William Gerhardie - The Polyglots

‘But he’s called George!’ said Sylvia.

‘Georges Hamlet Alexander — those are my names. A certain sense of delicacy, I suppose, prevented my people from actually calling me Hamlet. Instead they call me Georges.’

‘But why Georges and not George?’ asked Sylvia.

‘I really can’t tell,’ I confessed. ‘Not after Georges Carpentier, I hazard, for he could not have been many years old when I was born.’

‘In Tokyo!’ Aunt Teresa gaily exclaimed, looking round at the Vanderphants. ‘ Mais voilà un Japonais !’

‘ Tiens !’ said Mme Vanderphant.

‘At the Imperial Hotel. An unlooked-for diversion during my parents’ pleasure trip in the Far East, I fancy.’

‘But you’re British-born, so you’ve nothing to complain of,’ said my aunt.

‘I suppose I am lucky.’

‘Yes, names are a great trouble,’ said my aunt, looking round again at the Vanderphants. ‘My daughter was christened Sylvia because when she was born she was perfectly fair and looked like a fairy. Eventually her hair has turned darker and darker, and is now, as you see, almost black — with gold-brown lights in it.’

‘And light brown after it has been washed,’ Sylvia said.

‘Is it really?’ I asked with genuine interest.

‘Or take the names of my brothers,’ said Aunt Teresa, turning to Mme Vanderphant. ‘Our mother wanted girls at the time, but the first two born happened to be boys: so she christened one of them Connie, and the other Lucy.’

‘ Tiens !’ said Mme Vanderphant.

‘Connie — his father’—she pointed to me—‘was near-sighted, and Lucy very deaf. And how well I remember it when they took us for a trip on the Neva in a steam launch. Connie, as blind as an owl, was at the steering-wheel, and Lucy, stone-deaf, down below attending to the engine. And when Connie shouted down the speaking tube to Lucy to back engines, Lucy of course could not hear a word, and Connie, who could not see a thing, landed us right into the middle of the Liteiny Bridge. How well I remember it! And then they shouted, shouted at each other, nearly bit each other’s heads off. It was awful. Your mother was on the launch’—she turned to me. ‘I think they were just engaged.’

And as we plunged into reminiscence I took the opportunity of asking Aunt Teresa to enlighten me concerning my paternal ancestors. Whether what she said was fact or partly fiction I cannot truly vouch. I learnt, however, that originally, centuries ago, our fathers sprang from a Swedish knight who came to Finland to introduce Christianity and culture to the white-haired race; that subsequently he betrayed his stock and went over to the Finns and was disowned by his own clan without ever really being assimilated by the Finns, who, because of his forbidding looks, suspected him of being the devil’s envoy and called him old Saatana Perkele , which name — von Altteuffel — he adopted as he strayed into Esthonia and joined the missionary Teuton knights, I daresay in sinister extravagance, perhaps in evil irony, a dark romantic pride — who knows? — and chose two devils with twisted interlocking tails as his new coat-of-arms. His son, a Finn, but domiciled in northern Italy, had changed his name from Altteuffel to Diabolo. His son, an Italian born, but persecuted on account of his Protestant faith, had fled to Scotland, where his son, a Shetlander by birth, to make the name appear more Scottish, added a ‘gh’ ending to it, after the manner of MacDonogh—‘Diabologh’, to give it a more native air, but only succeeded in so estranging it from its original philology that it was neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring. So much so that when I, a distant offspring (born in far Japan), was joining up a Highland regiment to fight in the World War (for the freedom of small nationalities), the recruiting sergeant looked at it, and looking at it looked at it again, and as he looked at it he looked — well — puzzled. His face began to ripple, changed into a snigger, developed into a grin. He shook his head—‘ Gawddamn ,’ he said. Just that — and then no more. I took the oath and the King’s shilling — which then was eighteen-pence. My grandfather, who had been born in London and was of a restless disposition, after travelling in Spain, Holland, France, Denmark and Italy, settled in Siberia, where he had bought a large estate in the vicinity of Krasnoyarsk, where later he developed a successful business in exporting furs. In his diary there are curious references to the bull fights which he saw in Barcelona, where he also met his future wife, a Spanish lady who, after marriage, followed him to Manchester where, prior to settling on the Krasnoyarsk estate, she gave birth to my father, Aunt Teresa, Uncle Lucy, and half a dozen other offspring. My grandfather, who outlived his wife, provided in his will that the Krasnoyarsk estate (known by the Russian rendering of our surname ‘Diavolo’) should be equally divided among his many children. ‘But your father could not get on with your Uncle Lucy,’ Aunt Teresa told me, ‘and he withdrew his share of money and set up his cotton-spinning mills in Petersburg. And of course, he has also done very well.’ And as she spoke, I saw myself as a child back in the magnificent white house overlooking the Neva and contrasting strangely with the desolating quay on which it stood. Outside the snow was falling. The wind sweeping across the quay was hard, defiant. The ice-chained Neva looked cold and menacing. And looking at me, Aunt Teresa said, ‘You, George, are not a business man, you’re’—she made gestures with her blanched bejewelled hand towards the heavens—‘you’re a poet. Always in the clouds. But your father — ah, he was a business man!’ And Aunt Teresa, to uphold her personal prestige among her friends from Belgium, gave it to be understood that both her brothers had been rich as mischief. ‘If you went to Petersburg,’ she said to Berthe, ‘and asked for the works of Diavolo, why, any cabman would take you to my brother Connie’s place at once.’

‘ Tiens !’ said Berthe, with a very conscious look of reverence for the prestige of Connie coming on her face.

‘And now we’ve lost everything!’ she sighed, ‘in the revolution!’

‘ Courage! Courage! ’ said Uncle Emmanuel.

My aunt was very proud of the achievements of her clan, and exaggerated a little when talking to strangers. Mme Vanderphant at this point intervened to say that an uncle on their mother’s side also had big works in the vicinity of Brussels, and incidentally, a lovely house in the capital. But Aunt Teresa dismissed her lightly. That was nothing, she implied. Mme Vanderphant should have seen Connie’s house in Petersburg! As if talking to me, but really to impress the audience, in a deep contralto voice she said:

‘Your father’s house in Petersburg. Ah, that was a palace! And now, alas, all gone, all gone.’

‘ Courage! Courage! ’ said Uncle Emmanuel.

While Aunt Teresa talked of the glorious past, the Vanderphants, with their own thoughts far away, assumed a polite interest: Mme Vanderphant feigned to attend, with an unconvincing smile of humility on her face. Berthe, half-closing her eyes, listened to what I said and exchanged frequent glances with Aunt Teresa — little nods of intimate reminiscence, of warm approval and understanding. She could not have shared these memories, but in this assumption lay the secret of a personality too kind and sensitive even to think of chilling us with any attitude to our memories less intimate than our own.

‘Sylvia! Don’t blink!’ said Aunt Teresa sternly.

Sylvia made an inhuman effort — and blinked in the doing.

‘Of course, your father is independent of us,’ said Aunt Teresa, ‘and we can’t expect him to be sending us any remittances. But your Uncle Lucy has been our trustee ever since our father died, and is obliged to see that we receive our dividends as they are due to us.’