The Polyglots (36 page)

‘
Courage
!’ said Uncle Emmanuel.

‘
Alors, en avant
!’ commanded my aunt. ‘I can’t endure this exile any longer. I must have a complete change. And at Dixmude I shall at least have
Constance
to look after me.’

‘Hasn’t Berthe then looked after you?’ I asked, looking across at Berthe with a twinkle.

‘Berthe,’ said my aunt, ‘is not a trained nurse.’

‘What about the flat?’

‘Gustave will look after it.’

Then the packing began. It began in real fury. For we had only three days. We worked as if stripped to the waist. All the boxes and hold-alls and cases and trunks had been hauled down from the attic, and were being filled, filled to overflowing, to the point of bursting, tightly strapped up—and still the travail went on night and day: while Aunt Teresa, ensconced in her soft bed, was writing out the labels. Captain Negodyaev, hearing of our sudden flight, had a violent relapse of persecution mania and begged us piteously, for the love of all saints, to take him with us to Europe.

‘Why, man, you’re all shot to pieces,’ Beastly observed, surveying the Russian’s tremulous frame with compassion. ‘I daresay you had better come along.’

‘And my wife and Natàsha?’

‘Yes—why not?’

Captain Negodyaev was wringing Beastly’s hand with gratitude. But the question of their going with us in the last resort depended—though why it should so depend no one really knew—on Aunt Teresa. And finally my aunt said: ‘Yes.’ Gustave was to see his bank manager and director the same day (though it was Sunday and the bank was closed) to arrange for a substantial loan; and Gustave came back to say that he could do this only on the strict condition that on his return to Brussels
Père
Vanderflint took instant steps to sell his pension.

‘Yes, sell the pension,’ Sylvia agreed.

‘Well—yes.’ said Aunt Teresa.

‘Yes, my angel,’ Uncle Emmanuel rejoined, not without some concern. ‘What shall we live on, however?’

She did not answer at once. ‘There are ways and means,’ she replied.

This too, it seemed, could be got round. Gustave had relations who had an interest in a number of cinematographs in Dixmude, and an uncle on the city council, and possibly—he could not say for certain—but possibly some sort of post as films censor or something could be promised his father-in-law on arrival in Dixmude, carrying with it a modest stipend, which would, however, compensate him for the loss of the pension.

‘Yes, that will do very well,’ Sylvia said gaily.

Between Sunday and Wednesday we lived in a whirl and a trance. Removing. Here they had settled, by all accounts for a long stay, and were gradually nearing the inevitable doom—flagging, sagging, fizzling out. And now—suddenly—removing, living again, beginning anew, planning, struggling, bracing. ‘Oh, my God!’ Berthe, wedged in between trunks, wailed aloud. And, with this, spring was beginning. Spring was beginning. Over half the globe it was beginning, a verdant hope renewed. I hardly saw Sylvia. The moral issues were happily out of our hands. If there is a seat of justice, a day of judgment, Aunt Teresa will, in her own good time, answer for this curious mismanagement of the
convenances
. Meanwhile I decline to discuss this delicate subject any
further. I wash my hands of the whole business. Gustave was not an eagle. And if I were Sylvia
I
should not have gone back to him. But then, nor would I have married him in the first place. She married him, and she went back to him—till Wednesday morning. It was her affair. I have no comment to make. Indeed, I have nothing further to say.

On Tuesday afternoon Aunt Molly paid her last visit to Uncle Lucy’s grave; and on Wednesday morning at quarter to ten we were ready to drive to the station.

‘There are only two more questions,’ said Aunt Teresa, as she was putting on her hat. ‘One is Vladislav.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Uncle Emmanuel. ‘I’ve spoken to the General about Vladislav. And I have recommended him for the Cross of Saint Stanislav.’

‘And the other is Stepàn.’

‘I went to Stepàn,’ I said. ‘He is still in his bunk.’

‘Gustave,’ she said, ‘you might keep an eye on Stepàn.’

‘
Oui, maman
,’ said Gustave, and touched his Adam’s apple.

‘And now we can be off.’

‘Come on, Harry. Come on, Nora,’ Aunt Molly called.

‘Oh, where’s my umbelera?’ wailed Natàsha.

‘There it is.’

‘Come on.’

On the stairs as we went down we were stopped by the daughter of the actual-state’s-councillor.

‘No time’—I held out a warning hand. ‘We’re leaving.’

‘I won’t be long. The main feature of our proposition for the reform——’

‘Quite so, but, you see, we are pressed for time; we have to catch a train.’

‘Yes, yes, yes. I won’t be long. We want, if the Allied Governments will assist us with our alphabet——’

‘Quite, but we are afraid to miss our train.’

‘Yes, yes, yes. I won’t be many minutes. Primarily, we want to introduce phonetic——’

‘But, really, we shall miss the train——’

‘
Madame, nous sommes pressés
. We have no time; our train is leaving,’ intervened my uncle.

‘I will be brief and outline the scheme in a few concise——’

‘Good-bye!’

We swept past her.

GENERAL ‘PSHE-PSHE’ WAS AT THE STATION IN HIS grey coat with a scarlet lining, and I instructed our guards—two Hungarian prisoners-of-war awaiting repatriation and dressed up as Tommies and led by an old squinting British corporal—Corporal Cripple—now proceeding to his Tientsin station for discharge—to accord the General the requisite military honours. But they were a sleepy lot of fellows, and presented arms to an excise clerk instead, much to his delight. We made what military display we could, but the War Office had long since withdrawn our men, and our parade was not redeeming. Colonel Ishibaiashi had sent a guard of honour. The little Nippons in their red-banded caps looked smart enough, but the officer, every time that he shrieked the word of command, sounded just as though he were being skinned alive, so that the Russian peasants who gazed on from behind the fence laughed aloud in derision.

The General had ordered the meagre Russian military band to come and play us off, and we could see them coming: the movement of the drummer’s arms, the puffing of the soldiers’ cheeks, but not a sound of it could be heard before they were actually abreast of us. There are perhaps few things spectacularly more pitiable than the disintegration of a once resplendent army. Count Valentine also came and conversed fluently in florid French with Berthe, tapping the while his new leggings, procured from the British ordnance stores, with a light bamboo cane (likewise of
English make). The Metropolitan also came. Dr. Abelberg came. Philip Brown, who was going to Shanghai by train to join his ship which had already sailed from Vladivostok, wanted to be photographed in the act of saying farewell to ‘his girl’. He was being seen off by his cousin, who was only a sergeant in the American Expeditionary Force, but told his Russian sweetheart that it was more than being an officer. It was a lovely day in spring. We were going by a special train given us by General ‘Pshe-Pshe’, who presented Aunt Teresa with a whistle on a white silk lanyard which she was to blow as soon as she wished to set the train in motion. It was the most luxurious train at his disposal, and was manned by Czech personnel. The engines, ready to start, breathed: puff-puff-puff. The Czech drivers looked at us from above their perches with a dare-devil air: ‘We’ll drive you as you’ve never been driven before!’ That was their look.

‘It’s a fine engine,’ I said, looking back at Vladislav, who stood with a complacent gaze, surveying his well-polished high boots.

‘An engine. It’s only an engine in name. In France, ah!—there they have engines! Such engines that once you have got them going you won’t stop them again! Yes.’

The spring sunny freshness; I breathed in the air; I paced up and down in my brown highly polished top-boots. O Life! Vladislav—he was all right. He would get through revolutions and counter-revolutions, through red and white and green terrors without coming to much harm. He would wander on from the coast to the Urals, from the Caspian Sea up the Volga and back again to the south, to the west, to the north, to the east, round and round. He was all right.

‘Keep out of the Army, my son, and you’ll be all right,’ was my farewell advice to him.

And then we parted with the General. There was a worried look on his face: his troops had already been disarmed, and he had been nicknamed ‘Commander-in-Chief of all Disarmed Military and Naval Forces of the Far East’. Before leaving—he was in a hurry—the General bowed low over Aunt Teresa’s pale
bejewelled hand, and brought his black moustache against it in a prolonged exquisite expression of farewell. She looked moved, charming—with sad, beautiful St. Bernard eyes. He went away rather briskly, with visible emotion, and did not notice the omission of the guards.

Gustave stood on the platform at the open window of our coupé. ‘Write, Gustave,’ said Aunt Teresa.

He gulped once or twice, his Adam’s apple withdrawing and bobbing up again conveniently, pulled at his collar in a timid gesture, cleared his throat half-heartedly, and said:

‘
Oui, maman
.’

‘You must really make an effort to come home—to get a permanent transfer to Brussels or Dixmude,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ Sylvia echoed.

Gustave coughed a little and adjusted his Adam’s apple, but said nothing. He only stroked his broad chin with his two fingers and smiled, revealing a black tooth at either corner of his mouth.

‘
Allons
!’ said my uncle in a tone one might use to a small boy shirking a plunge into the water, urging him to be a man. ‘
Allons
! One must make a try. One must exert oneself.’

‘Come. Never say die!’ offered Beastly, who always took a leading share in any conversation, however intimate, once he was present.

‘Come. You must
demand
a transfer,’ urged Aunt Teresa, ‘or immediate annual leave.’

Gustave did not look hopeful. To be perfectly candid, I do not remember any man who, despite hearty urgings to the contrary, looked less hopeful. He seemed oppressed by the magnitude, the problem, the distance, and the vagueness of the whole proposition.

‘
Courage! Courage, mon ami!
’ urged Uncle Emmanuel.

‘Good-bye, Gustave,’ said Sylvia.

They kissed.

‘Good-bye.’ He looked as though he were going to cry. I remembered how he had said in church, ‘She has brought joy into
my life.’ And it was as though the sun had gone as suddenly as it had come out.

‘
Courage, mon ami
!’

‘
Adieu, mon pauvre Gustave
!’ That was all his mother-in-law had to say to him. But it may have compensated him all the same. I don’t know. I don’t care.

But when he advanced to the window, and with a self-conscious self-effacing smile moved towards the children, I felt that he was a member of the family, that he was attached to us, and had been cruelly wronged; and a pang ran through my heart and my conscience was ablaze.

‘Good-bye, ’Arry,’ he said.

Harry’s face suddenly quivered and winced into a protracted, leisurely sneeze that ran its full course of development to a climax, discharging in thunder; he unfolded his handkerchief, blew his nose twice with a trumpeting sound, replaced the handkerchief, and then said:

‘Good-bye.’

My aunt blew the whistle on the white lanyard presented to her by ‘Pshe-Pshe’, the old gallant. It was a beautiful morning, so fresh; the engines puffed on mightily, only awaiting this signal. Now they would set off.

‘
Adieu, Gustave
!’ And she lowered her bejewelled hand to his thin lips hidden under the soft canary moustache.

He smiled back timidly. ‘
Adieu, maman
!’

Now in England you sit in the corner seat of the compartment at the window, somewhere, let us say at Nuneaton, and quite imperceptibly, while you sit, with your hand in the sling, the train glides out of the station. Not so in Russia. At first there was a jerk, as if the two engines tried to do something that was obviously beyond their strength. The jerk was so violent that a portmanteau shook on the rack and hung in the balance. ‘
Allons donc
!’ muttered Berthe, while Uncle Emmanuel made propitiatory gestures, as if to say ‘
Que voulez-vous
?’ We were settling down again—when ‘
Whack
!’ came another jerk, and this time all the coaches all
along shook, moaned and screeched piteously. ‘
Ah mais! Ce sont des coquins ces machinistes tchèques!
’ uttered Uncle Emmanuel as he hastened to restore two of Aunt Teresa’s hat boxes to the rack from which they had fallen—when ‘
Whack
!’ came yet another jerk, more moderate this time, as though, after all, the task the engines had set themselves was not entirely beyond their strength. Then came a fourth jerk, and it seemed that the engines, in spite of all, were succeeding—succeeding. Sylvia waved her gloved hand. But her mother blocked the window.

‘Now mind you write, Gustave.’

The engines were already gathering strength, and slowly, but rapidly gathering speed, we were moving. And Vladislav waved his cap in the air and, timidly but none the less exultantly, as the train went faster he cried:

‘
Vive la France
!’

The train drew out, and Vladislav and Gustave with the platform they stood on slid away out of sight, out of call. I stood at the window and looked at the vanishing outskirts: a few mills, a few factories, a cemetery; then there came fields and woods. The engine gave a shrill whistle. The train rattled on with increasing speed, swayed at the curve—and all these things had become of the past.

Puff-puff-puff—and the accompanying shatter and rattle was not at all disagreeable. We were moving. After all the waiting and running about we were sitting still and were moving. I sat there, my head propped up by my hand, and thought: ‘
Pauvre Gustave! Pauvre Gustave!
’ I was the only one of the whole crew to shed a tear for him—and it was not a crocodile’s but a real genuine tear. What could I do? Even had I handed Sylvia to him through the window, what would have happened? Picture Aunt Teresa pulling the alarm-cord. It was his luck and my luck, and fate alone knew who of us two was the lucky one. I would not have you put this down to Sylvia or myself. It was very simple—our love affair had been upset by one of Aunt Teresa’s arbitrary acts: now it was reversed by another. On taking thought, we were content to
leave our love to fate and Aunt Teresa. ‘
Pauvre Gustave! Pauvre Gustave!
’ I could but repeat to the shattering rhythm of the train. To those who would cast the first stone at me for my betrayal of Gustave I would say this in my defence: Gustave was an enigma. He said ‘Yes’, or else he said ‘No’, and this he seemed to say according to whether you wished him to say one or the other. He was the type of man that you will find playing second fiddle in an orchestra: reliable but timid, and no good as a conductor. Gustave got the worst of the bargain. Or so it seemed on the face of it. But he was a patient man, and patience to the patient is as natural as impatience to the impatient. I was impatient. But my aunt was a fool, a blind, egotistical fool.