The Polyglots (32 page)

‘Bitter!’ shouted the General.

They kissed. The band played a flourish.

Beastly and Brown, who sat side by side, were boasting, it seemed, for all they were worth.

‘Gently! Gently!’ I prompted.

‘That’s all right,’ he guffawed. ‘I believe in talking to an American in his own language! Ha! Ha! Ha!’

As the dinner progressed, Beastly and Brown grew more and more tender and brotherly. Captain Negodyaev, on my left, soulful from drink, nudged my arm, and looking at Beastly said: ‘I am a captain, he is a major. But we have no majors any more. A Russian staff-captain is equal to your captain, and a Russian captain to your major. So he is a major, and I am a captain, and we are brothers-in-arms, and I want to give him something. Wait, I want to give him something, because he is a major and I am a captain, and we are brothers-in-arms. I want to give him something. Tell him so.’

‘What?’

He took off his badge. ‘This is my regimental badge,’ he said. ‘I want to give him this because it’s my dearest possession, and he is a major and I am a captain, and we are brothers-in-arms. Tell him so, will you.’

I nudged Beastly’s arm, but he was busy talking to Brown and only said: ‘Half a mo.’

‘He is busy,’ I said.

‘Tell him that it’s my dearest possession. I had it on my breast when the bullet struck it and so saved my life. I swore then I would never part with it, but would hand it on to my daughters and their children. But to-night I want to give it to him because,
as I say, he is a major and I am a captain, and we are equal in rank and brothers-in-arms, and it’s the most precious thing that I have. I want him to value it. Tell him so, tell him.’

‘Half a mo,’ Beastly said, as I nudged his arm, and went on saying to Brown, looking at him with dim, soft eyes:

‘You’re a jolly good fellow, old Philip, and I don’t mind the United States joining the British Empire any day—any day.’

‘Gee! You’re a swell guy, Percy,’ said Brown, ‘and we’ll join your empire the day you transfer the capital to Washington.’

‘Look here, Beastly,’ I said. ‘Negodyaev——’

‘One man at a time, one man at a time.’

‘Tell him,’ Captain Negodyaev urged, ‘how dear it is to me.’

‘Oh, God, wait a little, man!’ snarled Beastly. ‘I can’t talk to two men at a time.’

Captain Negodyaev expostulated vociferously.

‘Just you dry up, ole man! Don’t you get too excited,’ said Beastly, turning to him with dull eyes.

‘But he wants to give you his badge,’ I explained.

Captain Negodyaev gave me his badge, which I handed over to Beastly.

‘That’s all right, old bean,’ he said to the Russian, pocketing the badge, ‘but I can’t talk to everyone at once, can I?’ And he turned back to Brown.

‘Did you tell him? Did you explain to him?’ Captain Negodyaev accosted me. ‘Will he value it?’

‘Oh yes, he’ll value it all right.’

‘But he didn’t say anything.’

‘He was busy talking to Brown.’

‘But this is my dearest possession.’

For the rest of the meal Captain Negodyaev was taciturn. He was no longer soulful but speechless, as if mortally hurt. But I had my own worries, and I could not be bothered with his. People, objects, conversations were the ‘atmosphere’ charge with my love. There was only one thing—my jealous love, and all the other things claimed my attention and added to my suffering. I saw her
sitting in the evening, the soft lamplight on her dark head. I heard her laugh, or play the
Four Seasons of the Year:
the tune which made you want to cry. To be running with her in a field, to tramp the down with her in the rain, to dream of her as she sat at dinner one night in her champagne georgette, looking the tenderest of fairies, her dark velvety eyes blinking bashfully, softly. And then one wakes—she is not there. I fancied writing to her from afar: ‘It’s now past midnight. I’ve just come back from a dinner where I’d heard someone say “Sylvia”—and the thought of you went through my heart like an arrow. I couldn’t hear what my neighbour was saying; I listened politely, but my soul was with you, thousands of miles away. Where are you, Sylvia-Ninon?

‘And I think: perhaps she will get this letter as she is dining out with Gustave, and will read it to him in cold blood, like that letter from the man in the rubber trade which she once read out to me. I can see you so clearly before me. I can’t forget those eyes, those luminous, lustrous eyes, that soft cooing voice: “Alexander, listen. You never listen when I speak to you, just like water on a duck’s back” (oh, wouldn’t I listen now!), and those soft kisses, and our love.’

I remembered suddenly that the only thing that I had ever said to her that was at all encouraging, the only thing which showed any other than a sexual interest, was: ‘You shouldn’t eat so many chocolates; it’s bad for your teeth.’ And this, after having reluctantly bought her a box of Gala Peter—at five shillings a pound.

Love is like a match lit in the dark: it illumines all the lurking sensibilities for pain—your own and hers. How senseless, how unstable! Gustave looked triumphant at the end of satisfied achievement. And swiftly I conceived a situation typical of the
incongruity of life. A plot for a short story. While one man was down and out, another, who has succeeded, was holding forth on the glory of struggle!

I felt a surface unhappiness which dominated the depths of my real happiness; I fretted, but all the time I felt that I was fretting over things not worth the pain. We were so earnest, so unforgiving, exacting, intense; we were shouting ourselves hoarse till we were deaf to the real inner voice which even in moments of peace seemed scarcely resolute enough to make itself heard; and beneath it all was the sense that all this, as it were borrowed emotion, though consuming and painful enough, was trivial and unnecessary.

‘Champagne! Champagne!’ The sound of flying corks, the sparkling wine, voices, music … I felt sorry for myself, jealous of my former casual self whom she had loved, of the thought that she had loved me when I was not worthy of her love, and that now I could have kissed her feet she should care for me no more. And as I watched her tears came to my eyes.

Dinner over, I was invited to play, literally dragged to the piano. I played that voluptuous bit from
Tristan
, but it aroused no enthusiasm. I was dishonoured. Dr. Murgatroyd gave us a comic song, which must have been a modern comic song about the time of Joseph Chamberlain. Mr. Walton, the British diplomatic representative, who, according to
Who’s Who
, was ‘privately educated’, had been instructed in the art of playing the piano, and urged by the military (who looked upon this distinguished civilian as withal a good fellow), took his position at the much tried upright piano, while we others, linking up in a brotherly trellis-work of interlocked hands, made a large circle: General ‘Pshe-Pshe’ standing by Uncle Emmanuel, Beastly by General ‘Pshe-Pshe’, Colonel Ishibaiashi by Beastly, I by Colonel Ishibaiashi, the French Colonel by me, and as the music began, shaking our crossed hands with more and more emphasis to the slow deliberate rhythm of the Auld Lang Syne, our shining faces as we sang out expressing beatitude and loyalty everlasting. Having completed the song, Mr.
Walton repeated it with more precision and deliberation, Percy Beastly stressing the handshake which, as it were, determined that the word of Britain was as good in peace as in war. The Italian did not lag behind in warmth. Little Uncle Emmanuel, by the gravity with which he kept up the rhythm, showed that he had given his all, and had nothing more to give. Captain Negodyaev, probably still thinking of Percy Beastly’s boorishness, looked gloom itself, and, even as his country, stood aloof and only shared half-heartedly in the triumph of the Allied arms. Brown’s attitude, in its frank bright smile, betrayed the thought that though, to a Yank, foreigners all of us, we were a decent bunch, and that ‘better late than never’ was, after all, worth something to us, conceal it as we may. And the Frenchman in his cool but amiable detachment showed that he did his level best to recollect that France had had some small assistance from outside in winning her victorious war. On and on, on and on, our eyes shining, the sweat running down our faces, our clasped hands came down with a deadening thud to the ever-slackening pace, but gathering emphasis, of the song. If this was not the high climax of victory, the last pitch of the paroxysm of rejoicing, the apotheosis of triumph, the Allied cause victorious
in excelsis
, then there was no Allied cause. Mr. Walton, as if feeling that it was the Allied cause
in excelsis
, interjected between each bar of quavers two semi-quavers with his left hand low down on the scales, the effect of which can be imagined. Beastly stressed more and more violently, till one felt that one’s hands would drop off; the Jap sang louder and louder. Victory was ours. The enemy lay prostrate. Heaven had triumphed.

As the time of jollity came to an end and we were dancing in one another’s caps in the corridor (General ‘Pshe-Pshe’ in Colonel Ishibaiashi’s, I in the Italian Major’s, the French Colonel in mine, Beastly in the Czech’s, the Jap in the Yank’s, and so forth) suddenly I noticed Captain Negodyaev’s badge on a table in the hall. I picked it up quickly and went into the dining-room where he stood by the fire-place, brooding, and handed it back to him. ‘There.’

He took it darkly. Then, suddenly, he flung the badge into the fire, which, however—it being spring—was laid but not lit. ‘Well, that’s his affair,’ I thought, and went out into the hall to see the guests out.

When I returned to the dining-room I saw Vladislav crouching at the fire-place, and Captain Negodyaev standing over him, saying:

‘You blithering idiot! What are you squatting and staring at me for? Look for the damned thing! Look for it!’

‘SADIE.’

‘Yes. Sadie. I am afraid I shall always have that name now.’

The evening sun pressed through the window, over the carpet, over the silk chair. The flies raced like mad round the globe. They seemed to make this their headquarters—a meeting-place. And a wasp, too, was not long in coming. For a moment, we were alone.

‘What can I say? What is there to say?’ My words choked in my throat.

‘Little Prince, you cannot be as lonely as I am.’

The sun vanished, vanished from the carpet, from the silk chair. The flies dispersed to the windows and walls. It had become difficult to breathe. The clouds gathered more and more ominous. A sudden gust; the garden gate slammed. Then a few large and warm drops pelted the hard dusty road, and at once there was the sound of fine rain on the leaves and the hum, long and loud, in the air. And from afar rolled the dim basso of thunder. Already the lightning zigzagged once or twice, in front of your very brows, it seemed. The rain was one mass of grey vertical mist. We stood
at the window, inhaling the fresh breezy boon. How long would it last?

‘He?’

‘He is there, with
maman
—talking.’

‘Gustave——’ I sighed.

‘I don’t like his name.’

‘Why? Flaubert was called Gustave. It ought to be distinguished. It’s no worse than mine any day. Georges—there’s only Georges Carpentier. Unsuitable association for an intellectual!’

‘If it were just the name …’ She looked at me. Suddenly, shyly: ‘I dreamt last night you and I were flying in an aeroplane,’ she said. ‘I threw out two of your books, and you were so angry, so angry—you leapt after them straight out of the aeroplane, and we were so high up, so dreadfully high up. I cried my eyes out, but they could not find you. Afterwards somehow you returned—but how I forget.’

I looked at her. My soul, after much pain, had become strangely quiet. I just looked at her and could not speak.

‘In the
Daily Mail
,’ she said, ‘there was an article the other day about love—
How to win and keep a woman’s love
.’

‘The
Daily Mail … The Daily Mail
 … But why the
Daily Mail
? Why do you read the
Daily Mail
?’

‘Because I like these articles they have about love and things. I follow them to know how we stand, how we love each other, you see? You should read them.’

‘I have been so weak,’ I wailed melodramatically—and really feeling the part. ‘So miserably weak, so indecisive. I have imbibed this curse of a Hamletian vacillation with the name, I suppose.’

‘Never mind, darling, we shall travel. We shall come over to Europe one day and see you; won’t it be nice?’

‘And Gustave!’ I wailed, almost in tears. ‘Gustave! Gustave! of all people! Casting pearls—So silly, so really idiotic when one comes to think—isn’t it? Why was he dragged into this affair? Oh, when you consider, think ahead, weigh up, select—it’s almost better, really better, if you never thought at all.’

‘Never mind, darling.’

‘I deserve what I got—and with interest—I deserve it, honestly. But you; why
you?
Why should
you
have been let down as you have been, by me and your mother—me and your mother!’

‘Never mind, darling. He doesn’t count. Nothing will count. We shall think of each other all the time, and nothing, nothing will count.’

I looked at her, I looked long and steadily, and her eyes blinked several times in the interval. I looked—and suddenly the tears welled up from my eyes. ‘Queenie!’

‘What?’

‘My little queenie.’

‘Yes … Prince.’

‘What?’

‘My little prince.’

‘Yes. Oh, must we part?’

‘How cruel!’

‘Sixteen thousand miles.’

‘Don’t, or I shall cry.’

And the evening seemed to listen, to grieve, to sympathize with our losing each other.

‘The fact of the matter,’ she purled, looking into my face with her dark velvety eyes, ‘is that I shall never see you again.’

‘Gustave!’ called my aunt. He went back to her.