The Polyglots (14 page)

There followed a lot of crosses, big and small and of medium size.

AUNT TERESA WROTE THAT SHE HAD DULY CROSS-examined Captain Negodyaev (who was about to move over to them when Mme Vanderphant and her two girls vacated the rooms, probably about the middle of June), that Captain Negodyaev had in her presence cross-examined his man Vladislav, who told them that in France such a thing would have been impossible, that Vladislav had cross-examined all the requisite railway officials on the subject of the lost fur caps, and that the unanimous opinion seemed to be that the caps could not be traced in Harbin, or it would seem anywhere else, and that in the circumstances of the case Uncle Emmanuel recommended courage and patience. Uncle Lucy had still not remitted the money, nor had Major Beastly yet reported the result of his
démarches
. Did I think that the British Mission might help them, seeing that they were Belgians who had suffered in the war and that the English had helped the Belgians before, as a matter of course, and seemed to have thought nothing of it then? So why not now again? This was Uncle Emmanuel’s idea. She herself was, moreover, directly entitled to such aid, having, as I knew, been born in Manchester of an English father born in London.

That day Sir Hugo called me in and said:

‘And where are the caps?’

I explained to him that enquiries were still pending. And he said:

‘In that case you had better go back for the caps.’

I could ask for nothing better.

The very next morning I left for Harbin.

IT WAS MIDSUMMER NOW, AND HARBIN LOOKED green, fully dressed. My arrival synchronized with the departure
of Mme Vanderphant and her two girls. The lady, dressed up for the journey, with a veil over her beak (it was of a somewhat smaller dimension than Berthe’s and was tanned rather than red), had come into Aunt Teresa’s pink bedroom to say good-bye just as I came in to greet her.

‘
Adieu, madame
.’

‘
Adieu, ma pauvre Mathilde
!’ sighed my aunt from her pillows. ‘God bless you.’ They embraced. ‘You won’t see me again. Ah! With my poor miserable health——’ She sobbed softly into her lace handkerchief, petulantly, like a child. ‘Pity me! Pity me!… The money you lent us,’ she said, her sobs having suddenly ceased, ‘will be remitted to you direct to Dixmude as soon as Lucy sends me the dividend.’

Mme Vanderphant stood still for a moment, sad and mute. ‘How strange: people meet, and then part, then write letters, grow tired of that, forget—and then die.’ She looked at her sister. ‘
Ma pauvre Berthe
! When shall we see each other again?’

‘
Adieu, Madeleine. Adieu, Marie
.’

‘
Adieu, madame
!’ they curtsied.

The door closed after them.

‘I am quite alone in the house,’ said my aunt, ‘Emmanuel!’ she called out.

“Yes, my darling?’ He stood in the doorway.

‘You will stay at home with me.’

‘Yes, my angel.’

‘Sylvia has gone to her piano lesson. I had to let Berthe go to the station to see them off.’

‘Berthe is stopping, then?’ I asked.

‘Yes, she could not leave me, in my poor miserable state of health, with no one, alas! to look after me in my sad exile! She will stay till we can arrange for
Constance
to come over from Belgium.’

‘This is awfully kind of her, isn’t it—stopping behind for your sake, while her people are going home to Europe? Isn’t Berthe awfully good to you?’

“Yes, but she is rather abrupt and sometimes she has such a
temper!
such
a temper! This morning she said to me while making my compress: “I am tired out after packing all night for them—tired out.” Just like this: “Tired out!” It quite upset my poor nerves. Queer! as if I were to blame for her having to pack for them! She is very abrupt. But I never say anything. It is not my nature. Other people like Berthe and Mme Vanderphant always allow their anger to get the better of them. They let it out and are free. But I keep it all to myself, never complain, and suffer in silence!’

‘I suppose she does get tired.’

‘But she ought to remember that I’m a helpless poor invalid and can do nothing! This had such an effect on my poor nerves that, alas! I couldn’t sleep all day after it!’

‘But, after all, she is not a paid nurse.’

My aunt looked as me as if to say: What do
you
know about it? ‘Ach, if I only had
Constance
here!’ she sighed.

When Berthe, with tear-stained eyes, came back from the station, Aunt Teresa called out:

‘Berthe! Berthe!’

‘Yes?’

‘Give me a pyramidon, will you? Insufferable head-splitting
migraine
!’

‘One moment.’

Berthe looked very sombre and somewhat bedraggled, perhaps unnerved at her sacrifice.

‘Oh, my God!
Pyramidon
! This is aspirin, which is fatal for my heart! Ach! if only I had
Constance
here to look after me!’

‘I am tired out to-day … tired out,’ muttered Berthe. ‘Packing all night, never had a wink of sleep.’

‘How unkind!’

Berthe looked very sombre.

‘Oh, not so much water, Berthe! I’ve told you!’

‘Oh, please, Thérèse; really!’

‘Ah … 
Constance
…!’ she sighed dismally.

In the dining-room I came across Berthe. She stood close to the window. She was crying.

Uncle Emmanuel, passing by, noticed her crying.

‘Orphan … I feel like an orphan,’ she said.

‘
Ah
,
c’est la vie
,’ said my uncle facilely.

IN THE MIDDLE OF JULY AN OPERA COMPANY WHICH had been touring the Far East halted in Harbin, and we went to the theatre twice—the first time to
Faust
, and the second to
Aida
. As we listened, to the recitations, explanations, vows, entreaties of the musical love-dialogue, and as the lovers’ singing protestations accompanied by florid gestures were at their very strongest, Philip Brown’s Anglo-Saxon sense of humour was tickled and he winked at Sylvia.

Faust and Marguerite argued, argued at cross-purposes, it seemed, and with a self-sufficient detachment as though wilfully ignoring each other but competing for attention at the hands of the audience. Aunt Teresa liked the music of Gounod. It reminded her of Nice and Biarritz, Petersburg and Paris, Lucerne and Karlsbad, Geneva, Venice, Cannes, and all the places where she had heard these melodies before. She knew them, and now, as she leaned back in the red-plush box, she looked at Berthe and nodded at her with glances of sad and intimate reminiscence, and Berthe, though she could not have divined all the places that Aunt Teresa had in mind, nodded back at her with that same air of delicate and memorable experiences—for ever gone, and never to return. There was no disturbing passion, no intensity about this
sort of music: Aunt Teresa had only to sit back in her chair, and the orchestra and singer combined to do the rest:
Fai—tes-lui mes aveux, portez mes vœux
!…’ Aunt Teresa liked sitting out in the public parks, on the Terrasse at Monte Carlo, or on the Promenade des Anglais at Nice, surveying the passing people through her gold-rimmed
lorgnon
, and listening to just this kind of music,
pots-pourris
from Verdi and Gounod—so unstrenuous! It claimed so little of one. Really nice of the composers to acknowledge music was not
all
. Nice men they must have been. She would have liked to ask Gounod to tea had he been alive: she was sure he would not stay too long.

Next night was
Aida
. Sylvia, sitting a little to the front of me, bent forward, like a rose on a stem. Berthe had closed her eyes—lost in the vortex of familiar melody; and even Philip Brown was serious. Oh, I liked it! I felt that I was born for love—while the priests invoking the chieftain to repent and change his mind, sang:

‘Rhadames! Rhadame—e—s!’

Driving home, I treated them to fragments from
Aida
in my own peculiar voice and individual intonation: ‘Rhadames! Rhadame—e—s!’ when Brown uttered:

‘What a mess!’

Before retiring to bed, in my pyjamas, I was conducting with a brush before the looking-glass, when Sylvia entered from the back. I wanted to be a composer, a conductor of orchestra, passionately, painfully. What was I? An army officer. It was—as if it wasn’t quite good enough. ‘I wasn’t born for the Army,’ I said. ‘I was born for something better—though I don’t quite know what it is.’

‘You are very naughty,’ she said.

After that she was silent, her eyes fixed on the floor.

I sighed. There was a pause. And she sighed.

‘What do maidens wait for, I wonder?’

‘What does anybody wait for?’ she said, her eyes still on the floor.

‘I know: for the moment when, suddenly, you shoot out
roots into the very source of life and taste the sap running up, as through a straw, on to your palate, and feel that there is nothing you have missed and you are glad to be alive.’

I took her up to the glass and kissed her—just to see what we looked like in the glass, kissing like that—when the door opened and Aunt Teresa surprised us.

For a moment she looked dazed. Then, coming up to us, with a curious, unfamiliar smile on her face—‘I’m so glad,’ she said. ‘I always wished it. And your parents, too, would have been glad, I know.’

She kissed us both, as if by way of putting the seal on our intentions. ‘But—do put something on top of these pyjamas, George.’

I put on my dressing-gown, and we sat together in my room long into the morning, Sylvia staring at the floor. And it somehow seemed as though Aunt Teresa had forgotten about the serious state of her health.

After they had gone, I sat on my bed in my pyjamas, my bare feet dangling down—perhaps a little stunned. I am a serious young man, an intellectual. And I wondered whether marriage in my case was wise. I had a sneaking feeling that it was not. ‘Rhadames!’ rang in my ears. And another voice, a small private voice in me sang: ‘What a mess! Oh, what a mess! z …’

IT WAS THE CREST OF A TRULY BLAZING SUMMER when I had a telegram from Vladivostok that the 50,000 fur caps had been found at the station in a disused shed. I had been interviewing Captain Negodyaev, who had just installed himself in our flat and had come up to see me in my attic, where I did my literary work, to press on me the need of Allied censorship at
Harbin, when the telegram arrived: ‘Caps found in disused shed Vladivostok station. Return forthwith.’

In the light of Captain Negodyaev’s urgings and with an eye on my engagement, I wired stressing how essential in my view was the establishment of an inter-Allied military censorship at Harbin. Having wired, there was nothing to it but to wait for a reply.

Captain Negodyaev sat at table facing Aunt Teresa, drinking tea and dipping a rusk into his glass. ‘I have two daughters,’ he was saying. ‘Màsha and Natàsha. Masha is married, and lives with her husband Ippolit Sergèiech Blagovèschenski. Ah, poor Màsha, she has suffered a great deal at the hands of her husband.’

‘Is he—cruel to her?’ asked Aunt Teresa.

‘No, not cruel. But he neglects her—for another woman——’

He stopped somewhat abruptly, a little confused. The clock ticked on uninterruptedly for a space. And Berthe said, to fill the awkward pause of silence, ‘
Cela arrive quelquefois
.’

‘
Ah, c’est la vie
,’ said Uncle Emmanuel philosophically.

‘I have a letter from my wife,’ said Captain Negodyaev, ‘which describes the conditions in Novorossiisk. I will read it to you if I may.’

‘Do,’ urged Aunt Teresa.

‘This was written in the spring, but I have only just received it.’

He cleared his throat and read: