The Polyglots (28 page)

To die, I thought, must be like violent stomach-ache, when you exclaim, ‘Oh my!’ and are released, contented, with a blissful smile, into another world. Into the reasons necessitating this strange attire, into the tragedy of it I am unable to follow. Of course, he had worried over the loss of his Siberian property a good deal. And let us be just: he had also purchased a large quantity of roubles, which would justify any man laying hands on himself on that score alone. But I am inclined to think that the ordinary normal spectacle of life as it is lived on our planet had unhinged his mind: had proved too much for him. I pondered on the logic of the insane: perhaps they have a logic of their own. Or perhaps madness is the very antithesis of logic.

I found Berthe in the children’s bedroom. ‘I believe you and I, Berthe, are the only two sane beings on this earth. In fact, I am not even so sure about you. Why don’t you spring at me and bite me in the shoulder?’

The children were awake. I went in and saw Nora, her small rosy head on the enormous pillow, like a pale cherry. She was crying.

‘What’s the matter, Nora?’

‘Earache.’

‘You’ve been in a draught?’

‘I ’hink so,’ she said, and cried.

It transpired that during the day she had drunk water out of the drain-pipe in the yard, and suddenly in the night fear seized her, and she cried: ‘Don’t want to die.’ In the rough-and-tumble she had scratched her leg, and the little boy with the withered arm had evidently preyed on her mind, and through her choking sobs ‘Don’t want to die,’ she interjected, ‘withered leg … oh, I don’t want to die.’

‘Nora, but what is the matter, dear?’

‘My leg’s withering,’ she sobbed, ‘but I don’t want to die.’

At last she calmed down. Berthe got her to kneel in bed and say her prayers again, which she said: ‘Mammy and daddy, granpas and granmas, uncles and aunties and cousins—and Cousin Georgie.’ Then she was tucked in once more and at once went to sleep.

‘S—sh!’ whispered Berthe. But Harry made overt signs to me, and moving on tiptoe I strolled over to him and sat on the edge of his bed. He tucked in his feet: ‘You can sit back now,’ he said. ‘It’s all right.’

The moon looked blurred, as if behind a film, and more apart, more distant, and I wondered if one could be happy on the moon. Nora, who must have dreamt of the little boy Billy at school pinching her, cried out in her sleep: ‘Leave me alone!
Leave me alone
! Stop it!
Stop it
! Shu
p
up!’

Then Sylvia, flushed and terror-stricken, flitted in: ‘Aunt Berthe,
maman
is in hysterics,
une crise de nerfs
…’

It was a damnable night.

NEXT DAY AUNT TERESA DID NOT RISE FROM HER bed, and Berthe attended to her with hot and cold compresses,
valerian drops, pyramidon, aspirin, and a number of lotions. Aunt Teresa’s nerves were so badly upset by the suicide that even Aunt Molly herself on arriving two days later from Japan had to take turns with Berthe and Sylvia at Aunt Teresa’s bedside during the night. Uncle Emmanuel returned in the early morning, from the Cossack’s, and was so dumbfounded on being told of what had happened that he found nothing to say. Aunt Molly came back, and to the end of her days she would never cease regretting that brief holiday in Japan. And although it was clearly a matter of death, ‘
C’est la vie
,’ said my uncle, pressing her hand.

General ‘Pshe-Pshe’, hearing of the calamity, called on Sunday morning to tender his condolences. He bowed low over Aunt Teresa’s hand and brushed his prickly moustache against it. Then, for a brief space, he sat still, in homage to the deceased. He cleared his throat to show that it was over. But Aunt Teresa was the first to speak. Her poor brother! Who would have thought it! It was such a shock to her nervous system that Dr. Abelberg, who had begun to cure her, had abandoned his treatment in despair. She had not a wink of sleep since the calamity! And indeed her face looked white and pasty and transparent against the morning light. The General said that he had come as an old friend with the one wish to be of help if they would let him. Would they like a band?

‘A
band
?’ exclaimed my aunt.

‘
Pardon
,’ said Uncle Emmanuel, addressing himself
viâ
me with his unfailing courtesy, to General ‘Pshe-Pshe’, ‘what kind of band does his Excellency mean?’

‘The military band which assisted at the ball,’ the General replied, with a timid smile.

‘For the funeral!’ exclaimed Aunt Teresa. And we had visions of the carcass of Uncle Lucy being galloped off at full speed to the cemetery to the wafting strains of the mazurka.

‘But they will play the funeral march—appropriate to the occasion,’ explained the General, with the same tender timid smile on his face.

‘Ah, that is perfectly all right, then,’ said Uncle Emmanuel,
completely satisfied. ‘That’s all right. The General is too amiable.’ He bowed courteously. The General bowed back.

Another stiff little pause.

We anticipated difficulties in regard to the burial of a ‘suicide’. But in the face of the general chaos, no real restriction was put in our way. Indeed, why should there have been? Had a man not the right to cast off his own shell? But a minor hitch had none the less occurred in the choosing of the grave site. Uncle Emmanuel cleared his throat. ‘We expected,’ he said, ‘certain difficulties in regard to obtaining a licence for the burial. The death, of course, is not a—a—’ he flung out explanatory gestures—‘an ordinary kind of affair, and we expected——’

‘Oh?’ The General cast a quick enquiring look at Aunt Teresa. ‘Has anyone said anything?’

‘Well—yes,’ Uncle Emmanuel admitted.

‘Who?’

‘The keeper of the graveyard. But no one else has.’

‘Let him come to me,’ said the General, all his native ferociousness coming into his manly face. ‘
I
’ll talk to him!
I
’ll settle him quickly enough!’ He would, he declared, stand no nonsense from anyone in this city so long as he had his troops in it—he did not know how much longer that would be, and he was bound to say that if the Allies did not change their mind (some people’s blindness must be a blessing in disguise, otherwise he could not account for their survival), yes, he was bound to say that if the Allies did not change their mind and send him reinforcements he would no longer be master of the situation, and then anything might happen and
any
keeper of
any
graveyard would do as he pleased; but so long as he, General Pshemòvich-Pshevìtski, was still in command he would see that they, his friends, were properly protected. Uncle Emmanuel bowed. The General bowed back. He respected Madame Vanderflint and Monsieur le Commandant (‘Ah, his Excellency is too amiable,’ Uncle Emmanuel punctuated the flow. Mutual bows), he respected them, and it was his wish to mark his esteem for the deceased without at all enquiring into the
manner of his death. He also wished to mark his esteem for Mme Vanderflint, and though it was not in strict accordance with the regulations, which laid it down that such military honours were reserved for the military, still he supposed that the deceased had served his term of military service in his time——

‘No,’ interrupted Aunt Teresa. ‘My poor brother was a British subject, and there was no compulsory military service in England—at least before the war.’

No matter! The General in his esteem for the lady would waive that point also and fire a military salute at her brother’s grave.

‘What?’ asked Aunt Teresa, not understanding perfectly.

‘A firing squad,’ he said. ‘I’ll order firing.’

‘Oh, no!’ she quailed. ‘Please not, it reminds me of Anatole, my son, I couldn’t stand it.’ And suddenly, before anyone was prepared for it, she began to sob.

‘Blank cartridge,’ he said, looking round sheepishly.

‘That’s all right, my angel, that’s all right, my dear,’ Uncle Emmanuel consoled her. ‘No one will do it if you don’t want it. No one will do it.’

At this moment Aunt Molly entered the room. The General rose with military precision and clicked his spurs before her and bent over her podgy hand with the solitary wedding ring. ‘Whatever is the matter?’ she asked, seeing Berthe run out for the valerian drops and Aunt Teresa in hysterics.

‘Ah, they want to shoot at the grave, as if hanging were not enough,’ Berthe muttered angrily, as she swept past her.

‘Hanging … shooting …’ mumbled Aunt Molly. ‘Why? Why?’ And having unwittingly uttered the word and seeing Teresa in tears, she too began to sob into her handkerchief. The General shuffled his feet awkwardly, till, Berthe having arrived with the drops, Uncle Emmanuel took me by one arm and the General by the other, and spoke to him,
viâ
me, in these terms: ‘
Ah
,
mon général
, you must excuse my wife, her nerves have all gone to pieces, and my
belle-sœur
did not understand the nature of the honour you were going to accord her poor husband.
Qu’est-ce que
vous voulez
? She has been brought up in civilian surroundings—in the country—far away from cities and towns;
évidemment
, her husband and relatives were all civilians, unacquainted with the code that we
—nous autres militaires
—share together as our precious heritage, and you must forget this little episode,
mon général
.’

I translated.

AUNT TERESA, ALREADY SEATED IN THE CARRIAGE, waited for Berthe and Uncle Emmanuel to join her; but Berthe, with that quick intuition for succour, divined where her help was most needed and said she must walk by the side of Aunt Molly, who insisted on walking behind the coffin.

‘Emmanuel!’ exclaimed Aunt Teresa, ‘you will sit with me in the carriage.’ But, strange as it may seem, my uncle this time took a firm stand, though, as always, his answer was tender. ‘Ah,’ said he, beholding my uniform, ‘it behoves
nous autres militaires
to march behind the coffin. It would not look well if I sat with you in the carriage, my angel.’

‘But, Emmanuel! I can’t be sitting here all alone!’ remonstrated Aunt Teresa in tones of acute anguish. ‘I feel very faint and ill! I must have somebody at my side.’

And to comfort her, Natàsha was put into the carriage.

At last the procession moved on. Uncle Emmanuel had donned his uniform for the occasion and had a broad black band
stitched round his sleeve. I had fished out ‘
le sabre de mon père
’—a long clumsy thing in a leather scabbard. I had bought it cheap in a second-hand shop in Charing Cross Road; it was an obsolete cavalry sword of pre-Waterloo pattern, being much too long even when you sat on the top of a horse, and therefore long since discarded. I carried it well forward, walking side by side with Uncle Emmanuel, on the heels of Aunt Molly and Berthe, at the slow funeral pace set by the General’s brass band. And it seemed to me that Uncle Emmanuel was glad that now he could keep step with me, without effort, that his strides were as measured and dignified as my own. Alas, it was a funeral march. My spurs softly jingled; involuntarily I looked down at my feet, conscious of the superiority of my cavalry boots which Pickup had polished up to the last pitch, so that they shone like the veneer of a dark-brown piano. My uncle’s ill-fitting boots and incongruously light leggings were detestable. Only an officer of the Latin race could put up with the indignity of such a uniform. As the hearse moved through the streets, peasants took off their caps and crossed themselves. An American captain saluted that sunshade salute, and seemed glad of the opportunity. He was smart, but his boots, though good, were much too low. I daresay he thought mine too high. Poor Uncle Lucy! he did not suspect the homage accorded him on all sides. What futile waste of gesture: if the dead can really see the living one may assume that they are above such vanities. Yet this was a farewell from a stray brother who lingered behind to a brother who had set out on a journey. A Chink whipped his horse up a steep hill. Two little girls, looking on, said: ‘What a cruel man!’ And Uncle Emmanuel upon my having translated, said: ‘The little hearts are compassionate.’ A very old man in charge of three cows and a bull found that the bull had galloped off at the cross-roads in the opposite direction to that of the cows, and he could not make up his mind which way to go. He was too old to run after the bull, and the cows meanwhile had also walked off, and so he stood still, reflecting in anguish, while the street urchins laughed at him, teasing him: ‘Beaver! Beaver!’ And Uncle Emmanuel said:
‘They are cruel and heartless, the little ones!’—This was life. And how was death?

We went by a long winding road into the country, between two rows of trees. Aunt Molly looked hot in her long astrakhan coat and warm felt goloshes slopping in the mud. Soon, too, Pickup’s labour was wasted: my boots were covered with dirt. The road before us seemed endless. I had a feeling that I’d like to mount a steed and ride away from these mourners, this dead, from their red weeping eyes and the deadly boredom of living, gallop on without looking back, on and on, on and on.

At length we had reached the lonely Lutheran cemetery in that far-away lonely suburb, and the hearse and the carriages halted. We followed the bier through the great silent gate that bore the message:
I know that my Redeemer liveth
. It was the 14th of April; two days ago it had been bitterly cold and snow had fallen in heaps and covered everything at a distance. But that morning turned out hot, even stifling, and now as we entered the lych gate, the awakening verdure exuded upon us so strong and pungent a scent that we felt as though we had entered a hothouse. The procession turned to the left, the wheels leaving deep furrows in the muddy snow. But the sun played on a thousand well-kept tombstones and sepulchres: evidently in this forgotten, far-away nook of the world people had been dying, people who are cared for, who are not forgotten. The trees were stripped of verdure, but green was just sprouting. Behind the open grave which swilled in water there were birches—dear, modest birches!—and at the side, as if guarding the grave, a young weeping willow with the leaves golden in the spring sun. They had been trying to pump out the water, but the pump—or the people—proved unable to cope with the floods of the melting snow, and when the coffin was lowered there was an unpleasant sound of its splashing, as if it had been dropped into a well. How strange, I thought: Uncle Lucy, who was born in Manchester, and spent his life in Krasnoyarsk, was put to bed with a shovel in a Lutheran graveyard on the soil of a Russian concession on the Chinese Eastern Railway. When the coffin was
being lowered into the swilling grave, Uncle Emmanuel and I, who stood a little forward, stretched ourselves up to the salute. The Lutheran pastor—for want of an Anglican minister—read the service in sonorous German. We precipitated to the edge of the grave. Aunt Teresa and Natàsha dropped flowers on the floating coffin; then Aunt Molly dropped two China roses. We followed her with handfuls of sand which fell on the hollow-sounding lid. I stood to the salute, and Uncle Emmanuel quickly put on his cap and emulated my example; the pastor said a few last words. And the men vigorously handled their spades.