Futility (11 page)

I ordered chicken soup. The General talked loosely about the Siberian situation. About five minutes after I had ordered soup the waiter returned without being called and very amiably volunteered the information that the soup would be served immediately. When, three-quarters of an hour later, I asked the waiter about the soup, he repeated “Immediately,” but the word now somehow failed to inspire in us the same confidence. The
General talked of the Siberian situation for about an hour and a quarter, when we observed that the soup had not been served. I again called the waiter.

“What about that soup?” I asked.

“I am afraid, sir,” said the waiter, “you will have to wait a while, for soup is a troublesome thing to prepare nowadays.”

“How long?”

“About three-quarters of an hour.”

General Bologoevski then continued about the situation. I gathered that there was a General Horvat who had formed an All-Russia Government, and that there was also a Siberian Government, defying General Horvat on the one hand and the Bolsheviks on the other, and that there were various officer organizations grouped about this or the other government, and some rather inclined to be on their own, all looking forward to a possible intervention by the Allies. After an hour or so had elapsed I interrupted General Bologoevski by observing that the soup had not yet been served, and I called a waiter who was passing and told him to fetch the waiter who had been serving us. “He has gone to bed,” came the answer, “and I am on the night shift.”

“Oh!” And I inquired about the soup.

“Soup?” said the new waiter, evidently disowning all responsibility for his predecessor, and after some hesitation he promised us some soup in about three-quarters of an hour. General Bologoevski then continued about the situation. He spoke for an intolerably long time, stopping only once or twice to inquire about the soup and whether it was coming. The clock in the corner chimed midnight, and then one. I was now devilishly hungry, and the General looked misused and maltreated. I shouted for the waiter, who with eyes closed slumbered in a standing posture in the distant corner of the room.
“What about that soup?” I repeated in excited tones when the waiter showed signs of recovering consciousness.

“Soup?” he asked, “Well, you see you can’t have soup nowadays … unless you choose to wait—”

“Wait!”
I said.

“Three-quarters of an hour or so,” he said.

Whereupon the General rose. He rose in a threatening manner. It seemed to me that the General’s manner of rising was deliberately remonstrative, a protest undisguised.

“General!” I shouted, as he ran across to his hat and sword. “Come back and have something. A chicken cutlet. General!”

But he was gone. I sat alone at my table and waited for the cutlet. As I looked before me I observed sitting at a distant table a man with a familiar face. I could not believe it. My heart leapt within me. I dashed from my chair.

“Nikolai Vasilievich!”

“Andrei Andreiech!”

“Is it possible? Is it really you?”

Nikolai Vasilievich was kissing me on both cheeks, in confirmation of his identity.

“Well, I never thought that you were here! I never thought that you could be here, Nikolai Vasilievich.”

“I am here,” said Nikolai Vasilievich sadly.

“And who else is here, who else, Nikolai Vasilievich?”

“All,” sighed Nikolai Vasilievich.

“All! How do you mean all?”

“
All
.”

“Fanny Ivanovna here?”

“Yes, she is here.”

“Nina?”

“Yes, she is here.”

“And Pàvel Pàvlovich?”

“Yes, both Pàvel Pàvlovichi are here.”

“And Eberheim?”

“Yes, he is here too … they’re all here.”

“You don’t say so!… And Čečedek?”

“All here—all.”

“And Vera?”

“Yes.”

“And Sonia?…”

“Yes, all—my wife and all.”

“Which wife, Nikolai Vasilievich?”

“How do you mean? I only have one—Magda Nikolaevna.”

“Oh, you haven’t married Zina then?”

“No, but she is here. They are all here—all her family … Uncle Kostia … all.”

“How are they all? Tell me, Nikolai Vasilievich … the grandfathers dead, I suppose?”

“Oh no, both here. But I don’t think—nobody thinks—they can last very long now, either of them.”

“Oh, they’re alive. That’s good.… And so Magda Nikolaevna is here too—with Čečedek, of course.”

“Yes, and Eisenstein.”

“She has married Čečedek?”

“No, she has married no one—except me, of course. But I expect it won’t be very long now till I get a divorce.”

My voice dropped to a confidential whisper. “Why are they all here, Nikolai Vasilievich?” I asked.

“Andrei Andreiech, don’t ask me. Why is it that they followed me here all the way from Petrograd? And when I had to go over to Japan just for a fortnight on a matter of business … well, they all followed me there … all … every one of them!… You see, they are, so to speak, economically dependent on me. That is why I suppose they follow me about wherever I go. We
are inseparable—financially. We are a chain. Russia being what she is to-day—disjointed, with neither railway nor postal communication that you can rely on, they simply have to be where I am if they are to get money out of me. I quite understand their position. So they follow me, you see.…”

“Nikolai Vasilievich!” And I shook him long and warmly by the hand.

We sat together long into the morning, and Nikolai Vasilievich complained of his lot. The mines, it seemed, were still the chief deterrent to his happiness. His family, he said, had decided to leave Petrograd and go east because their house, which, strictly speaking, belonged to them no longer, had, since the Bolshevik revolution, been invaded by a host of undesirable people and there was hardly a room left in the house that they could call their own. Another reason which prompted them to leave the capital was that the Bolshevik authorities had restricted individuals from drawing on their current accounts in the banks; and what was more important still, Nikolai Vasilievich had really nothing left in the bank to draw upon. So he had naturally turned to his other source of income—the gold-mines in Siberia. He had poured considerable money into these gold-mines in the past, in the hope that some day they would make him very wealthy. For years and years they had a way of ever being on the eve of making him wealthy, yet always some minor, unforeseen incident occurred which temporarily postponed the realization of his hopes. The gold-mines were about to begin to pay, when war broke out and temporarily affected the output. Then in the war he perceived the opportunity of placing them on a military footing. The governor, a friend of his, had promised to assist him, when unhappily the revolution came and the governor was arrested and dismissed. Kerenski’s time was the most trying time of all. For then the miners began to call committee-meetings and talk
as to what they would do when they seized the mines; but they confined their revolutionary schemes to a violent expression as to what they
would
do, in the meantime doing nothing, either in the taking over of the mines or in the working of them. With the Bolshevik revolution things began to move, and the men seized the mines. At first the news was a great shock to Nikolai Vasilievich, for he knew that there were many families dependent on him. Then he perceived that he could actually buy the gold from the men at exactly the same price as it had cost him to produce it. He was much relieved, and for the first time in his life he was actually doing good business.

It was then that they decided to leave Petrograd for Siberia, and his families, dependents and hangers-on naturally all followed him. He travelled with Fanny Ivanovna, Sonia, Nina, Baron Wunderhausen, Kniaz, Eberheim and the book-keeper Stanitski. His wife was in the same train, but in a different carriage, and she insisted on having Vera with her, for she was not well, and Čečedek was merely a man. Eisenstein followed her. At times it seemed as if he had lost sight of them; but he invariably turned up by the next train in every town they halted. Eberheim was a great trouble. He suffered terribly. At several wayside stations they had to take him out and put him into hospital. Sometimes there was no hospital, only a doctor. Sometimes there was no doctor, and Zina’s father attended to him as best he could. Eisenstein too was helpful. On more than one occasion Zina’s family—the largest family of all—and Magda Nikolaevna’s party, had gone on not knowing that Nikolai Vasilievich’s party had remained behind; and Nikolai Vasilievich thought that he would never see them again. But they had discovered his absence and waited for him in the next town along the line, before proceeding farther. The two old grandfathers stood the journey very well on the whole, considering their advanced age and the hardships of the trip.
What made it very unpleasant for Nikolai Vasilievich was that the various parties who were financially dependent on him were not on speaking terms with one another. He was besieged with notes requesting private interviews, and there were violent disputes which he was called upon to settle. When at length he had arrived at the headquarters of his gold-mines, he learnt that the Czecho-Slovak troops in their recent offensive against the Bolsheviks had recaptured the mines, shot the miners’ leaders, imprisoned many other miners, and then handed the mines back to his manager; whereon the miners killed the manager and refused to resume work. Mr. Thomson, his consulting-engineer, despairing of the situation, had returned to England. And Nikolai Vasilievich perceived that his recent scheme of purchasing the gold from the men had been completely knocked on the head.

He was now considering another scheme that had been suggested to him by a number of financiers in the Far East, which involved the active co-operation of two influential generals—to organize and dispatch a punitive expedition to the gold-mines in order to compel the miners to restart work. This somewhat complicated scheme had necessitated a trip to Tokio to interest another Russian general who was there in the scheme; and all the families, no doubt thinking that he was trying to escape from his responsibilities, followed him to Tokio, thus unnecessarily increasing his expenses. He had had great difficulty in finding accommodation for his family in Vladivostok; but for Fanny Ivanovna, Sonia, Nina, Vera, Baron Wunderhausen and himself he had procured the ground floor of a little house. All the others had also settled down in Vladivostok. And the Baron would, no doubt, find it difficult to evade military service.

“And how are you?” asked Nikolai Vasilievich. “I wondered
if you would be coming with the Admiral. We half expected that you would. Well, what do you think of it?”

“Think of it!” I said. “Why, we are the men of the hour. You should have seen the deputations, proclamations, speeches, hailing him as the new Lafayette. He said to-day, jokingly of course, that he would have to work out a time-table for seeing people. Dictators, say, from 7 to 10; supreme rulers between 10 and 1; prime ministers could be admitted between 2 and 5. Then till seven he would be free to cabinet ministers of the rank and file. Supreme commanders-in-chief could come from 8 to 1. And so forth, down to common general officers commanding. Yes, it was hardly an exaggeration.…”

Nikolai Vasilievich smiled one of his kindly smiles. “Do you think it will be all right?” he asked.

“Rather!” I replied irrelevantly. “It’s the climax of his career. He has been called upon by four joint deputations representing, I think, four separate All-Russia Governments whose heads conferred on him the title of Supreme Commander-in-Chief of All the Armed Military and Naval Forces operating on the Territory of Russia,’ or something of this sort. And he made a speech to them; said that Foch was wrong and Douglas Haig was wrong, and all those muddle-headed politicians! The war was to be won on the Eastern Front.”

“I too think it will be won on the Eastern Front,” said Nikolai Vasilievich. “It ought to, anyhow.”

“Why?”

“Well, because the Eastern Front has unquestionably the greater resources in mineral wealth. The gold-mines ought to be cleared of the enemy before anything else if you want to win the war.”

“Yes,” said I with an assumed and exaggerated pensiveness, “that is unquestionably the case.”

We arranged to meet again to-morrow, as we descended arm in arm the shabby flight of steps, and it was decided that Nikolai Vasilievich should call for me and drive me home to see the family.

The rain had ceased. We parted at the cross-roads.

When I turned into my bedroom I beheld the Admiral and a little dark-haired man, aquiline featured, sitting on my bed and talking like two conspirators. The dark-haired little man then rose with the precision common to Russian officers, and shook hands. He was, I learnt afterwards, Admiral Kolchak.

It was very late that night when I fell asleep. I was thinking of my meeting on the morrow with the family, with Nina. I pictured to myself her image as I last remembered it. And, interlacing with these thoughts, there was the thought of the gallant Admiral in the bedroom opposite, tucked away between his heavy blankets, his teeth in a glass of water on the table at his side—no presentable sight!—seeing visions of a Napoleonic ride athwart the great Siberian plain, at the head of his vast new armies marching onward to take their stand on the re-established Eastern Front.

Then in the small hours of the morning he was wakened by the noise of a dog that ran through the half-open door of his bedroom in pursuit of a cat. I heard the Admiral strike a match, then jump out of bed and fumble with his stick under the bed and cupboards and chest of drawers, evidently looking for the animals. I went in to him and offered my services in the chase.

“Can you see the dog?” came the Admiral’s sturdy voice from under a cupboard.

“I’m looking for the cat, sir.”

“Cat! Where did
that
come from?’

“I saw it run into your room after a rat.”

“Nonsense!”

“I did, sir, and the dog ran in after the cat.”

We fumbled with our sticks.

“I don’t believe there was a rat,” said the Admiral.