at the wall and shuffled their feet. At last, with some difficulty, and thanks to Berthe’s initiative, the mechanism was set in motion: we began to go round, gingerly at first and feeling somewhat foolish, but gradually gaining confidence. Tall Uncle Lucy, small Uncle Emmanuel, Captain Negodyaev with the wooden leg—all but Aunt Teresa—went round the tree merrily. I thought: a few more æons, and we shall have joined the vast battalions which lie in wait for us and possibly begrudge us our temporary advantage. Why then is life so peculiarly unsatisfying? Why is there a streak of sadness, a deep strata of melancholy beneath all joy? ‘Green grow the leaves of the old oak tree. Green grow the leaves on the old oak tree. They waggled and they jaggled and they never could agree: till the tenor of the song goes merrily.

  ‘Merrily-y—merrily-y—till the tenor of the song goes merrily.’

  ‘Gleen glow the leaves on the ole, ole tree,’ sang the small children, while Nora lagged behind—

  ‘navver could aglee——’

  ‘They razzled and they jazzled,’ came from Bubby, Harry, and Natàsha, and Nora sang—

  ‘and the tanner of the song——’

  ‘Mère Lee——! Mère Lee——!’ came Berthe’s piercing soprano, a rendering which was an outrage on the national atmosphere of the song. ‘They razzled and they jazzled,’ Nora sang in her own time and tune, while—

  ‘Gleen glow the leaves’ came from the other three, when Nora, making up by a bounce, would cry—

  ‘could aglee——!’

  And Berthe shrieked like an engine whistle—‘Mère Leeeee——!’

  From the many lighted candles the room had become very hot. Beyond the drawn curtains, Harbin was eclipsing into twilight, amid cries of Mongol drivers and the sound of cracking whips, the sense of two rival civilizations bordering on each other, the piercing wind sweeping the barren, naked streets, raising clouds of cold dust, and the town mercilessly cold but snowless, miserable, like a sleepless sufferer or a tearless heart. The wax candles burnt down sadly. The smell of burning pine. Music, laughter—and I wanted to weep for all living things. Oh, why must we live? Half realized revelry! Whom were we pleasing? A mere interlude—and then back. Back at the heart of the universe, listening to the beat and the waves universal rising and falling and breaking in and ab
out us, dreaming of all things and none, sleeping—what deep, wholesome sleep—for ever and ever and ever.

  The three little chairs of the three little bears were put in a row. Berthe, who had a ‘working knowledge’ of music, sat down to the piano, and Aunt Teresa, as a special dispensation on account of the high festival, joined her, brushing aside her long, black silk skirt as she sat down on the plush stool beside Berthe (who had moved on to a plain chair), and the two women struck together the opening bars of Liszt’s Rhapsody No. 2, the children the while playing musical chairs. Harry moved very close to the chairs, ready to drop into each and even sitting down for a space and refusing to move on, and having fallen out of the game, joined again imperceptibly and strove irregularly to compete for a chair as before. Aunt Teresa and Berthe were belabouring the rhapsody, my aunt swinging her body a little to the always accelerating galloping rhythm, as though she were an expert musician, or else an expert horsewoman—or both. And possibly because the passage they were interpreting was one of chaos, they never noticed a discrepancy till Berthe turned the page. ‘Voyons donc, Berthe! I’m not yet half through the page!’—‘Enfin, Thérèse!’ Nor had we noticed anything, for chaos it should have been: and chaos it certainly was. The music having abruptly ceased, the children made for the chairs, and Nora fell out.

  After supper Dr. Murgatroyd was talking of the psychology of the Koreans in the light of the teaching of Confucius, when he suddenly discovered that, leaning back against a table with a lighted candle on it, he had burnt a hole in the seat of his trousers. From the adjoining room came Beastly’s resonant voice: ‘No, my dear sir, you can’t get out of that—ha, ha! Sit down, here you are, here’s the pen and here’s the ink, and get about it—ha, ha, ha!’ he guffawed loudly.

  ‘See here, man, you sit down right here, and write to your Marshal,’ spoke Philip Brown’s stern voice.

  ‘But ze maréchal he be astonished,’ protested Uncle Emmanuel excitedly.

  ‘Never you mind, old chap. You write him a letter and ask him for the autograph, quick.’

  ‘Allons donc! le maréchal he askèd for ze French Red Cross, and ze French Red Cross zey getted nothing. You send it all to American Red Cross.’ Flushed in the face, Uncle Emmanuel expostulated: ‘Excuse to me, ’ow can I ask? He askèd where is ze money. I say, Zey send it all to Amérique! Nom de Dieu, enfin!’ protested Uncle Emmanuel, all his muscles agog with excitement.

  ‘They’re Allies—ain’t they?’ Beastly interjected.

  ‘Sure we are!’ said Philip Brown.

  ‘Why, my dear sir—ha, ha, ha, ha! you don’t know your own silly business!’

  ‘Comment?’

  ‘Come on yourself! Get down to it and write to the Marshal for the autograph, here, now.’ The two men standing over him, Uncle Emmanuel sat down to his desk and, with tears in his eyes, began to write to the Marshal.

  The three little bears played nicely together, having moved their three little chairs round the table, though now and then Harry upset their shop, and then you heard Natàsha’s voice: ‘Harry! Harry! What for you doing!’ and also you heard Nora’s voice: ‘Leave me alone! Shup up! Harry! Leave me alone! Stop it! Stop it!’

  ‘Whatever is the matter?’ Aunt Molly asked.

  ‘Nora’s eaten my chocolate-cream,’ Harry wailed.

  ‘Because he’s eaten my Easter egg last year!’ Nora cried eagerly.

  Slap! Slap! Slap! came from Aunt Molly—and tears galore from the children’s eyes.

  Then they played as before. They exchanged with each other some of their presents. ‘Give back?’

  ‘No give back?’ or ‘To keep?’ Harry changed his chocolate stick with a little boy for a watch. ‘I gave him this,’ Harry said, looking the while at the watch. ‘Is it worth it?’ The little boy ate the chocolate stick and then cried and wanted his watch back. Harry pricked Nora’s balloon, and, watching it, I thought: I’d like to die like that—fizzle out.

  ‘Harry’s been kicking Natàsha!’ Nora complained to her mummy. But Harry, who heard this, only called out ‘Nora!’ put his arm round her, and off they ran together happily, neither of them caring a straw. Only Bubby played demurely alone.

  At half-past ten, just before retiring to bed, Captain Negodyaev had a relapse of persecution mania, and he bid his wife and daughter dress—ready for flight at a moment’s notice. They sat in the hot drawing-room, all dressed and ready, in their fur coats and muffs and hats and warm goloshes, till he declared ‘All Clear!’ and sent them off to bed.

  Towards bed-time the children were overwhelmed with presents. They were dazed, almost unhappy: Nora dying from fatigue. Washed and put to bed, she knelt up and prayed: ‘Gentle Jesus meek and mile look upon a little chile pity my s-s-s-simplicity. God bless mummy and daddy and granpas and granmas and uncles and aunties and cousins—and Cousin Georgie.’

  Then Harry, too, rose on his knees. ‘Green grow——’

  He stopped. An impatient wave of the hand—‘Not that!’—and fell dead asleep.

  35

  AFTER CHRISTMAS OUR WEDDING WAS POSTPONED till after the New Year. ‘Do you mind, darling?’

  ‘No, just as you like, darling.’

  I looked at her tenderly. ‘Lovie-dovie-cats’-eyes.’

  ‘This is too soppy, darling,’ she said.

  Since early morning on New Year’s day visitors had been calling on us. Franz Joseph came. The spelling lady came. The virgin came. After the virgin and the daughter of the actual-state’s-councillor, there came a morose-looking Russian major general with pale mad eyes, whose conversation was largely incoherent. I was besieged by them, yet I liked them. They were good, well-behaved lunatics, trim and neat in their diminutive, harmless lunacy, compared with our war lords in their raving, disorderly madness. They were floating in a sea of bewilderment and confusion, but we who were waging this colossal war with seriousness and with method were more destructively futile in our pretensions, more grievously self-deluded. The world had got unhinged and was whirling round in a pool of madness, and those few lunatics were whirling independently within ours: wheels within wheels! And I received them with courtesy, to the pained astonishment of Vladislav, who, pointing at Franz Joseph, said: ‘In France they wouldn’t have spoken to that man.’ So sensible and nice and relevant they were in their own little world of delusion that we, big lunatics, who were engaged in making war and revolution, allowed the little lunatics to roam in peace at large: out of a latent instinct of proportion that it would have been absurd to lock them up in the face of what was being done by admittedly sane people in our midst. Asylums and prisons were open: indeed, not in Russia alone. To give Europe her due, ‘retail’ murderers had been invited to vacate their prison cells to participate in the wholesale murder going on galore upon the battlefields.

  There also came a Metropolitan. The vladika apologized for calling on a holiday—but the affair was urgent, for he had the welfare of the Orthodox people at heart. It was vodka—the undoing of many a weak soul in the past. For years and years the Government had seen fit to poison the Russian pravoslavnie people. The time had come, he thought, for the Church to take a stand. What should be done? Well, yes, he knew what should be done and would be glad if I could see my way to urge his scheme before the General. The vodka monopoly should be transferred forthwith to private interests. There was a powerful financial syndicate prepared to purchase the monopoly and he was in favour of their doing so, on conscientious grounds, for verily the Government could not continue this systematic intoxication of the pravoslavnie people. He was in touch with them. Yes, the syndicate were willing. He—well, ye-es, he had been approached by them.

  ‘But,’ I faltered, ‘the systematic intoxication of the pravoslavnie population is to go on at that rate?’

  The holy father leaned back and flung open his hands, just as Uncle Emmanuel was wont to do when he said, ‘Que voulez-vous?’ He paused.

  ‘Well, that would be a matter for their own conscience,’ he said at last. ‘We
cannot control everything.’

  ‘I see. The syndicate would then be personally responsible to God for the intoxication of the pravoslavnie population?’

  ‘It is immoral for the State to poison the people it is called upon to govern,’ said the Metropolitan, with a glint of righteous anger in his eyes. ‘Private enterprise is another matter.’

  He left me with the distinct impression that private enterprise was indeed another matter. And I equipped him with a card to Dr. Murgatroyd.

  General ‘Pshe-Pshe’ (as we now called him for short) brought with him Count Valentine—a thin, ungainly individual with a high-pitched voice, whose one redeeming feature was his title. All afternoon I sat in my room in the attic and faked New Year’s messages for Aunt Teresa, purporting as it were to come from local Jap and Chink officials and their wives, and as I showered them upon my aunt, she would exclaim: ‘Tiens! Encore! Ah!’—delighted at her popularity—while I went up and typed again. Natàsha stole up the stairs like a kitten, and entreated: ‘Play with me, oh, play with me!’ while I typed on, ‘General and Madame Pan-La-Toon send greetings of the season to Monsieur le Commandant and Madame Vanderflint and wish them happiness in the New Year.’

  ‘Tiens! Encore une! Mais voilà un dèluge!’ Aunt Teresa cried, opening the missives and smiling happily at Berthe. It quite reminded her of the old days.

  36

  AUNT TERESA GIVES A BALL

  IT WAS ALREADY THE MIDDLE OF MARCH, BUT THE winter was still on, white, crisp, impenetrable. Aunt Teresa had become a social centre of the town; and perhaps what added zest to the adventure was the knowledge that our polyglottic presence in Harbin was only temporary—as temporary as life on earth. We specialized in being nice to everybody. Only the children were rather naughty. They would come up to any guest, however stolid, and say: ‘You are awfully ugly’, or Bubby would comment on her mother’s looks as Aunt Molly came down the stairs in a new dress: ‘Oh, mummy, you do look a fright!’ We were an unusual set of people caught in an unusual set of circumstances and conditions. I like to think that we had, by the play of accident, escaped from much that has become threadbare and stereotyped in life. In the world war, the Russian revolution, things had taken place, strange shiftings of families and populations of which little has been heard as yet but the effect of which will tell one day