William Gerhardie - The Polyglots

And the end? you will ask. For you may have a morbid taste for a strong dramatic ending which may seem to you appropriate to anv kind of book. I say to you: ‘Bunkum!’ The end? I don’t know and I don’t care. The end depends on what you choose to make it. And I invite the reader to co-operate with me in a spirit of good will to make the end a happy one for all concerned: buy this book. If you have already bought it, buy it again, and get your brother and mother to buy it. And the end, for Aunt Teresa and Aunt Molly and the Negodyaev family, will be different — very different — from what it might otherwise become. So tell your friends, tell all your friends — my aunt wants you to.

‘By tomorrow evening we shall see the English coast lights.’ I was thrilled at the prospect, and Aunt Teresa — after all, my aunt was born in Manchester — was also thrilled. She had begun a Russian novel about a woman with six husbands, all living. Three husbands, or even four — she could have stood, perhaps. But six ! — It was too much. ‘I can’t read this,’ she said.

‘ Ma tante , your attitude to literature is as though you were doing it a favour by touching it at all.’

‘Talking of literature, have you read in yesterday’s Daily Mail ,’ Sylvia said—‘ Is Woman’s Love Selfish ?’

I looked at the horizon. ‘No land in sight?’ she questioned.

The Spanish Fleet thou canst not see, because

It is not yet in sight .

‘What Spanish Fleet are you talking of?’ said Aunt Teresa. My familiarity with quotable literature seems to constrain my family.

‘Ah, ma tante , your distinction lies outside the sphere of letters!’

That night we dallied, played bridge, and noted the addresses of our fellow-passengers, earnestly assuring and assured that we would call, or at least write — when early in the morning on the dim horizon we perceived the shore of England.

The approach of England, as if of a sudden, had precipitated the crystallization of our plans. The General with the mad eyes resigned himself to go to London. There must have been a Cabinet meeting, he thought, perhaps a debate in the House of Commons as to what might be the proper thing to do by him in his exile.

‘Why not see Krassin and go back to Russia and serve under the new régime?’

‘Too much honour for Krassin. Let him come to me. If they all come I might consider the invitation.’ The General said he thought the British Government, in concert with their Allies, would accord him the freedom of their countries and place a suite of officers at his disposal, one from each Ally, to accompany him on his travels through Europe; and he repeated his advice to me to apply for the highly enviable post of A.D.C. to him. ‘The war is over,’ said he, ‘and you cannot do better for yourself. I would treat you with all courtesy.’ Failing this, the General thought that he might eke out a handsome living in the British Isles by telling fortunes — disguise himself as the Black Monk of Russia, with long black fingernails and pale, terrible eyes.’ I only thought of it last night. I’d make my headquarters in Bond Street. All the society women would come in swarms. They would think I was Rasputin. I’d make tons and tons of money. What do you think of it?’

‘Not much.’

‘I go by what Carlyle said of the population of England.’

‘That applies to any population. If your recent utterance is to be regarded as at all characteristic it would prove it.’

‘Why, there are so many idiots in England that I would have a royal time!’

‘And the police, of course, are no exception: they would be silly enough to arrest you.’

‘H’m,’ said he, scraping his bristling chin with the black fingernails. There was silence. His spirits drooped. His usual optimism had deserted him. For a moment he was downcast, without plan, without hope. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said, looking at me with pale, desperate eyes.

‘Have you no relations?’

‘I have a wife somewhere, a sister.’

‘Where are they?’

‘Heaven only knows!’

As I strolled off I saw Mme Negodyaev leaning on the rails. It was her first appearance since Colombo.

‘Do you see those white cliffs? This is England,’ I said with a secret sense of proprietorship.

‘Yes. But to us,’ she said, ‘it makes little difference now whether it’s England or Belgium or what. Do we get off tonight?’

‘We shall anchor tonight, very late, but shan’t be allowed on shore till the morning on account of passports and things.’

We were silent; then she said:

‘Now there are only the two of us — and, of course, Màsha. Poor Màsha! Your aunt told me she would see us through. She commands such influence and authority, so we don’t worry. We two don’t need much. We have no one to educate now.’ The tears came to her eyes.

I looked on.

England, my England!

Though we had all looked for it with impatience, it seemed as if nevertheless it had been sprung on us unawares. Passengers suddenly transferred their interest from one another to their luggage. All had found their way into the hold and were opening and shutting up boxes and generally interfering with their fellow-men. (And when I say ‘men’ I also mean women.) People were busy and aloof and not a little irritable, while stewards became conspicuously courteous and obliging. Everyone thought of what he would do next: and that ‘next’ seemed to have little or nothing to do with the man standing next to him. Towards lunch-time the sun came out, but vanished again after lunch.

By four o’clock, while the boat was still moving, passport and quarantine officials came up on a cutter, and, like pirates, climbed up our ship long before the port hove in sight. The white cliffs were now more than ever clearly visible in the distance.

‘We shall probably land tonight.’

‘More probably tomorrow morning,’ said Beastly. ‘When a boat comes into port she always begins hooting and messing about for the best part of six hours. High Navigation, I expect! Ha-ha!’ He guffawed loudly. ‘Eye-wash, that’s all it is! Done on purpose to bluff you. They don’t want you to run away with the idea that navigation is as blessedly simple a matter as it really is — that’s about the truth of it! Same with applying for a passport and that sort of silly thing. All done to impress you. So here. You bet we’ll mess about till the morning instead of driving up like in a cab.’

‘And in Russia,’ I observed, ‘the coachman whips up the horse and drives up at the greatest possible speed, pulling up, abruptly, at the porch. It’s supposed to look grand.’

‘I know. Of course, this cannot be done with a car.’

‘Well, I knew a French lieutenant in Russia who did it.’

‘The ass, ruining the tyres!’

‘Therein,’ I observed, ‘lay the whole piquancy of the thing.’

Beastly nodded his head heavily, as if wondering what the world indeed was coming to! He knew what was what . There was no pessimism, no doubt, no inaction about him . He would go back to the Argentine to his railroads; he would go and dig a gold mine in Canada; he would start a company for the developing of the port of Vladivostok and make bags of money, and then go into politics abroad and at home, shout at open-air meetings, build bridges, dig oil wells, exploit forests and coal-fields, and raze the whole earth to the ground; he would — he would turn the world upside down and stand on it, gesticulating and holding forth with authority. He would — But as I listened to him I was certain that, whatever he did, he would miss the essential.

The dismal afternoon was nearing to its close, and still the mild waves ran past us, and the Rhinoceros held towards one point in England like the needle of a compass to the Pole. Already we could see the faint flickering lights of the English coast-line. And still the Rhinoceros heaved.