The Polyglots (7 page)

‘Ha!’ said the hostess.

But I ‘wouldn’t have any’.

They looked at each other, and decided I was mad. But I seized the opportunity as an excuse for going, pretending I had been provoked, and, accompanied downstairs by their propitiatory smiles and bows, and restored once more into my boots, I got into the rickshaw and drove off, and waited for my uncle a few doors away, where I was immediately surrounded by a swarm of street urchins begging alms. The rickshaw coolie greeted me with a happy grin as if to say ‘Ee! the young gentleman has been amusing himself!’

‘Very good?’ he asked, turning round in the shafts and grinning at me broadly.

I shook my head. ‘No good. Girls very bad. Why so bad?’

‘This bad Yoshiwara,’ said the rickshaw man comprehendingly. ‘No good. Good Yoshiwara very good.’

‘Really good?’

‘Ha! Very good.’

‘Why didn’t you take us to good Yoshiwara?’

‘Good Yoshiwara far, far, very far—three hours far.’

At last Uncle Emmanuel was ushered down the steps. He got into his rickshaw, and we drove off. Uncle Emmanuel, as we drove home, held forth to me upon the sanctity of the family, the family hearth, ‘
le
’ome’, as he put it in English, and on the duty of keeping clean at home and of not mixing the two lives.

I returned to the hotel in the early hours. I had a bath in tepid water and went to bed under the white mosquito curtain. I could not sleep; all night I heard the whistling and screeching of the trains passing and halting near by. I lay sleepless, images now of Sylvia, now of the rickshaw man saying: ‘Good Yoshiwara far, far, very far—three hours far’ floating in and out of my brain, with the trains screeching and whizzing through in the night. In the end, sleep had taken its own. I dreamt that I was playing dominoes with Sylvia while a U.S. citizen was fighting with a Jap over the sleeper, and when the train stopped we had arrived in Oxford, which was being ‘opened’ by my mother and Lord Haig. Here there was much noise, like at the Palm Week bazaars to which we went as children in Russia. And suddenly I was confronted by an enormous frog. I am a trainer in a zoo. I am frightened, but they ask me: ‘Can’t you manage a frog better than that?’

‘What must I do?’ I ask.

‘Shoot at it out of this.’

And I am handed a toy gun shooting cranberries.

If we are not a bit surprised at the inconsistencies, the incongruities, the rank ludicrousness of our dreams, perhaps we shall not be any more surprised if we discover that our life beyond the grave has similar surprises in store for us. It will all fall into place, and will not seem strange but inevitable, as our wakeful life of
broken images, for some strange reason, even as the strangest of dreams, seems not the least strange but inevitable.

‘Perhaps,’ I said, on wakening with these pictures fresh but quickly fading from my memory, ‘our instruments of measure are illusions, like the rest …’

I had a lavish breakfast, the pleasure of which was enhanced by the thought that the War Office was paying for it.

IT WAS EVENING. I PLAYED THAT VOLUPTUOUS BIT from the
Liebestod
in
Tristan
, and Sylvia sat by and listened, absorbed. From the open window the moon swam out, exactly as in a romance, causing me to remember that I was not Hamlet but Romeo.

I played louder and louder till suddenly the door opened and Berthe said:

‘Your aunt asks you to stop playing, as she has a
migràine
.’

‘Come out on the balcony,’ Sylvia said.

‘Ha, ha! High-heeled shoes at last! How they show off the calves!’

She laughed—a lovely dingling laughter.

‘It’s dishonest to show too much of your legs. It upsets men’s equilibrium. Either don’t go so far, or if you do, then go the whole hog.’

‘Alexander’ (she called me by my third name because George, she thought, was too common and Hamlet a little ridiculous)—‘Alexander, read me something.’

‘What?’

‘Anything. This.’

‘Whose book is this?’

‘
Maman’s
.’

I opened and read: ‘ “… Besides, Dorian, don’t deceive yourself. Life is not governed by will or intention. Life is a question
of nerves, and fibres, and slowly built-up cells in which thought hides itself and passion has its dream. You may fancy yourself safe, and think yourself strong. But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play—I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend.” ’

Sylvia had shut her eyes.

‘Lovely,’ she murmured.

Night, the patron of lovers and thieves, enwrapped us, casting upon us a thin veil of white mist. But the light was on in the corridor, and I had the feeling that every moment the door might fling open and my aunt would come in. This disconcerted me somewhat. A wicked smell, as of burning fishbones, rose from behind the backyard wall which the balcony overlooked.

‘Tomorrow I’m going back to school,’ she said, ‘and—and we’ve never been out by ourselves. What cold hands you have, Alexander.’

‘What is it like at your school?’

‘Quite nice,’ she said. ‘We play hockey.’

A phenomenon of transformation! A Belgian girl, after four years in an Irish Catholic convent in Japan, came out an Irish colleen; there was even a trace of the delicious brogue in her accents. But withal there was a Latin warmth of grace in Sylvia which underlined her naturally acquired anglicism. There was a British freedom in her, but she would remember the restraints of a Latin upbringing, what was at Dixmude, and the ceremonious notions of her parents as to conduct that becomes a Belgian young girl. And there was something ‘taking’ in such discipline, as in a beautiful young horse submitting to the harness, or the discomfiture of ornament upon a lovely female form.

‘ “Play me something. Play me a nocturne, Dorian, and, as you play, tell me, in a low voice, how you kept your youth …” ’

While I read aloud, Sylvia ‘prepared’ an expression of
wonderment on her face, to show that she was sensitive to what I read. But she began to fret as I read on, absorbed, and then nestled to me closely. Her nostrils widened as she breathed in the fresh air.

‘ “The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young …” ’ And although neither of us had anything to do with the tragedy of old age, here we kissed. A light breeze that moment wafted the smell of the burning fishbones upon us.

‘Isn’t it lovely?’ she purled.

I agreed.

Besides, it was.

‘Lovie—dovie—cats’-eyes,’ she said.

‘ “Why have you stopped playing, Dorian? Go back and give me the nocturne again. Look at that great honey-coloured moon that hangs in the dusky air. She is waiting for you to charm her, and if you play she will come closer to the earth …” ’

We kissed.

And then we kissed again, this time independently of Dorian.

She had soft warm lips, and I held my breath back—at some considerable inconvenience to myself. Then I released her, and began breathing as if I had just climbed up a very steep hill.

‘Go on, darling.’

‘What lovely hair you have!’

‘Wants washing,’ she answered.

I stretched out my legs, my hands in my trouser pockets, and stared at the moon—and suddenly shot out: ‘Art thou not Lucifer?’ (causing Sylvia a little shock):

She stretched herself to my mouth the moment I finished, having, as it were, watched all this time till it was vacant. I kissed her, with considerable passion. ‘What are all your names?’ I asked.

‘Sylvia Ninon Thérèse Anastathia Vanderflint.’

‘Ninon,’ I said, and then repeated lingeringly, sipping the flavour:

‘Sylvia Ninon. Sylvia Ninon. Sylvia,’ I said, and took her hand. ‘Be not afear’d; the isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.

‘Who wrote this?’

‘Shakespeare.’

‘It’s—very lovely.’

I trotted out such quotations as I could remember—my Sunday best, so to speak. And, presently, grasping her passionately by the hand—‘Adorable dreamer,’ I whispered, ‘whose heart has been so romantic! who has given thyself so prodigally, given thyself to sides and to heroes not mine, only never to the Philistines! home of lost causes and forsaken beliefs and unpopular names and impossible loyalties!’

‘Who wrote it?’

I wanted to say that I wrote it; but I told the truth. ‘Matthew Arnold wrote it. It’s about Oxford.’

‘Oh!’ She was a little disappointed. ‘And I thought it was about a woman—who’—she blushed—‘who gave herself to some hero.’

‘No, darling, no.’

After that I recited the passage about Mona Lisa who, like the
vampire, has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and to whom all this has been but as the sound of lyres and flutes, that lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands.

‘Oh, darling, let us talk of something else.’

‘But I thought you liked—literature?’

‘Well, darling, I
listened
—for your sake. But you are so long, you’ve never finished.’

‘But good heavens!’ I exclaimed. ‘I’ve been trotting it out for
your
sake! I thought you liked books.’

‘This is too high-brow for me, darling.’

‘High-brow! What do you like, then?’

‘Oh, I like something more—fruity.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘Anything with a lot of killing in it.’

‘Of course, my case is different, I admit. When I cease earning my living by the sword I shall commence earning it by the pen.’

‘One day you will be a great author, and I shall read your story in the
Daily Mail
,’ she said.

‘The
Daily Mail
! Why on earth the
Daily Mail
?’

‘They have serials there. Don’t you read them? I always do.’

‘Oh, well—yes, there are—I know there are.’

‘I also write,’ she said.

‘You?’

‘I do! Letters to the Press.’ She went out and returning brought a newspaper. ‘I wrote this.’

Under a rubric headed ‘Questions and Answers’, I read:

‘Do you think it wrong for one girl and one boy to go for a picnic up on an island by themselves?’

‘I wrote this,’ she said.

‘But why did you write it?’

‘I write—because I want to know things. Besides, it’s nice to see one’s letter in the Press.’

‘And what is their answer?’

‘Here is their answer.’ She showed me. ‘Not necessarily.’

I read on questions from other correspondents. ‘What is the proper height and weight of a boy nineteen years and one month?’ asked one. ‘Is he too young to be engaged?’ asked another. ‘If you say yes, it’ll be in time to save him, as he is my friend. I’d like to persuade him to wait awhile, but what’s your answer?’

‘These others are silly,’ she said, wrinkling her nose.

I smiled. She looked at me with a long, searching glance, as if taking stock of me as a man and a lover, while I, conscious of her scrutiny, manipulated an expression like this—M’m. There is something eminently seraphic hovering over my six foot of flesh and bone. I forgot whether I told you I’m good-looking? Sleek black hair brushed back from the forehead—and all the rest of it.

‘You’re so clever—and yet you’re nothing much to look at,’ she said.

This, I must confess, astonished me. I have no shallow vanity—but this astonished me. Sleek black hair, eyes, nose, and all that sort of thing. It astonished me.

‘Never mind, darling. I don’t like handsome men,’ she added.

Now this sort of thing puzzles me. What am I to make of it?

‘I love you all the same,’ she said.

‘How am I to understand it?’

‘There’s nothing to understand.’

‘H’m. It’s—strange,’ I said. And then, after a pause, again: ‘It’s strange.’

I rose at last, for I was due that evening at the entertainment to be given us by the Imperial General Staff.

I FOUND BEASTLY THERE AND PHILIP BROWN AND Uncle Emmanuel and Colonel Ishibaiashi and a fair proportion of the Diplomatic Corps, in short, white, tail-less evening coats, all moving about on the matted floor in their socks, our shoes having first been removed in the hall, and I noticed that Beastly had a hole at the big toe. Not that this disturbed him at all, for he drank many cocktails and chaffed Philip Brown, guffawing loudly as he gave those ironical heavy nods with his head, as if to ask what indeed the world was coming to!

Percy Beastly was a Cockney by birth, and the years that he had spent in Canada as a youth had not contrived to polish his naturally rough-and-ready personality. He and Brown were each representative of the cruder class of their respective countries. (Brown, before the war, was a detective.) They were not individuals: they were merely samples of a type. They prided themselves on going through life with eyes open, but could only see ‘graft’ or ‘bluff’ in all human activities; they said ‘they weren’t born yesterday’, asked if you could see ‘any green in their eye’, and always suspected that someone was ‘pulling their leg’. The world has a strange way of ‘pulling the leg’ of such people! Beastly was very free and cheery, and chaffed the
geisha
girls at his side and drank much lukewarm
saké
with the officers who crouched up to each of us in turn to drink our health, and ate little pieces of shark and whale, it seemed cheerfully enough. But the unaccustomed
cuisine
had, I gather, played havoc with his sorely-tried digestion; and when a stout and cheery old Englishman came up to him in the hotel next morning and said, as men say over cocktails, ‘Well, Major, what d’you think of Japan?’ he answered, with some feeling: