William Gerhardie - The Polyglots

There also came a Metropolitan. The vladika apologized for calling on a holiday — but the affair was urgent, for he had the welfare of the Orthodox people at heart. It was vodka — the undoing of many a weak soul in the past. For years and years the Government had seen fit to poison the Russian pravoslavnie people. The time had come, he thought, for the Church to take a stand. What should be done? Well, yes, he knew what should be done and would be glad if I could see my way to urge his scheme before the General. The vodka monopoly should be transferred forthwith to private interests. There was a powerful financial syndicate prepared to purchase the monopoly and he was in favour of their doing so, on conscientious grounds, for verily the Government could not continue this systematic intoxication of the pravoslavnie people. He was in touch with them. Yes, the syndicate were willing. He — well, ye-es, he had been approached by them.

‘But,’ I faltered, ‘the systematic intoxication of the pravoslavnie population is to go on at that rate?’

The holy father leaned back and flung open his hands, just as Uncle Emmanuel was wont to do when he said, ‘ Que voulez-vous ?’ He paused.

‘Well, that would be a matter for their own conscience,’ he said at last. ‘We cannot control everything.’

‘I see. The syndicate would then be personally responsible to God for the intoxication of the pravoslavnie population?’

‘It is immoral for the State to poison the people it is called upon to govern,’ said the Metropolitan, with a glint of righteous anger in his eyes. ‘Private enterprise is another matter.’

He left me with the distinct impression that private enterprise was indeed another matter. And I equipped him with a card to Dr. Murgatroyd.

General ‘Pshe-Pshe’ (as we now called him for short) brought with him Count Valentine — a thin, ungainly individual with a high-pitched voice, whose one redeeming feature was his title. All afternoon I sat in my room in the attic and faked New Year’s messages for Aunt Teresa, purporting as it were to come from local Jap and Chink officials and their wives, and as I showered them upon my aunt, she would exclaim: ‘ Tiens! Encore! Ah! ’—delighted at her popularity — while I went up and typed again. Natàsha stole up the stairs like a kitten, and entreated: ‘Play with me, oh, play with me!’ while I typed on, ‘General and Madame Pan-La-Toon send greetings of the season to Monsieur le Commandant and Madame Vanderflint and wish them happiness in the New Year.’

‘ Tiens! Encore une! Mais voilà un dèluge !’ Aunt Teresa cried, opening the missives and smiling happily at Berthe. It quite reminded her of the old days.

AUNT TERESA GIVES A BALL

IT WAS ALREADY THE MIDDLE OF MARCH, BUT THE winter was still on, white, crisp, impenetrable. Aunt Teresa had become a social centre of the town; and perhaps what added zest to the adventure was the knowledge that our polyglottic presence in Harbin was only temporary — as temporary as life on earth. We specialized in being nice to everybody. Only the children were rather naughty. They would come up to any guest, however stolid, and say: ‘You are awfully ugly’, or Bubby would comment on her mother’s looks as Aunt Molly came down the stairs in a new dress: ‘Oh, mummy, you do look a fright!’ We were an unusual set of people caught in an unusual set of circumstances and conditions. I like to think that we had, by the play of accident, escaped from much that has become threadbare and stereotyped in life. In the world war, the Russian revolution, things had taken place, strange shiftings of families and populations of which little has been heard as yet but the effect of which will tell one day

In the day-time I was censoring all manner of telegrams and letters — an indictment of the war: that anyone should waste his time and talents on being a military censor. Personally, of course, I didn’t care a hang about the letters. It seemed to me that in a chaotic sea of gloom where age-long grievances sprang up like fountains to the surface, to censor private letters which someone wrote to someone else in the Far East of Russia was a farce to be enjoyed as such and nothing more. At this period I worked upon a thesis (for, as I have said, I am an intellectual and do not take wars very seriously) — a thesis named: A Record of the Stages in the Evolution of an Attitude . I would work in my attic on the Evolution of an Attitude and then run down to the drawing-room to kiss my red-haired cousin — and having thus refreshed myself, return to work. Life, in the meanwhile, was going on. One had a sensation — living like this far away in the East — that one was out of it all, out of touch with all the seething mental activities of the West. But the chances were, if one tried to ascertain the truth, that at the headquarters of Western thought the thinkers, wearied of the hollow mechanism of the West, were putting out their feelers towards the hollow mystery of the East. But one thought not of that: and so one felt ‘out of it all’. When one scanned the glazed pages of Anglo-Saxon magazines and read the advertisements of new razors and fountain pens, how to cure oneself of gout, train one’s mind, get an appointment, combining business with pleasure, grow hair, preserve one’s complexion and teeth, furnish a house with all the latest conveniences, control one’s digestion and liver and purchase new shirts, one felt that far, far away there was a ‘progressive’, sensible life, that one was wantonly missing the benefits of one’s age. And one felt particularly ‘out of it all’.

Do you follow my story? Are you interested? Is it all perfectly clear to you? Very well, then, let us go on. On Thursday, the 22nd, Aunt Teresa gave a ball to celebrate my betrothal to Sylvia. Aunt Teresa sent out gilt-edged cards to His Excellency General Pshemòvich-Pshevìtski et fils , Count Valentine, Major Beastly, Lieut. Philip Brown, U.S.N., Colonel Ishibaiashi, of the Japanese Imperial General Staff, Dr. Murgatroyd, and, although they shared our flat with us, Captain and Mme Negodyaev. And the orchestra from the American Flagship, which Brown had promised us, not having arrived, General Pshemòvich-Pshevìtski helped us out with a military brass band.

Count Valentine called the same afternoon and left a card of the size of a postcard which read:

COUNT VLADIMIR VSÈVOLODOVICH VALENTINE;

Assistant-Director of Posts and Telegraphs: Assistant-Inspector of Communications with the title of Acting-President (with plenipotentiary powers) of the Special and Extraordinary Conference convened for the discussion of questions arising in connexion with the requisition of quarters allotted to members of the Allied contingents in the Far East, and the unification of measures for the defence of the State against the enemy; and Supreme Inspector of the Provisional Commission for Inland Revenue.

And across the print he had written in pencil:

Called to tender congratulations on the occasion of the birthday of his Majesty the King of England.

But as I met him on the stairs it gradually transpired that the driving motive of his call had been to ask for British underclothing and possibly a pair of Army Ordnance boots. Count Valentine explained that his noble name derived from England and that for that reason he favoured English clothes. He bent down and felt my cavalry boots and said, ‘Pretty. — I wonder where I could get a pair like these.’ He fiddled with a button on my tunic. ‘ Très chic ! I should rather like a jacket made after your model if you will allow me to take it home with me for a few days. Unfortunately all my wardrobes have remained in Petrograd and I feel so dreadfully uncomfortable in these unbecoming clothes.’