Futility (23 page)

“I know,” he said, “it is a most damrotten game, you know.
I give dem h-h-hell, those damrotten Frenchmen. They are all damrotten Bolsheviks, they are.”

“Well,” I said quietly, “Kolchak has tried it. Denikin has tried it. Yudenich has tried it. I should give it a rest now.”

“Ah,” he laughed, “all this has merely been a little rehearsal. We shall begin seriously in a year or two. It’s the only way to stop bloodshed.” He puffed at his heavy cigar and his eyes twitched in the smoke.

“A rehearsal.… Yes, I too intend to begin ‘seriously’ when I get to Vladivostok,” I laughed.

“Is it not rather an adventure in futility?” Sir Hugo asked.

“He has taken my advice at last.” The General kissed his finger-tips. “What eyes—!”

“What calves! What ankles!” I completed automatically.

Silence.

“The boat’s beginning to roll.”

“Where are all the passengers?” asked the General.

“I fear they must be indisposed,” Sir Hugo said, “in consequence of the heavy sea.”

The General paused a little, gazing down at the cause of the passengers’ indisposition. “Of course,” he said, “this rolling and pitching ought never to be.”

“Oh!” said Sir Hugo.

“It is entirely due to bad steering. Now on Russian ships when there is rolling or pitching the captain leaves his breakfast-table without a word, goes up to the man at the steering-wheel, beats him in the face the number of times he considers adequate (v
mordoo
, do you understand?)—”

Sir Hugo nodded to indicate that he understood.

“—and retires, without a word, to the saloon and continues his breakfast. And believe me, Sir Hugo, there is no more—ha, ha, ha—
rolling
or—ha, ha, ha—
pitching
! No more.”

“Hm,” said Sir Hugo. “Doesn’t the man at the steering-wheel ever … protest?”

“No,” said the General. “He knows what it’s for. The whole beauty of it is that the transaction is carried out swiftly, efficiently, quietly, without a sound … to everybody’s satisfaction.”

“This quietude of method, General, seems to have produced, to put it mildly, quite a stir recently?”

“Not carried out quietly enough,” explained the General, indicating the root of the trouble.

“The times are dead and over, anyhow.”

“They are dead and over,” sighed the General, as if mourning a dear relation.

Silence again. The wind full of that vigour of the sea swept across my face.

“Do you see that ship there, sir?”

“
Which
ship
where
?” came the answer.

“
That
ship
there
,” said I, pointing at the only vessel on the only sea.

Sir Hugo looked.

“It’s
not
a ship,” he said. “It’s a boat.”

“But, oh! sir,” I breathed in courteous remonstrance.

“Only His Majesty’s ships are ships,” came the dry rejoinder. “All other vessels are boats.… But to return to the question at issue, what were you going to say about the boat?”

“Well, I thought it was the
Aquitania
, but now I see it isn’t,” I said, looking down into the green-blue waves. “Do you remember the U-boat scare three years ago when we crossed to New York? It was a time when you felt that at any moment you might find yourself floating on the water owing to the disappearance of the boat.”

“The
ship
,” corrected Sir Hugo. “The
Aquitania
 … I mean the
boat
 … I beg your pardon, you’re right this time and I
apologize. But why the devil didn’t you say so straight out instead of wasting my time and your time with … with … with such a rubbishy matter?”

Ominous silence.

Then said the General, “Perhaps we might go and have a drink?”

A week later we were entering the harbour of Port Said. We stood at the rail, balancing ourselves on our heels, as the liner, rolling heavily, turned into port.

“We’re already four days late,” Sir Hugo said.

“I know. I have never been on such a damrotten ship before,” remarked the General. “Now I remember on a Russian ship I once crossed the Pacific in, the captain promised to reach Yokohama by a certain date, but, as usual of course, failed to do so by a week or more. Well, all the passengers on board, officers and civilians, men and women, first-class passengers and even those who worked their passage, used to go up to the captain’s cabin every morning and beat him in the face (
v mordoo
, you understand?) until it had swollen to, oh—oh—” (he indicated the size of the captain’s face)—“immense proportions.”

“Hm,” said Sir Hugo, seemingly very interested. “I think I caught you, General, saying ‘first-class passengers and those who worked their passage.’ Now do you, or don’t you, purposely omit second-class passengers and such passengers as may, or may not, have been going steerage? Or am I putting words into your mouth? But let this matter drift: it is of no consequence. My sympathies in this incident, I hope you will forgive me, General, are all on the side of the captain.”

The General listened, but did not understand. We parted with him next morning, as we left Port Said.…

Then, one afternoon, armed with binoculars, we peered at the horizon to see if we could spot dry land. It was towards
seven in the evening that the throbbing liner came into sight of Aden. She stole up carefully, and then lay still outside the harbour.

We could feel the Sahara breathe upon us, like an oven. I leaned across the rail and watched the sandy, ominous desert coast, the strange, almost pathetic stillness of the place, the malicious yellow water of the harbour.

I remember those disturbing, endless nights at Aden, when I fancied that the boat would never move again. I remember a kind of jeering look about that ancient liner (captured from the Germans in the war) as she broke down every now and then at God-forsaken places like Perim. I was in a hurry, but circumstances had conspired to make my journey inordinately slow.… But we were moving now at last. I gazed at the sombre, yellow water as the liner glided off the shark-infested coast of Aden in the heavy, stifling silence of the eastern night. And it seemed to me that from the surface to its depths the sea writhed in agony, and that the sun-scorched desert withered in its age-long weariness, all from a want of motive. And it seemed to me the stars had spent themselves in waiting.…

Then, one evening at Colombo, I parted with Sir Hugo, who was changing boats for Singapore. We shook hands warmly. “Thank you so much for all your splendid, excellent work,” he was saying; and we were both obviously touched. And though I did not know what the splendid, excellent work he was thanking me for really was, I now felt that it was enormous, overwhelming, but that I would gladly do it all again, and more if necessary: so sweet was it to be thanked! “Splendid! Splendid!” he repeated, as I helped him with his things. “Good. Very good. Thank you! Thank you again! Splendid! Splendid fellow! Splendid fellow! Thank you! Good-bye!” And as he settled in the throbbing motor-launch below that then
took him ashore, he waved his hand to me and his lips seemed to be moving still and saying “Splendid!” Then he was gone … on his new mission of advice.

I was sorry to part with the old man. There was a quality about him that made him almost human. Later in the journey I had a letter from him.
“We have had a good voyage, so far,”
he wrote,
“with only two days’ rough weather, when we were skirting a typhoon, or a similar storm
.…
”

And now I was alone on board the old ocean liner, as she steamed away carefully past the bright, foam-washed breakwaters of Colombo’s sunlit coast, and bulged into the open sea.

I was in bed on deck, on the point of going to sleep. Suddenly the dream of Nina, like a wave from nowhere, flowed upon my brain. I was still awake that second: I caught the dream as if with both my hands. I smiled broadly to myself. I had
caught
a dream!…

The sea was like a mirror of black glass. I listened to the nocturnal silence. Now and then a wilful dolphin would splash the surface of the water; then everything was still. The liner glided noiselessly across the sea.

Towards Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai.… I had vague fears of being “late.” In my emotional anxiety the East itself appeared emotionally coloured. The eastern night was veiled with sorrow. It was a night of
Why?
I discovered pathos in the animation of the Peking streets at night. Even as I write I can see Canton with its narrow, crowded streets sheltering beneath the dripping, overlapping roofs of shops, and feel the sombre enigmatic calm of their interior, the lethargic stare of Chinese merchants seated on the floor, and the thudding of the rain upon the roof; and I can see the dull and yellow water of the rivers, the swarming multitudes of lives upon the quays, the
sampans
crowding the canals; and I recall again the din of Mukden, the stretch of ancient muddy soil receding from my sight as I watched it from the window of the train, the fall of evening, and the melancholy of the ages. And I was made to feel that I was in another age, another world, that somewhere I must have dreamt this, or perhaps had known it ere I was born on earth, that deep in the recesses of my memory was an imprint of this peculiar light, this noise and din, this languid stillness of the East.

FINALLY I ARRIVED AT VLADIVOSTOK. THE MOMENT I set my foot on the platform I flew by well-known streets and curves and turnings to their house. I remember I felt in the manner of Tristan at the end of the last act: very sure, impatient, overwhelmed with love. I felt that I would just fly into the room and cry
“Isolde!”
and she would fly into my arms—
“Tristan!”
And then, immediately, we would get busy with the love duet.

I knocked at the window, and I felt that they should hear the throbbing of my heart. I knocked again, and then the blind behind the window was tampered with, and there was Sonia peering at me through the glass. Her frown developed into a radiant smile and her voice rang through the building:

“Andrei Andreiech!”

She ran away and then came to the door, half opened it, and said, “Andrei Andreiech, we aren’t dressed yet; but come into the drawing-room … wait, let me run away first.”

It was about eleven o’clock in the morning. She ran away, and I went into the drawing-room. Everything was exactly as I had left it. The canary in the cage went on with his usual “Chic!… cherric!…” hopping to and fro. The sun was shining brightly through the window. It was one of those glorious autumn days that are like the unfolding days of spring.

“We shall be ready in ten minutes,” Sonia shouted from the adjoining room.

I waited ten minutes, and another ten minutes. Then the door opened and Sonia, radiant, came in. “Nina will be ready in ten minutes,” she said.

“No, she won’t be ready!” came Nina’s voice—a discontented voice.

“Fanny Ivanovna and Kniaz have gone out shopping,” Sonia said.

“How is Nikolai Vasilievich?” I asked.

“He is probably at the office … or else with Zina.”

“How are the mines?”

She only waved her hand.

“Hopeless?”

“Oh, he
hopes
—we all
hope
, of course.…”

“Well then,” said I, “… we must hope.”

Then Vera, radiant and marvellously pretty, came in. “Nina will come in five minutes,” she said.

“Not in five but in ten minutes,” came Nina’s voice, this time a whimsical voice.

I sat on the old sofa, and Sonia and Vera both stared at me in a curious manner, wondering, no doubt, why the dickens I had arrived.

Then the door of the adjoining room flew open, and Nina flitted in, shook hands without looking at me and flitted over to the window.

I still sat on the old sofa, of which the spring had burst, and no one spoke. It was a somewhat silly situation.

“That spring I am sitting on is burst,” I said at length.

“Oh, Vera burst it,” Nina said.

“It’s a lie!” Vera flared. “You know yourself you burst it last night when you jumped about with Ward.”

“No, it’s Vera,” Nina said.

“It’s a lie! a lie! a lie!”

“It really doesn’t matter in the least who burst it,” I intervened. “I noticed that the spring was burst because I happened to be sitting on it … otherwise everything seems to be very much the same.”

We sat still for a little while. Then Nina turned to me impulsively and said, “And you haven’t seen the three sisters!”

I stared at her with blank expression.

She ran out, and returning quickly, thrust three tiny kittens on my lap. The old cat followed her into the room and looked up at me suspiciously.

“This is Sonia. This is Nina. This is Vera,” she explained.

For a while we admired the “three sisters”; then with the same swift motion, she grabbed the kittens in her hands and carried them away. The old cat followed her back into the adjoining room.

Again there was silence. The canary in the cage went on: “Chic!… cherric!…”

“And Andrei Andreiech always goes on with his ‘Chic!… cherric!…’ ” said Nina.

“Which Andrei Andreiech?”

She pointed at the canary.

“What do you mean?”

“We call him Andrei Andreiech.”

“Why?”

“Oh, just so … there is something of you about him … something … unsubstantial.”

“Nina, come for a walk,” I said.

I helped her on with her coat.

We went by the Aleutskaya, bathed in sunshine, switched off down the Svetlanskaya and turned into a park overhanging the sea. Autumn stood at the door with its sombre moods of hopes frustrated, of joys gone, and aims blown to the wind, like leaves of autumn.

“Why did you come?” she said. “Why? I never asked you.”

“You told me that you love me,” I said.

“I never loved you.”

“Why did you lie then?” I cried.

“Go to the devil!” she answered, and turned her face away.

“I have been three months on the way … three months. Good God, Nina, travelling
three months
to come and see you—and there!…”

“It was an unusually long journey. You must have been moving very slowly.”