The Polyglots

by William Gerhardie

  She was very still, but said nothing. And again I had the fear lest my aunt’s Narcissus should begin loving me ‘by transference’. My mood at that time was, in proportion to the preparations being made, steadily declining against marriage. I am not a cynic; but from what I’ve seen of married life in our own home, it has definitely put me off it for the remainder of my life. Only yesterday I heard a married man compare marriage to a rotten egg. ‘Because,’ he said, ‘it looks all right from the outside, and before you taste it you do not know that it is rotten. ‘You may reproach me for fickleness in love. But what writer is sure of his livelihood with so fickle a public as ours? You may, for example, be reading this book—but it does not follow that you have bought it. Latterly my tongue would loiter with persistence round about my canine tooth. I came up to my shaving-glass, opened my mouth and looked in. What a cavity! Yes, wars were not to be fought with impunity. It was some time since I had been to the dentist. And it occurred to me that if I married Sylvia (who already had a gold crown at the end of her mouth) I would have to pay her dentists’ bills in addition to my own, for all the fillings, crowns, fantastic bridges, and so forth, with which she would palliate the encroaching ruin of the years, ward off the desolation, till, one day, the disaster could be forestalled no longer, and she would order a complete set of artificial teeth—an upper and a nether plate—for which I, too, should have to foot the bill. Out of what? Out of literature, forsooth!… My grandfather rose in his grave.

  Poverty—and the children catch measles. Winter—and a shortage of coal. From bad to worse, until you sit in your shirt-sleeves, maybe, in a one-roomed lodging, and having pushed aside the pans and saucers begin to write your book, A Psychological Analysis of the Succeeding Stages in the Evolution of an Attitude, the children howling ‘I doan want to!’ Sylvia, thin and angry and exhausted, perhaps turned into a shrew. To keep them from starvation you set your teeth and write a novel. At last it’s finished. You send it to Pluckworth on the 7th of November and it comes back on the 15th of December, on which date you send it to Jane Sons, and Jane Sons return it to you on the 3rd of January, on which date you send it to Norman Elder, who sends it back on the 15th of March.

  Suddenly I fell asleep. I dreamt that we were dining in a restaurant and Sylvia protested: ‘I want French wine!’ The waiter came, I had no money, and began to cry. I woke up in a sweat.

  No, I did not want to get married.

  After tea I went up to my attic, intent on settling down to a prolonged spell of solid work. But my tangled thoughts, revolting stubbornly, chased after those running streams of life which found their spring in Sylvia. Then, finally, I laid aside my papers and went to her. As I saw her, again I visualized our future life when I might be unkind to her; and because I wanted to be kind to her I craved to have this union broken before it was too late; and yet I knew that she, unconscious of future painful hours thus evaded, would suffer from the knowledge of a happiness missed; and it distressed me that I could not, without wounding her, explain these manifold considerations.

  ‘Darling, frankly: do you want to marry me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s so nice to be married, darling. To be always together. To live in the same house. To feel the same things. To have the same thoughts.’

  Sylvia playing the Four Seasons of the Year. I take her for a walk, but think my own thoughts: though we couldn’t be nearer, we couldn’t be farther apart.

  ‘This we can have without marrying.’

  ‘But I want to have children … by you.’

  ‘We’ll send our son to New College.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  I used to say to Aunt Teresa in the course of our psychoanalytical experiments: ‘If there is something that worries you try to isolate it and to tell me what it is—and we shall endeavour to side-track it.’ I swear I never brought this on with an ulterior motive. And for some little time to come my experiments proved unsuccessful. Only as the time was nearing for our wedding and subsequent departure for Europe did Aunt Teresa tell me: ‘I begin to believe in psycho-analysis. Something is worrying me, and that is why I feel so very ill.’

  She sent for Dr. Abelberg and asked him whether there was anything in psycho-analysis.

  The Doctor agreed.

  After he had left she confessed to me:

  ‘Dr. Abelberg asked me what it was that worried me. And when I told him that it was the dread of separation from my only daughter after the death of my only son, he said it was fatal for me to have anything like that to worry me.’

  Poor Aunt Teresa! We did not show any sense of what we were doing to her. It did not occur to us that this was at all hard on her: to bring up her child, and then, suddenly, to see her go. She foresaw no prospect of following us to Europe. Most likely Uncle Emmanuel would enter Gustave Boulanger’s bank, and then the last hope of seeing her daughter again would have gone. But we thought not of that. I boiled at the mere thought of a ‘selfish’ intervention on her part. Yet I knew that if I went away with Sylvia I would feel profoundly sorry for my aunt. That I did not feel so argued that I did not seriously believe I’d go away with her. If we had mingled our tears with hers and asked her to forgive us, she might have done so and resigned herself to her sad fate. But we did not do so; and once she had, with my aid, isolated her ‘complex’, there was no forgetting it.

  The next I learnt was from Sylvia herself—when she told me ‘It’s all off’—crying, trying to restrain herself, and I, no longer knowing whether to be glad or to be sorry, or rather sorry against my very gladness, did my best to make her marry me, half satisfied, half mortified at my apparent failure to persuade her. We would get married first, I would leave and then return for her.

  ‘No.’

  At one time it seemed as though Sylvia resolved to take advantage of her whip hand—to avenge her suffering—and strike a blow for her own freedom, the feelings of her mother notwithstanding. But she collapsed in the doing.

  Sylvia and Aunt Teresa mingled tears. But they were different kinds of tears. The daughter was a real heroine. She cried, but made a brave show, and only listened, blinking; and she never showed her wound, and sacrificed her happiness completely and without reproach.

  And it was accepted promptly, without much ado.

  ‘Sylvia! again!’ said Aunt Teresa.

  Sylvia blinked.

  The tragedy of our position was not that Aunt Teresa dominated us into surrender, but that taking every circumstance into account—Aunt Teresa included—we could not make up our minds one way or another. My motive split: one portion of it became allied with Aunt Teresa; the other remained loyal to my love. But it is little use explaining the multifarious motives of one’s thoughts and actions. I think this is a general mistake that novelists fall into. Why should I whitewash my conscience with your boredom, or waste my time in making the haphazard course of life seem rational in print? Why should I try to vindicate myself? Why pretend that I was reasonable or even logical? My conduct was confused, irrational. Who cares?

  I considered the question from separate points of view—from the point of view of my present happiness, my future happiness, Sylvia’s happiness if I married her, Sylvia’s happiness if I did not marry her—and arrived at independent conclusions. I considered the question while I was undressing to go to bed, and while thinking of it, found that I had dressed again, put on my boots, and was tying my tie. Undressing myself once again, I considered the question again from all points of view simultaneously, displayed a truly Balfourian multi-sidedness. But, like my royal namesake from Shakespeare, I finally arrived at no conclusion at all. I am cursed with a Hamletian inaction. Russia has bitten me much too deeply. Why was I named Hamlet? Why this heart-splitting dilemma? Like him, I had an uncle—I had two uncles—but there was no clear reason why I should have murdered either of them. No such crude necessity in my case. Though perhaps it was my duty rather to murder my aunt. If it was, the reader must try to forgive me:
I didn’t do it.

  38

  AND ALREADY—AS THE SENTENCE ONCE PROCLAIMED is proceeded with without respite—so Aunt Teresa, once I was definitely off the cards, showed us her hand. I had suspected all along that she had someone up her sleeve. But her choice astonished me. To her, however, Gustave Boulanger seemed a candidate pre-eminently suitable. He was a Belgian, and he lived in the Far East. But sooner or later, his home would be in Belgium, and she still hoped that sooner or later they would all return to Belgium. Aunt Teresa’s method of inveigling Gustave into marriage with her daughter was both swift and efficient and, if you remember my own case, not without precedent. She waited till they were to be found alone together, chatting innocently enough, when she dropped upon them, like an eagle from the blue, with her heartiest congratulations and best wishes for their future happiness. ‘I’m so glad, so glad indeed,’ she said, kissing them both on the cheek and taking them completely by surprise. Gustave coughed a little and adjusted his Adam’s apple; but said nothing, only stroked his broad chin with his two fingers and smiled. And Gustave had to see his way to buy Sylvia a ring which she wore next to my own—that very same one which I once exhorted her to set me as a seal upon her heart.

  It was difficult to know what Sylvia thought of it. Unlike myself, Gustave was not handsome. He had small podgy hands covered with freckles, and an absurd canary moustache. His large head had a bald patch on the crown which he vainly tried to cover up with what little hair he had left, and his teeth were ridiculously small considering the width of his chin. Gustave was a confirmed bachelor, and probably he did not favour the impending marriage. But it was difficult to know what Gustave really thought of it. It was difficult to know what Gustave thought of anything. For Gustave never said anything. He only stroked his chin with his two fingers and smiled. And each time he smiled he revealed a black tooth at each corner of his mouth.

  I thought: We have lived our days carefully, sparingly, grudgingly. We have been cowards, preferring our life as a drab, moderate compromise rather than coloured in vivid stripes of joys and griefs. And now, she, my aunt, who has lived fully and recklessly and has landed on the rocks, wants to thrive upon the little savings of our happiness.—No more of it! No!

  ‘No more of it!’ I said.

  ‘No, darling.’

  ‘No what?’ I asked, knowing that Sylvia, who hated trouble, was unduly acquiescent.

  ‘No—what you mean,’ she replied, blinking.

  She looked as though she had something up her sleeve. But this, I knew, was merely an endeavour on her part to conceal her attitude of having nothing up her sleeve, of which she was ashamed. She acted almost without motive, following the line of least resistance, but feeling that in civilized society it was expected of one to be able to produce a reasoned motive for each action, she invented motives—sometimes after the event.

  ‘No parting?’

  ‘No, darling.’

  ‘What is it all about then?’

  ‘Maman,’ she said—and was silent. ‘Wants to part us?’

  ‘Yes, darling.’

  ‘Sixteen thousand miles apart.’

  ‘So cruel!’ she said.

  ‘But do you want to marry him?’

  ‘Darling, I’m so easily persuaded.’

  She looked at me doubtfully, expecting a lead.

  ‘Then let us run away together to England,’ I said—rather uncertainly. I thought of the cost of the passage: my grandfather stirred in his grave.

  She looked at me dumbly, her head bent, blinking.

  ‘Shall we?’

  ‘We can’t, darling. Maman.’

  She looked as if she wanted me to overrule her meek objection by a stronger motive, but I accepted it as valid, and she looked pained.

  ‘Then what had we better do? Shall we marry—marry and separate? Marry and, for the time being, you remain and I go?’

  She looked at me shyly: ‘Just as you like, darling.’

  ‘But—but what’s the good if your mother will never let you go? What’s the good? Besides, she might marry you off in my absence. No, she can’t do that, but still, what’s the use? Darling, answer me.’

  ‘I don’t care. Oh, it’s going to rain. I must shut the window. What a wind! I don’t care, darling.’

  ‘But I do. And I’m damned if I’ll do anything of the sort.’ I smarted under Aunt Teresa’s selfishness. I felt we were the victims of a crying wrong. ‘Either we are to be married at once and you sail with me, or—or it’s good-bye for ever.’

  She was mute, very sad, and then said:

  ‘Darling, I can’t.’

  ‘You must!’

  ‘No, darling, I can’t.’

  ‘Yes, that’s settled now. We leave together.’ And even as I spoke the words I felt a pang for Aunt Teresa who had already lost her only son—and now her only daughter.

  ‘No, no; it will make maman so sad.’

  ‘Damn your maman! Damn all mamans!’

  ‘Oh, what’s the use of cursing? We’ve got to make the best of things, that’s all.’

  ‘We can only make the best of things by cursing.’

  ‘Don’t be nasty to me, darling.’

  ‘I’m not nasty.’

  ‘Be nice to me.’

  ‘I am nice. And your maman would be a very nice person—if it weren’t for her deceitfulness, dishonesty, meanness, and utter selfishness.’ But because I knew full well the indecisions that really held me back, and was angry at my indecisions, I now transferred, with glee, my anger to my aunt, and my soul quailed under the weight of wrong, so that I nearly cried aloud for grief.

  ‘We’ve got to make the best of things,’ she said. ‘Yes, darling, it’s the only thing to do.’

  It was not the only thing to do; but I could not do—whatever it was that wanted doing—and my heart felt sick.

  ‘We shall meet again, we can think of each other,’ she said.

  ‘We shall most likely never see each other again.’

  ‘Oh, don’t; you make me so sad, darling.’ She paused, and then said: ‘I shall be true to you. We shall meet again somehow, I feel we shall. And don’t flirt with anyone meanwhile, will you?’

  I sighed. ‘Well, I suppose we must make the best of things, that’s evident. But—oh——’

  ‘Never mind, darling.’

  ‘Of course—it may even be for the best—who knows?’ I said cheerily.

  ‘Yes, never mind, darling.’

  ‘We might not have been happy together after all—so cheer up!——’

  She listened, blinking.

  ‘Quarrelled, perhaps divorced later on——But why are you crying then?’

  ‘I cry,’ she sobbed, ‘because it hurts me.’

  She was on my neck, her wet cheek against mine, and I spoke tender foolish words: ‘Oh, my little mouse, my little kitten, my little birdie, my little chicken!’

  She stifled a sob. ‘Not chicken.’

  ‘Lovie-dovie-cats’-eyes.’

  ‘Now, darling, don’t be soppy.’

  ‘But I’m so—for you,’ I replied.

  ‘No, darling, I don’t like this soppy stuff.’

  ‘Oh, well——’

  She laughed her dingling silvery laughter which was a lovely thing.

  Our spacious pessimism, what is it? The squeal of a puppy. Life hurts, and then the night is starless, the world a desolating void where the wind groans and mutters and complains in our echo. But we go on, amazed, a little puzzled, inert, day-dreaming and unquestioning. In the twilight of the drawing-room General ‘Pshe-Pshe’ was sitting at the side of Aunt Teresa, saying: ‘My wife and I do not get on together well. My children, too, are not what they should be. But here with you I feel at home.’ He kissed her hand. ‘Here my soul rests.’ He kissed her hand once more. ‘This … my spiritual home!’ Again he kissed her hand. ‘When I go home, half of my soul remains here in this flat. Oh, my beautiful woman!’ He kissed her hand. Aunt Teresa looked to heaven, as if pleading that this
was a strain on her, the ailing delicate woman that she was.

  ‘I see things through you and your being. If I hear a song that I think you have never heard it hurts me to think that it should have been in vain. If I hear a tune or see a picture, or anything like that, that is familiar to you, it hurts me equally, it hurts me more, to think that it has captured your attention, if even for a moment, perhaps your affection, your love, and that I—I—I—I couldn’t, couldn’t … nothing but blind indifference.’ He could not speak. He was rent by self-pity; his heart was weeping tears. She looked to heaven, invoking strength to bear this—but not altogether displeased.

  Harry stood in the doorway.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, feeling foolish at his seeing her side by side with ‘Pshe-Pshe’ on the sofa.

  ‘Nuffink. I’m not asking for anything.’

  39

  And he repulsed (a short tale to make),

  Fell into a sadness; then into a fast;

  Thence to a watch; thence into a weakness;

  Thence to a lightness; and by this declension,

  Into the madness wherein now he raves.

  HAMLET.

  IT WAS THE 11TH OF APRIL, NORA’S BIRTHDAY. AUNT Molly had been away in Japan a week and she had taken Bubby with her, leaving Harry and Nora in the charge of ‘Aunt’ Berthe—for their own father, she felt was altogether too incalculable a factor to be relied on in these matters. The children played nicely together, and were not a nuisance. In the morning, before lunch, Berthe would take them out into town for an airing and they would walk in front of her, buttoned up in their warm padded coats and warm gaiters, Harry holding Nora by the hand. They would come back to say they had seen a big dog in the street; or Harry would climb the steps to my attic, where I was in the habit of working—‘There’—and give me a big nail. Three times a week Harry went to the newly-organized school for Anglo-American children, and sometimes Nora was sent with him for company. He would walk in, with that old man’s smile on his face, holding her by the hand, and she would sit at a desk next to a little boy (who pinched her occasionally), her legs dangling down, and draw something with the stump of a pencil. And when she twitched, because the little boy at her side was pinching her, Harry, sitting behind, put up his hand—‘Please, teacher’—so putting a stop to it. She had been taught what to say when she wanted to rise and go out, which she did now with an air of independence, putting up her hand and saying: ‘Please, teacher, may I?’ and the teacher graciously nodded her head. But when she returned to the room, Harry, appreciating the position of things, put up his hand—‘Please, teacher’—and, strolling over to his little sister, gravely buttoned up her knickers in front of the class.