IV

Much of my experiences must now appear in the nature of a farce. This is not my fault. A good deal of life is a hilarious farce, and yet, as in the case of the affiliation of Nikolai Vasilievich’s family, it all comes about in the proper constitutional way, through a string of human motives. For a week or so Nikolai Vasilievich kept on applying to the Admiral for a coupé in his train to Omsk, in the teeth of implacable refusals. Then, after much opposition from the Admiral, and a passionate, though somewhat vague attempt on the part of Nikolai Vasilievich to identify his personal misfortunes with that of “honest” Russia, and the doings of the Czechs, the miners, and the punitive expedition whose disinterestedness he had begun to doubt, with that of international Bolshevism, this was conceded. But on hearing of this step, Fanny Ivanovna at once concluded that Nikolai Vasilievich was trying to escape from her⁠—a suspicion she always entertained⁠—and she immediately applied to see the Admiral in person and asked for two additional coupés, to accommodate her and the three sisters. The Admiral was a sailor and a gentleman. He promised her two coupés.

I forget which wing of the family was the next to apply. I remember that every day that week our waiting-room was crowded with petitioners. The Admiral said No. He found himself saying No innumerable times each day. Now it is an intrinsic part of the Russian character that it does not accept No for No. It is constitutionally incapable of doing so. Its institutions are all a negation of that principle. And what is more, it refuses to confine that fact to within the Russian border. It regards it in the light of worldwide application, assuming that it is indeed nothing less than human nature.

The Admiral still said No. He held that it was not human nature but just Russian nature, and as an illustration of his point he meant to show that when an Englishman says No he does mean No. But none of them would understand the Admiral’s interpretation of No. They had all grown up with the idea that No meant Yes after an adequate amount of pressure and insistence. The pressure was of various kinds, according to the age, sex and nature of the applicant. There were tears, entreaties. There were questions, such as the “object” of the Allies in Siberia, since they monopolized the best trains and refused to help the Russians in their primary needs. There were direct questions which it was thought must needs shatter the impregnability of the Admiral’s No, such as, for instance: Did the Admiral wish to starve them, as he evidently did, by cutting them adrift from Nikolai Vasilievich, the breadwinner?

The Admiral still said that No was No, and would they please understand it? They all replied that No was not the point, the point being: What were they to do without Nikolai Vasilievich? Whereon the Admiral replied that when he said a thing he meant it, this being the sterling value of British character. But they persisted all the same, treating him as if he were just human like the rest of them. Then the Admiral became a little angry. It annoyed him that they should fail to understand the primary fact that an Englishman was not a Russian and that hence any laxity that held good in Russian character did not hold good in that of a native of the British Isles. But the Russians hammered on in spite of all; till the Admiral was heartily amused that they should indeed know no better than to think that he would give in just because they persisted, for, the ignorance of human nature that, he thought, such a belief implied⁠—a quaint and childish ignorance⁠—began to fascinate him. He looked at them and looked at them again, as they poured forth their woes⁠ ⁠… and marvelled. Indeed, their touching innocence fascinated him so much that finally he felt he wanted to humour them, as one is inclined to humour quaint, unreasonable children who know no better. And it was by way of humouring them that the Admiral gave way. No (for once only) was to mean Yes. They thanked him cordially. He sighed and wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. The Russian character had won the day.

That night we started on our trip along the great, now pitiably disorganized Siberian track. It was a lovely night in late autumn. The Admiral’s special train had been brought over on the main line; and the General and I, both somewhat under the influence of liquor, walked arm in arm up and down the platform; and the General, in an overflow of feeling, spoke piteously of his ruined soul, his wasted life, and how he felt, and what he felt, and why he felt it. The Admiral and Sir Hugo had already settled down in the drawing-room of the coach, and were drinking. As the train moved, we too stepped into the carriage and threw ourselves back on our cushions; and the General’s hand stretched for the bottle. But I lay back musingly in the dark carriage, thinking of all things and none in particular, in that agreeable half-conscious way that is known to precede slumber, as the train rattled on its way to Omsk.

Two carriages behind us was Nikolai Vasilievich with a substantial proportion of his family, all bound for Omsk. When I closed my eyes I could see Nina, and my drowsy thoughts would linger: “She is à moi.⁠ ⁠… Tucked away in that compartment with her sisters.⁠ ⁠… À moi.⁠ ⁠… Now they were undressing for the night.⁠ ⁠… À moi.⁠ ⁠… At a handstretch. Always there. But there was no hurry. O life⁠ ⁠… leisurely life⁠ ⁠… !”

I was wakened by the General, and we went and joined the Admiral and Sir Hugo. It seemed that they were both what is known as “lit up.”

“You’re drunk,” the Admiral greeted me.

“And so are you,” I said.

“I know I am, damn you!”

And we were all very jolly and sang “Stenka Razin,” the Russian robber song, while the train rattled westward. And the General’s eyes were moist with tears: he was happy in his melancholy. And, tearfully emotional, he crept to the Admiral, and clinging to his neck tried to kiss him.

“Go away!” cried the Admiral in the manner of an innocent young girl about to be accosted; and then in a more manly tone:

“Damn your eyes!”

And then the General leaned back with that exaggerated leisure peculiar to his condition, and sang a Russian gipsy song. He spoke of the good old prewar days. He sighed, sighed deeply. Now everything seemed to have gone wrong, no doubt because his wife who ran him was not here to look after him. But he expected her to come and then all would be well. If he was in a muddle, if he was in debt, as he invariably was, he merely turned to his creditors and said, “I don’t understand all this. Wait till my wife arrives. It’s a damrotten game, you know, without my wife. My wife she is a clever woman. She will put it all right with you. My wife she is a dragoon.”

In the night the train stopped at a wayside station and seemed as though it would never start again. The Admiral then sent out the General to find out what was the matter, and Sir Hugo, who attributed the cause to “bad staff work,” proffered the suggestion of “negotiating” with the stationmaster. But the General said he thought the stationmaster was a most “damrotten fellow,” in the case of which type he usually relied on “elemental” measures. Accordingly he drew out his pistol and threatened to shoot the stationmaster like a dog unless he cleared the line immediately. The stationmaster, used to these methods, took no heed of the warning, but said that he would lodge a vigorous protest through the usual channels. Whereon the General replaced the pistol in his pouch, remarking that life was a “damrotten game.”

What a trip!⁠ ⁠…

In the morning I observed the Admiral talking to Fanny Ivanovna in his deliberate manner, looking into her eyes. And the impression I received was that the Admiral thought Fanny Ivanovna was a “good fellow.” But the three sisters, bashful though they were when he spoke to them in English, had somehow overlooked him; though Nina once remarked, “How awfully funnily his mouth protrudes when he looks at you so seriously. I feel so shy because I feel he does.”

“Now with all this English influence behind him Nikolai Vasilievich ought to be able to find out something definite about his mines at Omsk,” Fanny Ivanovna confided to me. “And there is no doubt this time we’re travelling in comfort. The children are so pleased. You know, they are so childish. Any change like this amuses them.” And then, in a lowered voice: “Anything like that⁠—love⁠—I assure you, they know absolutely nothing about. They’re such children!”

“But Sonia’s married!” I remonstrated.

“Ach! how that angers me! And to whom, to whom! He can’t even wash his neck. It’s all that mother!”

And so we covered verst after verst, as our luxurious train, freshly painted, beautifully furnished, admirably kept, rushed through a stricken land of misery. On our choice engines we moved like lightning, or perchance stood long hours at lonely wayside stations, the glamour of innumerable electric lights within our carriages presenting to a community of half-starving refugees the gloating picture of the Admiral and his “staff” at dinner.

And so we arrived at Lake Baikal, that crystal sea imprisoned in a frame of snow-capped mountains. We stopped our train and lingered on the rocks, drank in the harmony of a strange light, glassy water, snow, fir, and perfect quietude; and when at last we said goodbye to Lake Baikal, that proudest of lakes, a gale fearful and furious had blown in upon this serenity of beauty and lashed huge waves in the inky blackness of the night.

On went the train, rushing and swaying through the windy space of the fields.

What a trip! How we argued and wrangled the long journey through! Sometimes we would almost come to blows; for the ordinary Russian does not argue: he shouts, and his opponent, to score his point, shouts louder and quicker. The Russian General combined intellectual vagueness with an emotional temperament; and, contriving to identify his country with his class, he discovered that his country had been grievously insulted by me. All was over between us. He would never speak to me again.

But that evening, after dinner, we sat together over a bottle of whisky, and the General became emotional. “You are young and foolish,” he said, “and you probably don’t know what you are talking about. I don’t. But you love Russia. Tell me you love Russia; don’t you? We both love Russia. She’s been degraded and trampled on; but she is a fine country. She will arise. She must arise. And we both love Russia.” He cried. “Tell me you love Russia. Tell me you love her. We Russians are lazy, drunken, good-for-nothing swine; but we are good people, aren’t we? It’s a holy land. It’s a holy people. Look at her.” He gazed out of the window.

I rose and stood by him, and we looked at Russia, whirling past. Then I left him. When I returned, the General was still lying on the sofa, but his melancholy had vanished and he was spitting at the ceiling, probably for want of anything better to do.

On we went. Two days before we had left Irkutsk. The train rushed and roared and rattled. It was a weather that breeds pessimists. I stood looking out upon the steppes, these immense, monotonous Siberian plains, dull and melancholy in the rain, when Zina came to me and said her mother wished to see me privately. As I entered her coupé the old lady was drinking tea. She bade me sit down.

“It’s about Uncle Kostia,” she began. She sighed, and there was a prolonged pause. “Cleverness! Wisdom!⁠ ⁠… Oh, I don’t know, Andrei Andreiech. God in heaven knows”⁠—she crossed herself⁠—“that we are groping in the dark and none of us know what we are about or what’s what, and I am an old ignorant, sinful woman. But if you ask me, Andrei Andreiech, I’d just as soon have a fool as a wise man. Take Uncle Kostia. Such a clever man⁠—and what’s the good of it? I am stupid, dotty in my old age, but really I don’t see where all his cleverness is leading to. And I say it is time he did something and gave up living upon others. Zina tells me she can’t keep on asking Nikolai Vasilievich for money, and I really do think it is time Uncle Kostia began to work⁠ ⁠… and published something. I thought perhaps you could get the Admiral to place him on some paper⁠—propaganda of some sort. It isn’t that one is sorry to keep Uncle Kostia. He is clever, they all say. Heaven knows he has lived on his brother long enough, and one was never sorry to give him all he wanted since the man is clever, you understand, and writes. But now there is nothing to give⁠ ⁠… since there is nothing, you see? I don’t want to appear obdurate or unfeeling; but I thought perhaps you could talk it over with Uncle Kostia. I know he likes you and he might listen to you.”

I went, promising to do what I could.

When I knocked at the door of Uncle Kostia’s coupé it was late in the afternoon. The train rushed, and the dreary monotonous steppes receded, whirling past. Twilight was falling within and without. The candles had not yet been lit. Then the door of the coupé was pulled open and revealed Uncle Kostia sitting on the sofa, laboriously rubbing his eyes. I inquired if I had disturbed him. He assured me that I had not. He sprinkled some eau de cologne on his hands and rubbed his face⁠—a substitute for washing⁠—then made room for me on the sofa, and rubbing his eyes with his fists he yawned widely and looked at the window. The melancholy of the Siberian plain must have communicated itself to both of us. For a time we sat in silence, contemplating the unspeakable disorder of the coupé. I was about to frame an adequate sentence to open conversation when he preceded me.

“There!” he said, and struck his forehead with his palm. “And I am called a clever man. Andrei Andreiech, I have been thinking. I have been thinking a good deal these last days.” He stopped abruptly.

“What have you been thinking about, Uncle Kostia?” I asked.

“That’s just the trouble,” he said, “I can’t tell you.”

I waited.

“I don’t know myself,” he explained.

I still waited.

“I have been thinking of this and that and the other, in fact, of one thing and another⁠—precious but elusive thoughts, Andrei Andreiech. Beautiful emotions. A kaleidoscope of the most subtle colours, if I may so express myself. And, Andrei Andreiech, it has taught me a great truth. It has taught me the futility of writing.”

“But now really, Uncle Kostia,” I remonstrated.

“Don’t interrupt me,” said Uncle Kostia. “It is a truth that only ten percent, if that, of the substance of our thoughts and feelings can be transferred on paper. It can’t be done, Andrei Andreiech⁠—and that’s all there is to it.

“And when I think what a fool I have been, writing all these years, toiling, slaving at a desk like a clerk⁠—when I ought to have been thinking, only thinking.”

“But, Uncle Kostia⁠—” I began.

“Andrei Andreiech, it’s no use. How can I write down what I think? The subtlety, the privacy, the exquisite intimacy, the thousand and one inexplicable impulses that prompt and make up thought and stir emotion.⁠ ⁠… Andrei Andreiech, how can I? Think! how can I? Oh, you are hopeless⁠ ⁠… hopeless!⁠ ⁠… Today I have been thinking. It will seem nothing to you if I tell you; it will seem nothing to me if I tell it; but, believe me, it was something infinitely deep, infinitely complex, infinitely beautiful just when I thought of it⁠—without the labour of exertion.”

“What was it, Uncle Kostia?” I inquired.

“It was vague,” he said evasively.

“Oh, come, Uncle Kostia?”

“How can I tell? I know too much.”

I was aware of the unpleasant shrinking of ideas when set down on paper. So I persisted:

“Come on, Uncle Kostia! out with it!”

“Well,” said Uncle Kostia, and his face became that of a mystic. “I thought, for instance⁠—I wonder if you will understand me?⁠—I thought: Where are we all going?”

“Hm,” I said significantly.

“I thought: Why are we all moving?”

“You have not far to seek for motives,” said I. “I presume there are motives in each case.”

“Motives!” he cried. “That is the very point. There are no motives. The motives are naught. It is the consequences. Where are we going? Why are we going? Look: we are moving. Going somewhere. Doing something. The train rushes through Siberia. The wheels are moving. The engine-drivers are adding fuel to the engines. Why? Why are we here? What are we doing in Siberia? Where are we heading for? Something. Somewhere. But what? Where? Why?”

I think I must have misunderstood Uncle Kostia’s subtle thoughts. Or was it that my commission was continually in my mind? But I asked him:

“Is it that you are doomed by your sense of inutility, Uncle Kostia?”

His eyes flashed. He spoke impatiently: “My inutility! Your inutility! What the devil does it matter whose inutility? Is your Admiral very utile, may I ask? What I was saying was that we all behaved as if we were actually doing things, boarding this Trans-Siberian Express as if in order to do something at the end of the journey, while actually the journey is in excess of anything we are likely to achieve.”

But I thought I would keep him to the point, that is to say, my point. “Then would you rather not travel in this train, Uncle Kostia?”

An anxious look came into his eyes.

“Why? I like travelling in this train. I am comfortable.”

“But the futility of it?”

“Oh!” groaned Uncle Kostia at my stupidity. “Can’t you understand that it is the very fact of this physical futility that inflates me with a sense of spiritual importance?”

I looked at him with a blank expression.

“When I am at home⁠—I mean anywhere at a standstill⁠—I am wretched intolerably. I write and I think⁠—” He stopped.

“What?”

“What am I writing for: what on earth am I thinking for?”

“So you have doubts?”

“Yes, at moments I am seized by misgivings: what is it all for? I ask.”

“I see.”

“Now it is different. We are moving, apparently doing something, going somewhere. One has a sense of accomplishing something. I lie here in my coupé and I think: It is good. At last I am doing something. Living, not recording. Living! Living! I look out of the window, and my heart cries out: Life! Life! and so living, living vividly, I lapse into my accustomed sphere of meditation, and then before I know exactly where I am I begin to meditate: Where are we all going to? Isn’t our journey the kernel of absurdity? And so, by contrast, as it were, I gain a sense of the importance of meditation.⁠ ⁠… That is how we deceive ourselves, Andrei Andreiech.”

“And you can do it in spite of being conscious of the deception involved?”

“I have been unconscious of it,” he said, “until you forced me into introspection.”

Then, after a pause, I was tickled into inquiring:

“Why don’t you⁠—er⁠—publish some of it, eh, Uncle Kostia?”

Uncle Kostia grabbed his beard into his fist and looked at me with pity rather than with scorn and made a movement as if he was going to spit out of sheer disgust, but evidently thought better of it. “You have a front of brass,” he said. “I cannot penetrate it.”

“Look here, Uncle Kostia,” I cried impatiently, “you must be reasonable and think of poor Nikolai Vasilievich. He can’t go on supporting everybody.”

“He hasn’t said anything, has he?” he asked anxiously.

“No⁠ ⁠… but.⁠ ⁠…” I paused to enable him to say the obvious.

“He wouldn’t,” said Uncle Kostia. “He is wonderful. I admire him.”

I returned to my coupé. It was evening now and the lights were lit. Dismal forests stretched over hundreds of versts. I lay back and the ideas let loose by Uncle Kostia set to work in my mind. And I thought: Where are we heading? Why? What is it all for? And then I thought of the war with its hysterical activity; I pictured soldiers boarding trains, to return to the front; the loading of ships with war matériel; the rush in the Ministry of Munitions. I thought of the Germans seething with energy in just the same way; and I contrasted in my mind this hustling activity, this strained efficiency with the pitiable weakness in the intellectual conception of the conflict, and I understood that the man had been essentially right, that our journeys were in excess of our achievements. Our life was an inept play with some disproportionately good acting in it. Then, as I dreamed away, I heard Fanny Ivanovna talking to somebody in the adjoining coupé. I pulled my door open and I could now hear her voice distinctly. I listened. I was vastly tickled. I wondered to whom it was that she was telling her autobiography. Then I heard occasional expressions of assent in Sir Hugo’s trim and careful Russian. I leaned forward, the incarnation of attention.

“He would come to me in the evening and say, ‘Fanny, I don’t know what I would do without you.⁠ ⁠…’

“He came to me one evening in April and said, ‘Fanny, I must speak to you very seriously.⁠ ⁠…’

“ ‘It is love, this time, real love. I thought that I had loved, I had loved, you, Fanny, but this is the love that comes once only, to which you yield gloriously, magnificently, or you are crushed and broken and thrust aside.⁠ ⁠…’ ”

I felt my heart beat violently within me. I waited for Sir Hugo’s detailed cross-examination; but indeed there was little of it. Only once, when Fanny Ivanovna referred to Nikolai Vasilievich’s wife did Sir Hugo stop her with an apology, to inquire “Which wife?”

The train rushed through the autumn night; the windows now were black and revealed nothing. Interlacing with the din, squeal and rattle of the wheels, now and then my ear would catch familiar fragments of the monologue.

“ ‘Nikolai!’ I cried. ‘Du bist verrückt⁠ ⁠… wahnsinnich!⁠ ⁠…’

“I cried and he cried with me.⁠ ⁠…

“ ‘Think of the children, Nikolai! They are your children.⁠ ⁠…’

“I said to him: ‘I shall wait till you pay me off. I shall not leave otherwise.’ ”

I felt indeed I was on the summits of existence. Why should I be treated to such stupendous depths of irony? There beyond the clouds the gods were laughing, laughing voluptuously. I could not sit still. With all my heart I craved to have a peep, if only at Sir Hugo’s face. I thought I’d give my life to know what was his verdict on the situation. Noiselessly I stole into the corridor, and bending forward with infinite precaution, I peeped at the interior of the coupé. They sat next each other. Under the shaded light projected the ruddy weather-beaten face of Sir Hugo. Sir Hugo looked⁠—how shall I describe it?⁠—he looked as if he thought it was a case of damned bad staff work.

The train rushed on, noisily swaying through the silence of the night. I went back to my coupé, and passing Uncle Kostia’s kennel I overheard the finale of what must have been a frantic theological discussion between Uncle Kostia and the General. The General, drunk, his fundamental principles of faith all uprooted and scattered in disorder about the coupé, furious, with hair dishevelled, cried out to Uncle Kostia:

“Well, is there a God, or is there no God?”

“How do I know?” snapped Uncle Kostia angrily. “Go away!”