The Polyglots

by William Gerhardie

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘The point is that I jumped out clean on to the carpet.’

  ‘That is very interesting, I am sure,’ said he.

  There was a stiff little pause. My uncle cleared his throat. ‘I suspected something all along. I suspected it.’

  ‘And I wish you joy of it!’

  ‘I would have advised you to be more careful, though.’

  ‘When I want your advice I shall cable for it.’

  ‘If we were here alone I would give you a bit of my mind.’

  ‘Then we should exchange our minds like visiting cards.’

  ‘She has no brother,’ he whimpered. ‘Anatole——’ And the tears came to his eyes.

  ‘I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum.’

  ‘What has Ophelia got to do with it?’

  ‘I had made her happy.’

  ‘My poor daughter …’

  Languidly I sipped my brandy. Wearily I raised my eyes at him. ‘Must I really blow your silly brains out?’

  ‘This is scandalous! a scandalous affair!’

  ‘The only equity for your existence that I can tentatively advance, mon oncle, is that you may be a blessing in disguise.’

  I may be—intermittently—a cynic; but he is worse: he does not know he is a cynic. His daughter! His daughter! But the daughter wanted me to love her, and her father meantime loved other men’s daughters. So why does he squeak and squeal, this future censor of films?

  ‘I am the last man,’ my tone was conciliatory, ‘to want to give the matter a significance it does not possess.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Emmanuel,’ said Aunt Teresa in a tone which clearly implied that she was proud of his display of paternal authority but sought to show that much in life must be forgiven. She fumbled in her speech. What she meant, but found it difficult to convey in words, was that she had been unhappy all along at the thought of having done her daughter out of her birthright—which is love—but that I had somehow managed to restore that privilege. ‘But Emmanuel, Sylvia was already married at the time.’

  ‘On the eve of my departure, you old cuckoo of an uncle!’

  ‘Married?’ said Uncle Emmanuel, agreeably astonished at this extenuating circumstance. ‘Of course, that puts a different complexion on it. Well, at that rate we shall presume that she knew what she was doing. Still—still——’

  But he did not get beyond that ‘still’—a protest put on record, but not pressed.

  Dinner over, we lounged over coffee on deck. The big steamer had gone out into the open sea; the pier was discernible only by its string of lights. When the café orchestra subsided, in the intervals we could just catch the distant strains of the band playing in the illuminated gardens of Government House. On the bows a gramophone screamed shrilly, and some Cockney petty officers danced to it with one another in quick, vulgar movements.

  This was China—the Far East! The moist heat of evening enveloped us, and standing at the rail, the ship in midstream, somehow one felt sorry for onself and all the lives that live.

  49

  Methinks it should be now a huge eclipse

  Of sun and moon and that the affrighted globe

  Should yawn at alteration.

  OTHELLO.

  WHEN WE HAD COME BACK NEXT DAY (THE SHIP had broken down and was undergoing alterations and repairs) the General with the mad eyes was still on board, pacing the deck in his sweat-eaten canvas shoes, as a cat paces the roof of a house in flames. The General, who had come from Hong-Kong to Shanghai and had arrived again at Hong-Kong, decided to go on to Singapore, where the Russian Consul—so he hoped—would finance him and request and require that he be allowed forthwith to land on British soil. To this idea he clung with that ready hope of the fainthearted who, because he dreads the prospect of despair—his sole alternative, clutches at each straw with the assurance of salvation. The General with the mad eyes looked on the British Empire as a huge joke, while Captain Negodyaev regarded it as a refuge for himself and for his family from the imagined persecutions which he so feared on Russian soil, and gravely saluted the Union Jack on every possible occasion; and the occasions, considering that every port we touched was unequivocally British, were not few. It is a truism that whenever Russians meet they quarrel. Captain Negodyaev was a monarchist at heart, and the General with the mad eyes a Bolshevik convert. When on board I played the magnificent old Russian national anthem, the General remarked that it was most improper, while Captain Negodyaev begged me to go on. Yet, it was the Captain who was socially despised by the General, who called his junior a vulgar time-server, and scoffed at his undistinguished unit and provincial upbringing. The Bolshevik General had been a guardsman and a military academician. He prided himself on his connexions in England, and spoke a great deal of the peers with whom he was intimate. ‘I have only to write to Lord Curzon,’ he would say, with a self-satisfied smile, ‘and all the British ports will lie open before me.’

  ‘But in spite of all your aristocratic friends,’ rejoined Captain Negodyaev, ‘they won’t let you out to buy yourself a pack of postcards. Whereas I——’

  ‘Of course not, because I am a big gun; but you—you’re a nonentity, they don’t notice you.’

  The Captain of H.M.T. Rhinoceros, a stout little man with an unpleasant smile, and wearing the C.M.G. ribbon, implied in all he said and did that he was every bit as good as a regular Captain of the Royal Navy. But the R.N. Commodore, who travelled as a private passenger on board and wore plain clothes, was a constant eyesore to him; and during dinner the Captain dwelt at length on the service rendered in the war by the Mercantile Marine.

  ‘Certainly!’ Beastly nodded heavily as was his custom. ‘What I always say is: one man’s as good as another and a damned sight better!’ And he guffawed loudly.

  The Captain looked round at the company, and the Commodore. The Commodore made no comment.

  Each morning at 10.30 the procession of inspection passed along the deck, headed by the Captain and the Officer Commanding Troops, and followed by the First Officer, the Adjutant, the Second Officer, the Officer of the Day, the Purser, the Chief Engineer, the Medical Officer, and the Ship’s Surgeon. At the conclusion of one of these parades Captain Negodyaev stopped the Captain (who was on his way to do something) and, through me, conveyed:

  ‘I have two daughters, Captain: Màsha and Natàsha. Tell the Captain that Màsha is away—married. And this is Natàsha.’

  ‘This is Natàsha,’ I translated, ignoring the preamble.

  The Captain touched Natàsha kindly on the shoulder, not because he wanted to, but because she happened to be in his way. ‘This is your daughter?’ he asked, in a tone implying that she should not be allowed to block the passage. And he went his way.

  After lunch there was deck-tennis. Beastly played, as you might expect him to, with cheery determination, nodding significantly, a look of evident satisfaction and a broad proud grin coming on his face as his opponents proved unequal to returning his stroke (not because he was so good but because they were so bad). But he looked round as if to say: ‘There! this is me all over: to settle it by one stroke!’ And he would look round to see if all had noticed it. And Mme Negodyaev played as though she quite expected (assuming a degree of justice in the universe) that her measure of exertion must also be her measure of success. And when it wasn’t—well, then she looked as though there was no justice in the world, no reason, no goodness, no God!

  ‘What a lovely, lovely sea!’ Sylvia exclaimed, as she stood at the rail awaiting the dinner-gong.

  ‘A stagnant pool reflecting a stray sunbeam may appear to a short-lived insect as evidence of the miraculous and divine. The sublime in nature does not depend on such simple answers as whether this glorious sea before us be the elixir of divine nature or merely a chance pool of slop spilt by some careless char-woman of another dimension: for the miracle might well be in the essence of its being all these thing
s at once.’

  ‘Darling, you are getting very dull,’ she said.

  Early in the morning we cast anchor off the shore of Singapore. A green-tabbed officer steamed up in a white launch flying the naval ensign, and stepping on board enquired, ‘Is there a Russian General here—a General Pok-Pok-Pokhitonoff? A dangerous man.’ There was. And the result of it was that the General with the mad eyes was not allowed ashore.

  At Singapore, among other things, books were purchased for the education of Natàsha. Her parents had been worrying more and more about her education. ‘She’s already eight, she will be nine in a year, and she’s not too attentive,’ Mme Negodyaev complained. ‘I always said that I would have my children educated to perfection. And I did not stint my last penny on Màsha. Poor Màsha! She’s been so well educated, and yet she’s not too happy. Ah, well. And now there is Natàsha.—Ah, here is my cherub.’

  Natàsha stood at her side, with eyes bright as daylight. ‘We have seen the bullocks,’ she said. ‘Oh, how many bullocks in the street!’

  At Singapore an old dug-out of a British General came on board, and then we steamed up the straits between dark forests of malacca trees till once again we bulged into the ocean. The General with the mad eyes decided he would drift on to Ceylon. To the British General who said, ‘What a nice little daughter you have’, Captain Negodyaev replied through me: ‘I have, your Excellency, two daughters: Màsha, the eldest, is away—married, your Excellency. And this, your Excellency, is Natàsha. She is only eight. Unfortunately, your Excellency, things being what they are, your Excellency, her education is being seriously neglected. Yes, very truly said: it is a long journey, your Excellency.’

  Captain Negodyaev liked the British General for his apparent absence of snobbery, just as he disliked the Russian General for his arrogant superiority. But that was because he had not yet learnt to discriminate between the two traditions. The grander the Russian sire the more abrupt his manner with inferiors. Not so in England. English snobbery is a snobbery subdued, a snobbery in shade, in undertone. Your Russian Count will simply fire a volley of abuse at an intruding upstart; and all the other Counts will feel with satisfaction that he has vindicated the integrity of their exclusive caste. Not so in England. It is by an exaggerated deference, by an innuendo of reserve, that your English snob will show you that in the society of him and God you are other than his kind. The English General did not take well to the Russian General. ‘You’re a Bolshevist,’ he said to him, as if with a deep concern for the Russian’s welfare.

  The Russian sniffed. ‘Any man who doesn’t smoke a pipe or play billiards is called a Bolshevik in your country nowadays. You might as well call me a chair or a carpet for what it conveys.’

  The British General would not let the Russian General out of his sight, and followed perpetually on his heels. ‘He’s a dangerous man,’ he confessed to me. ‘I am sure he’ll set the ship on fire if I don’t keep an eye on him. Dreadful fellows, these Bolshevists.’ And as you lounged in your deck-chair you would catch between one deck-house and the next a glimpse of the English General’s immaculate white tennis shoes, and then shortly afterwards a glimpse of the Russian General’s sweat-eaten brown canvas shoes making away, it seemed, from the white tennis shoes, round and round the deck.

  For Sylvia and me the voyage was of pure unmitigated bliss from early morning until late at night—love all the way—till perhaps one tired of it just a little. I was content—indifferent. Bovril and biscuits, deck-tennis and quoits, concerts, dances, cocktails, conversations, bridge, and lemon-squash.

  ‘The weather,’ she remarked, ‘is beautiful.’

  ‘You and I together, love, never mind the weather, love. Look at these two generals chasing each other round the deck.’

  It was hot and stifling in the cabin. We dragged our mattresses up on deck and slept at the water’s edge to the sound of the lazy splash of the sea.

  ‘What are you laughing at?’

  ‘At our deceiving him.’

  ‘Whom?’ she asked, with a stir.

  ‘The Captain.’

  ‘This is not love.’

  ‘Love and love and always love—I love you and you love me—bliss—contentment—perfect happiness everlasting. Still, why is it, darling, that sometimes one longs to hang oneself?’

  ‘Alexander,’ she said, ‘you have changed.’

  ‘I haven’t changed, but it’s … exasperating.’

  In the midst of the Indian Ocean Captain Negodyaev had a relapse of persecution mania, and he bid his wife and daughter don their overcoats (it seemed to him that fleeing involved fleeing in overcoats) and sit down in the saloon lounge in their furs and muffs and overshoes, surrounded on all sides by the tropic water, till he declared ‘All Clear’ and sent them back to bed. When I asked Natàsha why her daddy made them don their overcoats and sit out in the lounge, she said, with a shrug, ‘I don’t know what’s it means.’ Her education now began in earnest. Her mother taught her Russian syntax. I undertook to teach her English, and three times a week I would dictate from First Steps to a distracted infant: ‘Nat had a cat but no rat. Did the cat eat the rat of poor Nat?’ And punctuating the lesson, sometimes there was the sound of shuffling steps portending the approach of the sweat-eaten canvas shoes; you caught a glimpse of the pale mad eyes, heard him sniff the air, snort a little, and pass by. Sylvia undertook to tutor the French side, and Natàsha would be exercised in such pregnant conversation as: ‘Avez-vous vu le pantalon de ma grand’tante qui est dans le jardin?’ Berthe undertook the piano, which meant that every day for a whole hour Natàsha’s slender pink fingers travelled the keys in a dull series of Hannon’s exercises, up, up, up the scale, and having reached the utmost top, down, down, down they came till they roared hoarsely (and somewhat unnaturally if you remembered the age and sex of the being who produced these desultory sounds), adding to the ordinary monotony of the sea-voyage, making you want to sleep and never to waken! And Beastly, while the sea was calm, undertook (since he could not affect the culture of a foreign tongue) to instruct Natàsha in arithmetic, to which class of his (since he was always eager to outshine us others) he invited Harry, who counted ‘1, 2, 3, 5, 7 …’ or when asked how much two and two made together usually relied on his considerable imagination and replied, after a dreamy spell: ‘Eleven.’ Uncle Emmanuel, a German scholar in his day—a language which he chose for special study from the General Staff aspect, foreseeing as he did a war between his country and the German Empire—made use of it for the first time by undertaking to propel Natàsha’s steps; and when just after luncheon on the way to your cabin you passed the saloon, there was the spectacle of a distracted little girl with plaited hair revealing the tenderest of necks, biting at her pen that she wielded with her slender ink-stained fingers, swinging lazily her bare-kneed legs, and little Uncle Emmanuel, his hand stuck in the front of his waistcoat, strutting up and down with a serious professorial mien, dictating: ‘Ist das ein Mensch? Nein, es ist ein Stuhl.’ And if you chose to wait a little longer, you would be rewarded by desultory steps and a pair of shabby canvas shoes emerging from behind the corner, a sniff, a snort, and a fade-out. Natàsha’s belated education was thus accelerated to the last degree, even Aunt Teresa undertaking to supervise the infant’s efforts at fancy needlework. And, indeed, Natàsha looked proud, sitting on a cushion at the feet of the grand grey-haired bejewelled dame, who occasionally corrected her in a deep drawling baritone.

  Uncle Tom passed and winked. She gurgled in ecstatic delight. The lessons over, she would run after him and plead: ‘Play with me; oh, play with me!’ She told him all about Little Lord ‘Fountainpen’. Uncle Tom’s finger-joints cracked when he bent them, which, he said, was because he had rheumatism. ‘Oh, Uncle Tom, you are so funny!’ And she had a new name for him—‘Uncle Romatism’, because, she explained, ‘his bones were all crackling’. Harry and Nora, too, were extremely interested in this ‘crackling’ on the part of ‘Uncle Romatism’; and the children would listen
in hushed awe to the cracking of the seaman’s joints. He had to do it over and over again for their amusement.

  The nearer west we moved, the duskier became the yellow, Chinky faces; the more regularly featured, Hindu-looking, more and more like my lean friends from India whom I had known at Oxford. It was a gradually changing panorama noticeable at each port of call, a stimulating subject for reflection, as the big ocean liner, rendered miniature in my imagination, struggled on the troubled ocean somewhere between the Malay coast and the island of Ceylon.

  The sea had calmed down, the sun came out, radiant as a smile. I closed my eyes, and the breeze, full of that vigour of the sea, swept across my face; and I slumbered in the keen delight. I dreamt that Captain Negodyaev asked me for a loan of £50—and I woke up.

  At Colombo, the General with the mad eyes was again confined on board as a dangerous revolutionary. The staff officer, who had come up in a cutter with the orders, placed his craft at the disposal of the English General, and in the morning we all went ashore. Ah, the Ceylon sea. Ah, the tropical night. The early morning rickshaw ride down to the green roaring ocean which rushed at one and receded, rushed and receded, sparkling in the sun. The dance at the Galle Face Hotel. Again the tropical night with the big pale moon, and the palm-tree forest leering at us from behind, and the lighted ship in midstream keeping watch, faithfully waiting. What were we waiting for? Death? Crouching on all fours, it will creep up and—snap—! take us away, one by one.

  We were gathered on the upper deck of the Rhinoceros, as she steamed away carefully past the bright foam-washed breakwaters of Colombo’s sun-lit coast, and bulged into the open sea. The ocean rose in green mountains, with glints of light on the crests; the gulls wheeling and crying now soared in the sun, now rocked on the waves. Sylvia stood at my side, looked at me. ‘With that old, dilapidated bow of yours you look like a minor poet. Come, I’ll tie it for you.’ I felt the touch of her tender fingers on my neck; and I smelt the fragrance of her hair, and it reminded me of the dances I had danced with her the night before at the hotel, and that brought back to me a swarm of delicate sensations, of tropic nights, of thwarted rivalries, of love, which had transfigured for me, like nothing else, that strange journey round the world; and I felt that we should yet be long together, and that the flower of our happiness was still to come.