Читать книгу The Silver Thorn: A Book of Stories - Hugh Walpole - Страница 6

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Captain Ford’s first impression was that ‘he couldn’t have believed there could have been such a country.’ Certainly the weather during the first days towards the end of September was not propitious. It rained very often; the mud rose higher and higher in the streets; on many days a thick heavy pall hung over the place and everyone walked with bent shoulders as though they dreaded a blow. The houses seem to be made of papier-mâché, the towers of gold and blue and green were cheap and tawdry, and the noise of the clanging trams was deafening. The Isvoschiks splashed mud over Captain Ford’s trousers, and officious people were always attempting to take his coat, hat and stick away from him when he wished to retain them. No one walked on the right side of the street, church bells were always ringing when he wanted to slumber. At the Opera he was late and had to stand in the passage during a whole act, he tumbled continually over holes in the pavement, and was kept waiting in his bank two hours before they gave him his money.

‘I simply couldn’t have believed such a country possible,’ he said to himself again and again....

Then the Ivanoff family was like nothing that he’d ever known. Mme. Ivanoff herself, soft and fluffy and plump, with eyes that were always filling with tears, and the prettiest broken English, had been in the opinion of many English officers ‘a dear little woman.’ They wrote to her long after they had left her and told her that one day they would come back to live in Russia. She treasured their letters in a box that one of them had given her with ‘A Present from Brighton’ in red paint on the lid. But Captain Ford simply found her irritating. She was frightened with him, and when she gave him lessons in the morning lost her head, forgot her English and sometimes even her Russian.

‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand you,’ his moustache would say to her.

And she would stammer:

‘Oh! How say it in Engleesh? What is that word—yes? You know—’appy, merry, gay—no, not gay. Ah—Tak!’ and he would wait with a terrible patience, staring just over her head at the Ikon in the corner of the room.

Then she was certainly absent-minded and believed that good-nature was of more value than sharpness of intellect. She simply wanted life to be pleasant for everyone and was never happier than when six stout ladies of her acquaintance came early in the afternoon and played lotto with her until dinner-time. Her husband also wished life to be pleasant. He was an inventor who had, many years ago, had considerable success with a Patent Clip that held papers for you with an iron clasp above your writing-table. Since then he had invented many things—boot-polish, a new way of peeling oranges, a game with horses and counters, a book-rest and a collapsible chair that became an umbrella-stand when you had sat upon it long enough. Only the paperclip had been really successful, but he lived in great hope and was one of the most cheerful people in Moscow except at sudden moments of utter despair when he loudly proclaimed his disdain of God and told the cook (very much a friend of the family) that he intended to commit suicide before nightfall. He was a little man with a red moustache and large blue baby eyes—he was sentimental and absolutely credulous; he believed anything that anyone told him.

The children, Kostia, Anna and Vladimir, were just like other children, loved their parents but only occasionally obeyed them, made a tremendous noise, cried and laughed and sang. Kostia, however, was now a boy of fourteen and was beginning to regard life seriously, he read the newspaper, was often grave and silent and patronised his father. But the most remarkable member of the family was Uncle Anton, Mr. Ivanoff’s brother. Some people might have said that he was not quite right in his head, but all eccentricities were forgiven him for his ‘remarkable ideas.’

‘What kind of ideas?’ said Captain Ford suspiciously when Mme. Ivanoff first told him this.

‘Wonderful things,’ said Mme. Ivanoff, ‘about Russia, and God, and the Soul of Man.’

‘Really!’ was all Captain Ford said.

Uncle Anton was remarkable to look upon, a giant of a man with a long brown untidy beard, shaggy brown eyebrows and a mop of utterly uncared-for hair. He was dirty and shabby and sometimes not quite decent in his appearance. He ate his food in a horrible manner, blew his soup all over the table and gnawed bones in his hands like a savage. What Captain Ford thought of these things may be imagined—no consolation to him that Uncle Anton loved humanity and would walk a mile rather than tread on a worm—no consolation at all. But the worst of it was that Uncle Anton took, from the first, a great liking to Captain Ford. ‘Here was a proper man,’ he said, ‘a man to whom I can talk,’ and talk to him he did. It was one of Mme. Ivanoff’s hardest tasks to keep Uncle Anton out of Captain Ford’s room. ‘He has other interests,’ she would tell her brother-in-law. ‘He is different from us.’

‘All men are the same,’ Uncle Anton replied, smiling down upon her. ‘We are all brothers. My heart is warm towards him.’

Indeed, at first, the hearts of all the family were warm; they were prepared absolutely to make Captain Ford one of themselves. But Captain Ford did not like vodka, hated Schee, could not touch little cucumbers, and had a real terror of Rabcheek. He watched with paralysed fascination little Vladimir’s manner of mastication. Uncle Anton’s preoccupation with a chicken bone paled the soldier’s bronzed cheek.

Then he had never, at any time, been a great conversationalist. He had always distrusted talkers, and one of his favourite dicta was: ‘If you’ve got something you want to say, just think first as to whether it’s really worth while, you’re sure to find it isn’t.’ The Ivanoffs certainly never thought first. They said exactly what came into their heads, talking all together, screaming and shouting if necessary, happy and friendly and merry. Madame Ivanoff soon discovered that Captain Ford disliked noise at meal-times, and she did her best—but unfortunately her memory was short, she was easily excited, and her apologies afterwards seemed to give him very little pleasure. Other Englishmen had smiled at the noise and confusion. Captain Ford looked as though he were called on by his country to perform an especially hazardous and unpleasant duty. It was evident to anyone that he was not happy. There were many other little things. He wanted a cold bath every morning, and that should have been simple enough, but the taps were eccentric, the water was sometimes brown and thick, the catch would not fasten on the bathroom door (upon one occasion when the Captain was in his bath Uncle Anton entered, and, instead of retiring, proposed that they should have a bath together). Then there was the matter of ‘the wash.’ In England this was a perfectly regular affair. You sent your washing on Monday and received it back again on Friday; but here, whatever you might do or say, the ‘wash’ had its own habits and customs. Frequently the arrival of Prazniky would delay things for a fortnight or so. Masha would be sent to the laundry with orders to die rather than return without the Captain’s collars. Nevertheless, she did return without them; she had had a wonderful conversation with the head of the laundry—he was an agreeable man and hoped by next Tuesday or Wednesday to have discovered most of the Captain’s things.

‘You see what it is—on nas,’ said Mme. Ivanoff, smiling happily.

‘But, Good God!——’ cried the Captain.

He shut himself then into an impenetrable reserve, and the family regarded him with frightened eyes. He felt their terror and was irritated by it. He flung himself into the learning of Russian with a ferocity and pertinacity that was devastating. He was not very clever, but of an amazing doggedness. His accent was appalling, but he never made a mistake in grammar. It promised to be a dismal winter for the Ivanoffs....