William Gerhardie - The Polyglots

‘ A là guerre comme à la guerre ,’ replied Uncle Emmanuel.

‘How pale Natàsha looks!’ Aunt Molly observed. Natàsha, according to Mme Negodyaev, had been crying in her sleep. And Natàsha related a dream that had frightened her in the night. A snow-covered hill somewhere in Russia. Tired of walking, she had sat down — and waited. Dusk was falling quickly. And as she waited, what she waited for appeared. Over the snow-clad mountains lost in twilight, in the dim blue distance a black mass was moving towards her. As it approached, her eye could discern that it was a procession of men. ‘Awful mens coming along and not looking at me and carrying something — oh, like a coffin. Oh, I was so frightened. And they came nearer and nearer, not looking at me, and then stopped before me and laid down the coffin, saying nothing. And I saw it was open and empty. I said, “Oh, who have you come for?” And they said: “For you.” Oh — it gave me such a — oh!’ She shuddered, and then suddenly began to cry.

After lunch I strolled about in the garden. Magnificent trees. A bed of tulips all bending towards the sun, like a corps de ballet . Strange: the Shanghai house was like the house of my dreams. Its shape reminded me of our house in Petersburg, dreaming upon the bank of the wide Neva. I remembered so well how it stood there, a little worse for wear and tear, but infinitely near, as if saying with reproach: ‘You have left me, but I have a soul of my own, and I shall live even when you will not.’ The interior, to some extent, also seemed familiar. This is my sister’s room, I thought. Here on the wide landing I used to wait for her on my tricycle car to come home from school, merely to convey her down this corridor to her room … Here at this window we would sit and wait for the carriage to return from the station with our parents, home from Nice. — All that is over … But is it over?

Natàsha came running across the path, her sea-green eyes sparkling in the sun. ‘Oh, I have been to the pictures; Mr. Speak took us! Oh, what a lovely!’ she cried. ‘Mary Pickford. Oh, what a beauty boy little Lord Fountainpen! with long beauty hair like that. Oh, and so sad — I so cried! Oh, how I cried all the time! Oh, how beauty! Oh! oh!’ She liked Mr. Speak, but wondered how it was that he who was so rich did not fill all his cupboards with chocolate.

While in Shanghai Natàsha attended the dentist, and Mr. Speak said that for each tooth she put under the door Mouse would bring her a dollar. Two teeth had been put by her there, and Mouse brought her two dollars. Natàsha’s eyes sparkled with joy as she picked up the coins in the morning. ‘Look, Harry, look!’ she exclaimed. When the third tooth was extracted, Natàsha demurred. ‘Poor Mouse, she can’t get so many dollars,’ she sighed.

At dinner there was sole dieppoise; saline of partridge with button mushrooms and an orange salad; roast shoulder of mutton with braised celery, potato fritters, red currant jelly, and brown gravy; Coup Jacques; and Angels on Horseback. The table had been set magnificently. The old Chinese butler stood behind our host, mute like a statue, the incarnation of duty and devotion, and saw to it that every whim of his master’s was carried immediately into effect. A procession of servants, whom he marshalled, stole in and out without a sound and served us reverently, as though offering a sacrifice, while the high-priest looked on in awe. The ladies having left us, Uncle Emmanuel talked of the wrongs suffered by Belgium at the hands of the late enemy, as he puffed at a cigar. ‘ Ah, figurez-vous ,’ he began in a confidential tone, buttonholing Mr. Speak, a tone which implied that he was going to impart something of value. ‘ Les crapauds !’ The message died in the cigar smoke as suddenly as it had come to life. Mr. Speak, withal a profiteer who felt a little awkward in the presence of such officers as had ‘done their bit’ in the war but at ease with the confidences of my uncle, told us eagerly of his own work in ousting German merchants from Shanghai and installing himself in their places. He had done his bit. Our host looked at us timidly expectant, anxious for approval of his patriotic work; which he received forthwith from Uncle Emmanuel, who said: ‘ Les crapauds ! In Belgium they tookèd Bourgmestre Max, they tookèd him and they takèd him, les crapauds !’

Mr. Speak sighed. ‘A great war’, he uttered.

‘ Ah, nous autres militaires we have cause to remember it!’ said my uncle. ‘Now we are sailing home vers la patrie .’

The patriotic business over, our host began telling us joke after joke. But I did not listen because, while he was telling his joke, my time was occupied in preparing my next (I had to be ready or he would go off with his next), and at the end of each of his jokes I laughed automatically with the others. For, as everyone knows, it is much more fun telling your own anecdotes (since anecdotes to be enjoyed must have sunk in, and that needs time) than listening to new ones.

Next morning Sylvia, in her new clothes and hat, went off without me and had a rattling good time with her new friends. But she returned for the Carlton dance, and I felt the silk glide on her smooth warm limbs as she pressed against me in the tango. And everybody asked: ‘Who is that lovely girl with the dark-brown locks?’ And I felt she was mine for all time. Now I should have been happy. Yet every hope fulfilled bears its own fatality. What we hoped for has come true; but not quite as we had hoped it. ‘I have been to Confession this morning,’ she said as we danced. ‘To confess my love for Princie. A young priest,’ she added. ‘Quite good-looking.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘He said: “Everything?”

‘I said “Yes.”

‘ “But why?” said he.

‘ “Because,” said I, “because I love him.”

‘ “But who is he?” said he.

‘ “I do not know,” said I. “I love him.” ’

Before leaving Shanghai, my uncle and aunt deemed it proper to drop cards on the Captains and Ward Room Officers of the Allied cruisers, and Uncle Emmanuel being laid up with indigestion, he requested me to take round his cards for him. I liked being ‘piped’. The American Flag-Lieutenant, a friend of mine, used to pipe me as befits a colonel rather than a captain, and I went on board the U.S. Flagship pretty frequently. Philip Brown met me on the quarter-deck. ‘I am right glad to see you, George,’—he held out his hand. ‘Well, it’s against the regulations of our country to keep any liquor on board, but if you will follow me to my cabin I’ll see to it that you get some all the same.’ And indeed! and indeed! From underneath his bunk he produced a bottle of whisky and a siphon, and Philip used the bottle rather more than the siphon. ‘Come on, you old Cheese. Come, get it down your system! Pour it down your cavity!’

From the American Flagship I went on the British, from that on the French, the Italian, the Jap, and so forth. Everywhere I was duly ‘piped’ on and off. On the quarter-deck of the Chink ship I was met by a befuddled petty officer who could not comprehend the nature of my visit. ‘What do you want?’ he asked with startling directness.

‘Commandant Vanderflint,’ I began, ‘who is ill—’

‘Who ill? You ill?’ asked the Chink.

‘Great heavens, no! This is his card — for the Captain.’

‘Ah—!—Nobody at home,’ he said after a pause.

As I turned to go something struck a spark between his brows, but he stood there, still dubious and undecided, while I gained the gangway. Then, after some excogitation, he began to screech for a sailor, who, as I stepped ashore, piped after me a solitary miserable thin note.