Wilfred decided to explain the matter himself to Pavel. He had picked up a dozen or so words of Russian, his imaginative ear naturally selecting the words whose Russian sound seemed to him appropriate to their English meaning. Cobaka, the word for dog, for instance, printed on his retina as S’barker, made him feel that a high reputation as a linguist was not immeasurably beyond his reach. Poyezd, a train, too, was encouraging—it could be nothing else but a puffing thing.
“Listen—vot compromise-ski,” he cried, addressing Pavel urgently across the prostrate form of the mare. “Nyet poyezd—ufftermobile horosho. Ufftermobile, s’barker nichevo. Ufftermobile from Mi-san to Gensan. Then parry-hot,” (Parakhot was also obviously a steamer in his mind, which connected the name Parry with a coal merchant in London.) “Parry-hot s’barker nichevo. Parry-hot to Seishin. Then droshky. S’barker by this route completely nichevo. That’s my idea—take it or leave it, as Londoners say. Ufftermobile horosho, ah?”
Pavel straightened his back. His face was very happy and kind and running with sweat. Horses were the only selfless delight he knew. His chestnut eyes were soft—almost rapturous.
“Avtomobil horosho, ah?” his lips uttered vaguely in a benevolent, expressionless voice. After a moment, first the meaning and then the possibilities of Wilfred’s compromise-ski began to take shape in his mind. Intelligence seeped into his spellbound face. “Avtomobil … nu … da-da-da … horosho. …” On the word of approval he began to nod his head. The continued nodding of his head seemed to shake his natural complacent nature back into position, as a watch is shaken to start its ticking again. “Avtomobil … da-da-da … horosho …” He thought with pleasure that his daughter would appear to the neighbors to be scorning a mere train—leaving home proudly in a car.
“Good idea, isn’t it? Ufftermobile horosho, ah?” Wilfred insisted, much pleased.
“Horosho—horosho.”
“Horosho? Really horosho?”
“Horosho.” Wilfred clasped his hands together, congratulating himself. So like Russians, he thought, consenting to the most expensive, least practical, plan—without even inquiring what the expense would be. And all for the sake of a smelly dog. Still, who was he, Wilfred, to complain? He would travel grandly. The Korean motor proprietor spoke some Chinese, and perhaps would consider a small commission—but No—a guardian angel he would remain to the end. He looked round for more applause from the bride and bridegroom. But they were no longer there.
XIV
The Butters baby had proved to be twins, and there was so much extra sewing for Anna to do that she was obliged to take some home. Her stitching was poor; she did not mind; she was tired of other people’s children. She did not mind if every garment she made should fall to pieces on their superfluous bodies. She resented, too, being obliged to remain so much in the presence of her husband, whose melancholy and arid figure seemed to her now little more than a tiresomely deathless reminder of her disappointed motherhood. She said that her son was dead, she imagined him dead, but she knew that he was not dead. At the very root of her mind was the sane admission that there was no practical reason why he should not return in safety to Chi-tao-kou, with or without a wife. This root of common sense was planted deeply out of sight in her heart, however; aboveground flourished the branching growth of silly premonition and apprehension—a growth which she saw no reason to prune; and from this tangle had lately blossomed her entirely senseless determination to see her son’s bride through the distorting eyes of the dead Alexander—to call her Death, and to have no hope. This superficial, yet ardently nourished, hopelessness did not prevent her from taking her sewing every afternoon out on to the ramshackle porch of their house, which commanded a view of the street along which her son, if he returned, must come. The despair which ached continually, like a cramp, in her brain did not prevent her from thinking “I’ll make curd cakes the first evening, I think, and I’ll kill one of the last two chicks out of Old Speckly’s last brood but one. …”
Old Sergei was obscurely glad that his wife’s work now obliged her to spend more time in the house. Her presence was tempestuous, her words hardly ever kind. Nineteen years of marriage had made her so wary and contrary a bird that the little snares he spread to trip her into a complaisant word of approval or an appropriate and flattering grunt of agreement were always futile. He was never allowed to complete his sporadic gestures of preening himself. Still, even humiliation was better than silence—especially as there was no mocker at hand to witness his frequent humiliations. Somehow, in spite of Anna’s impatience, he felt safe with her, as one feels safe even in a rough straw bed after groping in a dark room. Wherever she sat, sewing, he sat near her, trying not to notice that she often moved petulantly away. From the porch, however, as he soon discovered, she would not move away; there, he—sitting just inside the
