Futility (13 page)

Instantly she vanished to the dressing-room; and in her absence the Baron tackled me again about a billet in Persia or Mesopotamia. I expressed a mild surprise. “Have we not come here to help the Russian national cause?” I asked. “Is that then of no interest to you?”

“You know,” he said nonchalantly, “nothing will come of it.”

“Why?”

“The Czechs are such awful swine. They’re all Bolsheviks.”

And then added, “And the Americans, too, are Bolsheviks. President Wilson. Nothing will come of it all.”

And, involuntarily, the conversation at lunch surged back to my mind. I thought this equalled it in point of sheer “constructive statesmanship.” And then Nina, now in her original coiffure, returned.

We sat under dusty imitation palm-trees, my sleeve every now and then touching her shapely naked girlish arms; till Nikolai Vasilievich came up and gave us supper, insisting on paying for it all himself. I thought of the poor, long-suffering mines who would eventually have to square all this, as I surveyed the debris on the tablecloth, while Nikolai Vasilievich paid the waiter.

When the music, after the due interval, broke out into a resounding waltz, we all flocked back into the ball-room.

General Bologoevski, who had turned up at the eleventh hour, stood at my side, and we admired Nina, who now fulfilled a carelessly contrived engagement. “What eyes! What calves! What ankles!” he was saying. “Look here, why in heaven don’t you marry her?…”

Driving through the dark and muddy streets, I sat on the folding seat; the car was packed with members of the family. Tucked away in the corner opposite, like a purring kitten, was Nina. We began to part provisionally at their gate; but they asked me to come in. We had cold ham and tinned salmon and tea with sweets. There was a certain subdued agitation about my presence in the household at this hour, and once I heard Fanny Ivanovna’s shrill voice from the adjoining room explain excitedly to Sonia: “You needn’t drag the bed into the drawing-room till Andrei Andreiech is gone.”

I had been
going
for an hour or so. We had said “good night” innumerable times. Nina clung to me whimsically,
ignoring Nikolai Vasilievich’s desire to be rid of me. They all came out into the tiny hall and added to the difficulty of my withdrawal. Nina fastened my great sheepskin overcoat, which appealed to her by reason of its many straps. I was to come again to-morrow night to supper, and the day after, and every, every day.…

MY TANGLED MEMORIES OF SIBERIA COME TO ME to-day largely as a string of dances, dinners, concerts, garden-parties, modulated by the atmosphere of weather and the seasons of the year, with the gathering clouds of the political situation looming always in the background. And I remember, in particular, the Admiral’s first
thé dansant
. As he ran through my provisional list of guests he frowned and growled a little. “What are all these women?” he asked.

“You should see them, Admiral,” smiled General Bologoevski.

“Good-looking?”

The General kissed his finger-tips.

“And who is Fanny Ivanovna?”

“A German.”

A shadow came across his face. “I’m damned if I want any Huns in my house,” he growled; but gave in grudgingly.

Through inadvertence on somebody’s part, the officers of the U.S. Flagship arrived half an hour before time—an incident which taxed my capacity for consuming liquor to the utmost pitch. They had also overdone their kindness by sending us two jazz bands instead of one, with the result that their almost
simultaneous employment in the two adjoining rooms reserved for dancing proved an experience unsatisfactory to the ear. As the Hawaiian string-band flowed and quivered in a languid, plaintive waltz, the adjoining brass-band fairly knocked sparks out of it by bursting into an intoxicating one-step.

Some two hours earlier I had met Vera in the street. She had been to see their dressmaker about the frock in which now, radiant but bashful, she appeared. Almost immediately, the family was followed by the Zina-Uncle Kostia wing, and by Magda Nikolaevna and Čečedek. But they would not speak to one another. Nikolai Vasilievich had been to see me in the morning about bringing Zina; and now he tried to dance with her. But both were awkward and bashful, and the experiment proved unsatisfactory; while Fanny Ivanovna looked on at them sarcastically. Nina whispered to me as we one-stepped: “After them! Go after them!” her triangular, fur-bordered hat bobbing up into my face in the excitement. And as we overtook them: “Oh, my God!”

Stepping like a duck, Zina would not turn unless warned beforehand, and even then only half the circle; and Nikolai Vasilievich, exasperated by his futile efforts, asked impatiently: “Are you dancing in goloshes? Have you rubber soles on your shoes? Or what
is
it?”

They gave it up at last and stood by the wall, in everybody’s way, shamefaced and pitiful; and Zina looked as though she regretted her insistence on coming to this dance.

“Will you dance?” said I.

“I’ve never danced before,” said she. “But I don’t mind trying.” She looked up at her lover. Evidently their experiment did not count. Nikolai Vasilievich smiled feebly.

And, as a preliminary, she stepped on my toe.…

My next dance was with Magda Nikolaevna, a beautiful
woman enough, but so delicate and with such an elaborate concoction of accessories by way of dress that the chief sensation yielded from the dance with her was one of infinite precaution.

As a
pièce de résistance
, I danced with a little niece of Uncle Kostia, Olya Olenin. She was stout and round, like a football, and we banged into people and against walls carelessly and with the harmlessness of a football.

“To-day I have grown ten years older,” confided Nikolai Vasilievich, as I came up to him. “I shall not forget it.”

“You take it much too seriously,” I said.

“I blame myself for being such a fool as to have listened to her. I didn’t want to come.”

“Nikolai Vasilievich, really!”

“Oh, please don’t take it that way. It was charming of you to ask us. I like your Admiral … and that other officer, his assistant, who says ‘Splendid! Splendid!’ ”

“Sir Hugo,” I supplied.

Then Uncle Kostia, spectacled, and with the air of a profound philosopher taking stock of his impressions, joined us. “I’ve been talking to your Admiral,” he said.

“Well?”

“Fine-looking man. Combines the manner of Napoleon I with the mind, I think, of Napoleon III. Wants to get to Moscow. But what he’ll do when he gets there (if he gets there), curiously enough doesn’t seem to have occurred to him! The simplicity of the scheme is touching. All right, let’s assume he gets there and plants a constitutional Russian government and retains an Allied army to support it. Will he keep the Allied troops there indefinitely? And when at last they go, what’s to prevent the government from collapsing like a pack of cards at the hands of a population inevitably resentful of foreign
interference? Then there’s your country. You think your country will support you. But it will be divided.”

“I disagree,” said Nikolai Vasilievich. “I’d much rather, for example, the gold-mining area was occupied by English troops, or even by the Japanese, than by the Russians. I know what I am talking about. I am a typical Russian myself. There are honest men in Russia, and there are clever men in Russia; but there are no honest clever men in Russia. And if there are, they are probably heavy drinkers.”

Uncle Kostia “pooh-poohed” this sweeping charge; but Nikolai Vasilievich continued:

“To take my book-keeper Stanitski. Andrei Andreiech knows him. Dishonest as you make them. And still I am obliged to keep him on. Why? Because if I took an honest man he would make such a hash of all the books that I wouldn’t know where I was at all.”

“But do you know where you are with a dishonest book-keeper, Nikolai Vasilievich?” said Uncle Kostia with that keen spasmodic interest that highly abstract men have of taking, periodically, in practical affairs, almost as a relief from themselves. “I am a man of letters, no business man in any sense; still it would seem to me—”

“To be candid,” said the other, “it doesn’t matter much either way just now. Till we can get the goldmines back there is no doing any business. I get money in advance occasionally. He sees to the paying of the interest, which is paid out of the same money, and puts it down in the books. For the present that is all.”

“Hm!… Still, I should do something about that,” said Uncle Kostia, “if I may presume to give advice in these matters.”

“When we get the gold-mines there will be time enough to act,” Nikolai Vasilievich answered somewhat gruffly. “I only
mentioned it as an illustration of the political situation we have to contend with. The foreigners here must laugh at our methods!”

“Why? They’re only muddling up our issues.”

“The idea,” I attempted to amend Uncle Kostia’s proposition, “is that the Allied troops should help to raise and train Russian
cadres
and so lay the foundation for a new Russian Army which, in its turn, would make it possible to rebuild the State. It’s not an invasion by foreign troops. You may rest your mind in peace on that point.”

“Oh!… Oh!… If that’s the idea,” said Uncle Kostia in augmented tones, “then I am doubly alarmed; for I can guess the elements which will form the backbone of this new White Russian Army—monarchists altogether too brainless to realize that theirs is a lost cause.”

“Most of them, I think, would favour a Constitutional Monarchy,” proffered Nikolai Vasilievich.

“A constitutional monarchy in Russia,” retorted Uncle Kostia, “would invariably be more monarchical than constitutional.”

“Anyhow,” I said, “do have a drink.”

I could see Sir Hugo’s ruddy, weather-beaten face, as he served Fanny Ivanovna with her ice-cream; and as I came up to her I overheard her say to him in German: “I think the Bolsheviks are bound to be beaten soon because it is impossible to do any trade while they are in power.”

“Splendid!” said Sir Hugo somewhat inconsequently. “Splendid!”

“We simply can’t recover our mines, and Nikolai Vasilievich—”

She stopped.…

She danced heavily; and as I turned her each time, revolved
a few times of her own momentum. She sought to direct me by sheer strength of will. “Who is steering, Fanny Ivanovna? You or me?” I asked in exasperation.

“I am sorry, Andrei Andreiech,” she answered. “I do it unintentionally.”

The Baron asked me for the third time about Persia or Mesopotamia; but the Admiral’s approach frightened him away.

We watched Kniaz, who was shaking hands cordially with everybody as he took his leave. “That Kniaz of yours looks as if one day he’d been unspeakably astonished—and remained so ever since.”

“Look at General Bologoevski, sir, dancing with that painted woman.”

The Admiral’s face drew out and darkened. “That man,” said he, “is the
biggest
fool in the Russian Army.” He pondered. “The Russian men are no damned good. But the women are splendid! What about that Czech concert to-night? You can bring your women if you like into the box. Don’t want the men. Ha! ha! ha! Look at old Hugo talking to the young girls!”

“I’ll ask the three sisters.…”

“Those three there sitting on the window-sill?”

“Yes.… And Fanny Ivanovna,” I added.

“All right. Let’s have the Hun.

“Well, Nikolai Vasilievich,” he turned to his guest. “I hear you know English very well. Where have you picked it up?”

“No, no,” blushed Nikolai Vasilievich; and said in Russian, “Your English spelling is so difficult. In English you spell a word ‘London’ and pronounce it ‘Birmingham.’ ”

“Ha! ha! ha! ha!” laughed the Admiral loudly, but with dignity; and then asked, “Are you comfortable in Vladivostok? Can you get all the food you want for your family? I hope you will tell me if there is anything I can do?”

“I am very grateful,” bowed the Russian.

“Now mind you don’t forget to ask.…”

Nikolai Vasilievich, as things went, did not forget; nor did he wait to be asked twice. On the spot he said that he understood the Admiral was shortly travelling by special train up-country, and all he, Nikolai Vasilievich, requested was one modest coupé in that special train, as it was urgent that he should see a certain Russian general at Omsk, relative to the forthcoming punitive expedition to his goldmines.

The Admiral returned the classic answer: “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Will you kindly introdooce me to the young lady yonder?” said a very smart, stiff-collared U.S. naval officer. He looked in the direction of the window-sill.

“Which one?”

The next moment he was dancing with Nina.

“Who’s that officer?” asked General Bologoevski.

“Ward.”

“What eyes! What calves! What ankles!” he sighed again. “Look here, really, why in the world don’t you marry her?”

“And now,” said I, “it’s my turn,” as the waltz subsided on the last three beats.

“Tell me,”
whined Nigger voices,
“why nights are lonesome,”
and the cymbals beat the pulse;
“tell me why days are blue
.…
”
And we moved rhythmically to the incantation, stooping, jerking gently, swaying smoothly, like plants in the water. When the song ceased it was immediately encored. And when the bands went, a handful of us, those who had enjoyed it most, lingered for a while. I and Nina, the Baron and his painted lady, Vera and Holdcroft, danced to the husky gramophone; and Sonia sat on the window-sill and stared at Holdcroft with unmitigated admiration.

And in the evening I called for them in our car and took them to the concert. We arrived a little late because at a point in the journey our progress had been impeded by a car that blocked the road. Inside was a drunken gentleman who was being urged by the chauffeur to pay his fare. “Don’t want to pay,” the gentleman responded.

“Then get out!”

“Don’t want to get out.”

“Get out,
you—
”

“Who’re you talking to?” came from within. “Don’t you know I’m an officer?”

“Officer. There’s a lot of you here, we know your kind.… Get out!”