E. Delafield - The Collected Works of E. M. Delafield (Illustrated Edition)

What, I wonder, are all these cases? They can't all be carrying important secret documents for the Government. Yet all the Comrades have portfolios, except the very old man who has a newspaper parcel instead, from which protrudes the tail of a fish. Perhaps the Comrades who are less ancien régime carry their fish in portfolios? The old man, I am sorry to say, spits.

I turn my attention elsewhere. An English tourist has come into the office, and I know by the brisk and businesslike way in which he begins that he is newly arrived and has no experience of Russian methods—unlike me. (At this I feel elderly and superior, and think of Julia Mills amid the Desert of Sahara.)

"There's a man I want to get hold of as soon as possible," says the Englishman blithely. "I haven't got his address, but you'll find him in the telephone book. Harrison, the name is."

"Harrison?"

"Harrison."

"You do not know where he lives?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Not in which street is his apartment?"

"No. But he'll be in the telephone book."

"Perhaps you know where is his office?"

"No, but—"

"Not in which street is his office?"

"I only know that his name is Harrison, and he's in Leningrad, and you'll find him in the telephone book."

"Ah, But you have not his address."

"It'll be in the telephone book."

"Ah."

There is a long silence. At this stage—for I have heard this dialogue before, and have often taken part in it myself—some English tourists, and most American ones, look round for the telephone book and swoop down upon it. This Englishman, however, is of inferior mettle. Or perhaps he has Russian blood in him.

He waits.

Presently Intourist utters once more:

"He has a telephone number?"

"Yes. He'll be in the book."

"Ah, It is at his house or at his office, the telephone?"

"His office, I think."

"And the name it is Harrison? "

"Harrison."

Faint demonstrations of searching for the book.

"The book it is not here. I will send."

A young blonde, who has, to my certain knowledge, been standing waiting for the better part of an hour, is sent to fetch the book. Perhaps it is for that and nothing else that she has been waiting? Intourist waits, the Englishman waits, we all wait.

The French ladies on the bench have begun to mutter to one another, low and venomously.

"Mais voilè—elle n'a pas de cceur. Tout simplement. Elle manque de coeur."

"Ça, par exemple—non!"

"Moi, je vous dis que si."

"Moi, je vous dis que non."

Deadlock.

The very old man has now, I think, fallen into a coma. What an abominable thing it is to keep him waiting all this time! He is a hard-working peasant, and his haughty employer, the Grand Duke, is upstairs drinking champagne—

What am I thinking of? The poor Grand Duke is, if fortunate, giving dancing lessons somewhere on the Riviera. The old man is a worker, a Comrade—he is quite all right.

Still I don't think they need keep him waiting such a very long while.

Presently the blonde returns with the telephone book, and Intourist begins to turn over the leaves, and to say once more:

"Harrison?"

"Harrison."

"Ah, Harrison," Along pause.

"No. He is not here,"

"But I think he must be. I say, would you mind if I had a look?"

The Englishman has a look, and runs Harrison to ground in a moment.

"Here he is! A. M. Harrison—that's the man."

"Ah? He is in the book?"

Intourist is only mildly surprised, and not in the least interested. The blonde, in a thoughtful way, says into space:

"Harrison."

The voices of the French ladies surge upward once more.

"Ah! son mari! Comme je le plains!"

"Et moi, non. Au contraire."

I should like to know more of the ménage under discussion—they can't both be right—but they shrug their shoulders simultaneously, glare, and say nothing more.

The Harrison quest goes on. I say to myself, we are progressing slowly, ma'am. If I knew as many quotations from Shakespeare or Plato, or even Karl Marx, as I do from Dickens, I should hold a very different, and much more splendid, place in the ranks of the literary.

"You want that I should telephone to him, yes?"

"Please. If you will."

Intourist will.

But not at once.

"It is his apartment or his office?"

"Well, I don't really know—but whichever number is in the book will find him, I expect."

"I will try," says Intourist pessimistically.

They know, and I know, that their pessimism is justified. The Englishman, as yet, does not know.

He waits—I suppose hopefully—and the telephone is brought into action.

It is customary—necessary, for all I know to the contrary—to shriek, rather than speak into it, and the first fifteen "Allo's" meet with no acknowledgment. Then something happens. The Exchange has replied.

The two French ladies, tired of looking angrily at each other, turn their heads; the blonde lifts hers from its apathetic angle; only the old man is unmoved. (Disgraceful, that he should have been ignored so long. I believe no one has so much as asked him what he wants. Hotel servants the same all the world over, Comrades or no Comrades.)

"Shall I—?" says the Englishman, ready to leap at the receiver.

"The number is bee-zy,"

"Busy?"

"It is bee-zy, If you will wait a little I will try once more."

We all settle down again.

A woman with a baby—and a portfolio—comes into the hotel with a businesslike air, and goes up and speaks to the porter in Russian.

He nods.

Like Jove, I think, and ought to be pleased to find that I am moving a step away from Dickens and toward the classics; but on the other hand I like Dickens, and I don't even know the classics.

The woman with the baby sits down, in the absence of any unoccupied chair, on a marble step leading to the barber's shop, and waits.

I wonder what amount of information Jove can have conveyed to her in that single nod, for her to know—as she presumably does—that it is going to be worth her while to sit down and wait.

Presently the French ladies get up. They both say " Eh bien! " and the one who didn't pity the husband adds: " A quelque chose, malheur est bon " in a philosophical way.

They move toward the lift, their mysterious allusions for ever unexplained.

Not that they leave us immediately. Far from it. They have to wait for the lift. Then they have to wait because the lift can take only four people, and there are already three inside it and they decline—fiercely—to go separately.

" Mais passez donc —"

" Non, non, non. Allez, je vous en prie. "

" Mais non, mais non. Allez, vous— "

" Da tout. "

A solitary Ukranian, who has been waiting—probably for the lift—for hours, is encouraged by the liftman to take advantage of this indecision and fill the vacant place.

He does so, and the French ladies are left, shrugging their shoulders again. One of them says that it is " fantastique ."

The bench on which the old man of the ancien régime is sitting has now two vacant places, which are at once filled by four people. They take advantage of the old man's state of suspended animation to shove him and his fish to the extremest edge of the seat. I think that presently he will fall off.

The Englishman is still seeking his Harrison.

"I should think you might give them another ring now."

"I will try."

The effort is made.

"There is no reply from that number."

"No reply?"

"No. I think it is his office. It does not answer,"

"But there must be somebody there."