Kingsley Amis - Russian Hide-and-Seek

‘You sound a good deal less than fond of him.’

‘He’s a pig.’

‘What has he done?’ asked Theodore, naturally enough, for she had spoken with the heat of personal dislike.

‘I don’t know. I mean he’s done nothing to me. I see as little of him as possible. But anybody who does that job must be a pig.’

He started to say something and checked himself, noticing that Alexander, with Elizabeth Cuy at his side, was on his way to where they stood. Theodore and Nina looked at each other and went on looking, indeed stared hard. She was so sure he was about to take her hands that she drew in her breath and a blush coloured her pale cheeks.

‘Can I see you again soon?’ he asked indistinctly.

‘Of course. Of course.’

Then the other two had come up and there was no further chance of talking privately before dinner. The dining-room, originally the central portion of a hall rising the full height of the house, faced west on to a court bounded by a red-brick wing, a wall of the same material broken by two gateways and, in front, a low stone balustrade. Away from this ran a double line of plane-tree stumps, corresponding to the cypresses on the other side. The fine marble chimney-piece in the room was almost undamaged, and the long table of Crimean walnut was thought to go suitably with it. At the moment the prettily mottled and figured surface of the table was spread with silver plate and cutlery, wine bottles, glasses – three at each place, sweetmeats and bowls full of the roses cut earlier. Brown-clad footmen with white gloves settled the company into their chairs. Petrovsky at the head had Mrs Tabidze and Mrs Korotchenko respectively on his right and left; his wife at the foot repeated the pattern with their husbands. Theodore found himself between Mrs Korotchenko and Nina, an excellent position as it proved, for the senior lady gave all her attention to Petrovsky, while the colonel, on Nina’s other side, exchanged a couple of brisk amiabilities with her and began a conversation with his hostess. As he and Nina talked, which they did with some concentration, Theodore glanced over at Alexander a few times. Once he was saying something to the Cuy girl; once he was listening to whatever Mrs Tabidze had to say to him; twice his eye was on Mrs Korotchenko. And once he met Theodore’s glance with a look of genial friendliness, as if to encourage him in his attentions to Nina and to wish him well.

A prune soup opened the meal, accompanied by sweet sherry and followed by grilled salmon with radishes and beet-roots. The wine was a first-class, long-lived Pouilly Blanc Fumé The final course consisted of a hot fruit salad, whipped cream and little macaroons; chilled Georgian champagne circulated. Finally chocolates, fudge, sugared almonds, buttered tea, a fine brandy (also from Georgia) and cigars were offered.

Now, with the servants dismissed, Petrovsky rapped for silence and said, ‘Let me inform newcomers that the rule of the house requires us, before returning to the drawing-room, to follow the ancient and honourable tradition of spending some minutes in conversation round the table.’

Tabidze, a dark lean man of fifty, very trim in his regimentals, gave a dry chuckle. ‘Did I hear something about an ancient and honourable tradition, Sergei? You must be turning conservative in your old age.’

‘Oh, I think that’s a little unfair, Nicholas. I’ve never been opposed to traditions as such. It’s the unthinking acceptance of them that I deplore.’

‘Strange how often it seems to amount to the same thing. Take this land-tenure reform of yours, now. I don’t pretend to have gone into the details, but I’ve grasped the main outline. What you intend is revolutionary. The present system has worked perfectly well for over forty years and you want to turn it upside down.’

‘Not at all, I merely want to make it work better. Remember that all I have done – all my advisers and I have done – is frame a set of proposals for submission to the central authority. Who will quite certainly tone them down a great deal at best; we took account of that. I foresee that when the amended version goes into effect, if it ever does, even you, my dear Nicholas, will find very little ground for concern.’

‘I hope you’re right.’ Tabidze inspected a cigar and turned to Korotchenko. ‘What is your view of the matter, sir?’

‘The view of so recent a newcomer could hardly…’

‘No, please,’ said Petrovsky, ‘I want to hear what everybody thinks.’

‘I beg your pardon, Controller, I have not yet had time to study the protocol with the closeness required to do it justice.’

Theodore nudged Nina, then looked to his right. Mrs Korotchenko sat facing her front, her attention quite unfixed, as though the talk were being conducted in a language altogether strange to her; perhaps it was, he thought, not yet having heard her speak. In profile her eyelid showed a slight epicanthic fold, suggesting Mongoloid ancestry. Now Alexander spoke, and Theodore listened and watched with the greatest care.

‘If you really want to know what everybody thinks, papa, including the young, you shall hear what I think, though I fancy you have a moderate idea already.’ Alexander’s tone and manner were entirely respectful, neither heavy nor frivolous. ‘I can reassure the respected colonel that nothing is going to be turned upside down or even moved more than a couple of millimetres from its present position. – Your account, sir, of my father as nursing revolutionary intentions could not, with deference, be more mistaken; you were unintentionally right when you called him a conservative. But I’d better address him direct. – You dislike and fear change, papa, but you also have a conscience. Something should be done, something is done, something has been done, and everything is as it was before, except that some people feel better about it. Oh yes, you’re not the only one; half the men who run this country are of the same stamp. Now I come to think of it, there is one other result of the change that’s no change: a lot of those with a grievance will also have the illusion that something has been done, so the rulers are actually safer as well as more comfortable in mind.’

At this point Elizabeth Cuy broke in, a small fair grey-eyed girl whose attractions were perhaps outweighed for Alexander by her direct glance and style. ‘Piss off- how dare you tell your father he’s of the same stamp as someone else!’ she said with annoyance and amusement mixed. ‘Explaining him to himself like that! Accusing him of not being sincere!’

‘I meant no impertinence.’

‘Yes you did. What you said was impertinent and you meant it.’

‘Don’t concern yourself, Elizabeth,’ said Petrovsky with a smile. ‘I took no offence.’

‘Well, you should have done, sir, and expressed it too. How else are the young to learn respect?’

‘I think the young are pretty satisfactory as they are.’

‘Do you really! They appal me, some of them.’ Elizabeth glared at Alexander for a moment before unwillingly laughing. ‘All right, my great politician, let’s hear your scheme for sharing out the land or whatever it is.’

‘It’s perfectly simple. The land should belong to those who work on it and live on it.’

‘I see. So the gardens here should belong to your man Mily and his squad. Who would be quite entitled to keep you and the rest of the family out of them if they felt so inclined.’

‘Well…’

‘Yes, my boy. You say SHOULD. Where does that come from? What right have Mily and the others to those gardens out there?’

‘There is such a thing as justice, isn’t there?’

‘May I answer that, Elizabeth?’ It was Colonel Tabidze. ‘The answer is no. Justice does not exist. All that exists, all that has ever existed, is a series of more or less unjust actions and events and institutions on the one hand, and the idea of justice on the other. In its name all the great injustices are done. So with enslavements and the idea of freedom, barbarities in the name of progress, lies and… At least that’s how it is and how it’s always been with us. Ideas are the curse of the Russian. You can see it in Tolstoy, in Dostoievsky, in Chekhov: a whole class distracted from their duty, their marriages, their work, their pleasures, even their sense of self-preservation – all by ideas. What is to become of us?’