“But given a creed?”
“Not even your heathen Chinee could give me a creed. I am too tolerant.”
“I know,” said Toby. “I feel the same way. It’s the curse of our generation.”
“Yes. Well, at least you want a creed. You’re free of it to that extent.”
The boat was running through a silvery channel between thickets of pine and ash. Their eyes, undistracted by detail of colour and movement, rejoiced in the still shapes of the trees. Ahead of them stretched another sound, the open water shot with the faint tints of the midnight sky; beyond it was the black belt of forest starred with lonely points of light from the windows of summer cottages.
“When I left school,” said Toby, “I don’t think that there was anything at all which I felt to be wrong—except perhaps disloyalty and cowardice.”
“I don’t follow you,” Bendrihem said hesitantly. “Do you mean that was common?”
“Common? Well, I don’t know. Common among boys who thought for themselves at all. And perhaps the rest caught it later.”
“You see, we rejected all standards in the formative years,” Ottery explained, searching slowly and bitterly for his words. “Education was just a hypocrisy. I’m talking of men born about the turn of the century who were fourteen in 1914 and eighteen in 1918. Boys aren’t fools. What was the good of stuffing conventional religion and morality into us when we could see that blasted few adults were paying any attention to either? And of drivelling about preparation for life when we knew that the average life of an infantry subaltern was little more than a month? Even teaching us to speak the truth was a farce when we knew that everyone from the government to our schoolmasters was lying like hell. The war denied in practice all the values that in theory we were supposed to respect.”
“And then,” Toby added, “it didn’t even try our manhood, for it ended before we got into it.”
“You mean you were disappointed?” asked Bendrihem incredulously.
“Yes. The average boy was. It was the only object of our life.”
“Of course. It had to be so. Only I never realised it before.”
“Yes, a deadly mentality!” said Toby, understanding Bendrihem’s aversion. “But we were fine material in a way. By and large, we were the most independent thinkers the public schools ever turned out. I can’t answer for the boys who had the good fortune to be educated elsewhere, but they must have felt much the same.”
“Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow ye shall not die,” said Ottery. “Society expected us to enjoy ourselves. And, by God, we did! But they didn’t give us any other rights.”
“How could they?” asked Toby. “The men who had fought naturally had the first claim to all jobs.”
“I’m not resentful, old friend. I’m just stating a fact.”
“We most of us had to step off with the wrong foot,” Toby said. “But so did the demobilised men.”
“True. But they had some standards to fall back on, and we hadn’t any. They had some reason for self-confidence. As you say, their manhood had been tried. Do you ever see any of your contemporaries to-day, Toby?”
“Not a damn one. My life’s been too much off the beaten track.”
“A discontented lot. Their wives bore them. Their children puzzle them, and they wonder why the devil they trouble to make money. Silent blokes, or like me—apt to cheer themselves up with noise and merriment. A lot of them are in gaol or running night clubs. They couldn’t accept other people’s standards and they hadn’t any of their own. And there are just a few who have come through to 1933 with a code that they have hammered out for themselves and no respect for anyone or anything. Jolly fellows when they don’t take to communism or yoga!”
“Muy nobles y muy brutos!” said Toby. “I wish I could meet some of them.”
“You’re a fair example, old friend.”
“I’m a lost soul, your reverence. I know what I’ll do under most given circumstances, but I don’t know why I do it.”
“A fallen angel trying his wings in the pit,” said Bendrihem softly.
“Inky wings! Bat’s wings!” chuckled Ottery appreciatively. “He does look like that. Or a Punch caricature of a revolutionary—except that his hair is short and he’s revoltingly well-fed.”
“I can’t help what I look like,” said Toby. “But I wish to God I knew what I am.”
“A messenger, I think,” answered Bendrihem.
“How do you mean?”
“A reformer, if you like.”
“But how the devil can I be when I haven’t any faith? All these Salvation Armies having a band competition from Los Angeles to Moscow don’t mean anything to me. They make me angry—so angry that I suppose you’re right. I’m a fanatic, and futile. The only international policy that appeals to me is communist, but I can’t accept the rest of their programme. I hate democracy, but the alternative is to be ruled by fascists or soap manufacturers, which is worse. I’m born and disciplined for a life of service, but what the hell shall I serve?”
“If ever you can answer that question,” said Bendrihem, “let me know.”
“I also will listen. And behold this man was a chartered accountant and a publican! Toby, give me something to believe in.”
“Why worry? I thank God for you as you are. You’re content to live in the world and enjoy it.”
“I?”
The blank surface of his life descended around Mark Ottery, making him see his companions as one fly might behold two others through the impassable mystery of a window-pane. Toby knew, but Toby forgot. It was curious that men who found no problem in sex should assume so entirely its unimportance. There was no bridge, it seemed, between the men who ignored it and the men, like himself, who desired to ignore it and succeeded in doing so only by continuous effort. Their words were alike; their thoughts as far apart as thoughts could be.
Live in the world and enjoy it! As if he could ever enjoy it unless he were unconscious of anything but the columns of figures in a book, or surrendering willingly to the first streams of wine that mingled with his blood. He longed to open his heart to Bendrihem. The man’s face promised that he could understand a personal revolt. But it was impossible to talk between three; one didn’t bore one’s friends. Some day, perhaps, at a quiet dinner in London—oh, damn it! Like an old whore spilling her troubles over a bottle of port!
“Give me to drink!” roared Mark Ottery. “Shiver my whiskers, lads! Pour me whisky wine!”
V
GREGORY VASSILIEFF
“Dear Sirs: I have your letter of October 20th,” dictated Mr Gregory Vassilieff. “It is no earthly use your telling me to protest Angelescu’s bills. He has had fourteen protested in the last two years. It is a habit of his. He considers a bill protested as a debt paid. I must remind you that I warned you not to do business with him. Contrary to what you think, I am not being bribed by him. I am trying to get for you as much of your money as I can. Angelescu has plenty. Kindly have the sense to let me get it out of him in my own way. Yours faithfully …
“There! Captain Eliot, you will be good enough to write that letter as I have dictated it.”
“I say, it’s rather strong, isn’t it?” remarked Captain Eliot, caressing his manly and prominent chin.
He was proud of his chin. A glimpse of its empire-building contours in the mirror helped him through bad times like a prayer to an immediately responsive god.
“No. It says exactly what I mean.”
“I don’t know what they’ll think, you know.”
“They’ll think I’m verrry rrude. But a verrry good agent.”
Vassilieff spoke fluent English with a strong Russian accent. His clipped vowels and clipped sentences were sudden as bursts of rifle fire, dominated by the rolling barrage of the r’s and the explosion of the s’s.
Captain Eliot was disgus
ted by his employer’s extraordinary correspondence. He had come out to Bucharest two years earlier on the invitation of an old schoolfellow who required his money and services for the development of an oil concession. Eliot had considered it rather bad form to investigate a man who had been captain of the eleven and thus found himself in a very foreign country without a cent and without—pending various lawsuits against his vanished partner—the permission of the police to leave. He took counsel with his chin, and on a genuine impulse of courage hired himself out to Rumanian businessmen as an English correspondent. They treated him with deference, letting him see that they appreciated the services of an English officer and gentleman, especially when they asked him, as they frequently did, to wait indefinitely for his fee.
Captain Eliot had been relieved when Mr Vassilieff offered him a whole-time job in his rapidly expanding agency business. He pictured himself instructing the Russian ex-colonel of artillery in English business methods, and listening respectfully to the reminiscences of one who had been a page at the court of his late Imperial Majesty the Tsar. On his very first day in Vassilieff’s office he had ventured to express his sympathy with the fate of the royal family, to which his employer had replied that they thoroughly deserved it; he added that he was a businessman and preferred to be addressed as “Mr” rather than “Colonel.” Captain Eliot at once put him down as an outsider, and ever since had congratulated himself on the accuracy of his first impression.
“Any more letters, Mr Vassilieff? Or shall I carry on with those?”
“That’s all. What about the toy man who called yesterday when I was out?”
“I said I’d telephone him as soon as you were free this morning. Shall I call him now?”
“What sort of man is he?”
“A sahib,” said Captain Eliot decisively.
“God! That is verrrry painful. I won’t see him.”
“Oh, you must!” Eliot protested in such a tone of conviction that Vassilieff was impressed in spite of himself. “He was at my old school. He noticed my tie at once.”
“Was he wearing one too?”
“No, he wasn’t, but—”
“Tell him I’ll see him if he’s here within twenty minutes.”
“I say, you know, he represents quite an important firm,” said Eliot.
Admittedly Mr Vassilieff was a busy man, but it was not very good form for a commission agent, and Russian at that, to lay down the law to a visiting representative.
“In that case he will probably be here within ten minutes, Captain Eliot.”
Toby Manning was actually at the agent’s office in a quarter of an hour, unconsciously putting Hanson & Crane in the sound middle classes of industry where it belonged. He greeted Captain Eliot with an affectation of comradeship and entered Vassilieff’s private room.
The two men instantly disliked one another. To Toby, Gregory Vassilieff was a tall, heavy-lidded barbarian with a barrack-room manner who would no doubt have dignity if dressed in Cossack uniform outside a restaurant, but was merely spare and savage in a grey tweed suit. To Gregory, Toby Manning was just another of these nice young company directors with no languages, a distrust of all foreigners and an out-of-date price-list.
They shook hands. Toby sat down and talked on casual subjects for five minutes, following the courteous Mediterranean custom of not approaching business until some sort of personal contact had been established. Vassilieff listened impatiently, cursing the sheer incapacity of these moneyed idiots in business to come to the point.
“I am looking for an agent,” Toby began at last. “The British Chamber of Commerce told me—”
“That I am honest, experienced and energetic, but have little capital,” Vassilieff interrupted. “Did they also tell you that I was difficult?”
“Since you seem to have seen their report …”
“Of course I’ve seen it. Have Hanson & Crane ever done business in Rumania?”
“Not yet. But we think the right man could find a market.”
“That’s what you all say. Listen, Mr Manning! I am a commission agent in a country where no importer pays a debt unless he is compelled to. The government’s policy—deliberate, you understand me—is to help him to avoid payment. Half my day is taken up collecting money. The other half I argue with the Exchange Control Commission. I find a third half to sell. I have no time for futile correspondence, and I cannot undertake to teach you how to run an export business.”
“If you mean that you will kindly refrain from teaching us how to run our business,” replied Toby shortly, “we shall also refrain from teaching you how to sell. The only question that interests me is—can you?”
“I can.”
“Our business is not big. You won’t be dealing with government tenders. Small shops, stationers, fancy goods and the like—those would be your customers. Frankly we want to feel secure. That is why I have come to you. But a little Jewish commission man would probably do more business.”
“You think so?”
“I do think so.”
“Why?”
“Because you may find it distasteful.”
Both of them had slightly raised their voices, and were enunciating their words with peculiar and offensive clarity.
“I have a wife, Mr Manning, and expensive tastes. They have to be satisfied. I prefer kissing the backsides of shopkeepers”—Gregory blew a juicy and sardonic kiss at the office door—“to driving a taxi or running a cabaret. What commission do you pay?”
“Twenty-five per cent.”
“It is enough to pay for my kisses,” said Vassilieff with mock humility. “I am not an English sahib. I cannot afford to find anything distasteful.”
“God damn and blast you!” Toby exploded, jumping to his feet. “Do you suppose I should stand here listening to your impudence if I wasn’t paid a fat salary to do it?”
Gregory Vassilieff stood up behind his desk and stared at his visitor. He overtopped him by a good two inches. For a second, tense with anger, they held each other’s eyes, resenting, down to the last photographic detail, the stranger’s personal appearance. To Toby it was offensive that a damned oriental with high cheekbones, narrow eyes and a Mongol mouth should arrogate to himself a fine European forehead and the iron-grey, neat moustache of a British general. To Gregory it would have given the utmost pleasure to plunge his fist into that reserved, well-mannered face that, simply owing to a little flare of temper, actually dared to put on the flame and intelligence of an angry Latin.
“I say!” said Captain Eliot, pushing open the door. “I say! I couldn’t help hearing. I mean it’s not playing the game, Manning. Vassilieff doesn’t quite understand us, you know. You must make allowances—”
“Oh, get out, you bloody fool!” snapped Toby.
Gregory Vassilieff loosed a full-throated Russian shout of laughter, throwing wide his arms in a gesture of welcome that deprived his mirth of all suspicion of malice. Toby smiled faintly, embarrassed, his ebbing anger struggling with the desire to smile an apology for having sworn at the other’s employee. Then as Vassilieff rocked and roared, the flimsy and conventional office furniture trembling under the diapason of his voice, he too began to chuckle. Why, he did not know. It was not merely that he had caught the infection. It was a complex enjoyment of his spiritual unity with the Russian, of the absurdity of their common distrust, of Captain Eliot’s outraged face as he closed the door.
Vassilieff had the Russian genius for leaping straight into a human relationship and ignoring such non-essentials as words. He accepted Toby as instinctively as one war-worn tomcat, after the preliminary spittings, might accept another, transforming, without any reason apparent to the onlooker, furies rampant into kittens playful.
“Foolishness! Foolishness!” shouted Vassilieff, waving his hand around the cheap little office. “Come! Let us sell toys until we are sane!”
Captain Eliot ignored them as they passed through the outer office. He would have liked to report them to some headmaster or commanding officer. As there was none handy, he mentally composed a biting letter to the Daily Mail on the behaviour of English representatives abroad.
“Back at one,” said Mr Vassilieff.
“I shall hold the fort,” answered Captain Eliot coldly.
Toby spent that morning and the two following days visiting prospective customers with Gregory Vassilieff. The Russian was the best agent he had yet engaged. He already handled water-colour paints, tennis rackets and balls, and portable gramophones, and thus knew the financial standing, personal habits and first names of the merchants who were likely to lay in a stock of English toys. They were all Jews. That neither concerned nor intimidated Gregory Vassilieff. He was out for business and he cared no more than a cross-legged merchant in a Bokhara bazaar with whom he did it. His customers understood and even admired his frankness. Far from fawning on them in the ingratiating manner he had described, he bullied them, dominated them, praised the beauty of their daughters, had the latest political scandal at the tip of his tongue and went out of his way to do them a good turn. He had made himself a reputation for fairness and courage, and did not hesitate to back his customer against his principal if he considered the customer to be right. Toby was amused by the shopkeepers’ attitude to Mr Vassilieff; it was evident that they both dreaded and looked forward to his visits. He fascinated them.
On the fourth day they worked their way down the Calea Victoriei and up the Strada Lipscani, in the first impeded by mincing officers flaunting undrawable swords that were cast in one piece with the scabbard, in the second by minor financiers who, having bought something intangible at one end of the street, were rushing wild-eyed to the other end to sell it. Five lengthy calls produced one order. That made altogether twenty-three calls and six orders. Gregory was pleased that the Englishman understood that it was not a bad result for a first round of visits. Most of them didn’t; but then most of them could not talk to the customers. This man seemed equally at ease in French and German.
The Third Hour Page 14