Futility (21 page)

There had been another night of firing. The headquarters of the Russian Zemstvo had been fiercely bombarded in the night. Then when at last the building was stormed by Japanese troops they found, to their amazement, that there was no one there. General Bologoevski, who had been attached of late to the Russian Staff, discovered on the morrow that he had lost yet another government overnight. Down came the red flag
and up went the flag of the Rising Sun. Russian prisoners tied to their Korean colleagues were being led through the streets on a rope, like cattle. Then, these lives wasted, this damage done, “their honour satisfied,” as said the Nippon officers, they turned to the scattered government and invited them to return to their shattered offices and resume their interrupted duties. And Nikolai Vasilievich, released from prison, was inclined to think that the little Nippons were, on the whole, good fellows.

Fanny Ivanovna and he, alone in the house, were about to have tea. The canary in the cage seemed livelier at the approach of spring. The cat was growing fatter. The samovar could not be made to work. Nikolai Vasilievich, dressed up in a morning-coat, put on white leather gloves and blackened them considerably as he grappled inefficiently with the large insurgent samovar that blew up columns of black smoke in the little hall; while Fanny Ivanovna, as usual, shouted advice to him from the adjoining room that really only served to annoy him.

“Sit down, Andrei Andreiech,” she said, “he won’t be long. Well, Nikolai,” she shouted, “can you manage it? Andrei Andreiech is
waiting
for his tea.”

“Shut up!” came his angry voice amid angry, recalcitrant hissing.

“Nikolai! Please! What will Andrei Andreiech think of you?”

There was no
kulich
, no
paskha
. But Fanny Ivanovna had done up the table as well as she could for the occasion; and there was something pathetic about the poor results she had attained compared with the lustre of pre-war Easter-week in Petersburg. We sat at table, and no one spoke. Nikolai Vasilievich was sad. Was he sad because he had returned from prison to something that was only prison in a mitigated form? Was it that the suspense had been too long, that he had succumbed in the waiting? Was it that he had suddenly, secretly, for no
particular reason, on the eve of great changes, lost faith in the recovery of his mines? Or was it just reaction, the unexpectedness of his release? How much the one, how much the other, who can tell? The emotion of the soul is an elusive thing. There is a subtlety about the moods that bears no introspection. These nights in early spring in Vladivostok are so intolerably sad that oft-times one might weep for no other reason than that life was passing untouched, unrealized, a drudgery with but a gleam of beauty.… Only later in the evening it transpired from his conversation that he hesitated. He hesitated what to do. His mind was in a state of perplexity and doubt. His finances were coming to an end. Should they all follow Baron Wunderhausen to Yokohama on the off-chance that he has secured some post there? But he remembered that the Baron was not a baron, and not even Wunderhausen, and he felt that he would be safer not to count on him. They might follow the Admiral to England, as the Russian General was doing; or remain with Eisenstein in Vladi, who was beginning to succeed as a dentist here—there was a dearth of them—and wait till the mines materialize? Perhaps he had better wait. Things seemed to be moving now at last, and perhaps there was more hope now than there had been hitherto.

After supper the Admiral and Sir Hugo came to say good-bye. Also, gradually, the family collected. The room was now full of people. The talk, as ever, lapsed into politics. The Russians have a habit of suspecting the “Allies” of unheard-of calumnies, so much so in fact that even the surprising attitude of innocence adopted by the allied representatives, who sincerely know no better, seems a fairer statement of the true position. The incentive to bloodshed in this miserable Russian business, as in fact the incentive to all murder, is not so much a matter of wanton wickedness as wanton ignorance: a metaphysical
confusion of motive: a chaos of the mind: a matter of muddled ethics. It is an integral part of Russian hospitality that they blackguard an “ally” to his face for the “calumnious machinations” practised by his Government in foreign affairs. The amusing thing about it is that this blackguarding is so deplorably inconsistent. One is apt to be shouted down for the “betrayal” of Kolchak, the “annexation” of the Caucasus, and the starvation by blockade by one’s host, who will have it that all these diabolical acts have been deliberately designed by Mr. Lloyd George in order to “humiliate” Russia for her early exit from the war. But really all this angry denunciation is almost meant as a compliment: to show how much they like you personally despite your racial blackguardism, which they take for granted. Thus accosted, one is apt to become heated, stick up for the Government of one’s country, and overstate facts. The room becomes a bear-garden.

Eisenstein opened the attack. “Your allied diplomats,” he said, “are hopeless. Some months ago I had occasion to see one of these worthy representatives of the diplomatic corps on behalf of a number of Jews that were in danger of being massacred by Kolchak’s officers. The diplomat, my client, by the way, was a marvellous linguist, a wonderful specimen of humanity. There he sat before me, maintaining a most distressing silence in twenty-eight foreign languages. ‘I beg of you to intercede,’ I said, ‘to prevent their being massacred. I entreat you, sir, to protest.’

“ ‘My dear Mr. Eisenstein,’ he said at last, ‘how can I protest—before they are killed? I want facts to go upon. I cannot act before I have facts. Facts, Mr. Eisenstein, facts!’

“ ‘Sir,’ I cried, ‘you will have
deadly
facts, if you are satisfied to wait at all.’

“ ‘Anyhow,’ he said, ‘I am not going to risk my reputation
for flimsy rumours of this kind. I have been a diplomat now for thirty-six years, and never once in my career, sir, have I said anything that … well, could be misconstrued … to mean something. And I am certainly not going to revise my methods now.’ And that was all I got out of him.”

“You Allies,” said Uncle Kostia, “have no sense of humour. I’m a sedentary worker, a man of letters, no fighting man in any sense. I sit in my room all day and watch your intervention through the window, so to speak. And it amuses me to see how you are fussing over us and always in the wrong direction, running about like clowns in a circus. A naval gentleman of yours will arrive at the port, fresh and raw from the high seas, and will be moved to request enlightenment from his more experienced colleagues on this rather elementary question: ‘Who is Kolchak? Is he a Bolshevik?’ He will be corrected in his erroneous supposition; and then, a week later, he will begin to dabble in Russian politics and will undertake brief excursions along the coast and fire now and then, somewhat promiscuously, at groups of villagers, whom in his simplicity he believes to be Bolsheviks—boom—boom—boom—boom! He will set them flying in all directions, perhaps kill a cow or so. After such a trip he will return to port, cheery and in good spirits; and after some little while the scattered villagers will return to their village, consume the cow, and resume their interrupted occupations.… Wonderful minds you have! You will prop up some half-witted general and send in stores of clothing and munitions. And the fruit of it? The Bolshevik divisions wearing British uniforms with royal buttons, and the Bolshevik minority in Moscow nationally strengthened in the face of foreign enemies. I sit at my window, writing, reading, and the news dribbles through: ‘Omsk fallen. Kolchak shot. Allies packing up.’ It seems … silly.”

“Quite,” said the book-keeper Stanitski. It was a curious thing that the book-keeper Stanitski should not have been seen in Nikolai Vasilievich’s household till the absence of finances in the firm of Nikolai Vasilievich provided him with nothing to record. Nikolai Vasilievich still went to his office every afternoon to talk things over with Stanitski and possibly to keep up the feeling that he was still a business man; and sometimes Zina would come and see him at his office. Stanitski was glad of these visits; for he would then drop the paper he had been reading—there was absolutely nothing to do—and take part in their conversation. As business gradually dribbled down to nothing, one felt that the book-keeper Stanitski was becoming less of an employee and more of a friend and hanger-on. He was absolutely indispensable to Nikolai Vasilievich, for Stanitski was an optimist.

“Kolchak was impulsive and well-meaning,” said Eisenstein, “but unfortunate in his selection of a task. He dismissed General Ditrich, who wanted to give up Omsk to save the Army, and replaced him by General Saharov, who undertook to keep Omsk; whereon General Saharov lost both Omsk and the Army.”

“You Jews,” said the Admiral, “are all damned Bolsheviks.” When the Admiral spoke of Jews he was filled with anger and, curiously, his face assumed a kind of Semitic expression.

“I wasn’t, Admiral,” he said. “I might be one now. There may be a gleam of hope there at least. There’s none here.”

“
I
wasn’t one,” said Kniaz, his eyes and nostrils flaming with passion, “till you Allies made me one!” The room grew still. We all turned round and stared at him. He had come in an hour or so ago, said nothing and consumed a box of chocolates all by himself. For twenty years or more he had said nothing. We felt that he had had ample time to think deep
thoughts: and there at last he was pouring them out: giving us the benefit of all these years of silent contemplation: releasing the compressed fervour of his humiliated and down-trodden patriotism. “Kniaz! Kniaz!” cried Fanny Ivanovna in alarm. “Kniaz!”

But there was no stopping him. He spoke with the tremor and vehemence of a man who had held his tongue for twenty years. He overwhelmed us with surprise, but he seemed no less overwhelmed himself, flushed and marvelling at what was the matter with him. “Why I personally object to your meddling in our affairs,” he cried, “is because it implies the impression as if you could manage your own.” Fearful, flaming words spat from his fiery mouth. “Ireland. India. Egypt.” Etc., etc., etc.

An Admiral contradicted by an adult person not subject to Naval regulations is a man at a disadvantage.

“They are just a pack of damned Bolsheviks, the lot of them, that’s all they are,” said he.

“Jew-led, I suppose,” laughed Eisenstein.

“The Russian question,” said the Admiral, “is a very big question, and I do not propose to discuss it here.”

“You have made it into a big question,” they all shouted, “because you had not the imagination to foresee how it would grow into a big question when it was yet a little one.”

“I wonder,” said the Admiral, “if you have held these views consistently throughout the revolution, if you had always been opposed to our help?”

“Well,” said Kniaz, “when I thought you would back up a moderate democratic party I was at least more hopeful of the issue.”

“
Which
‘moderate party,’ pray?”

“Avksentiev’s Government. The Directorate.”

“Oh, those!” scoffed the Admiral. “They weren’t much
good. They did not believe in armies, and fighting, and that sort of thing.”

Kniaz looked up at him and pondered over the Admiral’s uniform and probably thought that fighting, for the gallant sailor, was really an end in itself. And Kniaz concluded with the words: “And now having thoroughly muddled up our issues, you leave us to the tender mercies of the Japanese.” But Sir Hugo, conceiving that they were arguing beside the point, snatched that phrase from him and stepped in between them with much dignity. He must have felt that the occasion called for a clear brain like his own to clear the misunderstanding.

“I think, Prince Borisov” (and we all stared at Kniaz: it was indeed characteristic that Sir Hugo should be the first to know the Prince’s name), “that you are totally mistaken as to the object of the Allies in Siberia. You use that most unfortunate word ‘invasion.’ There was no question of ‘invasion.’ Our sole object in coming out to Russia, and the Admiral will confirm it, was to establish one indivisible national Russia by creating one strong united Russian Army—and that object, I am glad to say, we have now achieved.”

“One national Russia! Excuse me, but—but—but—but if there is any national Russia to-day it is all on the other side. As for the Russian Army, the only Russian Army now is the Bolshevik Army. The others have all melted away.”

“Ho! Kniaz is a Bolshevik!” cried Fanny Ivanovna.

“Ho! ho!” cried the others.

“I will not argue about details, Prince Borisov. I am not a biologist and I don’t dissect. And I don’t propose to be dragged into pedantic microscopic analysis as to which is the particular political party to which the army, for the moment, swears allegiance. I am satisfied that it is a strong
Russian
Army, which it has been our object to create. And I will now say good-bye
to you, and I will ask you to accept my very best wishes for the welfare of your great country, sir, and your personal welfare, too. Good-bye.”

The Admiral and Sir Hugo then vanished with Nikolai Vasilievich, and Fanny Ivanovna went after them into the little hall to see them out, while I remained behind.

“Sonia! Vera! Nina!” came from Fanny Ivanovna. “How dark! Light the
elektrichno
!”

“Why don’t you tell her,” I said to the three sisters, “that it is not
‘elektrichno,’
but
‘elektrichestvo’
?”

“We’ve told her hundreds of times,” they replied in unison, “but she will have it her own way
‘elektrichno’
and
‘elektrichno’
.”

The Admiral’s departure had set the ball spinning. Very soon the bulk of them was gone. And then the incredible happened. The three American boys arrived and took the three sisters to a dance. And on the eve of my departure! I heard their laughing voices in the street, as the door closed upon them. That settled it. How they enjoyed themselves! How they enjoyed life! As for me, I would have to go home and pack.… That settled it.

I sat alone with Nikolai Vasilievich and Fanny Ivanovna.