The Polyglots (13 page)

Tired of pacing the platform, I got into my coupé, took out a book and scanned the pages. I am a serious young man—an intellectual. I was plunged in thought, when Pickup interrupted me.

‘Who? What?… Ah, yes.’

Then the train drew out.

‘HAVE YOU, OR HAVE YOU NOT, AN INTELLIGIBLE account of the present situation?’ Sir Hugo asked when I reported two days later.

‘Yes, sir. It is quite simple.’ I shuffled. ‘You see, sir, it’s like this. Irkutsk is now once again in the hands of the Whites who are being driven by the Reds towards Irkutsk. The Reds at Irkutsk, you will recollect, had taken it over by a
coup de main
from the Social-Revolutionaries after these had captured the town from the Kolchakites and had later defeated Semënov. Now the Kappel Whites, I think, will join in with Semënov, but being hard pressed by the main Red forces will, I think, strive east and may possibly recapture Vladivostok from the Reds, I mean the Social-Revolutionaries, at the same time evacuating Irkutsk, should they have been compelled to seize it, which will then, I think, be recaptured by the Reds. Is that quite clear, sir?’

Sir Hugo closed his eyes and laid his fingers on the lids in order as it were to yield the maximum concentration. ‘M’m!… It is at least as clear as the situation seems to be at present,’ he said.

‘Of course, sir, I have said nothing of the Poles, the Letts, Latvians, and Lithuanians, the Czechs, Yanks, Japs, Rumanians, French, Italians, Serbians, Slovenes, the Jugoslavians, the German,
Austrian, Hungarian and Magyar war-prisoners, the Chinese, the Canadians and ourselves, and many other different nationalities, whose presence rather tends to complicate the situation in view of the several politics they follow.’

‘The devil they do,’ grunted Sir Hugo.

‘It’s a fact they do, sir.’

‘I know they do.’

‘Of course,’ I said, ‘the position of the Czechs is probably the most difficult of all.’

‘Excuse me,’ Sir Hugo interrupted me. ‘I think I caught you saying “Letts, Latvians and Lithuanians”. Now, when you say “Letts, Latvians
and
Lithuanians”, do you mean … what the dickens
do
you mean?’

‘They are kindred races … in a way,’ I said lightly, by way of evading an embarrassing question on which, in fact, I was not very clear myself.

‘Now, when you say “kindred races in a way” do you mean “kindred people”—and in
what
way?’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said cheerfully, as a way out of the difficulty. ‘The position of the Czechs,’ I continued, ‘is a very difficult one——’

‘Now I was inclined to ask you,’ Sir Hugo interrupted, ‘if you are aware of the relation between the so-called nationalities such as the Letts, Latvians, Lithuanians, and so forth, and the so-called countries as Lettland, Latvia, Lithuania, Esthonia, Livonia, Esthland, Kurland, Livland, and so forth, and whether or not, in fact, they are not all, or if not all, largely the same people. But let this drift. To return to the subject at issue, what were you going to say about the Czechs?’

‘The position of the Czechs,’ I proceeded happily, ‘is a very difficult one. Two years ago they fought the Bolsheviks and were involuntarily driven into the camp of the reactionary old-régimists. They stuck it for a year till they could stick it no longer, being a democratically-minded people; they then, by way of atoning for their sins, helped the Social-Revolutionaries against the old-régimists. The S.-R.’s by the aid of their Czech brethren
established themselves, but all too late in the season, and so lost their identity amidst the Bolsheviks.’

‘Well?’

‘Well, you see, sir, the Czechs had to fight the Bolsheviks.’

‘Why?’ said Sir Hugo, somewhat defiantly, as the smoke from his Japanese cigarette curled round his ruddy face and his eyes assumed a kind of roguish expression.

‘Because the Bolsheviks fought them.’

‘Why?’ asked Sir Hugo with the same intonation and expression.

‘As their traditional enemy of two years’ duration.’

‘Oh!’ said Sir Hugo.

‘They are pursuing the Czechs in their retreat east.’

‘The devil they are,’ said Sir Hugo.

‘Well, sir, there were still certain reactionaries, the remnants of what used to be the Kolchak Army, under the command of General Kappel, who retreated to the east along the railway track and fought a rearguard action against the Bolsheviks who were pursuing them. The Czechs were in the same boat, so they identified themselves with that section of the Whites and fought their cause against the pursuing Reds.

‘But there was another section of the Whites of whom Ataman Semënov was the nucleus whom the Czechs had antagonized by their support of the Social-Revolutionaries against Semënov.’

‘Well,’ said Sir Hugo, with eyes closed, ‘it is all perfectly clear to me. Where is the confusion?’

‘The real confusion came when their friends the Social-Revolutionaries turned as red as their advancing foes the Bolsheviks, and their comrades the remnants Kappelites as white as their bitter enemy Semënov.’

‘Well?’

‘Well, they didn’t quite know then where they stood, sir.’

‘The devil they didn’t,’ he said.

We both sighed.

‘And the caps?’ he said. ‘Have you got the caps?’

In truth, I hadn’t thought of the caps since I had delegated the
matter to Vladislav; but I presumed that they were there, nevertheless. ‘Yes, sir,’ I said, somewhat uncertainly.

‘You
have
?’ he questioned.

‘Yes, sir,’ I said—somewhat more certainly. For it seemed to me a rum thing indeed if the caps weren’t there. Why shouldn’t they be there?

The Major was still in charge of my late office as I got back; but as luck would have it, a week later when crossing a steep frozen path, he slipped and broke his leg—and once again I was in charge of the office. When, two months later, he came out of hospital he was hard put to it to regain his place, and finally gave up the struggle and went back to his post office. But the office, which by now contained a score of shell-shocked officers, my seniors in age and service, was no easy thing to run, and so insidious and powerful grew the revolt that, in the end, I found it necessary to erect a ‘buffer-state’ within, a sub-department, so to speak, containing the unruly officers in charge of an ambitious ‘sub’, who, while responsible to me, now bore directly the full pressure of their discontent: the price of his ambition. From time to time buff slips would be passed on to me from other sections and departments, which ran: ‘Please state whereabouts of 50,000 fur caps dispatched by you in February from Harbin.’ And according to the rules of the game, I must confess, I lost it every time, for in the nature of the case there was nowhere I could pass the buff slip on to for action. The action was unquestionably mine. And the drama of it was that I could not act on it. These are the tears of things! For the caps were not there.

‘Enquiries still pending’, I would reply ignominiously—and so on until the next buff slip. Enquiries had been pending for over two months; but the caps were not there.

Another thing, I waited for a letter from Sylvia—but no letter came. These are the tears of things! Once, only once, a long time ago, she had sent me a postcard—a coloured English landscape. ‘Something artistic. Alexander will like it,’ she must have thought to herself. Below was the printed inscription:

‘Soft green pastures, gay with innocent flowers’, and then in her own hand:

‘Ever yours,

‘Bébé (new name).

‘P.S.—I’ve sent you a Hanky—this is a little gift.’

The ‘Hanky’ had arrived. But never anything since. What was the reason? What
could
be the reason? I felt I wanted to take the first train to Harbin, to send a messenger, to telegraph, at least to write; but I could not even get myself to write to her, as this simple effort was damped by the thought that at any moment the postman might stroll into the office with the long-awaited letter. And thus relieved, I was made to suffer by another thought, that, with equal justice, no letter might arrive by the next post or indeed by any after.

‘What is it, Sergeant?’

He laid a buff slip on my desk.

‘Oh bother!’

It ran:

‘Please state whereabouts of 50,000 fur caps dispatched by you three months ago from Harbin. Urgent.’ To which I answered:

‘Enquiries still pending.’

I wondered: who was the most capable and energetic person in Harbin to whom I could safely entrust the task of moving heaven and earth to find the 50,000 fur caps. And suddenly my mind recalled the little red-leather book with the dates of receipt and dispatch of correspondence, and I decided that the most capable and energetic person in Harbin was Aunt Teresa. I found it quite an easy matter to write to Aunt Teresa, because I thought that Sylvia might read my letter, although I found it difficult to write to Sylvia direct. At last, unable to bear the torture of suspense any longer, I wrote a letter to her, entreating Sylvia by all that was holy in the world to write to me at once. To this I had a telegram from her. Not a word about her having written or of her going to do so now.

‘Sorry. Love. Sylvia.’

That was all.

And then, one morning, came her letter. Her handwriting was like her nature: those thin, swift, naïvely, irresponsibly confident strokes seemed to say: here am I, Sylvia Ninon Thérèse Anastathia Vanderflint, a woman of the world! There was, moreover, an unconscious kittenish quality about her curves, but the exaggerated length and confidence of the fine stroke was splendid out of all proportion.

I loved her letters. What attracted me was that she did not even pretend to think that her unintellectuality could be anything but interesting to me, an intellectual. Her style was inspirational. Obviously she never troubled to read through her writing, and the capitals she used recognized no law save that of impulse. Sylvia would put a dot inconsequently after any word, just as the fancy took her; or suddenly she would put a dash with two dots beneath it. She would suddenly—for no apparent reason—insert a mark of interrogation, or more often three at a time. This freedom, this utter disregard of punctuation and the fact that I was, in a way, a man who specialized in prose, delighted me exceedingly. Enclosed was another envelope marked, ‘
Please read carefully
!’

I had in my letter, referring to the difficulty of extracting a reply from her, said she was ‘impossible’. And now she signed herself: