Futility (14 page)

“Don’t want to get out.”

“Then kindly pay your fare.”

“Don’t want to pay.”

At length our chauffeur succeeded in disentangling our car. “I’m always so frightened for the children. Awful language these drunkards use,” said Fanny Ivanovna.

The theatre, as we entered the box, was a gallery of distinguished generals, admirals and Allied high commissioners; and the orchestra was sending forth the plaintive strains of the familiar Czecho-Slovak marching song.

I sat next to Nina, and the Admiral was in the other corner, half screened from the public view by the dusty curtain. To the great delight of Sonia and Fanny Ivanovna, there was the Overture to
Tannhäuser;
and as the initial pilgrims’ chorus was being repeated in its last resort, the conductor urging the executants to ever greater efforts, and the trombones blazed away their utmost perturbation, a chuckle of glee and satisfaction spread over the Admiral’s fine-set face. “There’s more discipline in an orchestra like this,” said he, “than
in a battalion of Marines,” and clapped his hands uproariously.

The concert over, the Admiral dispatched me first in his car with the family and waited for me to return for him. Driving home through the warm and starry night, Fanny Ivanovna praised the immaculate politeness of Sir Hugo; but added afterwards, “He’s frightfully nervous, and keeps fiddling with something or other all the time.”

“And keeps saying ‘Splendid! Splendid!’ ” added Nina.

“There’s something curious about his mind, too,” she said.

“Ah! you’ve discovered that!” I laughed. “It’s a grasp of the inessential, a passion for detail and exactitude unexcelled in creation. You don’t know him. To-day, for instance, I met him on the landing, before lunch. ‘Hello!’ he said. ‘Full of work?’ Now it had seemed to me that he said ‘Full of drink?’ and naturally enough I said, ‘No, not at this hour, sir.’ ‘At what hour do you start, pray?’ he began, and thinking he was talking about cocktails, I said, ‘Oh, just before dinner.’ ‘Hm!’ he said. ‘Just before dinner. I shall have to look into that.’ ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ I said, ‘I think I must have heard you wrong. Do you mind telling me again what you said?’ ‘Hm!’ he said, ‘I’ve been talking to you on this landing for the last three minutes on the basis of my original inquiry, and you now ask me what it was I said. I said—I think these were the exact words I used—I said: “Hello!” I said. “Full of work?” ‘Full of work?’ I cried, ‘and I thought you said “Full of drink.” ‘Full of drink,’ he said, ‘full of drink indeed. Good morning to you!’ And he went his way.”

The car had pulled up.

“Good night, Andrei Andreiech, and thank you very, very much.”

“Good night,” smiled the three sisters.

The Admiral was bucked as we drove home. I knew that he
was fond of young girls. On the other hand, he liked mature women. He praised the girls. I breathed to him that they had praised him.

The Admiral smiled one of his most adorable smiles.

“Fanny Ivanovna,” I said, “was struck by your appearance.”

The gallant Admiral blushed like a girl.

“There is something in having an appearance,” he said at last.

He looked out into the dark and silent night. Some minutes later he said, with conviction, “She’s a good woman, that Fanny Ivanovna.”

“Russian women are so much more interesting and fascinating,” I babbled, “than other women.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “But she’s a Boche.”

“Unfortunately,” I sighed.

The Admiral yawned. “Never mind,” he said. “I don’t mind the Germans. What I can’t stick are the dirty Bolsheviks.”

“Russian girls,” I continued, “are far more interesting and clever than other girls.”

“All girls,” the Admiral replied, “are stupid.”

MUCH OF MY EXPERIENCES MUST NOW APPEAR IN the nature of a farce. This is not my fault. A good deal of life is a hilarious farce, and yet, as in the case of the affiliation of Nikolai Vasilievich’s family, it all comes about in the proper constitutional way, through a string of human motives. For a week or so Nikolai Vasilievich kept on applying to the Admiral
for a coupé in his train to Omsk, in the teeth of implacable refusals. Then, after much opposition from the Admiral, and a passionate, though somewhat vague attempt on the part of Nikolai Vasilievich to identify his personal misfortunes with that of “honest” Russia, and the doings of the Czechs, the miners, and the punitive expedition whose disinterestedness he had begun to doubt, with that of international Bolshevism, this was conceded. But on hearing of this step, Fanny Ivanovna at once concluded that Nikolai Vasilievich was trying to escape from her—a suspicion she always entertained—and she immediately applied to see the Admiral in person and asked for two additional coupés, to accommodate her and the three sisters. The Admiral was a sailor and a gentleman. He promised her two coupés. I forget which wing of the family was the next to apply. I remember that every day that week our waiting-room was crowded with petitioners. The Admiral said No. He found himself saying No innumerable times each day. Now it is an intrinsic part of the Russian character that it does not accept No for No. It is constitutionally incapable of doing so. Its institutions are all a negation of that principle. And what is more, it refuses to confine that fact to within the Russian border. It regards it in the light of world-wide application, assuming that it is indeed nothing less than human nature.

The Admiral still said No. He held that it was not human nature but just Russian nature, and as an illustration of his point he meant to show that when an Englishman says No he does mean No. But none of them would understand the Admiral’s interpretation of No. They had all grown up with the idea that No meant Yes after an adequate amount of pressure and insistence. The pressure was of various kinds, according to the age, sex and nature of the applicant. There were tears, entreaties. There were questions, such as the “object” of the
Allies in Siberia, since they monopolized the best trains and refused to help the Russians in their primary needs. There were direct questions which it was thought must needs shatter the impregnability of the Admiral’s No, such as, for instance: Did the Admiral wish to starve them, as he evidently did, by cutting them adrift from Nikolai Vasilievich, the bread-winner?

The Admiral still said that No was No, and would they please understand it? They all replied that No was not the point, the point being:
What were they to do without Nikolai Vasilievich?
Whereon the Admiral replied that when he said a thing he meant it, this being the sterling value of British character. But they persisted all the same, treating him as if he were just human like the rest of them. Then the Admiral became a little angry. It annoyed him that they should fail to understand the primary fact that an Englishman was not a Russian and that hence any laxity that held good in Russian character did not hold good in that of a native of the British Isles. But the Russians hammered on in spite of all; till the Admiral was heartily amused that they should indeed know no better than to think that he would give in just because they persisted, for, the ignorance of human nature that, he thought, such a belief implied—a quaint and childish ignorance—began to fascinate him. He looked at them and looked at them again, as they poured forth their woes … and marvelled. Indeed, their touching innocence fascinated him so much that finally he felt he wanted to humour them, as one is inclined to humour quaint, unreasonable children who know no better. And it was by way of humouring them that the Admiral gave way. No (for once only) was to mean Yes. They thanked him cordially. He sighed and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. The Russian character had won the day.

That night we started on our trip along the great, now
pitiably disorganized Siberian track. It was a lovely night in late autumn. The Admiral’s special train had been brought over on the main line; and the General and I, both somewhat under the influence of liquor, walked arm in arm up and down the platform; and the General, in an overflow of feeling, spoke piteously of his ruined soul, his wasted life, and how he felt, and what he felt, and why he felt it. The Admiral and Sir Hugo had already settled down in the drawing-room of the coach, and were drinking. As the train moved, we too stepped into the carriage and threw ourselves back on our cushions; and the General’s hand stretched for the bottle. But I lay back musingly in the dark carriage, thinking of all things and none in particular, in that agreeable half-conscious way that is known to precede slumber, as the train rattled on its way to Omsk.

Two carriages behind us was Nikolai Vasilievich with a substantial proportion of his family, all bound for Omsk. When I closed my eyes I could see Nina, and my drowsy thoughts would linger: “She is
à moi
.… Tucked away in that compartment with her sisters.…
À moi
.… Now they were undressing for the night.…
À moi
.… At a handstretch. Always there. But there was no hurry. O life … leisurely life …!”

I was wakened by the General, and we went and joined the Admiral and Sir Hugo. It seemed that they were both what is known as “lit up.”

“You’re drunk,” the Admiral greeted me.

“And so are you,” I said.

“I know I am, damn you!”

And we were all very jolly and sang
“Stenka Razin,”
the Russian robber song, while the train rattled westward. And the General’s eyes were moist with tears: he was happy in his melancholy. And, tearfully emotional, he crept to the Admiral, and clinging to his neck tried to kiss him.

“Go away!” cried the Admiral in the manner of an innocent young girl about to be accosted; and then in a more manly tone:

“Damn your eyes!”

And then the General leaned back with that exaggerated leisure peculiar to his condition, and sang a Russian gipsy song. He spoke of the good old pre-war days. He sighed, sighed deeply. Now everything seemed to have gone wrong, no doubt because his wife who ran him was not here to look after him. But he expected her to come and then all would be well. If he was in a muddle, if he was in debt, as he invariably was, he merely turned to his creditors and said, “I don’t understand all this. Wait till my wife arrives. It’s a damrotten game, you know, without my wife. My wife she is a clever woman. She will put it all right with you. My wife she is a dragoon.”

In the night the train stopped at a wayside station and seemed as though it would never start again. The Admiral then sent out the General to find out what was the matter, and Sir Hugo, who attributed the cause to “bad staff work,” proffered the suggestion of “negotiating” with the station-master. But the General said he thought the station-master was a most “damrotten fellow,” in the case of which type he usually relied on “elemental” measures. Accordingly he drew out his pistol and threatened to shoot the station-master like a dog unless he cleared the line immediately. The station-master, used to these methods, took no heed of the warning, but said that he would lodge a vigorous protest through the usual channels. Whereon the General replaced the pistol in his pouch, remarking that life was a “damrotten game.”

What a trip!…

In the morning I observed the Admiral talking to Fanny Ivanovna in his deliberate manner, looking into her eyes. And the impression I received was that the Admiral thought
Fanny Ivanovna was a “good fellow.” But the three sisters, bashful though they were when he spoke to them in English, had somehow overlooked him; though Nina once remarked, “How awfully funnily his mouth protrudes when he looks at you so seriously. I feel so shy because I feel
he
does.”

“Now with all this English influence behind him Nikolai Vasilievich ought to be able to find out something definite about his mines at Omsk,” Fanny Ivanovna confided to me. “And there is no doubt this time we’re travelling in comfort. The children are so pleased. You know, they are so childish. Any change like this amuses them.” And then, in a lowered voice: “Anything like that—love—I assure you, they know absolutely nothing about. They’re such children!”

“But Sonia’s married!” I remonstrated.

“
Ach!
how that angers me! And to whom, to
whom!
He can’t even wash his neck. It’s all that mother!”

And so we covered verst after verst, as our luxurious train, freshly painted, beautifully furnished, admirably kept, rushed through a stricken land of misery. On our choice engines we moved like lightning, or perchance stood long hours at lonely wayside stations, the glamour of innumerable electric lights within our carriages presenting to a community of half-starving refugees the gloating picture of the Admiral and his “staff” at dinner.

And so we arrived at Lake Baikal, that crystal sea imprisoned in a frame of snow-capped mountains. We stopped our train and lingered on the rocks, drank in the harmony of a strange light, glassy water, snow, fir, and perfect quietude; and when at last we said good-bye to Lake Baikal, that proudest of lakes, a gale fearful and furious had blown in upon this serenity of beauty and lashed huge waves in the inky blackness of the night.

On went the train, rushing and swaying through the windy space of the fields.

What a trip! How we argued and wrangled the long journey through! Sometimes we would almost come to blows; for the ordinary Russian does not argue: he shouts, and his opponent, to score his point, shouts louder and quicker. The Russian General combined intellectual vagueness with an emotional temperament; and, contriving to identify his country with his class, he discovered that his country had been grievously insulted by me. All was over between us. He would never speak to me again.

But that evening, after dinner, we sat together over a bottle of whisky, and the General became emotional. “You are young and foolish,” he said, “and you probably don’t know what you are talking about. I don’t. But you love Russia. Tell me you love Russia; don’t you? We both love Russia. She’s been degraded and trampled on; but she is a fine country. She will arise. She must arise. And we both love Russia.” He cried. “Tell me you love Russia. Tell me you love her. We Russians are lazy, drunken, good-for-nothing swine; but we are good people, aren’t we? It’s a holy land. It’s a holy people. Look at her.” He gazed out of the window.