Next night was Aida. Sylvia, sitting a little to the front of me, bent forward, like a rose on a stem. Berthe had closed her eyes — lost in the vortex of familiar melody; and even Philip Brown was serious. Oh, I liked it! I felt that I was born for love — while the priests invoking the chieftain to repent and change his mind, sang:
‘Rhadames! Rhadame — e—s!’
Driving home, I treated them to fragments from Aida in my own peculiar voice and individual intonation: ‘Rhadames! Rhadame — e—s!’ when Brown uttered:
‘What a mess!’
Before retiring to bed, in my pyjamas, I was conducting with a brush before the looking-glass, when Sylvia entered from the back. I wanted to be a composer, a conductor of orchestra, passionately, painfully. What was I? An army officer. It was — as if it wasn’t quite good enough. ‘I wasn’t born for the Army,’ I said. ‘I was born for something better — though I don’t quite know what it is.’
‘You are very naughty,’ she said.
After that she was silent, her eyes fixed on the floor.
I sighed. There was a pause. And she sighed.
‘What do maidens wait for, I wonder?’
‘What does anybody wait for?’ she said, her eyes still on the floor.
‘I know: for the moment when, suddenly, you shoot out roots into the very source of life and taste the sap running up, as through a straw, on to your palate, and feel that there is nothing you have missed and you are glad to be alive.’
I took her up to the glass and kissed her — just to see what we looked like in the glass, kissing like that — when the door opened and Aunt Teresa surprised us.
For a moment she looked dazed. Then, coming up to us, with a curious, unfamiliar smile on her face—‘I’m so glad,’ she said. ‘I always wished it. And your parents, too, would have been glad, I know.’
She kissed us both, as if by way of putting the seal on our intentions. ‘But — do put something on top of these pyjamas, George.’
I put on my dressing-gown, and we sat together in my room long into the morning, Sylvia staring at the floor. And it somehow seemed as though Aunt Teresa had forgotten about the serious state of her health.
After they had gone, I sat on my bed in my pyjamas, my bare feet dangling down — perhaps a little stunned. I am a serious young man, an intellectual. And I wondered whether marriage in my case was wise. I had a sneaking feeling that it was not. ‘Rhadames!’ rang in my ears. And another voice, a small private voice in me sang: ‘What a mess! Oh, what a mess! z …’
24
MÀSHA AND NATÀSHA
IT WAS THE CREST OF A TRULY BLAZING SUMMER when I had a telegram from Vladivostok that the 50,000 fur caps had been found at the station in a disused shed. I had been interviewing Captain Negodyaev, who had just installed himself in our flat and had come up to see me in my attic, where I did my literary work, to press on me the need of Allied censorship at Harbin, when the telegram arrived: ‘Caps found in disused shed Vladivostok station. Return forthwith.’
In the light of Captain Negodyaev’s urgings and with an eye on my engagement, I wired stressing how essential in my view was the establishment of an inter-Allied military censorship at Harbin. Having wired, there was nothing to it but to wait for a reply.
Captain Negodyaev sat at table facing Aunt Teresa, drinking tea and dipping a rusk into his glass. ‘I have two daughters,’ he was saying. ‘Màsha and Natàsha. Masha is married, and lives with her husband Ippolit Sergèiech Blagovèschenski. Ah, poor Màsha, she has suffered a great deal at the hands of her husband.’
‘Is he — cruel to her?’ asked Aunt Teresa.
‘No, not cruel. But he neglects her — for another woman—’
He stopped somewhat abruptly, a little confused. The clock ticked on uninterruptedly for a space. And Berthe said, to fill the awkward pause of silence, ‘Cela arrive quelquefois.’
‘Ah, c’est la vie,’ said Uncle Emmanuel philosophically.
‘I have a letter from my wife,’ said Captain Negodyaev, ‘which describes the conditions in Novorossiisk. I will read it to you if I may.’
‘Do,’ urged Aunt Teresa.
‘This was written in the spring, but I have only just received it.’
He cleared his throat and read:
Three months have passed since I received your last letter. How long the days seem without news from you. Perhaps I shall hear something about the parcel. I so longed for a letter. I hoped to have one somewhere about my birthday, but no, nothing, not a word. None reach this miserable land. Life has no joy for us. To us there seems no future, no tomorrow; today we are alive and thank God for that. Weary — yes, that we are, so tired, so worn out, so weary. To die is the only right left us. The million things one felt but could not say.
Another year has passed. I feel stronger this spring. Now the cold weather is over it will be easier, but there is still so much hard work ahead. We have kept alive, thanks to the stock of vegetables, but now there is very little left. So many of our friends have died. They have died, and no one will ever tell of them how they have suffered. But the spring is as wonderful as before, as though nothing were the matter. Natàsha has written to you several times. Write to her if you receive this letter. It will give her such pleasure and she has so little pleasure, poor little girl. You will hardly know her if you see her. She is very tall for her age, she looks ten. Her hair is quite fair. Some days she looks better than others. She is very delicate, and has a very tender skin, blue veins showing through. She is said to take entirely after my people, though some find that she resembles Alexei. You will find me quite old, I am sure, if you ever see me again; trouble does not make one beautiful. I have grown coarse. Yesterday I killed the hen, chopped off its head. An old, sick hen. I closed my eyes. So far we are still at the same house, but everything is being taken from us, and what is left us we have got to sell to keep alive. I kept the silver tankard, you know the one my godmother Aunt Jenya gave me — I kept it for Natàsha. Though it has got quite yellow, I kept it, as I have nothing else for her. We’ve sold everything. But they came and took it. What’s to be done if our mite has such a miserable old mother? I am not to blame.
Màsha is very unhappy, but tries to bear up. Ippolit is just the same as ever and brings that dreadful woman to the house. Nothing will stop him. He says it’s Love the Conquering Hero. At Easter we boiled up mother’s old wedding cake, which is thirty-seven years old, and ate it. Màsha and I break up barges on the river for fuel. But Ippolit doesn’t lift a finger — only sits and plays cards all day long in the café. We have one stove which we call the ‘Bourgouyka’. We are trying to get a goat in exchange for furniture. If we succeed Natàsha will at least have some milk food, poor mite; she is so delicate and, I fear, consumptive too. She dreams of better days and longs to see you badly. She loves you with all her heart, and thinks Harbin ‘the blessed land’. God bless and protect you. Your loving wife, Xenia.