William Gerhardie - The Polyglots

Towards six, when the coast seemed at arm’s length but the boat still moved unabated, and the steward was strapping up my hold-alls in the cabin, I went up on deck. In the marble saloon at the ‘blunt end’ of the ship sat the passport and quarantine officials holding judgment, like inquisitors, on the ‘aliens’. The General with the mad eyes, Captain and Mme Negodyaev looked like helpless buzzing flies fallen a prey to the tentacles of a spider. We — the Commodore among us — had donned uniforms, and otherwise, as British subjects, took up privileged positions at the front of the saloon, at the back of which the ‘aliens’ were rounded up and herded, like hostages in a siege, and pressed to answer hypothetical questions, in shame and iniquity, before they too could be admitted to the promised land.

We had come up. England hove in sight quite plainly now as a green island with houses and people and parks. We were outside the harbour, just going in; the ship listed heavily now on this side, now on that, clumsily turning round, finding her way into the harbour and hooting hoarsely and hideously; while from the funnels columns of black smoke broke into the drizzling sky. The man at the wheel told the man down below to back engines; then the ship stopped; then the engines resumed. And, true to prophecy, we were ‘messing about’ just outside the harbour. All the ship’s officers were at their posts; only the surgeon, his job over, stood idle at the hatch, puffing at a cigarette. A very long time yet she lolled there, hooting and turning about, it seemed aimlessly, while we stood at the rail balancing on our heels, as at last, pitching heavily, she entered the harbour. We went, past the breakwaters, up the long, wide enclosure of Southampton Water, between two rows of green lawn, when the engines, as if tired, gave way and stopped, the big boat drifting on noiselessly of her own momentum, till she cast anchor — lying- to in midstream.

Arrived. The Rhinoceros had become very still, her task done, her strength spent, listless and drooping. Sylvia stood at my side by the rail and cooed a lot of divorcing Gustave and marrying me on the strength of it. But I had long since got used to it and did not listen, but looked out on the handsome trimmed lawns of the banks. She put a sweet in her mouth and looked on, munching. ‘Dinner on board before landing,’ she said.

‘Oh, we shan’t land till the morning.’

‘Oh! Really? Oh! Oh! — Darling,’ she said; ‘I love you. Oh, I love you! I love you! I love you!’

‘And I too.’

A passport official came up to me. ‘Will you kindly interpret for this gentleman; he can’t speak a word of English?’

As I went up, he said, ‘There is the question of his daughter—’

‘I have two daughters,’ Captain Negodyaev was saying, ‘Màsha and Natàsha—’

‘There’s only one on the passport,’ rejoined the official.

‘Quite so,’ flustered the other. ‘Màsha does not appear on the passport because she is grown up, is married, and lives with her husband, Ippolit Sergèiech Blagovèschenski, away in South Russia. And Natàsha—’

His eyes filled. His face twitched. He gulped. ‘The gong has — hasn’t sounded yet?’ he asked nervously.

‘Not yet.’

Red-eyed, he looked at his wife. A tiny tear glittered on her lashes. ‘Our cherub,’ she lisped, ‘is gone — gone from us — to the cherubim.’

I told the passport official.

‘I see,’ said the man.

And while we stood there and waited, and while we paced on in silence I heard no stealthy steps; no cool covert hands hid my sight. There was no gurgling laughter, no shrug, no ecstatic delight. It was doleful in the gathering twilight, and the lights of England blinked at us ruefully, sadly. The gong echoed to the sound of the sea, and the gulls, the wind, and the drizzling rain.

THE END