William Gerhardie - The Polyglots

The children were awake. I went in and saw Nora, her small rosy head on the enormous pillow, like a pale cherry. She was crying.

‘What’s the matter, Nora?’

‘Earache.’

‘You’ve been in a draught?’

‘I ’hink so,’ she said, and cried.

It transpired that during the day she had drunk water out of the drain-pipe in the yard, and suddenly in the night fear seized her, and she cried: ‘Don’t want to die.’ In the rough-and-tumble she had scratched her leg, and the little boy with the withered arm had evidently preyed on her mind, and through her choking sobs ‘Don’t want to die,’ she interjected, ‘withered leg … oh, I don’t want to die.’

‘Nora, but what is the matter, dear?’

‘My leg’s withering,’ she sobbed, ‘but I don’t want to die.’

At last she calmed down. Berthe got her to kneel in bed and say her prayers again, which she said: ‘Mammy and daddy, granpas and granmas, uncles and aunties and cousins — and Cousin Georgie.’ Then she was tucked in once more and at once went to sleep.

‘S — sh!’ whispered Berthe. But Harry made overt signs to me, and moving on tiptoe I strolled over to him and sat on the edge of his bed. He tucked in his feet: ‘You can sit back now,’ he said. ‘It’s all right.’

The moon looked blurred, as if behind a film, and more apart, more distant, and I wondered if one could be happy on the moon. Nora, who must have dreamt of the little boy Billy at school pinching her, cried out in her sleep: ‘Leave me alone! Leave me alone ! Stop it! Stop it ! Shu p up!’

Then Sylvia, flushed and terror-stricken, flitted in: ‘Aunt Berthe, maman is in hysterics, une crise de nerfs …’

It was a damnable night.

NEXT DAY AUNT TERESA DID NOT RISE FROM HER bed, and Berthe attended to her with hot and cold compresses, valerian drops, pyramidon, aspirin, and a number of lotions. Aunt Teresa’s nerves were so badly upset by the suicide that even Aunt Molly herself on arriving two days later from Japan had to take turns with Berthe and Sylvia at Aunt Teresa’s bedside during the night. Uncle Emmanuel returned in the early morning, from the Cossack’s, and was so dumbfounded on being told of what had happened that he found nothing to say. Aunt Molly came back, and to the end of her days she would never cease regretting that brief holiday in Japan. And although it was clearly a matter of death, ‘ C’est la vie ,’ said my uncle, pressing her hand.

General ‘Pshe-Pshe’, hearing of the calamity, called on Sunday morning to tender his condolences. He bowed low over Aunt Teresa’s hand and brushed his prickly moustache against it. Then, for a brief space, he sat still, in homage to the deceased. He cleared his throat to show that it was over. But Aunt Teresa was the first to speak. Her poor brother! Who would have thought it! It was such a shock to her nervous system that Dr. Abelberg, who had begun to cure her, had abandoned his treatment in despair. She had not a wink of sleep since the calamity! And indeed her face looked white and pasty and transparent against the morning light. The General said that he had come as an old friend with the one wish to be of help if they would let him. Would they like a band?

‘A band ?’ exclaimed my aunt.

‘ Pardon ,’ said Uncle Emmanuel, addressing himself viâ me with his unfailing courtesy, to General ‘Pshe-Pshe’, ‘what kind of band does his Excellency mean?’

‘The military band which assisted at the ball,’ the General replied, with a timid smile.

‘For the funeral!’ exclaimed Aunt Teresa. And we had visions of the carcass of Uncle Lucy being galloped off at full speed to the cemetery to the wafting strains of the mazurka.

‘But they will play the funeral march — appropriate to the occasion,’ explained the General, with the same tender timid smile on his face.

‘Ah, that is perfectly all right, then,’ said Uncle Emmanuel, completely satisfied. ‘That’s all right. The General is too amiable.’ He bowed courteously. The General bowed back.

Another stiff little pause.

We anticipated difficulties in regard to the burial of a ‘suicide’. But in the face of the general chaos, no real restriction was put in our way. Indeed, why should there have been? Had a man not the right to cast off his own shell? But a minor hitch had none the less occurred in the choosing of the grave site. Uncle Emmanuel cleared his throat. ‘We expected,’ he said, ‘certain difficulties in regard to obtaining a licence for the burial. The death, of course, is not a — a—’ he flung out explanatory gestures—‘an ordinary kind of affair, and we expected—’

‘Oh?’ The General cast a quick enquiring look at Aunt Teresa. ‘Has anyone said anything?’

‘Well — yes,’ Uncle Emmanuel admitted.

‘Who?’

‘The keeper of the graveyard. But no one else has.’

‘Let him come to me,’ said the General, all his native ferociousness coming into his manly face. ‘ I ’ll talk to him! I ’ll settle him quickly enough!’ He would, he declared, stand no nonsense from anyone in this city so long as he had his troops in it — he did not know how much longer that would be, and he was bound to say that if the Allies did not change their mind (some people’s blindness must be a blessing in disguise, otherwise he could not account for their survival), yes, he was bound to say that if the Allies did not change their mind and send him reinforcements he would no longer be master of the situation, and then anything might happen and any keeper of any graveyard would do as he pleased; but so long as he, General Pshemòvich-Pshevìtski, was still in command he would see that they, his friends, were properly protected. Uncle Emmanuel bowed. The General bowed back. He respected Madame Vanderflint and Monsieur le Commandant (‘Ah, his Excellency is too amiable,’ Uncle Emmanuel punctuated the flow. Mutual bows), he respected them, and it was his wish to mark his esteem for the deceased without at all enquiring into the manner of his death. He also wished to mark his esteem for Mme Vanderflint, and though it was not in strict accordance with the regulations, which laid it down that such military honours were reserved for the military, still he supposed that the deceased had served his term of military service in his time—

‘No,’ interrupted Aunt Teresa. ‘My poor brother was a British subject, and there was no compulsory military service in England — at least before the war.’

No matter! The General in his esteem for the lady would waive that point also and fire a military salute at her brother’s grave.

‘What?’ asked Aunt Teresa, not understanding perfectly.

‘A firing squad,’ he said. ‘I’ll order firing.’

‘Oh, no!’ she quailed. ‘Please not, it reminds me of Anatole, my son, I couldn’t stand it.’ And suddenly, before anyone was prepared for it, she began to sob.

‘Blank cartridge,’ he said, looking round sheepishly.

‘That’s all right, my angel, that’s all right, my dear,’ Uncle Emmanuel consoled her. ‘No one will do it if you don’t want it. No one will do it.’

At this moment Aunt Molly entered the room. The General rose with military precision and clicked his spurs before her and bent over her podgy hand with the solitary wedding ring. ‘Whatever is the matter?’ she asked, seeing Berthe run out for the valerian drops and Aunt Teresa in hysterics.

‘Ah, they want to shoot at the grave, as if hanging were not enough,’ Berthe muttered angrily, as she swept past her.

‘Hanging … shooting …’ mumbled Aunt Molly. ‘Why? Why?’ And having unwittingly uttered the word and seeing Teresa in tears, she too began to sob into her handkerchief. The General shuffled his feet awkwardly, till, Berthe having arrived with the drops, Uncle Emmanuel took me by one arm and the General by the other, and spoke to him, viâ me, in these terms: ‘ Ah, mon général , you must excuse my wife, her nerves have all gone to pieces, and my belle-sœur did not understand the nature of the honour you were going to accord her poor husband. Qu’est-ce que vous voulez ? She has been brought up in civilian surroundings — in the country — far away from cities and towns; évidemment , her husband and relatives were all civilians, unacquainted with the code that we —nous autres militaires —share together as our precious heritage, and you must forget this little episode, mon général .’