In the day-time I was censoring all manner of telegrams and letters — an indictment of the war: that anyone should waste his time and talents on being a military censor. Personally, of course, I didn’t care a hang about the letters. It seemed to me that in a chaotic sea of gloom where age-long grievances sprang up like fountains to the surface, to censor private letters which someone wrote to someone else in the Far East of Russia was a farce to be enjoyed as such and nothing more. At this period I worked upon a thesis (for, as I have said, I am an intellectual and do not take wars very seriously) — a thesis named: A Record of the Stages in the Evolution of an Attitude. I would work in my attic on the Evolution of an Attitude and then run down to the drawing-room to kiss my red-haired cousin — and having thus refreshed myself, return to work. Life, in the meanwhile, was going on. One had a sensation — living like this far away in the East — that one was out of it all, out of touch with all the seething mental activities of the West. But the chances were, if one tried to ascertain the truth, that at the headquarters of Western thought the thinkers, wearied of the hollow mechanism of the West, were putting out their feelers towards the hollow mystery of the East. But one thought not of that: and so one felt ‘out of it all’. When one scanned the glazed pages of Anglo-Saxon magazines and read the advertisements of new razors and fountain pens, how to cure oneself of gout, train one’s mind, get an appointment, combining business with pleasure, grow hair, preserve one’s complexion and teeth, furnish a house with all the latest conveniences, control one’s digestion and liver and purchase new shirts, one felt that far, far away there was a ‘progressive’, sensible life, that one was wantonly missing the benefits of one’s age. And one felt particularly ‘out of it all’.
Do you follow my story? Are you interested? Is it all perfectly clear to you? Very well, then, let us go on. On Thursday, the 22nd, Aunt Teresa gave a ball to celebrate my betrothal to Sylvia. Aunt Teresa sent out gilt-edged cards to His Excellency General Pshemòvich-Pshevìtski et fils, Count Valentine, Major Beastly, Lieut. Philip Brown, U.S.N., Colonel Ishibaiashi, of the Japanese Imperial General Staff, Dr. Murgatroyd, and, although they shared our flat with us, Captain and Mme Negodyaev. And the orchestra from the American Flagship, which Brown had promised us, not having arrived, General Pshemòvich-Pshevìtski helped us out with a military brass band.
Count Valentine called the same afternoon and left a card of the size of a postcard which read:
COUNT VLADIMIR VSÈVOLODOVICH VALENTINE;
Assistant-Director of Posts and Telegraphs: Assistant-Inspector of Communications with the title of Acting-President (with plenipotentiary powers) of the Special and Extraordinary Conference convened for the discussion of questions arising in connexion with the requisition of quarters allotted to members of the Allied contingents in the Far East, and the unification of measures for the defence of the State against the enemy; and Supreme Inspector of the Provisional Commission for Inland Revenue.
And across the print he had written in penciclass="underline"
Called to tender congratulations on the occasion of the birthday of his Majesty the King of England.
But as I met him on the stairs it gradually transpired that the driving motive of his call had been to ask for British underclothing and possibly a pair of Army Ordnance boots. Count Valentine explained that his noble name derived from England and that for that reason he favoured English clothes. He bent down and felt my cavalry boots and said, ‘Pretty. — I wonder where I could get a pair like these.’ He fiddled with a button on my tunic. ‘Très chic! I should rather like a jacket made after your model if you will allow me to take it home with me for a few days. Unfortunately all my wardrobes have remained in Petrograd and I feel so dreadfully uncomfortable in these unbecoming clothes.’
I looked at him and thought: ‘Your one redeeming point is that you are a Count.’ He bowed again and again, and then vanished, still bowing.
The cold wind cut me in the face and wet snow tell in flecks from the dismal sky and vanished as it reached the ground. I drove home, elated and content. The house was being got ready under the competent direction of Vladislav. Sylvia, radiant, splendid, was dressing for the ball. Her shoes pinched a little at the toe and she was easily tired. I came up from the back. ‘Lovie-doviecats’-eyes.’
‘This is too soppy,’ she wrinkled her nose.
But at the ball one somehow felt (if not behaved accordingly) as though one did the ball a favour by being there at all. ‘Pshe-Pshe fils’, the General’s aide-de-camp, a short and freckled youth wearing the Don Cossacks’ uniform, danced the mazurka with Sylvia, stamping his feet and jingling his spurs and falling down on one knee with superlative skill. There were many young ladies and as many young men, among them a French naval Lieutenant with a touch of grey on one brow, and Gustave Boulanger, a local Belgian bank official of about thirty-five, with a small yellow moustache, a large broad chin and small teeth. And each time he smiled he revealed a black tooth at each corner of his mouth. ‘Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!’ Sylvia laughed. Surrounded by young men, she would at once begin laughing and be all ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ But Gustave Boulanger never said anything. He only stroked his broad chin with his two fingers and smiled.
By the side of my aunt was Dr. Abelberg, her latest physician. Aunt Teresa was always changing them, because as a general rule they found that there was nothing much the matter with her, and this she could not endure. It was as though they robbed her of her natural prestige. Aunt Teresa had long grown to look on death and sickness as her own peculiar monopoly and told us frequently that we would not have her with us very much longer. When Berthe fell ill with influenza my aunt resented it as an effrontery and gave it out as her opinion that there was nothing much the matter with Berthe. The last doctor but one had told my aunt that she must use her legs, go out and take a lot of exercise, play golf if possible; and she at once dismissed him as a bear. ‘An unfeeling fool,’ was her comment, ‘who doesn’t know his own business!’ Until in Dr. Abelberg it really seemed that she had found her man. And naturally she had asked him to the ball. He stood beside her, a tall man of forty with a head as bald as a billiard ball and black hair on the temples; an affable man with a manner which is acquired from constant attendance on very nervous and difficult patients; a doctor whose sole force of argument in prescribing a medicine was that the medicine he prescribed could not do any harm. I sometimes wonder whether doctors die like flies because they have no layman’s health-imparting illusion in the curative properties of medicine, and by involuntary auto-suggestion hasten their own doom.
‘Must I go to Japan in the spring, Doctor?’ she asked.
‘To Japan … Well …’
‘I know I ought. I ought, I ought!’
‘Well, yes, you ought.’
‘But you know I can’t. How can I?’
‘Well, I don’t think there is any need — yet. It wouldn’t do you any good. In fact, it might cause harm. Stay where you are and listen to my advice.’