The Laughter of Carthage (41 page)

She was on her feet. I think she wished to avoid the truth, escape the disturbing facts. That was why she had behaved so strangely last night. She moved rapidly, nervously, still a dressed-up little girl, towards the door. ‘Then we must talk, of course, Maxim. I’ll be home by this afternoon. Let’s have tea somewhere at four. Shall I meet you here?’

‘I want to talk now.’

‘At four.’ She turned back, ran forward, put her arms round my neck, kissed me on the nose and smiled. ‘If it’s bad news, four o’clock’s the ideal time to hear it. If it’s good, we can celebrate tonight.’

I looked at the pile of letters I myself was too fearful to open. All were connected to the Company’s failure. I would never open them. I returned to bed, staying there until lunch time while I tried to review my situation. I was furiously incredulous that I was destitute. I lay in my huge, clean bed, looking up at the ornate ceiling while sunlight brought Parisian spring into the beautiful room. Yet my only asset, save for my Odessa luck pieces, was the Hotchkiss, which would have to be sold and the profit handed to Kolya for Esmé. Letting Esmé have her own money would be foolish. She had become habitually extravagant. She could spend anything I gave her in a day. The house would only be ours for another month and most of the furniture was gone. There was very little left to arrange. I could rely on Kolya to take care of anything else. My only fear was that my news would bring Esmé too heavily down to earth. I was afraid she would fall back into her delirium; I should not be able to leave her if she suffered another. I tried, with this in mind, rehearsing the exact tone of my revelations. But half my brain would not respond to the other. I hate to admit the truth: I was to be torn away from the girl I regarded as my own flesh. Yet I at least had become used to disappointment, disillusion, betrayal. She had known only sunshine and ease since she had met me. How much worse it might be for her, with no automatic means of anaesthetising herself.

I ate a sandwich and drank a glass of beer in the brasserie round the corner from the house, walking down St-Michel to the Seine. It was damp spring weather with a slight mist in the air and on the water. The quayside bookstalls were mostly closed up, but a few patient old men like unkempt dogs sat guarding their wares. Traffic clogging the bridge was so still, so muted, I imagined time had frozen and myself the only unaffected individual in the entire city. Sounds became increasingly muffled and faint. The people I passed took on an unreal appearance, like projections in a cinema film, though the colours were brilliant. I crossed over the bridge to Notre Dame where I stood looking up at the cathedral’s massive doors. They represented a barricade against the corruption of the world outside. In all her sensual beauty, Paris surrounded me; her trees, just budding, were isolated one from the other. She was the least compassionate of cities, the most self-involved. She rewarded success grudgingly while quickly punishing failure. In her present haughtiness it was impossible to imagine how she had been during the Revolution or the Siege, with the mob in her streets, screaming and destroying. I could understand, I thought, how she had come to be attacked by her own inhabitants; by pétroleuses with crazed, wounded eyes, trying to burn her into recognition of her own mortality. They had failed, if indeed that had ever been their ambition. She remained impassive. Poverty and distress merely disgusted her. Noise offended her. She turned away from it.

By the time I walked back it had begun to rain. Beside the little round church of St Julien Pauvre, I heard the almost mechanical click of water on her laurels, smelling the dampness of her graveyard as a curtain of drizzle moved slowly across to me. I kept to backstreets and doorways. I could not afford to be found either by Brodmann or Tsipliakov. But Paris knew I was there: she intended to purge me as if I were an alien microbe. I longed for the warm chaos of Rome, even the filth and clamouring greed of Constantinople. I could not begin to imagine New York. In other cities, in their marble and granite towers, the world’s Mapmakers were still at work. The arms dealers and the grain merchants tested the pulse of a desperate planet. Greeks were betrayed to Turks; Russians to Poles; Ukrainians to Russians and Italians to ‘Jugo-Slavs’. Ideas of virtue and probity were subtly discredited. Jazz music drowned all protest. Would America, providing so much of this distraction, be even worse than here? I countered my fear. There were Russian colonies in Venezuela, Brazil, Peru and Argentina. If the United States failed me I could go South. From there it would be easy to find my way back to Europe. With this consolation I turned into the little cinema at L’Odeon and watched part of
Birth of a Nation
again, emerging into sunshine, my optimism restored.

I arrived back at the house by four, but Esmé did not return until six, full of pretty apologies, cursing buses and taxis and the traffic on the South Bank, kissing me all over my face, telling me about the present she had bought me. She had left it on the tram. She would get me another on Monday. It was too late to have tea, but since she seemed in such fundamentally good spirits I decided to speak.

‘Esmé, I have decided to leave France.’

‘What?’ She looked up from where she had been sorting through her purse. ‘For Rome?’

‘They’ll put me in prison if I don’t get as far away as possible. So I’m going to America.’

She was half smiling. She thought I joked. ‘But I want to go to America with you.’

‘You’ll join me there, as soon as Kolya has a passport for you. There’s a delay, because you have no proper documents. There are so many émigrés in your situation everything takes longer. It will only be a question of weeks at most. Then we’ll be together again.’

‘Where shall I live?’ She looked up frowning, putting the purse to one side. ‘The rent here is only good for another month.’

‘Kolya has offered you a room in their Paris apartment. He and Anäis are not there half the time so you’d have the place to yourself a good deal. And servants. Everything you want. Possibly Kolya and Anäis will be able to bring you to New York. They intend to go soon.’

She had grown pale and was biting her lower lip. Her eyes cast about as if she had lost something.

‘You mustn’t be afraid.’ I was gently reassuring. ‘You’ll soon be meeting Douglas Fairbanks.’

She smiled. ‘Maxim, do you love me?’

‘With all my heart.’ The question somehow disturbed me. ‘You are my wife, my sister. My daughter. My rose.’ I moved towards her.

‘Why do you love me?’

‘When I first saw you I felt something. An echo of recognition. I had always sought for you. I found you again. I’ve told you this before.’

‘I love you too, Maxim.’ She still seemed distracted. Perhaps she was resisting the meaning of my news.

‘I’ll stay, my darling, if you need me.’

She was brave, my little girl. ‘No. That would be wrong. I want you to go. I’ll join you soon. You must fulfil your destiny. It lies in America now.’

‘You’re behaving splendidly.’ I had expected tears.

‘It’s for the best,’ she said flatly.

I reached out and touched my fingers to her lips. She kissed them, glancing up at me with a strange, almost tragic, expression. Then she gasped and dropped her head. I held her shoulder. ‘You won’t notice I’m gone. You’ll know I’m with you in spirit the whole time. I love you, Esmé.’

‘I always feel you’re with me.’ Her voice was small, sounding oddly ashamed. Her response was mystifying and yet touching. ‘You must try not to miss me,’ I said.

‘You’re not leaving me for good, are you Maxim?’

‘Never! We shall be married one day. When you’re legally old enough.’ I smiled. ‘Perhaps in America where the age of consent is lower. That might be best. Would you like to be married in the Wild West? With Indian braves for guests? In a little wooden church on the plains?’

‘That would be wonderfully romantic.’ She stood up. Suddenly shy, she took my hand. ‘Let’s go to bed now.’

Our evening was beautiful in the peace and delicacy of our love-making. It had been the same with Kolya. There is a kind of release when lovers are about to separate for a while.

Oh, Esmé, my sister. My wistful spirit. My ideal. I never wanted you to be a woman. They took you and forced your face into the dirt and horror of the world. You said you were awake at last. But what is wrong with a dream? It harmed no one. It leaves no stain. Why talk of death when it is inevitable? What drives these people to spread despondent news like rats spread plague? Why should we know fear? They tore me from beauty and hope. With whips and pistols they drove me from my childhood, into this unbearable, cold, futureless wasteland. Children are trudging through the mud of the twentieth century; trudge across the wreckage of the world, homeless and without love.
Questo dev’essere un errore. Non mi dimentichi. Men ken platsn!

It poured all the way to Cherbourg: waves of light rain drifting like smoke across meadows and woods as the bluebells of France bloomed and the trees came to furious leaf. The train was warm. It smelled of coal and garlic and old women’s perfume. My brave little girl had stood with Kolya on the platform, waving a handkerchief, turning and smiling suddenly at my friend as if he had made a joke. He was frozen in black worsted, hat on head, hands in pockets, his white face expressionless as he watched the train pull out. Esmé, in red and white, leapt like a flag at a fete; she seemed still to be bouncing as the train curved and I lost sight of her. I was not at that moment much distressed. The prospect of travel as usual drove all other thoughts away. I refused to brood on that disaster which overtook my first real chance of public success. It would have produced unnecessary melancholia at best, insanity at worst. So I sat back in my seat, raised my hat to the three maiden ladies going to visit their sisters, to the dignified schoolboy sitting with Zola in his hand, and then took an interest in the countryside.

I looked on the bright side. I was, after all, Maxim Arturovitch Pyatnitski, a citizen of France, a man of affairs, on my way to catch a ship. The scandal would be forgotten. My achievements would be remembered. Presently, I was well dressed, carried my patents in my luggage, together with my Georgian pistols. There was no need to waste time on regrets. I was a free man. I was twenty-one years old. I had experienced more than most people do in a long life. And in America my diplomas, my honourable War record, would be even more impressive than in Europe. The sisters, when they spoke to me, were plainly admiring of my bearing and my appearance. When the train arrived I helped them onto the platform before attending to my own affairs. With a whole entourage of porters I marched from station to docks. It was impossible to miss my ship. She dwarfed every building, every piece of machinery in the port. I had never seen a ship so huge. I stared upwards, trying to make out the details of her decks. Little white faces peered back from far away. The
Mauretania
was a massive wall of dark metal topped by terraces of white and gold: the
monstrous nine deck’d city
as Kipling described her. Having served creditably throughout the War she was back in private service again; still the ship for whom most travellers had the greatest affection, particularly now, since cowardly U-boats had sunk her sister, the
Lusitania.
Leading my porters, I ascended the ramp specially prepared for First Class passengers. Entering an arch as tall as any palace’s I was greeted by a uniformed steward who inspected my ticket then led me towards the First Class boat deck. In the harbour intrusive tugboat horns were contentious and ill-mannered beyond the fading mist. My ship’s brass, woodwork, impeccable paint and silvered metal, glowed with an inner radiance, as if she were a living beast. I never knew any security greater than I experienced on entering my stateroom.

Having tipped steward and porters and stopped to look through the porthole at Cherbourg’s roofs and steeples, I lay down on a wide bed. I lit a cigarette. I did not care if my voyage took a year or more. Momentarily there came a tremendous, unexpected pang, as I realised neither Esmé nor Kolya were here to share my impressions; but a little cocaine soon helped me pull myself together. I was determined to be positive, to enjoy every moment of my stay on board the floating city. After all, I had no clear idea of what I might have to deal with when I arrived. I washed and changed my clothes.

Two hours later the bustle of the ship suddenly grew still. Anxious not to miss the experience I stepped outside my cabin just as the shorelines were let go. I went to join other passengers at the forward rails. Tugs were towing us slowly out to open water. The sun was dull, diffused, a splash of orange near the horizon. The sea was grey and white, alive with birds. The ship’s horns sounded a triumph, a farewell. When the hawsers were released, humming and hissing, they curled away and sliced into the waves, to be hauled in by invisible winches. The
Mauretania
dipped her prow, then rose gracefully. A breeze-borne spray striking our faces, we cheered with delight. Already there was a sense of comradeship between us, as there must always be on such a vessel. We moved into magical twilight. Slowly battery upon battery of electric bulbs blossomed everywhere on the ship. She was magnificent. She was a fabulous, unworldly apparition. She turned, this dignified aristocrat, towards the sunset and the West. I went below. I wished to put the final touches to my costume before dinner.