Futility (7 page)

NOW WHEN I ASK MYSELF HOW I COULD HAVE SO hopelessly misgauged the situation, I find it difficult to give a clear account of it. I had wanted to help, to be a friend to all those helpless, charming and kind-hearted people.… Anyhow, it was my first experience of “intervention.”

That night I lay awake in bed, planning how I could straighten out the tangle. Was it not, I pondered, up to me, their mutual confidant, to see that these childish, fascinating people did not destroy each other’s lives in their muddle-headedness and inertia? The older people had all blundered. Nina had been on a mission to Moscow, and Nina had failed. They would trust me, I said, to act for the best. And was it not a worthy task to save these helpless creatures from so much misery and anguish? Well, of course it was. Suddenly I felt violently
enthusiastic. I felt so violently enthusiastic that I jumped out of bed. I paced the floor that midnight hour, thinking with a Napoleonic concentration.

I felt, as my thoughts ran ahead of me, that the
dramatis personae
of this human drama was much too long to enable me to assign successfully to each character the part he was to play in his colleagues’ lives. I switched on the light over my writing-table and began to write. I wrote down their names in two columns. Then I perceived that the two columns did not serve my purpose; so I drew arrows and circles round the names and endeavoured to arrange them in sets and groups according to my own ideas as to how they should be mated. I began by mating Nina with myself. This was easy enough: it was obvious. I consented to make Baron Wunderhausen a present of Sonia. That was done. Obviously Kniaz would have to go on living on Nikolai Vasilievich till some employment could be found for him. I should have to go into this question later; examine the shares, see what possibilities they had of ever going up, and so on. Now so much was settled. Of course, Magda Nikolaevna must have her divorce. No useful purpose would be served by putting spokes in her wheel, by hindering her in her praiseworthy intention to marry Čečedek, that Austrian fellow, who was extraordinarily vealthy. They wanted all the money they could get. But the condition of this concession should be that Čečedek must agree to share the brunt of supporting the multitudinous families, dependents and hangers-on with Nikolai Vasilievich until such time at least as something more definite could be known about the mines. It might be advisable to sell the mines and re-purchase the mortgaged house in the Mohovaya. But that was a detail that could be settled later. I felt that I was getting on marvellously. Now that Nicholas and Magda were divorced (I could not help
calling them by their diminutives, for I felt so much older and wiser than they, having taken them in hand), Nicholas must be prevailed upon to marry Fanny. This step would do much to relieve the tension and prevent bad blood between the two. It would secure Fanny’s prestige in her own eyes and would consolidate her position in regard to her people in Germany. Now, Fanny having been granted this very liberal concession, which after all was nothing short of her one real great ambition in life, she on her part should not be allowed to impede Zina’s passionate desire to live with Nicholas: a gratification, as a matter of fact, demanded by the overpowering love of two human beings; and Zina, who had always been prepared for anything from suicide upward, would not begrudge Fanny the formal and somewhat hollow superiority of wedlock; while Zina’s people, in the face of the considerable financial assistance that they would continue to receive at the hands of Nikolai, and Magda’s future husband would find that their objection carried little moral weight. There remained Vera. She should stay, provisionally, with Fanny Ivanovna and Nicholas, the latter spending as much time in Fanny’s household as might be deemed fit or practicable. Vera hated her father, and Eisenstein, poor as he was, would not be likely to demand his daughter. Now Eisenstein should not be left without a job. He must leave the Stock Exchange. That was absolutely necessary. His dental qualifications should be looked into; and he might—but that at any rate was not of the first importance—be made assistant to Zina’s father (though unfortunately the latter’s practice was all too small already). How to enlarge the practice could be settled afterwards. Uncle Kostia’s manuscripts would have to be examined, and possibly some of his deeper thoughts might be published with advantage. Now, having made these few preliminary arrangements, it was imperative to ensure the
financial working of this new combine. Well, expenses must be cut down all round. Nicholas and Čečedek should not be taxed too heavily, for if they went bankrupt then the whole new structure would collapse like a pack of cards. I would set myself, at an early date, to examine very carefully the requirements of the various families and hangers-on.

First, there was Fanny’s family in Germany. Now Fanny, once definitely married to Nicholas, should have more moral courage to face the situation. Those spendthrift brothers in the Guards must be told to chuck the army and enter a commercial life. Militarism was no honourable profession. The sisters should marry. For all I knew they might long ago have married men with considerable means, but have kept it quiet from their sister, so as to continue to draw allowances from Nicky.

Now Zina’s family came next. The number of its mere hangers-on was preposterous. Of course, those two ancient grandfathers were already tottering and their end was nigh. The flappers who strummed on the piano were growing up. A few of them might be conveniently married off to suitable and financially independent young men. Zina’s father, assisted by Eisenstein, might make a better job of his doctoring; though to begin with, he should receive medical treatment himself.

Then …

I thought. There was no “then.” I had disposed of them all. There were indeed fewer cases than I had expected. I had disposed of them as I had gone along. Of course, Baron Wunderhausen, after he had married Sonia, was not really disposed of, perhaps on the contrary. But this was an isolated case into which I need not enter, at any rate just yet.

Perhaps I was young and absurd. But
was
I absurd? What was wrong with my proposition?

What thoughtful mind would accuse me of absurdity if
it only cared to look at the thing squarely? The people were helpless—children.

Of course, I would have to do it all tactfully, slowly, discreetly. But really, was it not a worthy mission? To arbitrate; to
settle
things. I felt as President Wilson must have felt years later when he was laying down the principles of a future League of Nations.…

I stood before Nina the following day, bursting with the desire to lay it all down before her all in a heap, as it were, but holding myself back with an effort, conscious of the danger of precipitate action. “Let us sit down, Nina,” I said, fingering a large folded sheet of paper. I held another even larger sheet, rolled up under my arm. “You see, Nina, we young people must help the old people out of their muddles. They are obviously unfit to help themselves.”

“I have done what I could,” she answered. “I have been down to Moscow, but of course I admit I only acted as Fanny Ivanovna’s envoy.”

“Exactly. You have failed?”

“I didn’t enjoy plenipotentiary powers, as they call it.”

“Quite so. Now listen to me, Nina.” And I proceeded to lay before her the principles on which I said I was going to reshape their lives: each one would have to give up something for the benefit of the whole, and each one would similarly receive a compensation of some kind in that future life of theirs: in short, as I had mapped it out the night before. I now unfolded my chart and diagram, and she bent over them and our heads nearly touched as we went into this complicated question very thoroughly and seriously indeed. I could barely suppress the look of pride that every now and then would steal over my face. I explained and propounded with something of the insolence of a creator, an artist and a prophet, and she listened
to me, all absorbed in my scheme, following the diagram, I thought, with marvellous intuition.

“Ah, yes. I understand,” she murmured. “That’s good. This couldn’t be better. Ah, there you kill two birds with one stone … oh, three birds!”

Then Nina rose.

“Well, what d’you think of it!” I said with undisguised triumph in my look. And looking at me with a quaint and sudden seriousness that astonished me immensely (to the detriment of my triumphant look), she answered:

“All this is very well, but … pray what
business is it all of yours
!”

I expostulated. I told her how eager I had been to help. But she laughed. She made fun of me. She had been making fun of me all the time, even while we were bending with such a serious mien over the chart and diagram. And I perceived that her serious look, her interest in the scheme a while ago, was all deliberately put on to commit me more deeply to the exposition of my scheme in order to make more fun of me afterwards.

She laughed. She burst with merriment.

“Nina!”

She laughed still more. She was convulsed; she could barely speak, and the tears came into her eyes.

Then she opened the door into the corridor and called out:

“Sonia! Sonia!”

“Nina!” I cried in remonstrance.

“Vera!” she called. “Papa! Fanny Ivanovna! Kniaz! Pavl Pavlch!”

I had to realize, to my deep shame and anguish, that they were all at home, as they entered the room one by one. My face grew crimson.

Nina held out the chart and the diagram at arm’s length and
explained, it seemed to me wilfully misrepresenting the whole thing, mating individuals in a preposterous fashion, so that Sonia would cry out:

“But Čečedek does not
want
to marry Fanny Ivanovna!”

And Fanny Ivanovna, colouring highly, would exclaim:

“What—what’s that?”

“They more or less belong to the same race,” said Nina. “Is that the idea?” She turned to me with assumed innocence.

And Sonia cried again, “But Zina doesn’t
want
to live with the dentist-Jew!”

“I take it that she’ll have to. You can’t have it all ways, you know, in such a complicated scheme.” And then with a side look at me, “Am I right?”

“And why should Čečedek subsidize anybody?”

“Why?” said Nina, with a look at me.

“You’re making a farce of it!” I cried in utter desperation.

“It’s you who are making a farce of it,” Nina cried. “Papa, he is laughing at us!”

Fanny Ivanovna walked out of the room in what seemed to me a defiant manner. I seemed to hear a solitary “Hm!”

Nikolai Vasilievich, with the diagram in his hand and trailing the chart in a degrading manner along the floor, so that I burnt with shame for my neat and able work of the night before, led me aside and said in a very earnest tone of voice, addressing me as “Young man”:

“You know we are always glad to have you here, but to make fun of our family difficulties … to make fun … to make fun …” (he was getting a little heated) “of our family difficulties into which you, as our guest, were unavoidably initiated … is, I consider, tactless and indelicate.” And he tore up first the chart and then the diagram into a thousand fragments and flung them into the great big stove in the corner of the room.

“Nikolai Vasilievich!” I cried. “I assure you I only wanted to help.”

“Oh, look here,” said Nikolai Vasilievich impatiently, turning on his heels, “please stop these unbecoming jokes. They’re not even funny.” And they all left me.

But I went into the corridor and caught Nina by the hand and dragged her back into the room and did what is known as “giving her a bit of my mind.” I was so wild that I did not know how to begin. “Very well,” I cried at last, “I shall leave you all to stew in your own juice!”

“Very well,” she said.

“And I shall never come again.”

“Very well,” she said.

And it seemed that to whatever I said in my excitement, she answered coldly and indifferently as she sat there, looking at me coldly and indifferently, “Very well,” until it irritated me beyond endurance, and I cried:

“
Very well!
But do you silly people realize how utterly laughable you all are? Oh, my God! Can’t you see yourselves!’ (I could not see myself.) “But can’t you see that you have been lifted out of Chekhov?… Oh, what would he not have given to see you and use you!”

“He’s dead,” she said.

“But there are others. Oh, no, my dear, you are not safe. What’s there to prevent some mean, unscrupulous scribbler who cares less for people than for his art, from writing you up? One doesn’t often come across such incomparable material. I feel I am almost capable of doing it myself. I’ll write up such a Three Sisters as will knock old Chekhov into a cocked hat. It’s so easy. You just set down the facts. The only handicap that I’m aware of is that you are all of you so preposterously improbable that no one would believe that you were real. This is, in fact, the
trouble with most modern literature. No fiction is good fiction unless it is true to life, and yet no life is worth relating unless it be a life out of the ordinary; and then it seems improbable like fiction.”

She did not answer, but by her face I could see that now she was angry.

“I wanted to help you, and this is the thanks I get.…”

And feeling that I must make my exit dramatically conclusive, I said, “And now I’m going”; and then on reflection added, “and I shall never come again.”

I lingered for a moment, to give her an opportunity of stopping me. But she did not avail herself of it; and so I left the room. Once or twice I stopped in the corridor to listen if she was coming, when I intended to continue my dramatic exit. But she did not come.

It did not matter, anyhow, I thought, as I was putting on my coat (slowly while no one watched me, but if she had appeared I would have hastened my withdrawal). I knew that she would watch me from the window, and at the door there stood that beautifully proportioned nag “Professor Metchnikoff,” waiting for me. My heart leapt within my breast at the agreeable thought of how I would step into the victoria and drive off swiftly with a dramatic conclusiveness.