William Gerhardie - The Polyglots

‘Without further cost to yourself, as they say in the business world.’ She learnt my expressions, I noticed, and repeated them. A very good sign.

I looked at her tenderly. ‘My Irish darling! Mein irisch Kind !’

‘Oh! Oh! Indeed,’ she said. She was brimming all over with life and wanted to be naughty like a child, but didn’t quite know how to set about it, and so only hopped about on tiptoe, while I wondered if I had sufficient money in my pocket-book, and if so, whether I could not spend it better than by dining out — buying a new pair of cavalry boots, for example. And my spirit clouded. Like my old grandfather on my mother’s side, I was not over-fond of spending money, and now at this extravagant resolution to distract myself with Sylvia by an expensive meal, my old grandfather called to me from the grave. His motto had been: ‘Bargain, bargain, bargain hard, and when you’ve done, beg a hank of thread.’ He was never tired of warning: ‘When poverty comes through the door, love flies out of the window.’ Or he would buy a pennyworth of paper clips and demand a guarantee. He had spent his whole nervous force in life in seeing that he always got full value for his money, and he died unconscious of the fact that he had not received the value for the life that he had spent. But in moments of wanton extravagance, my grandfather would be calling to me from the grave.

At the big shop in the Kitaiskaya — I have forgotten the name — I bought Sylvia a bottle of scent. In another shop she bought a piece of elastic; sat down and examined the articles with a proud, competent air and sent the girl about her business. And again I noticed her astoundingly charming profile. As the elastic was being wrapped up for her she took hold of her little vanity-bag, a little insincerely, perhaps, while I was looking dreamily away; then I bestirred myself and anticipated her action with a wholly admirable gallantry. And possibly because the amount was something like tuppence, for once my grandfather did not stir.

As we entered the restaurant ‘ Moderne ’ we were confronted by an enormous savage-looking head waiter — the sort of man of whom you tell yourself at once, ‘That man’s an ass.’ And subsequent events confirmed our worst suspicions. The waiter looked at us with that savage dubious look, as though he were not quite certain whether Sylvia and I were human beings or some other animals. He displayed the greatest inefficiency in the seemingly simple task of finding us an empty table, of which the number, in proportion to the tables occupied, was vast. Around us stood the waiters — internationals all: a race unto themselves — with that look of theirs betraying that their minds were only set upon a share of what I had in my breast-pocket. And because I was palpably allergic to such menials as porters, waiters and the like, I talked in a loud unconcerned voice, calculated also to reassure myself, and generally assumed the attitude of a gastronomic connoisseur and a man of the world — as though I were Arnold Bennett. Sylvia was studying the menu, and the enormous head waiter bent over her chair. And I looked at him with dark hatred. Among other things, Sylvia wanted chicken. There were two kinds of chicken. A whole chicken cost 500 roubles. A wing, 100 roubles. The rate of exchange, be it remembered, at that time was only 200 roubles to £1 sterling. The enormous head waiter strongly recommended the whole chicken. ‘Straight from Paris in an aeroplane,’ he said. I felt cold in the feet.

Sylvia hesitated dangerously. ‘I don’t think I want as much as a whole chicken. I’ll have a wing,’ she uttered at last. I breathed freely.

‘But the wing is larger than the chicken, madam,’ said the fiend. I longed to ask him to explain that curious mathematical perversion, but a latent sense of gallantry deterred me. I felt like clubbing him. But civilization suffered me to go on suffering in silence. ‘ Go away ,’ I whispered inwardly. ‘ Oh, go away !’ But I sat still, resigned. Only my left eyelid began to twitch a little nervously.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll have the whole chicken, then.’

Five hundred roubles! £2 10s. for a solitary chicken! My dead grandfather raised his bushy eyebrows. And I already pictured to myself how under the removed restraints of matrimony, probably in my braces and shirt-sleeves, I would exhort my wife to cut down her criminal expenditure.

There was a variety of ice-creams at ‘popular prices’, but Sylvia ordered a silly dish called ‘Pêche Melba’—and proportionately more expensive.

‘What wine, darling?’

‘French,’ she said.

‘But what kind?’

‘White, darling.’

The waiter bent over the wine list and pointed to the figures which were double those he did not point to. ‘But what kind?’

‘Sweet. The sweetest.’

And, according to the waiter, the sweetest wine concorded with the highest figure on the list.

How I hate extravagant drinks! How I hate extravagant food! What I really wanted now, if I could have my way, was eggs and bacon and hot milk.

‘Yes, that will do,’ she said.

The waiter, bowing, whipped his napkin under the arm and retired with the air of one who has his work cut out. The band struck up a gay waltz, but in my soul was darkness.

‘Whatever is the matter, darling?’ she enquired.

‘This soup,’ I said. ‘It’s damned hot. And why should I eat soup?’

‘You eat soup at home.’

‘At home I eat it — whether it’s there or not — I mean I eat it — I don’t care — because it’s there. Automatically.’

‘Well, eat it here as you would at home,’ she said. ‘Automatically.’

‘But here — oh, well, never mind.’

Spreading the table-napkin on her knees, quickly she brought her fingers together and bending a little and closing her eyes, hurriedly mumbled grace to herself. Then she began to eat the soup, dreamily rolling her eyes.

Meanwhile, the waiter had returned. ‘I regret, madam, but no more whole chickens left. Only the wing.’ And that moment the music seemed exhilarating.

‘Cheer up,’ I said.

‘In that case,’ said she, slowly recovering from the blow, ‘I’ll have something else.’

In front of us were two women of twenty. ‘Look at those two grannies there,’ Sylvia called out aloud.

‘Sylvia!’

She smiled a beautiful bashful smile: her mouth was closed, only the lips withdrew and revealed a portion of her teeth. A delicious smile.

She rolled her eyes and talked a lot to herself, cooing like a dove. I felt she wanted that I should propose marriage to her, but she was shy to ask. ‘Major Beastly,’ she said, and blushed, ‘thought that — that — that we were — you were — my, as it were, in a word, my fiancé.’ And she blushed crimson.

‘He’s a good man, Beastly,’ I said. And she blushed again. Sylvia had brought with her to dinner a letter from a man who had proposed to her once in Japan. ‘Read this,’ she said. The letter, which struck a devil-me-care tone, ended with the words: ‘If the price of rubber goes down by one jot, I’m a ruined man.’

‘He is in the rubber trade now,’ she explained, ‘somewhere in Canada, some place called Congo or something—’

‘You mean in Africa.’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘What is he? English? American?’

‘A Canadian.’

‘Where did you meet him?’

‘At the dance in Tokyo.’

‘And—?’

‘He wanted to marry me.’ She lowered her lashes. ‘He loved me.’

‘And you—?’

She did not answer at once. ‘He was rather like you.’

‘No excuse.’

‘Only worse.’

‘Still less.’

‘I wanted somebody to love me. And you were away.’