A very tall Tzigane with a shock of grizzled hair suddenly came to life and, picking up his guitar, began to sing on a long, drawn-out howling cry which cut across the smoke-filled room like a whip lash. With that one note the desolation of the steppes and the sound of a lone wolf in the forest closed round us, silencing the supper table chatter. I shivered, terror and pleasure struggling for place. Now the rest of the choir joined in, dutifully at first, but soon becoming one with their music, they flung the refrain at us, or relapsed into brooding minor chants where their harsh voices seemed to break with all the anguish of the world. Although they remained rigid, stony-faced, some of the women now began to sound another note, singing with a piercing sweetness and tenderness which I was to discover years later, was something belonging to the Russian Gipsies alone. Spanish Gipsies, however fiery their flamencos, however melancholy their Arab cadences, would never sound this particular note of heartbreak.
Had I thought these Tziganes without magic? Now I understood the Traveller’s descriptions of their magnetism, of whole nights and days and nights again, spent among them; of whole fortunes dissipated for their music. Now I understood the spell they cast over Pushkin and Dostoievsky, the young Tolstoy and so many more. Here in the stuffy little room there was no more time or thought – only feeling. Ten minutes to four said the phosphorescent dial of a waiter’s wrist watch, as he settled another bottle of champagne into its ice-bucket. I realized with pride that I had never stayed up so late before.
The Traveller was silent, listening raptly, as if drugged. From time to time he roused himself and threw me a crumb of companionship or explanation. ‘Russian enough for you here? Yes – it’s the real thing, as regards the Tziganes . . . Listen! This is one of their most famous old songs . . . You kissed my dark shoulders and I loved you for evermore. Mmm. No doubt she did. Not everyone admired a sunburnt skin when that was written. Your sort of sugar-icing was much more à la mode then. I think I shall call you Rhodopé. It’s Greek: Rhodopis, rose-fleshed.’
It was the first time anyone had ever made an allusion to my flesh and I was overwhelmed. Growing up, I thought, offered the most fascinating possibilities.
The Traveller was speaking again, as if to himself: how curious, he said, that the Tziganes always held such a potent appeal for both the old merchant classes and the aristocracy – the Guards and the Princes – but never for the bourgeoisie.
‘Monstrous lot, anyway. It’s enough to make one dislike them more – as if more reasons were needed . . .’ His voice trailed off. Again that inward-turning stare I knew so well, and hated, for it shut him away where I could not follow. No doubt he was thinking Russia, thinking love – the loves he had known there, set to music by the Tziganes. The choir sang on, gathering momentum, intoxicated by their own rhythms. Tragic, desperately gay or haunting, they sang of the troïka which carried the lover to his mistress through a snow-storm: they sang of love ‘stronger than fire or the sun’, of the dark forest and the sleeping camp, of betrayals and partings: Sertzé, the Song of the Heart, and the Song of the Evening Star which had once moved Tolstoy to tears.
Perhaps my rapture was apparent to them, for now they came over to our table and repeated the ritual of offering champagne, but this time addressing themselves to the barishnaya – myself.
To whom shall we drink it? To whom shall we pledge it? they chanted.
‘They ask what you would like them to sing,’ prompted the Traveller and, overcome, I could think of nothing. For all my infatuation with Russia, I could only recall the most commonplace verses, Black Eyes, or, losing my head entirely, The Song of the Volga Boatmen, something to which I was never, in fact, attached, even when I heard Chaliapin sing it.
Seeing my confusion, the Traveller intervened: ‘I’ll choose for you,’ he said, and the Tziganes sang me The Black Shawl, Pushkin’s verses, and one of their most heart-rending melodies, all passions and partings.
It was past five o’clock. Grown as reckless on Gipsy music as champagne (though this was doubly intoxicating when the Traveller ordered it as champagneskoye) I joined him in a toast to the downfall of Mademoiselle Lavisse – and with another gulp, proposed a last toast: ‘Our Trans-Siberian journey!’
‘Kama matout!’ said the Traveller abruptly, raising his glass to me, and smiling his sly teasing smile when I looked blank. ‘Kama matout! That’s Tzigane talk, my little Stupiditchka, and if you were more of a linguist, you’d know what it means!’
Or more of a woman, he might have added. Kama matout – I love you.
•
Perhaps it was the fabled spell of Tzigane music, but that night had, I think, decided both of us – he to seduce me, I to be seduced by him. Looking back, I consider the Traveller acted disgracefully, abusing every canon of honour. He not only seduced a minor, but the daughter of old friends who had entrusted her to his care while abroad. Yet neither of us had the slightest qualm, nor were we ever found out. The Traveller conducted the whole affair with what was, I suspect, practised care.
We were walking dreamily along the empty rain-washed streets towards my hotel when he stopped, swinging me round, looking at me in his curious, intent manner, reaching and reading my mind, behind my eyes.
‘Pussinka moiya – d’you want me to love you properly – improperly, I should say?’
‘You mean . . .?’
‘What else d’you think I mean, Stupiditchka?’ He was kissing me now, wooing kisses, but I was already won – undone. ‘And don’t start asking what Mademoiselle Lavisse would say – she’d be speechless.’
I too was without words. My dream and my wish, the core of all my romantic longings was suddenly before me waiting to be fulfilled. Now I was not sure what I wanted, what I felt, except that the street and the sky and my head spun dizzily. The chimney pots, the Paris attics, the tree tops, the Traveller’s face were all whirling round in fair-ground confusion. Gradually, they spun slower and came to a standstill, and I found myself walking along the same street once more. But it should have been a Russian street . . . I sighed, thinking of my old fantasy – the Trans-Siberian honeymoon. The Traveller read my sigh.
‘Yes, I know, you want us to be in our train – but that’s impossible . . . As a matter of fact, I think you’re in love with the train – not me . . . Wait, though . . . You’ve given me an idea . . .’ A curious look of elation passed across those generally inexpressive features. ‘Pussinka moiya! You shall be ruined in a train! We’ll turn it into the Trans-Siberian . . .’ He looked at his watch. ‘Six o’clock. I can’t imagine what sort can be running at this hour – nor where they are going. One thing is certain. I absolutely refuse to ruin you on a workmen’s train . . . O Pussinka moiya, my angel child, if only you knew how wonderful it is to steal a march on time! You ought to be older – I ought to be younger . . . tant pis! We’ve won. We’ve tricked time. To Siberia!’
He pushed me into a passing taxi and told the driver to go to the Gare de Lyon via the Rue de l’Arcade.
‘For my luggage?’ I was clutching at straws now, swept along by the racing tides of my desires.
‘Don’t be ridiculous – we’re not eloping. And you don’t need clothes for this sort of thing. On the contrary. I’m going to leave a message for Mademoiselle Lavisse.’
‘What on earth are you going to tell her?’
‘Quite simple – that we left early for a day in the country with old friends I met at the Cathedral last night – an unexpected invitation – interesting for you to visit their historic château – knew she’d agree. We didn’t want to disturb her so early. You’ll see, it will work out perfectly.’
And so it did. We caught a rapide to Dijon which was almost empty and soon, with the rustle of a lavish tip, the contrôleur was persuaded to lock us in our compartment. The Traveller snapped down the blinds in a business-like manner. ‘We are in the Trans-Siberian,’ he announced, with finality, and set out to convince me. Locked in with love and caviare . . . the perpetual day-dream . . . There was n
o caviare, although we had tried to get some at the station buffet, but there was love – all love. My childish imaginings merged with the present, the urgent, brutal and obsessive kingdom of the flesh which was now revealed to me. There were no more hesitations, no doubts nor any terrors. Only loving, only happiness.
‘Kama matout,’ I whispered, but my words were lost in the roar of the wheels.
So we loved, as the train hurled itself across the flat fields of France, that should have been the Steppes and, to me, seemed so.
The Traveller reached out and jerked up the blind of an outside window.
‘I want to see you in daylight – at your age you don’t need pink-shaded lights and all that fiddle-de-dee.’
I lay on the prickly red velvet banquette watching the telegraph poles and signal-boxes rushing past above my head. Grey streaks of poplar that should have been birches; rain that should have been snow. But it no longer mattered. The Chinese-yellow head came closer. The slit eyes stared down, as inscrutable as ever, but the harsh voice was soft.
‘So – how do you like being ruined in a rapide, my funny little Nursery Traveller? Don’t bother to tell me. You look remarkably happy. But then you never did have any sense of moral values – that and a good digestion are two of your most endearing qualities . . . Now get dressed quickly! We’re almost there!’
We scrambled for respectability. As the Traveller fought with his tie and I groped under the seat for a stocking I saw the side-long eyes turned on me with a particularly sly gleam. ‘You know,’ he said ruminatively, ‘I always liked that bit in your great Duke of Marlborough’s journal when he returns from the wars and rushes at the Duchess Sarah: “Pleasured my lady twice, with my boots on.” It’s so perfectly expressive of how one wants a woman. Women are different – they waste a lot of time subjugating their desires (and ours) to the setting and their appearance. Come here, Pussinka, come here this instant! I want you now!’
The train was slowing down, was sidling to a halt and had stopped dead before we collected ourselves. Crumpled and confused and suppressing hysterical laughter we emerged weakly on to the platform among the uproar of trolleys and scurrying figures.
‘We shall go to a hideous-looking hotel I know that understands comfort. The restaurant is excellent – renommé all over France. We shall sleep until tea-time, and then we’ll see,’ said my lover.
He took two rooms, escorted me to mine, ordered me a café complet and expressed the hope that I would sleep well.
Now launched on the path of depravity I felt slighted – rejected, even, that no double-bed was forthcoming. The Traveller, as usual, read my mind.
‘Don’t be so greedy – all in good time. Besides – I can’t have you getting blasé; sleep now. Later – we’ll see.’
Later saw the Traveller in my room explaining that we were not in Dijon for tourism, so it was unreasonable of me expecting to visit the city.
‘What d’you want to see – the mustard factory? Look out of the window – you can see the Cathedral quite well from here: it’s nothing extraordinary, in my opinion . . . We’ll go down and have a splendid dinner presently.’
Meanwhile, trains thundered and flashed past the windows. Signals fell with a shattering clang, whistles blasted, porters yelled, steam puffed angrily. The whole hotel seemed to rock, like the trains, for it was built beside the station, sharing and having its whole being within that of the S.N.C.F. But it was supremely comfortable, its crimson carpeting and white antimacassar-trimmed plush arm-chairs echoing the décor of the train; and, as the Traveller pointed out, the beds were as excellent as the restaurant. He studied the impressive menu long and silently, before ordering a meal composed largely of regional dishes.
‘This is a materialistic city. We are in a world of the senses,’ he said, falling-to with relish.
‘You are unromantic.’
‘Not at all. I’m practical. I’m not in Dijon every day. It’s a centre gastronomique. Besides, I don’t seduce girls in trains every day, either. Emotions need feeding. Pass that ravigote, will you? It’s particularly good.’
Mademoiselle Lavisse had been reached by telephone, earlier, her bleats of protest silenced by the Traveller’s flow of explanations. Such perfect weather – staying on another day, the Baronne simply insists. The gardens at their loveliest just now. It was, he added, such an opportunity for me to see something of French country life at its best. An unforgettable experience – here he had caught my eye. Yes, we should be back tomorrow evening. No, he couldn’t say exactly when – everything depended on the trains, he added, catching my eye again, and ringing off before she could ask our whereabouts.
We spent that night and all next day in Dijon, or rather, in the hotel, and I never succeeded in visiting the Cathedral or seeing anything of the city.
‘Time enough for tourism later in your life. First things first,’ said the Traveller, burrowing under a yellow satin eiderdown and inviting me to join him in his Mongolian yurt.
The magic of the Run-Away Game triumphed over the shunting uproar of the near-by goods yard and the conventional setting of a hotel bedroom. We were alone in the infinite snowy silence of the taïaga, listening to the soft thud of snow falling from a branch above us, to the crackle of a twig, as some unseen beast prowled near by.
‘I love you! I love you!’ Which of us spoke? The crescendos of passion are seldom suited to words, but our bodies spoke for us.
It was Siberia, it was a Mongol yurt, it was a troïka speeding through the forest, it was Gallantry Bower made perfect. It was how I had imagined love-making would be when, long ago, I had crouched beside the Traveller under the bracken fronds on a Devon headland. It was as I had always known our loving would be.
‘It will always be Gallantry Bower as long as we are together, shut away like this,’ said the Traveller when I reminded him of that first green hide-out. His voice sounded strange, and suddenly, there were tears in the dark, slit eyes. With one of his abrupt changes of mood he laughed sardonically. ‘Doucinka – d’you realize I’m a monster of depravity? I’m over forty and you’re under eighteen. You’ve turned me into an insatiable satyr.’
I opened my mouth to tell him I thought it a horrid way to speak of our love, but he cut me short.
‘Come here, you silly romantic miss, I can’t let you alone.’
CHAPTER VI
The following autumn I was sent to Italy. It was better than my first athletic prison, but I did not fit in there, among the girls who dreamed of a season, a husband, and two or three frilly babies. I had other ideas of adult life.
‘Finished? – that’s just about what you will be, if you stay there much longer,’ snorted the Traveller. He had come to see me, unheralded. One of the nuns was sent to fetch me from the library, a room darkened by cypress trees, where I was supposed to be reading Pater’s Renaissance, but was, in fact, revelling in a smuggled copy of Dumas’ Le Maître d’Armes and fancying myself as the French-born heroine who follows her lover to Siberia – Dumas’ worst book and a libel on the truth, according to the Traveller, to whom every aspect of the Dekabrist tragedy was sacred.
‘There is a signor waiting for you in the parlour,’ she said. ‘Your mother has written that you may go out with him.’ It could be no one else, I knew, although I had not seen him for nearly a year, and I rushed through the icy stone corridors and into the parlour, to find him telling Sister Maddalena that Tamerlaine’s twelfth ancestor was said by the Mongols to have sprung from the immaculate conception of a virgin.
‘Nothing like your Virgin of course,’ he added, anxious to avoid causing Sister Maddalena any possible offence. She smiled at him serenely, knowing there had been no wish to offend, and so left us, sailing away under the wide white coif.
As we walked through the olive trees, towards the gates, we passed Luigi, the old gardener, working among the tubs of oleander and box. He straightened himself to wish us a fortunate day. The sun shone overhead, as it usually did. But to me it now blazed in
tropical splendour. The Traveller stopped, listening intently.
‘Nightingales at noon! In October?’ he said, ‘. . . like the Krim’ – He always called this region, the Crimea, by its Russian name – Krim, which I thought far more exotic, besides having for me, no associations with the agonizing Crimean campaign, which haunted me by reason of an engraving I had once seen, where English men, and – oh, horror of horrors – innocent English horses, writhed and perished under Russian guns.
‘The Krim! Have you managed to go back there? What about the Fountain of Bakhtchisarai? And what about Siberia? Tell! Tell all!’ The Tuscan landscape faded, and I saw only Tartar bazaars, or the great steppes. The Traveller laughed. He seemed in a gay mood.
‘You never think of anything else, do you? Anyhow, today’s different. It’s here and now, and I’ve got a surprise for you.’ He looked slyly amused.
‘Something to eat, or to wear?’ I asked. Last Christmas he had sent me caviare and a muff.
‘Neither to eat or wear – rather to love or to hate,’ he replied, enigmatic as ever.
Outside the ornamental stone gates two young men sat on the balustrade overlooking the valley. One was about my age, I judged, the other a few years older. Both were unmistakable in their likeness to the Traveller, with the same dark, slanted, slit eyes, but with this difference – this welcome difference, I might have said, had not everything about the Traveller appeared irresistible to me – both young men had the thick, blue-black thatch of the Asiatic, plumage rather than hair. Both wore their overcoats as he did, flung over their shoulders in the manner of cloaks, which gave them a dashing air.
‘My sons,’ announced the Traveller.
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