The Polyglots (41 page)

I looked at her.

She closed her eyes and sighed. ‘Tired. I want to lie down.’

‘Shall we go to the hotel?’

‘Yes.’

We work, I reflected, but no one knows why. ‘There,’ I said, stopping and pointing down with my stick, ‘ants also work.’

‘Yes, darling, they do. But what they can do isn’t worth anything, is it?’ she said, looking at me with a sweet appeal of reasonableness as if she were sorry for the fated insignificance of the ants but could not overlook it since it was manifest to all.

‘Isn’t worth anything—you mean to the world?’

‘Yes, darling.’

‘It isn’t a question of size. The universe in its aggregate has possibly not more, but less sense than the ants and is striving to speak through them, to realize its own soul in tangible work towards truth. The universe is awakening from sleep into life and is groping, building, that is, provisionally calculating, erecting outposts that will last for a time in order not to lapse back into the sleep where all is blurred as in a delirium. Our work here is merely the “over” which the world puts down in order not to get muddled in its calculations. But the auditor adds up, adds up without cease: He is trying to realize His full wealth, to get at last at the correct
sum. For the Devil, I may tell you, is swindling Him of His possessions.’

‘The devil he is!’

‘And that is our work. That is what the ants are doing: registering the dream. But one must realize what that means and not register for registration’s sake. You must have something to register, and for that you must continually dive back into the dream to bring out the pearls.’

‘Darling,’ she said, ‘and you never bought me that little imitation pearl necklace after all.’

‘The whole trouble is that we don’t know whether the universe is directing us or we are directing the universe. Some hold that the universe is directing us to direct her. But the truth is probably that we all, the component parts of it, are propping up one another and cannot decide whither to go—as it really does not matter. The universe may not be going anywhere at all, but sensing the fatal barrenness of going anywhere in particular, for exactly the same reason is afraid of standing still. And so it is just restless. We are just restless. We do not know what it is we really want.’

‘But, darling, you know very well what I want. You’re only pretending you don’t.’

‘Perhaps when we get sick of wanting something in particular, and sick of wanting nothing in particular, we shall get sick of wanting anything at all, and then we shan’t want anything. Sooner or later we shall get sick of not wanting anything. Till we get sick of being sick.’

‘And then?’

‘Then we shall have stepped into the shoes of God.’

‘You are very naughty, darling,’ she said.

In a long room that smelt of newly polished wood, with windows overlooking the sea front, we took our
siesta
, and then the waiter brought up tea.

‘Tip him well, darling,’ Sylvia said. ‘He’s been quite good to us.’

Leaving the hotel, she gave the lady-manager her hand.
‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘my husband and I have enjoyed ourselves very much.’

As we descended the hill in the train, the sea stretched open before us. A big steamer was coming in, finding her way carefully into the harbour; while there was another steamer just sailing out to sea; and the image of it, coupled with the humming life of the sea front vibrating in the sunlight, portended of a peace—a peace uttered long before us. I thought: I shall perish: but the Universe is mine.

‘If the whole world doesn’t matter, then what matters? And what is the reason, anyhow, of this “not-mattering” existing at all? For if life were there for no intelligent reason and from no intelligent cause, it would be more than ever a mystery that it was there at all. And if there were no life at all, only death—it would be no less strange and mysterious that death was—a vast sleeping Nothing.’

‘The world beyond—Darling, I know nothing of the world beyond, only what my little heart cries about and whines, like a baby,’ she said, ‘who is crying for milk. Will the mother turn up?’

‘Oh, she will! Oh, she will!’

And when we descended into town, it swarmed with busy little people, like beetles—dark human beetles who rushed in all directions, and among the many dark ones there rushed a few white beetles, shouldering the white man’s burthen. And I hated myself.

‘But if we can hate ourselves and laugh at ourselves—whence this sense of humour in us? What is that in us which laughs, that will not stand solemnities, that will not be impressed by life? What portent is that safety-valve, that constant rise from certain fact into uncertain sublimation? Is that not the real God from which we cannot tire?’

‘You are so naughty, darling,’ she said.

It was nearing dinner-time, and the evening air was tinged by a faint breeze that made breathing tolerable. The sinuous music that reached us from some café or dancing hall stirred our thirst
for life; the shaded table lights beckoned to us to partake of their seclusion.

‘Let’s dine here, darling.’

‘No, no,
maman
will wonder where we are.’

We rickshawed about; got out at the square and looked at the statue of the Duke of Connaught. Then got back into our rickshaws and drove to the shore.

Life is wiser than reason, I thought. Life
is
, and so being, it has nothing to reason about: while reason is only a partial discovery of what
is
—incomplete and therefore inquisitive.

‘Darling, she’s waiting for you to step inside.’

We stepped into the sampan.

It was the old complaint which, when we are overworked, we put down to drudgery, or when we are lovesick we put down to love. It wasn’t drudgery. It wasn’t love. It was different. Sylvia, sitting close by my side, looked moved and gravely enchanted, and, by some mute agreement, we did not speak. Her large luminous hazel eyes gazed intently, in silent awe. Hong-Kong behind us, too, seemed in a spell of languor, stirring not, dreaming not: looking on, content just to be. There was no sound but that of the water lapping against the sides of the sampan; and the Chinese face of the woman who worked at the oar, fashioned no doubt in the image of God, was yet so different from ours. She either expected no miracles, or she took them for granted; she looked out to sea with a lethargic, expressionless stare, and worked dumbly and evenly at the oar. The
Rhinoceros
, with its white marble deck-house, looked like a sea-shell, translucent in the evening sunlight, wondrous and spellbound. The sturdy ship which was afraid neither of storms nor of space nor of darkness, looked moved and strangely tranquil as she lay out in midstream; like a hard-faced being melting to a cherished phrase of music, or a hardy seaman smiling at a child. And as you looked over the water at the wide expanse of sea and sky and back at the pearly city shimmering in the fading sunlight, you had a feeling then as if we were indeed immortal.

‘
Jesus
!’ she purled, ‘how I want to go on living for ever!’

Tears welled up from her eyes and hung on them, which made them seem golden, like Salomé’s. She smiled, and this shook them from her lashes.

But at dinner that night she was already laughing, drinking much wine and cooing gaily and, as always, half-audibly. Her teeth glittered as she held the glass, like a flower on a stem, and nearly spilt the wine, and because of this and her inherent gaiety, laughed more. Uncle Emmanuel and I had donned white flannels, and white almost transparent jackets—clean and crisp out of the wash—and Aunt Teresa and Aunt Molly, Berthe and Sylvia were also clad in gay white open lace; it was spring, almost summer now, and we were full of the joy of life. Aunt Molly with the children was at another table, and round the corner was Captain Negodyaev with his consort and Natàsha who kept looking round at us at intervals, laughing in her gurgling way. And suddenly she was crying softly.

‘What is it, Natàsha?’

‘What is it, dear?’

She cried very softly.

‘Darling, what is it?’

‘A wasp,’ she sobbed.

Harry laughed.

During dinner Uncle Emmanuel drank much wine and talked of the Governor’s ball that night and the mistake he had made in not calling on him. ‘I would have liked to go, too.’

‘
I
’m not going: I have no dress uniform.’

‘It’s a great pity.’

It transpired that Aunt Teresa, accompanied by Berthe, had also been on the Peak railway. ‘It pulled,’ she complained, ‘before I had sat down.’

‘That happens,’ I rejoined, ‘sometimes in sleep. One night I jumped clean out of bed.’

‘Oh yes, I remember!’ Sylvia cried happily.

‘Excuse me’—my uncle turned to her, looking suddenly like a detective—‘but how do you remember?’

‘Sorry,’ she said, lowering her lashes.

‘That won’t do at all.’

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Sorry.’

‘The point is that I jumped out clean on to the carpet.’

‘That is very interesting, I am sure,’ said he.

There was a stiff little pause. My uncle cleared his throat. ‘I suspected something all along. I suspected it.’

‘And I wish you joy of it!’

‘I would have advised you to be more careful, though.’

‘When I want your advice I shall cable for it.’

‘If we were here alone I would give you a bit of my mind.’

‘Then we should exchange our minds like visiting cards.’

‘She has no brother,’ he whimpered. ‘Anatole——’ And the tears came to his eyes.

‘I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum.’

‘What has Ophelia got to do with it?’

‘I had made her happy.’

‘My poor daughter …’

Languidly I sipped my brandy. Wearily I raised my eyes at him. ‘
Must
I really blow your silly brains out?’

‘This is scandalous! a scandalous affair!’

‘The only equity for your existence that I can tentatively advance,
mon oncle
, is that you may be a blessing in disguise.’

I may be—intermittently—a cynic; but he is worse: he does not know he is a cynic. His daughter! His daughter! But the daughter wanted me to love her, and her father meantime loved other men’s daughters. So why does he squeak and squeal, this future censor of films?

‘I am the last man,’ my tone was conciliatory, ‘to want to give the matter a significance it does not possess.’

‘Oh!’

‘Emmanuel,’ said Aunt Teresa in a tone which clearly implied that she was proud of his display of paternal authority but sought to show that much in life must be forgiven. She fumbled in her speech. What she meant, but found it difficult to convey in words,
was that she had been unhappy all along at the thought of having done her daughter out of her birthright—which is love—but that I had somehow managed to restore that privilege. ‘But Emmanuel, Sylvia was already married at the time.’

‘On the eve of my departure, you old cuckoo of an uncle!’

‘Married?’ said Uncle Emmanuel, agreeably astonished at this extenuating circumstance. ‘Of course, that puts a different complexion on it. Well, at that rate we shall presume that she knew what she was doing. Still—still——’

But he did not get beyond that ‘still’—a protest put on record, but not pressed.

Dinner over, we lounged over coffee on deck. The big steamer had gone out into the open sea; the pier was discernible only by its string of lights. When the café orchestra subsided, in the intervals we could just catch the distant strains of the band playing in the illuminated gardens of Government House. On the bows a gramophone screamed shrilly, and some Cockney petty officers danced to it with one another in quick, vulgar movements.

This was China—the Far East! The moist heat of evening enveloped us, and standing at the rail, the ship in midstream, somehow one felt sorry for onself and all the lives that live.

WHEN WE HAD COME BACK NEXT DAY (THE SHIP had broken down and was undergoing alterations and repairs) the General with the mad eyes was still on board, pacing the deck in his sweat-eaten canvas shoes, as a cat paces the roof of a house in
flames. The General, who had come from Hong-Kong to Shanghai and had arrived again at Hong-Kong, decided to go on to Singapore, where the Russian Consul—so he hoped—would finance him and request and require that he be allowed forthwith to land on British soil. To this idea he clung with that ready hope of the fainthearted who, because he dreads the prospect of despair—his sole alternative, clutches at each straw with the assurance of salvation. The General with the mad eyes looked on the British Empire as a huge joke, while Captain Negodyaev regarded it as a refuge for himself and for his family from the imagined persecutions which he so feared on Russian soil, and gravely saluted the Union Jack on every possible occasion; and the occasions, considering that every port we touched was unequivocally British, were not few. It is a truism that whenever Russians meet they quarrel. Captain Negodyaev was a monarchist at heart, and the General with the mad eyes a Bolshevik convert. When on board I played the magnificent old Russian national anthem, the General remarked that it was most improper, while Captain Negodyaev begged me to go on. Yet, it was the Captain who was socially despised by the General, who called his junior a vulgar time-server, and scoffed at his undistinguished unit and provincial upbringing. The Bolshevik General had been a guardsman and a military academician. He prided himself on his connexions in England, and spoke a great deal of the peers with whom he was intimate. ‘I have only to write to Lord Curzon,’ he would say, with a self-satisfied smile, ‘and all the British ports will lie open before me.’

‘But in spite of all your aristocratic friends,’ rejoined Captain Negodyaev, ‘they won’t let you out to buy yourself a pack of postcards. Whereas I——’

‘Of course not, because I am a big gun; but you—you’re a nonentity, they don’t notice you.’