William Gerhardie - The Polyglots

The General had ordered the meagre Russian military band to come and play us off, and we could see them coming: the movement of the drummer’s arms, the puffing of the soldiers’ cheeks, but not a sound of it could be heard before they were actually abreast of us. There are perhaps few things spectacularly more pitiable than the disintegration of a once resplendent army. Count Valentine also came and conversed fluently in florid French with Berthe, tapping the while his new leggings, procured from the British ordnance stores, with a light bamboo cane (likewise of English make). The Metropolitan also came. Dr. Abelberg came. Philip Brown, who was going to Shanghai by train to join his ship which had already sailed from Vladivostok, wanted to be photographed in the act of saying farewell to ‘his girl’. He was being seen off by his cousin, who was only a sergeant in the American Expeditionary Force, but told his Russian sweetheart that it was more than being an officer. It was a lovely day in spring. We were going by a special train given us by General ‘Pshe-Pshe’, who presented Aunt Teresa with a whistle on a white silk lanyard which she was to blow as soon as she wished to set the train in motion. It was the most luxurious train at his disposal, and was manned by Czech personnel. The engines, ready to start, breathed: puff-puff-puff. The Czech drivers looked at us from above their perches with a dare-devil air: ‘We’ll drive you as you’ve never been driven before!’ That was their look.

‘It’s a fine engine,’ I said, looking back at Vladislav, who stood with a complacent gaze, surveying his well-polished high boots.

‘An engine. It’s only an engine in name. In France, ah! — there they have engines! Such engines that once you have got them going you won’t stop them again! Yes.’

The spring sunny freshness; I breathed in the air; I paced up and down in my brown highly polished top-boots. O Life! Vladislav — he was all right. He would get through revolutions and counter-revolutions, through red and white and green terrors without coming to much harm. He would wander on from the coast to the Urals, from the Caspian Sea up the Volga and back again to the south, to the west, to the north, to the east, round and round. He was all right.

‘Keep out of the Army, my son, and you’ll be all right,’ was my farewell advice to him.

And then we parted with the General. There was a worried look on his face: his troops had already been disarmed, and he had been nicknamed ‘Commander-in-Chief of all Disarmed Military and Naval Forces of the Far East’. Before leaving — he was in a hurry — the General bowed low over Aunt Teresa’s pale bejewelled hand, and brought his black moustache against it in a prolonged exquisite expression of farewell. She looked moved, charming — with sad, beautiful St. Bernard eyes. He went away rather briskly, with visible emotion, and did not notice the omission of the guards.

Gustave stood on the platform at the open window of our coupé. ‘Write, Gustave,’ said Aunt Teresa.

He gulped once or twice, his Adam’s apple withdrawing and bobbing up again conveniently, pulled at his collar in a timid gesture, cleared his throat half-heartedly, and said:

‘ Oui, maman .’

‘You must really make an effort to come home — to get a permanent transfer to Brussels or Dixmude,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ Sylvia echoed.

Gustave coughed a little and adjusted his Adam’s apple, but said nothing. He only stroked his broad chin with his two fingers and smiled, revealing a black tooth at either corner of his mouth.

‘ Allons !’ said my uncle in a tone one might use to a small boy shirking a plunge into the water, urging him to be a man. ‘ Allons ! One must make a try. One must exert oneself.’

‘Come. Never say die!’ offered Beastly, who always took a leading share in any conversation, however intimate, once he was present.

‘Come. You must demand a transfer,’ urged Aunt Teresa, ‘or immediate annual leave.’

Gustave did not look hopeful. To be perfectly candid, I do not remember any man who, despite hearty urgings to the contrary, looked less hopeful. He seemed oppressed by the magnitude, the problem, the distance, and the vagueness of the whole proposition.

‘ Courage! Courage, mon ami! ’ urged Uncle Emmanuel.

‘Good-bye, Gustave,’ said Sylvia.

They kissed.

‘Good-bye.’ He looked as though he were going to cry. I remembered how he had said in church, ‘She has brought joy into my life.’ And it was as though the sun had gone as suddenly as it had come out.

‘ Courage, mon ami !’

‘ Adieu, mon pauvre Gustave !’ That was all his mother-in-law had to say to him. But it may have compensated him all the same. I don’t know. I don’t care.

But when he advanced to the window, and with a self-conscious self-effacing smile moved towards the children, I felt that he was a member of the family, that he was attached to us, and had been cruelly wronged; and a pang ran through my heart and my conscience was ablaze.

‘Good-bye, ’Arry,’ he said.

Harry’s face suddenly quivered and winced into a protracted, leisurely sneeze that ran its full course of development to a climax, discharging in thunder; he unfolded his handkerchief, blew his nose twice with a trumpeting sound, replaced the handkerchief, and then said:

‘Good-bye.’

My aunt blew the whistle on the white lanyard presented to her by ‘Pshe-Pshe’, the old gallant. It was a beautiful morning, so fresh; the engines puffed on mightily, only awaiting this signal. Now they would set off.

‘ Adieu, Gustave !’ And she lowered her bejewelled hand to his thin lips hidden under the soft canary moustache.

He smiled back timidly. ‘ Adieu, maman !’

Now in England you sit in the corner seat of the compartment at the window, somewhere, let us say at Nuneaton, and quite imperceptibly, while you sit, with your hand in the sling, the train glides out of the station. Not so in Russia. At first there was a jerk, as if the two engines tried to do something that was obviously beyond their strength. The jerk was so violent that a portmanteau shook on the rack and hung in the balance. ‘ Allons donc !’ muttered Berthe, while Uncle Emmanuel made propitiatory gestures, as if to say ‘ Que voulez-vous ?’ We were settling down again — when ‘ Whack !’ came another jerk, and this time all the coaches all along shook, moaned and screeched piteously. ‘ Ah mais! Ce sont des coquins ces machinistes tchèques! ’ uttered Uncle Emmanuel as he hastened to restore two of Aunt Teresa’s hat boxes to the rack from which they had fallen — when ‘ Whack !’ came yet another jerk, more moderate this time, as though, after all, the task the engines had set themselves was not entirely beyond their strength. Then came a fourth jerk, and it seemed that the engines, in spite of all, were succeeding — succeeding. Sylvia waved her gloved hand. But her mother blocked the window.

‘Now mind you write, Gustave.’

The engines were already gathering strength, and slowly, but rapidly gathering speed, we were moving. And Vladislav waved his cap in the air and, timidly but none the less exultantly, as the train went faster he cried:

‘ Vive la France !’

The train drew out, and Vladislav and Gustave with the platform they stood on slid away out of sight, out of call. I stood at the window and looked at the vanishing outskirts: a few mills, a few factories, a cemetery; then there came fields and woods. The engine gave a shrill whistle. The train rattled on with increasing speed, swayed at the curve — and all these things had become of the past.