The Polyglots (24 page)

In the day-time I was censoring all manner of telegrams and letters—an indictment of the war: that anyone should waste his time and talents on being a military censor. Personally, of course, I didn’t care a hang about the letters. It seemed to me that in a chaotic sea of gloom where age-long grievances sprang up like fountains to the surface, to censor private letters which someone wrote to someone else in the Far East of Russia was a farce to be enjoyed as such and nothing more. At this period I worked upon a thesis (for, as I have said, I am an intellectual and do not take wars very seriously)—a thesis named:
A Record of the Stages in the Evolution of an Attitude
. I would work in my attic on the Evolution of an Attitude and then run down to the drawing-room to kiss my red-haired cousin—and having thus refreshed myself, return to work. Life, in the meanwhile, was going on. One had a sensation—living like this far away in the East—that one was out of it all, out of touch with all the seething mental activities of the West. But the chances were, if one tried to ascertain the truth, that at the headquarters of Western thought the thinkers, wearied of the hollow mechanism of the West, were putting out their feelers towards the hollow mystery of the East. But one thought not of that: and so one felt ‘out of it all’. When one scanned the glazed pages of Anglo-Saxon magazines and read the advertisements of new razors and fountain pens, how to cure oneself of gout, train one’s mind, get an appointment, combining business with
pleasure, grow hair, preserve one’s complexion and teeth, furnish a house with all the latest conveniences, control one’s digestion and liver and purchase new shirts, one felt that far, far away there
was
a ‘progressive’, sensible life, that one was wantonly missing the benefits of one’s age. And one felt particularly ‘out of it all’.

Do you follow my story? Are you interested? Is it all perfectly clear to you? Very well, then, let us go on. On Thursday, the 22nd, Aunt Teresa gave a ball to celebrate my betrothal to Sylvia. Aunt Teresa sent out gilt-edged cards to His Excellency General Pshemòvich-Pshevìtski
et fils
, Count Valentine, Major Beastly, Lieut. Philip Brown, U.S.N., Colonel Ishibaiashi, of the Japanese Imperial General Staff, Dr. Murgatroyd, and, although they shared our flat with us, Captain and Mme Negodyaev. And the orchestra from the American Flagship, which Brown had promised us, not having arrived, General Pshemòvich-Pshevìtski helped us out with a military brass band.

Count Valentine called the same afternoon and left a card of the size of a postcard which read:

And across the print he had written in pencil:

But as I met him on the stairs it gradually transpired that the driving motive of his call had been to ask for British underclothing and possibly a pair of Army Ordnance boots. Count Valentine explained that his noble name derived from England and that for that reason he favoured English clothes. He bent down and felt my cavalry boots and said, ‘Pretty.—I wonder where I could get a pair like these.’ He fiddled with a button on my tunic. ‘
Très chic
! I should rather like a jacket made after your model if you will allow me to take it home with me for a few days. Unfortunately all my wardrobes have remained in Petrograd and I feel so dreadfully uncomfortable in these unbecoming clothes.’

I looked at him and thought: ‘Your one redeeming point is that you are a Count.’ He bowed again and again, and then vanished, still bowing.

The cold wind cut me in the face and wet snow tell in flecks from the dismal sky and vanished as it reached the ground. I drove home, elated and content. The house was being got ready under the competent direction of Vladislav. Sylvia, radiant, splendid, was dressing for the ball. Her shoes pinched a little at the toe and she was easily tired. I came up from the back. ‘Lovie-doviecats’-eyes.’

‘This is too soppy,’ she wrinkled her nose.

But at the ball one somehow felt (if not behaved accordingly) as though one did the ball a favour by being there at all. ‘Pshe-Pshe
fils
’, the General’s aide-de-camp, a short and freckled youth wearing the Don Cossacks’ uniform, danced the mazurka with Sylvia, stamping his feet and jingling his spurs and falling down on one knee with superlative skill. There were many young ladies and as many young men, among them a French naval Lieutenant with a touch of grey on one brow, and Gustave Boulanger, a local Belgian bank official of about thirty-five, with a small yellow moustache, a large broad chin and small teeth. And each time he smiled he revealed a black tooth at each corner of his mouth. ‘Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!’ Sylvia laughed. Surrounded by young men, she would at once begin laughing and be all ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ But Gustave
Boulanger never said anything. He only stroked his broad chin with his two fingers and smiled.

By the side of my aunt was Dr. Abelberg, her latest physician. Aunt Teresa was always changing them, because as a general rule they found that there was nothing much the matter with her, and this she could not endure. It was as though they robbed her of her natural prestige. Aunt Teresa had long grown to look on death and sickness as her own peculiar monopoly and told us frequently that we would not have her with us very much longer. When Berthe fell ill with influenza my aunt resented it as an effrontery and gave it out as her opinion that there was nothing much the matter with Berthe. The last doctor but one had told my aunt that she must use her legs, go out and take a lot of exercise, play golf if possible; and she at once dismissed him as a bear. ‘An unfeeling fool,’ was her comment, ‘who doesn’t know his own business!’ Until in Dr. Abelberg it really seemed that she had found her man. And naturally she had asked him to the ball. He stood beside her, a tall man of forty with a head as bald as a billiard ball and black hair on the temples; an affable man with a manner which is acquired from constant attendance on very nervous and difficult patients; a doctor whose sole force of argument in prescribing a medicine was that the medicine he prescribed could not do any harm. I sometimes wonder whether doctors die like flies because they have no layman’s health-imparting illusion in the curative properties of medicine, and by involuntary auto-suggestion hasten their own doom.

‘Must I go to Japan in the spring, Doctor?’ she asked.

‘To Japan … Well …’

‘I know I ought. I ought, I ought!’

‘Well, yes, you ought.’

‘But you know I can’t. How can I?’

‘Well, I don’t think there is any need—yet. It wouldn’t do you any good. In fact, it might cause harm. Stay where you are and listen to my advice.’

‘The Doctor keeps telling me that health is the first thing in life, don’t you, Doctor?’ she said, with a sly smile.

‘Why, you can’t pay too high a price for health.’

‘I guess she pays you quite enough—ha, ha, ha!’ guffawed Beastly.

‘If I had better health,’ she sighed, ‘I would enjoy life. I would go to the Opera. As it is, we’ve only been twice—to
Faust
and to
Aida
.’

‘I heard all about it,’ the Doctor observed with a bow.

‘Who from?’

‘Friends. They said you were greatly discussed and looked charming.’

‘When was that?’ asked my aunt.

He looked puzzled and taken aback. ‘Oh … Wednesday night.’

‘Why, that was long ago—in the summer,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been out anywhere since then. I was laid up all Wednesday. I had a most terrible
migraine
in the night. Indeed, at one time I felt so bad I thought I would not hold out.’

‘I know, I was very anxious about you—very anxious indeed. Hope you feel better now.’

‘Doctor,’ she said, ‘I think I must start taking
Ferros ferratinum
.’

Raising and dropping his forefinger, ‘Best thing for you,’ he said.

Indeed it seemed that she had found her man.

In the long interval Gustave Boulanger, who had a high but very weak tenor, was enjoined to give us a song. He coughed a little, stroked his throat in a nervous gesture as though adjusting his Adam’s apple. Tuning his wind instrument. One had the feeling that unless he set it to the proper pitch, his voice might break out in quite another clef. His throat adjusted, he sang
Ich grolle nicht
, to Count Valentine’s able accompaniment on the piano, but out of deference to Aunt Teresa and her deceased son he pretended that the words of the song were not German but Dutch. But my aunt did not care; besides, she knew German, and it was the Belgians themselves who had killed her son in the war.

When he finished, we applauded vociferously. But Gustave
never said anything. He only stroked his broad chin with his two fingers and smiled. While Count Valentine was still at the piano the Chinese boys brought trays with little glass plates of ice-cream, and General ‘Pshe-Pshe’ approached to where Aunt Teresa was sitting, with a plate of strawberry-ice in his hand.

‘No, thank you, General. The Doctor has forbidden me to have ice-cream.’

The Doctor looked pensive. Then:

‘It’s all right in my presence,’ he said. ‘Only don’t have the strawberry-ice.’

‘But I hate vanilla!’

‘Well, it is really of no consequence. Only eat it very slowly,’ he said.

While the dance was in full swing and Vladislav had strayed away from the front door, the virgin came in and while nobody was looking fainted in the waiting-room.

‘Impossible! Impossible!’ cried Aunt Teresa when Vladislav reported that a young woman was lying dead on the floor in the waiting-room.

‘Impossible!’ the Doctor echoed.

‘But who is she? I say this is impossible!’

‘Impossible!’

‘But, Doctor, she’s alive!’ cried Aunt Teresa as she beheld the virgin twitching on the floor.

‘Oh, yes, as a doctor I can confirm that fact.’

‘I didn’t believe it.’

‘Nor did I.’

‘Is that because of the heat in the room, Doctor?’

‘Distinctly the heat,’ he bowed.

She sighed. ‘Well—it’s hot in here.’

He sighed too.

‘
Chaleur de diable
!’ muttered Uncle Emmanuel.

‘Telephone at once to the hospital,’ commanded Dr. Abelberg.

‘Telephone!—’ repeated Vladislav in abject tones. ‘Why, you can telephone, of course, or else not telephone. It’s all one.
In France there are properly equipped hospitals and things. But here’—an abject gesture—‘you are safer at home than in the hospital. The other day they took my cousin to hospital, which was full up; they put the poor fellow on the floor in the corridor; he was still where they’d put him two days later, and on the third gave up his soul to God. “We’ve no time to bother. Told you we’re full up,” they said. And by the time they looked at him again his skull had split in two against the skirting.’

We tried all the hospitals, but all were full to overflowing; and it fell to Berthe to nurse the virgin back to life.

Aunt Teresa the while had returned to the drawing-room where General ‘Pshe-Pshe’, in a melancholy mood, was saying:

‘I am not understood! Not understood by my wife, not understood by my daughter, not understood by my son; never! You alone (he brushed her pale hand with his prickly black moustache), you alone! Here I’m content. This is my spiritual home.’

Dr. Abelberg was the last to go.

‘And what then, Doctor?’ solicited my aunt, as she took leave of him in the drawing-room.

Folding his fingers as he spoke, Dr. Abelberg said: ‘Salt baths morning and evening. Cold and hot compresses. Gargling before and after every meal. Tranquillity, tranquillity, and once more tranquillity.’

‘And what about
Ferros ferratinum
? Leave it?’

‘Leave it!’

I followed him out into the hall.

‘Doctor,’ I said, ‘tell me about Aunt Teresa. Is there any real cause for anxiety?’

‘Ah!’ He waved his hand in an airy gesture and bent down to my ear. ‘I wish I had her health,’ he whispered. ‘Why, she’s as strong as a horse.’ And he bid me good night.

AFTER THE BALL COUNT VALENTINE CALLED TO TENDER his congratulations on the occasion of the birthday of his Majesty the King of the Belgians, and incidentally enquired if he could not have a Sam Browne belt like mine. General ‘Pshe-Pshe’ also called.

Closeted with Aunt Teresa, ‘I am not understood,’ he said, ‘not understood by my family. But here in your midst I can rest, here I’m at home.’ He brushed his prickly moustache against her slender hand. Tears came into his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes.’

The wedding was to take place immediately a portion of my uncle’s brood had left for England. The first batch of Diabologhs—comprising mostly sons-in-law and married daughters, nurses, sucklings, Theo among them—sailed on Thursday. At the station while we waited for the train, another babe came up to Theo, and in the simple way that babies have, bit him on the brow. The second batch of Diabologhs sailed on Saturday. My red-haired cousin sailed. The first clean-up, the first big sweep had been made, and one began to see one’s way in the remaining mass, discern familiar faces. It looked as if at last Sylvia and I could marry in God’s name and live in our own flat without encumbrance. Uncle Lucy remained with Aunt Molly and the small children. He walked about with a long face, swinging a hammer and trying to be useful, but looking thoroughly out of his element. Poor man! It was not the fault of his face: he had a soul that didn’t smile. Also he had purchased roubles—and his pessimism on that count alone would seem rational enough. And already news had dribbled through that the first batch of Diabologhs had arrived in England and that my elder cousin, the artist of a modern school, for lack of other suitable subsistence, was now engaged in painting bicycles in Sussex; but still we two were not married. The War Office had obviously been losing interest in our adventure. Pickup was
recalled. This was the first sign. And then, one day, there came a missive foreshadowing our complete withdrawal before long from the Far East. As I passed on the news at dinner Aunt Teresa’s breath seemed to catch in her throat, and she looked a little pale. ‘But what will you do? You cannot leave us all alone? And we cannot go to Europe with you as we have no means! Can’t you write and tell them this at the War Office?’