Entering the dining-room on my return from the office, I saw a roomful of baby cousins at their evening meal. Napkined at the neck, they sat close at table on chairs that were too low for them, their chins touching the edge of the table, gaping around and swinging their legs. Behind stood their mothers and nurses, who urged them on with fine exhortations. Nora ate an egg beaten up in a cup; she held a teaspoon in her mouth upside down and sucked off the egg that clung to its convex surface, while her eyes wandered all over the ceiling. ‘Some more brad, mummy.’
‘Say please.’
‘Please.’
‘Isn’t she a mess!’ said Beastly loudly, and nodded heavily and guffawed several times in the doing.
Harry’s forget-me-not eyes matched the blue-lilac rim of the cup and saucer out of which he was drinking, holding it in his two little fists and looking out from above, his eyeballs rolling all over the room.
As she finished eating Nora crawled off the chair, and at once there was the sound of her hoof-clatter. Natàsha ran after her: ‘Ah! little Norkin!’ Nora’s legs were something in the way of a ship’s screw: they worked evenly enough, but somehow did not modulate their pace to the peculiarities of the surface, thus often, for sudden lack of resistance, performing in the air with unexpected precipitation, like a ship’s screw when it is jerked out of the water. In the same inconsequential way, she ran into Aunt Teresa’s bedside medicine table, which was more than Aunt Teresa’s nerves could stand. And Aunt Teresa took the opportunity to tell Nora what a sweet, obedient little girl she, Aunt Teresa, had been herself when of Nora’s age. Nora didn’t seem to care a bit, and while Aunt Teresa talked to her, was making very deliberate movements with her arms, as though affecting to fly. Aunt Molly, who was tired out, and had seemed angry with the noisy children, now that she had a moment to sit down, related tenderly their intimate histories from the earliest years. Aunt Teresa and Berthe professed a polite but unconvincing amazement at these confidences. A certain lady in Krasnoyarsk, Aunt Molly related, had organized a drawing competition, and Harry won a prize.
‘Fancy that!’ drawled Aunt Teresa, lifting for a second her eyes from the fancy needlework at which she was an adept and letting them fall at once.
‘How clever of him!’ said Berthe.
‘And when Bubby was barely one, and we used to ask her, “What has Bubby got good?”—“Good appetite,” she said.’
‘Fancy that — remarkable,’ said Aunt Teresa, and at once began counting the stitches.
‘Charmant,’ echoed Berthe.
‘When Nora was barely two, one day I asked her, “Do you love me?” And she said, “Would you care me to love you?” “Yes, I would.” “Then I love you dearly,” she said.’
Berthe beamed and purred like a cat, and Aunt Teresa first counted the stitches. ‘Fancy that,’ she said, and smiled rather belatedly.
‘Well, Bubby,’ drawled Aunt Teresa, ‘are you a good little girl? And do you love your mummy?’
‘Yes, I love her very much. I have a little pram,’ she said, ‘and now all my doggies can have rides in it, because if they are always running about and walking they will get so thin, you know.’
Uncle Lucy, ashamed of his enforced idleness, walked about with a hammer, a chisel, and a sore conscience, strenuously trying to be useful. He came up to my attic and, watching my typewriter, said that he could construct a machine which would work by electricity in such a way that if I pressed the keys in my attic the typewriter would actually perform the work in the basement. It seemed a wonderful invention, almost worth while patenting. But when questioned by me as to the actual advantage of the typing being done in the basement while I pressed the keys in the attic, Uncle Lucy agreed that there appeared to be no visible advantage in such an arrangement. He went away swinging the hammer, and wondering if there was anything by way of a nail anywhere that wanted driving in.
The flapper cousins slept in the dining-room adjoining my bedroom, behind screens. And I spent hours in kissing them good night. At the dead of night, again and again I would creep out of bed and, with the air of one who has forgotten something, slip into the dining-room behind the screen to kiss my red-haired cousin good night — long, lingering kisses …
I dreamt: a host of polyglots marching, an army of polyglots marching relentlessly, marching on, on, on, on — a stampede of feet.
31
A NEST OF POLYGLOTS
AND IN THE MORNING AUNT MOLLY ASKED ME NOT to blow my nose quite so loudly as it wakened up the children in the night. While I was shaving, Harry came into my room, followed presently by Nora.
‘Do you know what Nora said to me today?’ he began. ‘S’e said, “Good morning to you.” ’ And noticing the soap on my face, he pleaded: ‘S’ave me! S’ave me!’
‘And how’s Natàsha?’ I enquired.
His face at that showed no enthusiasm. ‘S’e won’t let us do anything,’ he complained.
‘Oh?’
‘S’ave me!’ he said. And while I lathered his face, he stood quite quiet, with a look of beatitude in his forget-me-not eyes.
‘Now s’ave Nora,’ he said.
‘Nora, do you want to?’
‘Yesh.’
And I lathered Nora’s face.
They watched me dress with interest. ‘What is this for?’ Harry would ask, fingering a suspender.
‘What is this for?’ Nora asked. What Harry said Nora said; what Harry did Nora did.
‘Daddy has one like these,’ Harry said, fingering my braces.
‘Daddy has one like these,’ Nora said.
‘Only better ones,’ said Harry.
‘Only batter ones,’ said Nora.
‘Who’s better, Nora or Natàsha?’ I asked.
‘Myself,’ he answered.
The act of dressing, I noticed, conduces to a peculiarly primitive mood of jocoseness, and I continued asking silly questions. ‘Whom shall I drown?’ I presently asked. ‘You or Nora?’
‘Drown yourself,’ he said.
‘Drown yourself,’ said Nora.
‘Come on,’ I cried, suddenly assuming a forbidding look on my face as I walked up to him and took him by the sleeve. He sidestepped and considered a moment, and—‘Go to hell!’ he said.
‘Harry!’
‘Go to hal,’ said Nora.
‘Who has taught you such dreadful language?’
‘Daddy,’ he said.
‘Oh, pour some on me, pour some on me — some of that hair stuff,’ he pleaded, watching me. I poured some on his head, rather lavishly. He stood very still, with the same beatific look in his forget-me-not eyes. But when it ran down his cheeks he closed his eyes with a grimace.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘It bited,’ he said.
‘Now pour some on Nora.’
These interruptions of my morning toilet considerably retarded my routine. Life, I observed, was not worth living: by the time I had risen, shaved, washed, bathed, dressed myself, and so on, the day was gone, and it was time to go to bed. This was our life. A large family in a small flat — all doing this all day long. The activity was all directed towards getting clean — during which process they all got dirty again. The atmosphere of the place was sleepy and conducive to day-dreaming. Dusk fell soon in the winter. The heavy curtains were drawn, shutting out the icy-cold dusty snowless streets of Harbin, with the brilliantly illuminated windows of the shops closing down one by one as the town sank deeper into twilight, and we dwelt in the warm nicely heated rooms with the sumptuous leather sofas and chairs and the shaded lights behind silk Chinese screens embroidered with flowers and birds. The Chinese boys moved like ghosts, noiseless, in soft satin slippers on carpeted floors, listless shapes in long spotless white gowns. There was repose, soft, sumptuous repose writ large over the quiet interior; but when you entered Aunt Teresa’s rose-coloured bedroom, and saw her in bed, about half-past five in the evening, among medicine bottles, family photos, especially those of her son, books, cushions, cosmetics, a writing-pad, a red leather buvard, screens on all sides, the rose-shaded light burning behind her, the scent of Mon Boudoir perfume lying in wait for you and stealing insidiously over your senses, you trod more softly than ever, you spoke in a whisper, you yawned, stretched, and yearned to wrap the quilt around yourself and yield to happy dreams.