William Gerhardie - The Polyglots

‘I am not understood! Not understood by my wife, not understood by my daughter, not understood by my son; never! You alone (he brushed her pale hand with his prickly black moustache), you alone! Here I’m content. This is my spiritual home.’

Dr. Abelberg was the last to go.

‘And what then, Doctor?’ solicited my aunt, as she took leave of him in the drawing-room.

Folding his fingers as he spoke, Dr. Abelberg said: ‘Salt baths morning and evening. Cold and hot compresses. Gargling before and after every meal. Tranquillity, tranquillity, and once more tranquillity.’

‘And what about Ferros ferratinum ? Leave it?’

‘Leave it!’

I followed him out into the hall.

‘Doctor,’ I said, ‘tell me about Aunt Teresa. Is there any real cause for anxiety?’

‘Ah!’ He waved his hand in an airy gesture and bent down to my ear. ‘I wish I had her health,’ he whispered. ‘Why, she’s as strong as a horse.’ And he bid me good night.

EXODUS OF THE POLYGLOTS

AFTER THE BALL COUNT VALENTINE CALLED TO TENDER his congratulations on the occasion of the birthday of his Majesty the King of the Belgians, and incidentally enquired if he could not have a Sam Browne belt like mine. General ‘Pshe-Pshe’ also called.

Closeted with Aunt Teresa, ‘I am not understood,’ he said, ‘not understood by my family. But here in your midst I can rest, here I’m at home.’ He brushed his prickly moustache against her slender hand. Tears came into his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes.’

The wedding was to take place immediately a portion of my uncle’s brood had left for England. The first batch of Diabologhs — comprising mostly sons-in-law and married daughters, nurses, sucklings, Theo among them — sailed on Thursday. At the station while we waited for the train, another babe came up to Theo, and in the simple way that babies have, bit him on the brow. The second batch of Diabologhs sailed on Saturday. My red-haired cousin sailed. The first clean-up, the first big sweep had been made, and one began to see one’s way in the remaining mass, discern familiar faces. It looked as if at last Sylvia and I could marry in God’s name and live in our own flat without encumbrance. Uncle Lucy remained with Aunt Molly and the small children. He walked about with a long face, swinging a hammer and trying to be useful, but looking thoroughly out of his element. Poor man! It was not the fault of his face: he had a soul that didn’t smile. Also he had purchased roubles — and his pessimism on that count alone would seem rational enough. And already news had dribbled through that the first batch of Diabologhs had arrived in England and that my elder cousin, the artist of a modern school, for lack of other suitable subsistence, was now engaged in painting bicycles in Sussex; but still we two were not married. The War Office had obviously been losing interest in our adventure. Pickup was recalled. This was the first sign. And then, one day, there came a missive foreshadowing our complete withdrawal before long from the Far East. As I passed on the news at dinner Aunt Teresa’s breath seemed to catch in her throat, and she looked a little pale. ‘But what will you do? You cannot leave us all alone? And we cannot go to Europe with you as we have no means! Can’t you write and tell them this at the War Office?’

‘Can I be—’ The last word was not spoken.

‘Can’t he, Emmanuel?’

‘ Ah, mais non, alors !’ exclaimed Uncle Emmanuel, in tones of outraged military propriety.

‘Strange! These people at the War Office understand nothing!’

The wedding had been fixed provisionally for April the 13th, but Aunt Teresa seemed sad, reluctant, and avoided all discussion tending towards any definite decision on this point. ‘You never think of me, you never think of your poor ailing Aunt Teresa,’ she complained, insinuating that my impending theft of her one remaining child was hard on her.

‘I do. I always think of you, ma tante . I think: “Lord, how lucky for her to have such a splendid nephew!” ’

My aunt did not behave as though she thought this was a superlatively brilliant joke; and, on second thoughts, I was inclined to agree with her that it wasn’t.

‘Naughty! Naughty!’ Natàsha said, after a pause, shaking her finger at me. ‘Naughty!’

‘Georgie-Porgie, pudding and pie,’ said my aunt.

‘Georgie-Porgie,’ she laughed her bubbling laughter: ‘Georgie-Porgie-g-g-g-g-g.’

I looked at my aunt with compassion. Poor woman, she seemed to me a mental, moral, physical, and above all financial, wreck! ‘You see,’ I said, conceiving suddenly the thought of curing her by auto-suggestion, ‘there’s really nothing much the matter with you except what you yourself imagine. What you have to say is: “Every day, in every way, I am feeling better and better.” ’

‘But I don’t. Enfin, c’est idiot ! How can I say I feel better if I feel worse?’

‘Take care: you will feel worse if you say so.’

‘But I do.’

‘And I wish you joy of it,’ said I, exasperated.

‘But what can I say if I feel worse and worse? Do you want me to lie to myself?’

‘Then say: “I feel the reverse of better and better.” ’

‘Is that all right?’

‘Well, at any rate it’s better.’

But nothing came of it. Aunt Teresa told me that she had une crise de nerfs from my auto-suggestion. She assured me she felt worse. My aunt was not a good disciple of Monsieur Coué. The crux of it, of course, was that she did not want to feel better, or in fact to make us think she did so. But the small children took to Coué like duck to water. While my aunt felt worse and worse, Nora told us she felt ‘b a tter and b a tter’. What it came to, anyhow, was that those of us who had felt bad didn’t feel so well, and those who had felt well, felt well and better. The Doctor said that Aunt Teresa was not really ill. But Aunt Teresa thought that she was ill, and to all intents and purposes she felt the same as if she had been ill. Clearly then she had a ‘complex’. I began to think of using for her benefit the discoveries of Freud and Jung with a view to liberating Aunt Teresa’s ‘complex’. I had only read a few pages of Freud’s Introductory Lecture to Psycho-Analysis, while waiting at the Oxford Union for a friend. I knew, however, that the pith of the whole thing was that the ‘complex’ had to be dissolved to free the patient of his particular delusion or affliction. Clearly Aunt Teresa was in love with her own person. This, at any rate, was my diagnosis of her case. To ‘side-track’ my aunt’s affections from Narcissus into normal channels had now become my earnest purpose. But I was not a little nervous lest, according to Freud, my aunt’s Narcissus were ‘side-tracked’ on to me and she began to love me with a passion not entirely becoming to an aunt. I began by delivering a lecture on psychology. I spoke of motor-centres and bus centres and railway centres and the reflections of the conscious and subconscious mind — and that sort of drivel — for an hour and a half. My aunt listened strenuously and tried to look as if she understood. ‘There is something in you that wants an outlet and cannot find it, and because of that is worrying you.’ I took her hands into mine. ‘Aunt Teresa dear, tell me.’

She was very still, but said nothing. And again I had the fear lest my aunt’s Narcissus should begin loving me ‘by transference’. My mood at that time was, in proportion to the preparations being made, steadily declining against marriage. I am not a cynic; but from what I’ve seen of married life in our own home, it has definitely put me off it for the remainder of my life. Only yesterday I heard a married man compare marriage to a rotten egg. ‘Because,’ he said, ‘it looks all right from the outside, and before you taste it you do not know that it is rotten. ‘You may reproach me for fickleness in love. But what writer is sure of his livelihood with so fickle a public as ours? You may, for example, be reading this book — but it does not follow that you have bought it. Latterly my tongue would loiter with persistence round about my canine tooth. I came up to my shaving-glass, opened my mouth and looked in. What a cavity! Yes, wars were not to be fought with impunity. It was some time since I had been to the dentist. And it occurred to me that if I married Sylvia (who already had a gold crown at the end of her mouth) I would have to pay her dentists’ bills in addition to my own, for all the fillings, crowns, fantastic bridges, and so forth, with which she would palliate the encroaching ruin of the years, ward off the desolation, till, one day, the disaster could be forestalled no longer, and she would order a complete set of artificial teeth — an upper and a nether plate — for which I, too, should have to foot the bill. Out of what? Out of literature, forsooth!.. My grandfather rose in his grave.