William Gerhardie - The Polyglots

Landed on the other side, we mounted the coach and sat mute as if bound by some mysterious sense of fraternity, while the train raced on to Shanghai. Suddenly, as though some huge bird had eclipsed the sun, it grew dark. And we felt as if a shadow had fallen on the clear still-water surface of our souls. Gloom. Rain; hail drummed at the pane. The world was a sorrowful place to live in!

I watched Beastly pull up the window, and I thought it was characteristic of us that he should be the first to be aroused to the necessity of action. It was of value. I meditated.

‘ “The one thing in the world of value,” said Emerson,’ said I, ‘ “is the active soul.” ’

‘Very truly said,’ rejoined Captain Negodyaev.

Natàsha sat facing me, and as I looked into her sparkling sea-green eyes I thought — I knew not why — I thought of death. Why, looking at her, should I think of death? This camping-ground that we call life: our turn, and we go forth into those bleak immensities. And behind us, at the port which growing distance separates us from, the church bells are tolling mournfully, solemnly, as out we sail into the boundless misty sea … Where? Why? Ah, now we know these questions do not arise. They are not; they were unreal.

It had stopped raining and the sun had come out.

‘Look, my girls, it’s a lovely day!’ said Harry.

The sun had come out, and at once all had become radiant and gay. I closed my eyes and fell asleep in the sun.

THE PARIS OF THE FAR EAST

WHEN I WOKE IT WAS PAST MIDNIGHT, AND THE train was already nearing Shanghai. Berthe was busy packing the hand-luggage of my aunt, and we were hauling down our baggage from the rack and putting on our hats and coats, when the train rushed into the station. It was a station much like any other station. It might have been Victoria or Charing Cross for all the difference I noticed. Two motors — so we learnt from a chasseur — awaited us. It seemed we could choose between the Cephas Speaks and the Septimus Pecks — two merchant princes of Shanghai, who, imagining that we were heroes who had won the war, in fact competed for the opportunity of offering us their hospitality. We chose the Cephas Speaks, and stepped into a luxurious limousine, with the aid of a smartly arrayed chasseur, and drove off. I think we chose them on account of the imposing look of the chasseur, and drove in the luxurious motor through the dark shimmering city, which is called, with a degree of truth, the Paris of the Far East. I looked out at the nocturnal streets with their many lights, that curious blend of Europe and the Orient, so disquieting and enchanting as though just on account of that blend, as the great big car rolled magnificently through the warm, moist air of spring. Through beautiful well-kept lanes which in the moonlight looked as if covered with snow, between deep walls of dark foliage we moved. The big car rolled along swiftly, but its size and grandeur gave its very swiftness a look of leisure, as though it said, with a self-contented, patronizing air: ‘That is nothing to me.’

And thinking of our curious destinies, I said: ‘Life is a chance cross-section — with chance encounters happening to come our way. Events come casually, begin discordantly, and end abruptly: they hinge entirely on chance; but within each event which comes our way we develop our inner harmony wholly and coherently.’

‘Darling, why don’t you talk to me of something interesting instead?’ Sylvia demurred.

Melancholily, the car rolled along, and then giving forth a small hoot of the horn, turned into another lane of deeper foliage and more moon. The car drove into a courtyard. Servants rushed to our feet. And, helped out on all sides, we alighted and mounted the steps into the palace of the hospitable merchant prince.

In the hall, despite the late hour, stood Mr. Cephas Speak, a crude but shy, diffident man, with extended hand (he would have liked to extend both, but he was too shy), and a hearty solicitude for our welfare and comfort. Having apparently done nothing in the war but fill his own pockets, he felt the more diffident with people like ourselves whom, on account of our heroic-looking uniforms, he imagined to be warriors without fear and without reproach. As I came down from my bedroom, Mr. Speak was already listening to Uncle Emmanuel’s highly coloured accounts of our bleak experiences.

‘You’ve had a pretty rough time, I can see, at the hands of the Bolsheviki,’ observed Mr. Speak, and filled Uncle Emmanuel’s glass and passed round the sandwiches.

‘ Ah! mais je crois bien! ’ agreed my uncle, swallowing a cocktail and pieces of a sandwich.

‘The trials, the perpetual excitements and uncertainties, the tribulations of this life of my sad exile,’ said Aunt Teresa, ‘have completely wrecked my poor nerves.’

‘ Ah, c’est terrible ,’ echoed my uncle.

Our host surveyed us all with infinite compassion. ‘Now you must have a thorough rest and pull up if you can. You must try and completely forget the Bolsheviki.’ And he passed round the sandwiches. It was as though we had been shipwrecked and were now picked up, and Mr. Speak was administering first-aid. Aunt Teresa heaved a deep sigh, and Uncle Emmanuel said:

‘I askèd dem. Eh bien , ’ow long is ze civil war goin’ to las’, and zey tellèd, “We know not ‘ow long, doan ask us.” Voyons donc , I say, you mus’ know, vous autres militaires !’

‘Are they pretty awful, the Bolsheviki?’ asked Mr. Speak, with an air as if he fully expected to hear that they were awful.

‘ Ah! je crois bien! ’ rejoined my uncle with some heat. ‘A nation must protect its ’ome, the family, the sacred hearth. We want our girls to remain girls. If they — the Bolsheviks I mean — are allowed to go on the way they please, why, at that rate soon there won’t be a virgin left in Russia! Ah! c’est terrible! ’

Mr. Speak looked as though he wanted to hear more about the virgins, but Uncle Emmanuel looked grave, and so Mr. Speak too put on a look of gravity.

Unconsciously, our tales became heroic. We felt they had to be if we were to be equal to his hospitality. And that was very great. Great as it was, though, it seemed to grow in proportion to the magnitude of our tales, and these must needs keep pace with his growing hospitality. ‘Oh, come,’ I said at last, to check Uncle Emmanuel’s extravagant imagination.

‘Excuse to me,’ he rejoined, ‘I know of what I’m talking.’

Mr. Speak could only listen. He shook his head. It seemed incredible. Uncle Emmanuel went on.

‘Very truly said,’ Captain Negodyaev chimed in. ‘I have myself two daughters, Mr. Speak: Màsha and Natàsha. Màsha, poor thing, is married, and she has to live in the most miserable conditions in South Russia, with her husband, Ippolit Sergèiech Blagovèschenski. And this — Natàsha! — this is Natàsha.’

Mr. Speak nodded approvingly, for he regarded Captain Negodyaev as a bulwark against Bolshevism. And he gave Natàsha a round box of chocolates tied with an orange ribbon.

‘Oh, look! look! Harry, look! What a beauty thing! Oh, what a lovely!’

‘A nice little girl!’ commented Mr. Speak.

‘Unfortunately, things being what they are, Mr. Speak, Natàsha’s education is being completely neglected. We simply don’t know what to do.’

‘And now. I suppose, we had better all go to bed,’ said my aunt. ‘It’s a quarter-past two.’

Mr. Speak wished us all a good night.

On the bedside-table were novels. The dear old thing had put them there for me to read. There they were — Gilbert Frankau, Compton Mackenzie, Stephen McKenna. The house, for all its luxurious magnificence, boasted no water-pipes, the water, cold or hot, having to be carried up by Chinese servants, of whom there was a host at our disposal. The reason for this idiosyncrasy was that nowadays water-pipes were by no means rare, being laid in every decent house, whereas Mr. Speak preferred to see his regiment of Chinese servants really earn their pay at some considerable exertion. During the night the roof, it seemed, had fallen in and burst through the ceilings. (These palaces were not of a substantial build.) And at breakfast Mr. Speak apologized for the disturbance caused during the night. ‘I regret,’ said he, ‘that owing to the roof accident I shall have to put you and your wife into one room.’