“You do not dance?” the paying guest inquired on our being introduced. “Why?”
“Andrei Andreiech is smitten,” said Madame Olenin.
“Ah! … Iz zas so … zzz … ?”
“Has lost his heart to Nina.”
The paying guest chuckled and picked his teeth. “Ah! … Iz zas so?” he said and sucked his breath in “… zzz …” as Japanese do in their politeness. “Ah! … Very nice! Very nice!”
“Andrei Andreiech wants to marry her,” continued Madame Olenin.
“Ah! … Iz zas so? … zzz. … Very nice! Very nice!”
“But she doesn’t want to,” I said.
“Ask her,” she said.
“I have asked her. She won’t.”
“Well, you ask her again.”
“How many times?”
“Never mind how many times. Go on asking her. If you go on at it long enough any woman will give way. You go on asking her. Or else marry our little Olya, our little football. You’ll suit each other well.”
The paying guest chuckled loudly and picked his teeth.
She was trifling, trifling with a serious question, and I smiled, as one smiles on these occasions—an economic and reluctant smile.
I learnt that one of the veteran grandfathers had died a month ago; the other was alive. He sat and frowned before him, and little Fanny seemed to shun his frown each time she passed him in the dining-room. I spoke to him and found that he would not admit that any revolution had ever taken place in Russia. “Nonsense,” he kept saying. “Nonsense. In France there has been a revolution. But this is Russia. This is not France.”
“But—but what of the Bolsheviks?” I asked.
The antiquated veteran suddenly relapsed into a fit of anger. “I’ll show these Bolsheviks!” he threatened. “I’ll make them dance! I’ll stand no nonsense! Not I! They’ll soon see the man they’ve got to deal with! They’ll get short shrift from me, I can tell you! I’ll show these Bolsheviks! I’ll make them sing! …” The feeble old man was seized by a violent fit of coughing. His body shook and reeled, and his vain threats only emphasized the wretched impotence, the piteous weakness of his senility. Madame Olenin came to his rescue and beat him on the back to alleviate his coughing and prayed him not to talk of the wicked Bolsheviks as it was injurious to his health, but even through his coughing, choking hopelessly, he threatened angrily: “I’ll show these Bolsheviks! I’ll make them sing! … these Bolsheviks! I’ll make them dance!” and then again relapsed into a violent fit a of senile coughing.
Uncle Kostia, as I went to him, was sitting on the sofa, unshaven and unkempt, in the dim and dreary light of early evening. An empty glass of tea stood on the table. “They are dancing,” he said, with a strange gleam in his eye. “Let them dance. They think I am useless. Let them think. They’ve been complaining of me?”
“Who, Nikolai Vasilievich?”
“No, he wouldn’t. I respect him. The others. I know they have. It’s life’s own joke that its superior humanity is not good enough for their inferiors. To the superior humanity the provocation is past a joke, I can tell you; to the inferior, the situation is just a matter of fact; so whose is the joke unless it is life’s own? Life is like that. Here am I—writing away unselfishly. Heaven only knows if what I write will be published in my lifetime. Then, years afterwards, they will read my books; they will think of me, wonder how I looked and spoke and felt. And I won’t know. …”
“Yes. But to dwell prematurely on the sadness of one’s death to others, Uncle Kostia, is like asking for money in advance. It’s commercially unsound.”
Then, as our talk continued, I became aware of awful symptoms of Uncle Kostia’s condition. Uncle Kostia assured me positively that he had never had a father: that he was the son of his grandfather. And when I pointed out that the omission seemed to me to err a little on the side of the extravagant, he replied quite earnestly that he did not “see it.”
V
Such pitiful, heartrending scenes as this became a frequent occurrence. Each of the three sisters walked arm in arm with each of the “three brothers,” and I trailed alone behind them, a kind of tutor, with a heinous sense of my three months’ voyage ripening into a grievance. A poor thing, sir, but mine own! The three sisters, escorted safely home, would cry out from the house steps, “Good night, Brothers!” The “three brothers” then would answer, “Good night, Sisters!” I alone said nothing. I felt that an additional “brother” might spoil the symmetry of the arrangement. The fact of the matter, as you will see, was that I was not one of the “three brothers.” That settled it.
A very similar situation would ensue at dances, those delightful dances of the American Red Cross. We, that is, the three sisters, the “three brothers” and I (the odd number), would drive down in an American Service limousine, rolling gently through the dark and gruesome streets, the mellow moon shining feebly on the muddy road. Next we entered that long draughty room in the Naval Barracks taken over by the American Red Cross. In a little while the three sisters reappeared in the room, looking the bouquet that they were, that big nigger band would blurt out its syncopated music, and they would slide away in the embrace of the “three brothers” and vanish in a paraphernalia of Allied uniforms, while I was reduced to being a “wallflower,” or else to dance with plump and heavy women, which after my experience with Nina felt very much like moving heavy chairs about the floor. It was idiotic to have travelled sixteen thousand miles to do this sort of thing! … That settled it.
I dare say it was my fault—but my somewhat inartistic intrusions on a party that was otherwise complete, began to tire Nina. She asked me to give up “pursuing” her. I resolved not to pursue her. I told her so. I kept telling her
