The Gentleman In the Parlour (29 page)

I took a shabby little steamer from Haiphong to Hong Kong, which ran along the coast stopping at various French ports on the way to take on and discharge cargo. It was very old and dirty. There were but three passengers beside myself. Two were French missionaries bound for the island of Hainan. One was an elderly man with a large square grey beard and the other was young, with a round red face on which his beard grew in little black patches. They spent most of the day reading their breviaries and the younger one studied Chinese. Then there was an American Jew called Elfenbein who was
travelling in hosiery. He was a tall fellow, powerfully built and strong, clumsy of gesture, with a long sallow face, a big straight nose and dark eyes. His voice was loud and strident. He was aggressive and irascible. He abused the ship, he abused the steward, he abused the boys, he abused the food. Nothing satisfied him. All the time you heard his voice raised in anger because his boxes of show goods were not placed as they should be, because he couldn't get a hot bath, because the soda water wasn't cold enough. He was a man with a chip on his shoulder. Everyone seemed in a conspiracy to slight or injure him and he kept threatening to give the captain or the steward a hit on the nose. Because I was the only person on board who spoke English he attached himself to me and I could not settle down on deck for five minutes without his corning to sit by me and telling me his latest grievance. He forced drinks on me which I did not want, and when I refused, cried: Oh, come on, be a sport, and ordered them notwithstanding. To my confusion he addressed me constantly as brother. He was odious, but I must admit that he was often amusing; he would tell damaging stories about his fellow Jews in a racy idiom that made them very entertaining. He talked interminably. He hated to be alone for a minute and it never occurred to him that you might not want his company; but when he was with you he was perpetually on the look out for affronts. He trod heavily on your corns and if you tucked your feet out of the way thought you insulted him. It made his society excessively fatiguing. He was the kind of Jew who made you understand the pogrom. I told him a little story about the peace conference. It appears that on one occasion Monsieur Paderewski was pressing upon Mr Wilson, Mr Lloyd George and Monsieur Clemenceau the Polish claims on Danzig.

‘If the Poles do not get it,' he said, ‘I warn you that their disappointment will be so great, there will be an outbreak and they will assassinate the Jews.'

Mr Wilson looked grave, Mr Lloyd George shook his head and M. Clemenceau frowned.

‘But what will happen if the Poles get Danzig?' asked Mr Wilson.

M Paderweski brightened. He shook his leonine mane.

‘Ah, that will be quite another thing,' he replied. ‘Their enthusiasm will be so great there will be an outbreak and they will assassinate the Jews.'

Elfenbein saw nothing funny in it.

‘Europe's no good,' he said. ‘If I had my way I'd sink the whole of Europe under the sea.'

Then I told him about Henri Deplis. He was by birth a native of the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg. On maturer reflection he became a commercial traveller. This did not amuse him either, so with a sigh for Saki's sake I desisted. We must accept with resignation the opinion of the hundred per cent American that the English have no sense of humour.

At meal times the captain sat at the head of the table, and two priests on one side of him and Elfenbein and I on the other.

The captain, a jovial little grey-headed man from Bordeaux, was retiring at the end of the year to make his own wine in his own vineyard.

‘Je vous enverrai un fût, mon pète,'
he promised the elderly priest.

Elfenbein spoke fluent and bad French. He seized the conversation and held it. Pep, that's what he'd got. The Frenchmen were polite to him, but it was not hard to see that they heartily disliked him. Many of his remarks were singularly tactless, and when he used obscene language in addressing the boy who was serving us, the priests looked down their noses and pretended not to hear. But Elfenbein was argumentative, and at one luncheon began to talk of religion. He made a number of observations upon the Catholic faith which were certainly not in good taste. The younger priest flushed
and was about to make some observation, when the elder said something to him in an undertone and he held his tongue. But when Elfenbein addressed a direct question to him the old man answered him mildly.

‘There is no compulsion in these matters. Everyone is at liberty to believe what he pleases.'

Elfenbein made a long tirade, but it was received in silence. He was not abashed. He told me afterwards that they couldn't answer his arguments.

‘I don't think they chose to,' I said. ‘I imagine they merely thought you a very rude, vulgar and ill-mannered fellow.'

‘Me?' he cried in astonishment.

‘They are perfectly inoffensive and they have devoted their lives to what they think is the service of God, why should you gratuitously insult them?'

‘I wasn't insultin' them. I was only puttin' my point of view as a rational man. I wanted to start an argument. D'you think I've hurt their feelings? Why, I wouldn't do that for the world, brother.'

His surprise was so ingenuous that I laughed.

‘You've sneered at what they look upon as most holy. They probably think you're a very ignorant and uneducated man; otherwise I fancy they'd think you were trying deliberately to insult them.'

His face fell. I really think he was under the impression that he had been pleasantly facetious. He looked at the old priest who was sitting in a comer reading his breviary and went up to him.

‘Father, my friend here says I hurt your feelings by what I said. I hadn't any wish to do no such thing. I beg you to pardon me if I said anythin' to offend you.'

The priest looked up and smiled.

‘Do not mention it, monsieur, it was of no consequence.'

‘I guess I must make up somehow, father, and if you'll allow me I'd like to make a contribution to your fund for
the poor. I've got a lot of piastres that I didn't have time to change at Haiphong and if you'll accept them you'll be doin' me a favour.'

Before the priest could answer he had pulled out of his trouser pocket a wad of notes and a handful of silver and put them down on the table.

‘But that is very kind of you,' said the priest. ‘This is a large sum.'

‘Take it, it's no good to me, I should only lose on the exchange if I turned it into real money at Hong-Kong. You'll do me a favour by takin' it.'

It was really a considerable amount and the priest looked at it with some embarrassment.

‘Our mission is very poor. We shall be extremely grateful. I hardly know how to thank you. I don't know what I can do.'

‘Well, I'm an atheist, father, but if you like to remember me in your prayers next time you say them I guess it won't harm me any an' if you'd add the name of my mother Rachel Obermeyer Kahanski I reckon we'd be about even-stephen.'

Elfenbein lumbered back to the table at the end of which I was sitting, drinking a glass of brandy with my coffee.

‘I made it all right with him. Least I could do, wasn't it? Listen, brother, I've got quite an assortment of men's garters in one of my trunks. You come along down to my stateroom and I'll give you a dozen pairs.'

His round took him from Batavia to Yokohama and he had been travelling now for one firm now for another for twenty years.

‘Tell me,' I said now, ‘you must have known an awful lot of people, what opinion have you formed of the human race?'

‘Sure I'll tell you. I think they're bully. You'd be surprised at the kindness I've received from everybody. If you're ill or anythin' like that, perfect strangers will
nurse you like your own mother. White, yellow, or brown they're all alike. It's surprisin' what they'll do for you. But they're stupid, they're terribly stupid. They've got no more brains than a turnip. They can't even tell you the way in their own home town. I'll give you my opinion of the human race in a nutshell, brother; their heart's in the right place, but their head's a thoroughly inefficient organ.'

This really is the end of this book.

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