William Gerhardie - The Polyglots

‘Certainly!’ Beastly nodded heavily as was his custom. ‘What I always say is: one man’s as good as another and a damned sight better!’ And he guffawed loudly.

The Captain looked round at the company, and the Commodore. The Commodore made no comment.

Each morning at 10.30 the procession of inspection passed along the deck, headed by the Captain and the Officer Commanding Troops, and followed by the First Officer, the Adjutant, the Second Officer, the Officer of the Day, the Purser, the Chief Engineer, the Medical Officer, and the Ship’s Surgeon. At the conclusion of one of these parades Captain Negodyaev stopped the Captain (who was on his way to do something) and, through me, conveyed:

‘I have two daughters, Captain: Màsha and Natàsha. Tell the Captain that Màsha is away — married. And this is Natàsha.’

‘This is Natàsha,’ I translated, ignoring the preamble.

The Captain touched Natàsha kindly on the shoulder, not because he wanted to, but because she happened to be in his way. ‘This is your daughter?’ he asked, in a tone implying that she should not be allowed to block the passage. And he went his way.

After lunch there was deck-tennis. Beastly played, as you might expect him to, with cheery determination, nodding significantly, a look of evident satisfaction and a broad proud grin coming on his face as his opponents proved unequal to returning his stroke (not because he was so good but because they were so bad). But he looked round as if to say: ‘There! this is me all over: to settle it by one stroke!’ And he would look round to see if all had noticed it. And Mme Negodyaev played as though she quite expected (assuming a degree of justice in the universe) that her measure of exertion must also be her measure of success. And when it wasn’t — well, then she looked as though there was no justice in the world, no reason, no goodness, no God!

‘What a lovely, lovely sea!’ Sylvia exclaimed, as she stood at the rail awaiting the dinner-gong.

‘A stagnant pool reflecting a stray sunbeam may appear to a short-lived insect as evidence of the miraculous and divine. The sublime in nature does not depend on such simple answers as whether this glorious sea before us be the elixir of divine nature or merely a chance pool of slop spilt by some careless char-woman of another dimension: for the miracle might well be in the essence of its being all these things at once.’

‘Darling, you are getting very dull,’ she said.

Early in the morning we cast anchor off the shore of Singapore. A green-tabbed officer steamed up in a white launch flying the naval ensign, and stepping on board enquired, ‘Is there a Russian General here — a General Pok-Pok-Pokhitonoff? A dangerous man.’ There was. And the result of it was that the General with the mad eyes was not allowed ashore.

At Singapore, among other things, books were purchased for the education of Natàsha. Her parents had been worrying more and more about her education. ‘She’s already eight, she will be nine in a year, and she’s not too attentive,’ Mme Negodyaev complained. ‘I always said that I would have my children educated to perfection. And I did not stint my last penny on Màsha. Poor Màsha! She’s been so well educated, and yet she’s not too happy. Ah, well. And now there is Natàsha. — Ah, here is my cherub.’

Natàsha stood at her side, with eyes bright as daylight. ‘We have seen the bullocks,’ she said. ‘Oh, how many bullocks in the street!’

At Singapore an old dug-out of a British General came on board, and then we steamed up the straits between dark forests of malacca trees till once again we bulged into the ocean. The General with the mad eyes decided he would drift on to Ceylon. To the British General who said, ‘What a nice little daughter you have’, Captain Negodyaev replied through me: ‘I have, your Excellency, two daughters: Màsha, the eldest, is away — married, your Excellency. And this, your Excellency, is Natàsha. She is only eight. Unfortunately, your Excellency, things being what they are, your Excellency, her education is being seriously neglected. Yes, very truly said: it is a long journey, your Excellency.’

Captain Negodyaev liked the British General for his apparent absence of snobbery, just as he disliked the Russian General for his arrogant superiority. But that was because he had not yet learnt to discriminate between the two traditions. The grander the Russian sire the more abrupt his manner with inferiors. Not so in England. English snobbery is a snobbery subdued, a snobbery in shade, in undertone. Your Russian Count will simply fire a volley of abuse at an intruding upstart; and all the other Counts will feel with satisfaction that he has vindicated the integrity of their exclusive caste. Not so in England. It is by an exaggerated deference, by an innuendo of reserve, that your English snob will show you that in the society of him and God you are other than his kind. The English General did not take well to the Russian General. ‘You’re a Bolshevist,’ he said to him, as if with a deep concern for the Russian’s welfare.

The Russian sniffed. ‘Any man who doesn’t smoke a pipe or play billiards is called a Bolshevik in your country nowadays. You might as well call me a chair or a carpet for what it conveys.’

The British General would not let the Russian General out of his sight, and followed perpetually on his heels. ‘He’s a dangerous man,’ he confessed to me. ‘I am sure he’ll set the ship on fire if I don’t keep an eye on him. Dreadful fellows, these Bolshevists.’ And as you lounged in your deck-chair you would catch between one deck-house and the next a glimpse of the English General’s immaculate white tennis shoes, and then shortly afterwards a glimpse of the Russian General’s sweat-eaten brown canvas shoes making away, it seemed, from the white tennis shoes, round and round the deck.

For Sylvia and me the voyage was of pure unmitigated bliss from early morning until late at night — love all the way — till perhaps one tired of it just a little. I was content — indifferent. Bovril and biscuits, deck-tennis and quoits, concerts, dances, cocktails, conversations, bridge, and lemon-squash.

‘The weather,’ she remarked, ‘is beautiful.’

‘You and I together, love, never mind the weather, love. Look at these two generals chasing each other round the deck.’

It was hot and stifling in the cabin. We dragged our mattresses up on deck and slept at the water’s edge to the sound of the lazy splash of the sea.

‘What are you laughing at?’

‘At our deceiving him.’

‘Whom?’ she asked, with a stir.

‘The Captain.’

‘This is not love.’

‘Love and love and always love — I love you and you love me — bliss — contentment — perfect happiness everlasting. Still, why is it, darling, that sometimes one longs to hang oneself?’

‘Alexander,’ she said, ‘you have changed.’

‘I haven’t changed, but it’s … exasperating.’

In the midst of the Indian Ocean Captain Negodyaev had a relapse of persecution mania, and he bid his wife and daughter don their overcoats (it seemed to him that fleeing involved fleeing in overcoats) and sit down in the saloon lounge in their furs and muffs and overshoes, surrounded on all sides by the tropic water, till he declared ‘All Clear’ and sent them back to bed. When I asked Natàsha why her daddy made them don their overcoats and sit out in the lounge, she said, with a shrug, ‘I don’t know what’s it means.’ Her education now began in earnest. Her mother taught her Russian syntax. I undertook to teach her English, and three times a week I would dictate from First Steps to a distracted infant: ‘Nat had a cat but no rat. Did the cat eat the rat of poor Nat?’ And punctuating the lesson, sometimes there was the sound of shuffling steps portending the approach of the sweat-eaten canvas shoes; you caught a glimpse of the pale mad eyes, heard him sniff the air, snort a little, and pass by. Sylvia undertook to tutor the French side, and Natàsha would be exercised in such pregnant conversation as: ‘ Avez-vous vu le pantalon de ma grand’tante qui est dans le jardin ?’ Berthe undertook the piano, which meant that every day for a whole hour Natàsha’s slender pink fingers travelled the keys in a dull series of Hannon’s exercises, up, up, up the scale, and having reached the utmost top, down, down, down they came till they roared hoarsely (and somewhat unnaturally if you remembered the age and sex of the being who produced these desultory sounds), adding to the ordinary monotony of the sea-voyage, making you want to sleep and never to waken! And Beastly, while the sea was calm, undertook (since he could not affect the culture of a foreign tongue) to instruct Natàsha in arithmetic, to which class of his (since he was always eager to outshine us others) he invited Harry, who counted ‘1, 2, 3, 5, 7 …’ or when asked how much two and two made together usually relied on his considerable imagination and replied, after a dreamy spell: ‘Eleven.’ Uncle Emmanuel, a German scholar in his day — a language which he chose for special study from the General Staff aspect, foreseeing as he did a war between his country and the German Empire — made use of it for the first time by undertaking to propel Natàsha’s steps; and when just after luncheon on the way to your cabin you passed the saloon, there was the spectacle of a distracted little girl with plaited hair revealing the tenderest of necks, biting at her pen that she wielded with her slender ink-stained fingers, swinging lazily her bare-kneed legs, and little Uncle Emmanuel, his hand stuck in the front of his waistcoat, strutting up and down with a serious professorial mien, dictating: ‘ Ist das ein Mensch? Nein, es ist ein Stuhl .’ And if you chose to wait a little longer, you would be rewarded by desultory steps and a pair of shabby canvas shoes emerging from behind the corner, a sniff, a snort, and a fade-out. Natàsha’s belated education was thus accelerated to the last degree, even Aunt Teresa undertaking to supervise the infant’s efforts at fancy needlework. And, indeed, Natàsha looked proud, sitting on a cushion at the feet of the grand grey-haired bejewelled dame, who occasionally corrected her in a deep drawling baritone.