The Polyglots

by William Gerhardie

  ‘It’s a fine engine,’ I said, looking back at Vladislav, who stood with a complacent gaze, surveying his well-polished high boots.

  ‘An engine. It’s only an engine in name. In France, ah!—there they have engines! Such engines that once you have got them going you won’t stop them again! Yes.’

  The spring sunny freshness; I breathed in the air; I paced up and down in my brown highly polished top-boots. O Life! Vladislav—he was all right. He would get through revolutions and counter-revolutions, through red and white and green terrors without coming to much harm. He would wander on from the coast to the Urals, from the Caspian Sea up the Volga and back again to the south, to the west, to the north, to the east, round and round. He was all right.

  ‘Keep out of the Army, my son, and you’ll be all right,’ was my farewell advice to him.

  And then we parted with the General. There was a worried look on his face: his troops had already been disarmed, and he had been nicknamed ‘Commander-in-Chief of all Disarmed Military and Naval Forces of the Far East’. Before leaving—he was in a hurry—the General bowed low over Aunt Teresa’s pale bejewelled hand, and brought his black moustache against it in a prolonged exquisite expression of farewell. She looked moved, charming—with sad, beautiful St. Bernard eyes. He went away rather briskly, with visible emotion, and did not notice the omission of the guards.

  Gustave stood on the platform at the open window of our coupé. ‘Write, Gustave,’ said Aunt Teresa.

  He gulped once or twice, his Adam’s apple withdrawing and bobbing up again conveniently, pulled at his collar in a timid gesture, cleared his throat half-heartedly, and said:

  ‘Oui, maman.’

  ‘You must really make an effort to come home—to get a permanent transfer to Brussels or Dixmude,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ Sylvia echoed.

  Gustave coughed a little and adjusted his Adam’s apple, but said nothing. He only stroked his broad chin with his two fingers and smiled, revealing a black tooth at either corner of his mouth.

  ‘Allons!’ said my uncle in a tone one might use to a small boy shirking a plunge into the water, urging him to be a man. ‘Allons! One must make a try. One must exert oneself.’

  ‘Come. Never say die!’ offered Beastly, who always took a leading share in any conversation, however intimate, once he was present.

  ‘Come. You must demand a transfer,’ urged Aunt Teresa, ‘or immediate annual leave.’

  Gustave did not look hopeful. To be perfectly candid, I do not remember any man who, despite hearty urgings to the contrary, looked less hopeful. He seemed oppressed by the magnitude, the problem, the distance, and the vagueness of the whole proposition.

  ‘Courage! Courage, mon ami!’ urged Uncle Emmanuel.

  ‘Good-bye, Gustave,’ said Sylvia.

  They kissed.

  ‘Good-bye.’ He looked as though he were going to cry. I remembered how he had said in church, ‘She has brought joy into my life.’ And it was as though the sun had gone as suddenly as it had come out.

  ‘Courage, mon ami!’

  ‘Adieu, mon pauvre Gustave!’ That was all his mother-in-law had to say to him. But it may have compensated him all the same. I don’t know. I don’t care.

  But when he advanced to the window, and with a self-conscious self-effacing smile moved towards the children, I felt that he was a member of the family, that he was attached to us, and had been cruelly wronged; and a pang ran through my heart and my conscience was ablaze.

  ‘Good-bye, ’Arry,’ he said.

  Harry’s face suddenly quivered and winced into a protracted, leisurely sneeze that ran its full course of development to a climax, discharging in thunder; he unfolded his handkerchief, blew his nose twice with a trumpeting sound, replaced the handkerchief, and then said:

  ‘Good-bye.’

  My aunt blew the whistle on the white lanyard presented to her by ‘Pshe-Pshe’, the old gallant. It was a beautiful morning, so fresh; the engines puffed on mightily, only awaiting this signal. Now they would set off.

  ‘Adieu, Gustave!’ And she lowered her bejewelled hand to his thin lips hidden under the soft canary moustache.

  He smiled back timidly. ‘Adieu, maman!’

  Now in England you sit in the corner seat of the compartment at the window, somewhere, let us say at Nuneaton, and quite imperceptibly, while you sit, with your hand in the sling, the train glides out of the station. Not so in Russia. At first there was a jerk, as if the two engines tried to do something that was obviously beyond their strength. The jerk was so violent that a portmanteau shook on the rack and hung in the balance. ‘Allons donc!’ muttered Berthe, while Uncle Emmanuel made propitiatory gestures, as if to say ‘Que voulez-vous?’ We were settling down again—when ‘Whack!’ came another jerk, and this time all the coaches all along shook, moaned and screeched piteously. ‘Ah mais! Ce sont des coquins ces machinistes tchèques!’ uttered Uncle Emmanuel as he hastened to restore two of Aunt Teresa’s hat boxes to the rack from which they had fallen—when ‘Whack!’ came yet another jerk, more moderate this time, as though, after all, the task the engines had set themselves was not entirely beyond their strength. Then came a fourth jerk, and it seemed that the engines, in spite of all, were succeeding—succeeding. Sylvia waved her gloved hand. But her mother blocked the window.

  ‘Now mind you write, Gustave.’

  The engines were already gathering strength, and slowly, but rapidly gathering speed, we were moving. And Vladislav waved his cap in the air and, timidly but none the less exultantly, as the train went faster he cried:

  ‘Vive la France!’

  The train drew out, and Vladislav and Gustave with the platform they stood on slid away out of sight, out of call. I stood at the window and looked at the vanishing outskirts: a few mills, a few factories, a cemetery; then there came fields and woods. The engine gave a shrill whistle. The train rattled on with increasing speed, swayed at the curve—and all these things had become of the past.

  Puff-puff-puff—and the accompanying shatter and rattle was not at all disagreeable. We were moving. After all the waiting and running about we were sitting still and were moving. I sat there, my head propped up by my hand, and thought: ‘Pauvre Gustave! Pauvre Gustave!’ I was the only one of the whole crew to shed a tear for him—and it was not a crocodile’s but a real genuine tear. What could I do? Even had I handed Sylvia to him through the window, what would have happened? Picture Aunt Teresa pulling the alarm-cord. It was his luck and my luck, and fate alone knew who of us two was the lucky one. I would not have you put this down to Sylvia or myself. It was very simple—our love affair had been upset by one of Aunt Teresa’s arbitrary acts: now it was reversed by another. On taking thought, we were content to leave our love to fate and Aunt Teresa. ‘Pauvre Gustave! Pauvre Gustave!’ I could but repeat to the shattering rhythm of the train. To those who would cast the first stone at me for my betrayal of Gustave I would say this in my defence: Gustave was an enigma. He said ‘Yes’, or else he said ‘No’, and this he seemed to say according to whether you wished him to say one or the other. He was the type of man that you will find playing second fiddle in an orchestra: reliable but timid, and no good as a conductor. Gustave got the worst of the bargain. Or so it seemed on the face of it. But he was a patient man, and patience to the patient is as natural as impatience to the impatient. I was impatient. But my aunt was a fool, a blind, egotistical fool.

  ‘A penny for your thoughts,’ she said.

  ‘Never mind my thoughts.’

  I looked out of the window. The green fields were whirling round; a few trees glimpsed; a forest flew by.

  ‘Look at the spring!’

  Nora looked, and saw gee-gees and moo-cows and ba-lambs and nanny-goats. The train raced on as before. Sylvia sat facing me, in her big velvet black hat, her wide-awake eyes sparkling in the morning sun. And looking at the window, with an unending smile on her face, ‘Are you frightened of bulls?’ she asked.

  �
�Very.’

  I thought: she is mine, mine for ever. And my heart gave a pang for Gustave. I wanted to speak to her, urgently, privately. I made signs to her to come into the corridor. She turned her head away from the sun, and looked at me with her dark velvety eyes, shook her head, and looked back at the window, smiling away in the sun.

  ‘Yes,’ I insisted.

  She did not respond.

  I wrote on a slip:

  Come out into the corridor immediately, or I shall never forgive you.

  She wrote in answer:

  You are so stupid, darling. The people are laughing at our soppy ways.

  From under her broad-brimmed black hat she looked out with her enormous eyes at the sunny fields and smiled to herself without cease.

  At one o’clock we took lunch in the restaurant-car. The train went on—puff-puff-puff. The field, drenched, seemed to sink in the river, and dark stems of trees showed out of the water in all indecent nakedness. Spring was beginning. Then over half the globe spring was beginning, as we rolled through an unsettled country that had been in a better way before we tackled it. Moods, reminiscences pressed into my heart. Once on just such a day, in just such a mood, at Oxford and in spring, I had gone to Magdalen citadel encompassed by a Chinese wall and steeped in tender foliage, and from an open window came a phrase of Chopin like a question addressed to the hollow blue. Oxford now would be a mass of green, white, tender pinks, tremulous like the sea. The green elms stretched out their arms to the sky. Why? Because, like us, they were thirsting for things outside themselves. Their own beauty was lost on them, wasted. But when the rain came the drenched birches drooped their glittering limbs and cried. Because, having quenched their thirst, there was nothing left them—nothing left outside the anguish of desire! And now, as we rattled past on our way, the tall pines roared and the slim young birches lashed together in the wind; prisoners rooted to the ground, they stood there and deplored their cruel fate. Later, in the tinge of evening, they shook their heads, looked older, wiser and resigned—but sad, sad.

  There was more dignity in their vague dreams than in all our farcical preoccupations. For it is the vagueness of a dormant world that lies behind our subtle thoughts as, maturing, they shrink into precise expressions. And so, perhaps, these beeches, dreaming, do not seek to apprehend and, not seeking, apprehend in full.

  ‘The logical conclusion of life,’ said Captain Negodyaev, ‘of all joy, sorrow, suffering, exaltation, consciousness; in a word, of being—is not being.’

  ‘But dreaming?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What is the meaning of life?’

  ‘Life is meaningless. Perhaps it is there to give meaning to death. After life we are content with death.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. If the whole world be unreal, then where is the real world? (This, by the way, is not a question but a statement, an assertion that the only reality is I.) And when I want to die, to be extinct into nothing, I only mean I am tired and want a pillowed sleep with happy dreams. The thought of death—of the complete annihilation of my I is as unnatural and impossible as eating myself up and leaving no crumbs behind.’

  ‘Darling, do talk of something more interesting—something which is easier to understand,’ Sylvia demurred.

  ‘You believe in immortality?’ he asked.

  ‘I have not sufficient data not to believe in it. It is no less a miracle that I should exist in a body than that I should exist without one.’

  ‘I don’t believe in things of which I have no tangible proof,’ he said.

  ‘Which means you disbelieve in everything except your limitations.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Your limited knowledge stops short this side of death, and you give your verdict in favour of this knowledge. But for me to believe that death is the end is like giving a verdict in the absence of innumerable witnesses to the contrary who had been prevented from appearing by some flood or fire. The unexplored possibilities of what might happen after death are so incalculable in the face of our provisional assumption to the contrary that as well we may deny the future generations inventions and discoveries of which we have no knowledge.’ I sighed.

  ‘What is it, darling?’

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ I said—and thought: ‘Pauvre Gustave.’

  An hour later we stopped at a country-side by the river. How quiet, how idyllic.

  Then we went on. The blinds in the train turned pink from the sunset. The grinding and clanking subdued: we rushed into a tunnel. Again we rushed out, polluting the air of the hill-side.

  By order of the General we had the special train, but no sooner did he leave us than they began unhooking one coach after another, till we were left with half. ‘Le sabre de mon père’ was in Aunt Teresa’s case with her umbrellas, and my eloquence proved helpless against the villainy of local station-masters. For lack of space I went in with Aunt Teresa, Aunt Molly, Berthe, Sylvia, Uncle Emmanuel, and Harry. In the adjoining coupé were ensconced the Negodyaev family, Bubby, Nora, and Nurse. In the third compartment, Beastly, Philip Brown, and several strangers.

  ‘Give your maman the corner seat, chérie,’ said Aunt Teresa. This roused my dormant sense of gallantry. I surrendered my cherished corner seat to Aunt Molly, perceiving in advance that I would be rewarded for my sacrifice; for I was now by Sylvia’s side. Our women were chattering like birds. Presently they got Uncle Emmanuel and myself to haul down a heavy supper-basket of immense proportions and dug into it. Tea, coffee, fruit, cakes, biscuits, sandwiches, and such-like luggage made its appearance. At wayside stations I had to run out to buy bananas, soda-water, and so forth. The evening sun, showing through the cream-coloured blinds, cast a pink light over Sylvia at my side. The train rattled on. Berthe and my aunts were still chattering. Their talk was boisterous and easy. Berthe was relating how when, many years ago, she travelled with her father there was a young man in the compartment with them who, in the process of settling down for the night, was taking off innumerable articles of underclothing, of which, however, there really seemed to be no visible end. They laughed. But Aunt Molly was silent. Looking through the window, I saw our train overtake a peasant driving in a cart. For a moment I could see him clearly to the minutest detail of his podgy face and cap, and I endeavoured to imagine the real ‘I’ of that man as if it had been myself sitting in that jolting cart; then the road which had been running alongside our track began to drift, and swiftly our ways parted, parted beyond sight and recall and remembrance. So it is in life, I thought, and I could see myself, a little light, a bundle of experiences, boring my way through timespace, past other bundles, bleak faces, eyes like lighted windows, all hurrying through what trance, what world of appearance, to what purpose, what goal? On, on, and on. The lights were being lit, the train hurried southwards. As Berthe and my aunts began to settle down for the night, they did strange things with their hands beneath their blouses, and their waists expanded automatically, and the creatures became flabby and unattractive, like empty sacks of oats. Sylvia alone did nothing to prepare herself for sleep. When night came, the shades were drawn over the electric globe and the window-screens lowered. The train rushed and roared through the dark. I stood for a while in the swaying corridor and looked through the wide black panes at the string of lights. What a lot of houses they have built: how they plod and multiply, these human beings! As we had settled down to sleep, the train, on the contrary, seemed to have grown more lively, and gathered speed, caring apparently nothing for darkness or sleep, and raced on with light-hearted gaiety, while we could only stretch our aching limbs and sigh. Sylvia was asleep. Through all the grinding and clanking, what sweet dreams would she be dreaming … perhaps of me? She had lain in my arms as the night drew out and the morning hours crept in sulkily, one by one. And now, like an angel child, she was asleep. These lines from Maupassant came back into my mind:

  How I have wept, the long night through, over the poor women of the past, so beautiful, so tender, so sweet, whose arms have opene
d for the kiss, and who are dead! The kiss—it is immortal! It passes from lip to lip, from century to century, from age to age. Men gather it, give it back, and die.

  It was interminable night. Carefully I moved my foot to hers and felt her ankle. She never stirred. Yes, she was asleep and leaning on my shoulder.

  Presently she sighed, tried to readjust her head upon the pillow, then gave it up as a bad job, opening her eyes.

  ‘Put your pillow on my knees.’

  She did. ‘Better now.’ She closed her eyes. I looked at my watch. It was past 3 a.m. All were sleeping. Then Harry, who had been sleeping with his head on Berthe’s lap, woke up. He muttered: ‘Yesterday the train went; today it’s stopped.’

  ‘Sleep, my little one,’ Berthe whispered, ‘sleep, my darling. You’ve woken in the middle of the night. The train went yesterday and today too; it has only stopped for a few minutes and will go on directly. Sleep, my darling.’ She kissed him on the forehead. ‘Sleep, my little one. There.’

  He shut his eyes, but opened them again after awhile with the remark, ‘Where’s Nora’s monkey?’

  Berthe tucked the cloth monkey in the front of his coat; he shut his eyes. But soon afterwards he woke again, announcing his intention to hang the monkey.

  This roused the rest of us, and no one any longer tried to sleep. I raised the window-screen. The grey dawn, showing feebly through the rain-stained window, mocked at the electric light. The air in the coupé was heavy. Uncle Emmanuel yawned into his hand and opened the door into the corridor. It was chilly. The ladies bucked up. Powder-puffs, hand-mirrors, and the like came into play; hands and eyes got busy; coiffure and complexion was remedied; scent poured out galore. And not a drop of water all the time. Water was not mentioned. Water was not thought of! Sylvia had a tiny orange-coloured crêpe-de-Chine ‘hanky’—that was all she used by way of toilet. It seemed to me touching. But had she used a bath-towel or nothing at all, it would have appeared to me—for such is the nature of love—equally touching.