‘We had not thought of that, Marthe,’ said Mademoiselle Berthe.
‘No,’ said Mademoiselle Marthe. ‘We shall try. It was an amiable little stylo, though it did not fill. I kept it, of course, for sentimental reasons, and because without possessions one ceases to exist.’
‘That,’ sighed Mademoiselle Berthe, ‘is the terrible, the terrifying possibility.’
‘We think,’ said Mademoiselle Marthe, ‘we ought to tell you we are Jewish.’
The Demoiselles Bloch offered this fact as if it were breakable. They tiptoed tenderly in button boots.
‘It is perplexing,’ said Mademoiselle Berthe. ‘When we were younger we were told to fear the Communists. Now we have learnt it is the Fascists. What are you?’
‘I have never really stopped to think,’ said Theodora.
And now the sun on her eyelids disposed her to believe that this was the desired state.
‘That is dreadful!’ said Mademoiselle Berthe.
‘It means you are a crypto-something,’ sighed Mademoiselle Marthe. ‘However. Shall we go in to lunch? There is always food and conversation. The amiable little stylo that I received from the President of the Republic is proof that these can overcome even racial prejudice.’
Now the Demoiselles Bloch began to knit their way between the thorns. They scattered smiles. Because they were grateful, they were grateful for the privilege of living, amongst the iceplant and the crown-of-thorns. Following them, Theodora felt in her the opening of many old wounds. She could not altogether allow the behinds of elderly Jewesses a monopoly in suffering, though admitting that these have a propensity peculiar to themselves.
‘I hope, Marthe,’ said Mademoiselle Berthe, ‘that there will be sardines to assist your theory. But the General may have finished them.’
‘I have gathered the General is fond of sardines,’ said Theodora.
‘The General is fond of everything that he does not hate.’
Now, licking his large fingers, alone at his inadequate table, for this must be the General, Theodora knew, he belched rather loudly as the Demoiselles Bloch apologized to the salle à manger for their presence and their intention of eating food. Released from the Blochs, Theodora sat apart, under the orders of le petit who moved between the tables, silent, but with all the insinuation of the many stale tangoes he had sung.
‘Un, deux, trrr-ois,’ called Henriette, the leather voice, through the hatch.
It appeared that she would cry soon. Her tongue had swelled.
‘Il n’y a pas de pâté de fois gras de Strasbourg?’ asked the General.
‘Non, je vous dis, il n’y en a pas. Il n’y en a jamais. Qu’est-ce que vous voulez? A prix fixel’
‘Merde!’ said the General.
‘I would like to remind you, General Sokolnikov, that there are ladies present,’ said the square woman with the girl.
‘Merde, merde, et mille fois merde!’ said the General. ‘Shame on Miss Grigg. A lady is a woman’s pis aller.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ said the square woman. ‘But there are some things that are not nice.’
‘Even my sister, a reasonable soul, and a spinster, whom I respected, God knows,’ sighed the General, ‘even my sister Ludmilla was not a lady. She took snuff, and spat in the corners, and wore boots like a Cossack under her long skirts.’
Theodora smiled. Because the General was expecting it. And because her boots rang hollow on the cold yellow grass, and in her armpit she felt the firmness of her little rifle.
‘But not all reasonable,’ the General said. ‘Religious too. She went on a pilgrimage to Kiev. She drank like a man. She said that it brought her face to face with God.’
‘Eat your lunch, Katina,’ said the square woman to the girl.
Then they began again to sit in the silences of their separate tables, between which le petit spun his own resentful, wavy pattern. Many unfinished situations complicated the surface of the dining room, or lay folded, passive, and half recognized amongst the table napkins. They had not yet given Theodora a big white envelope for her napkin, so that for the present she could remain detached, count the fishbones and the sighs of other people.
The General sighed as deeply and as endlessly as cotton wool, but when he smacked his lips, or sucked from his fingers whatever it was, the suction of rubber sprang into the room, out of his face, for this was rubber in the manner of the faces of most Russians. His lips would fan out into a rubber trumpet down which poured the rounded stream of words, which he would pick up sometimes and examine through his little rimless spectacles. Theodora saw all this after the soup. She saw, in particular, the ring, formed by gold claws and a deep, guilty ruby, that held his tie, pushed through like a napkin.
After he had sighed a lot and counted his prawn shells several times, the General wrote Theodora a note:
Madame,
Physical geography is deceptive. I advise you, therefore, not to explore my face. The others, and particularly Mrs Rapallo, will tell you I am mad, a charlatan, a boor, a drunkard, a sensualist, and an old man. Admitting to something of all these charges, I throw myself on your sympathy and understanding, which I can sense across the dining-room, and suggest that some time we discuss each other. I would hand you my soul on this plate if it would do either of us good.
Alyosha Sergei Sokolnikov
Le petit brought to Theodora the General’s note, which was written distinctly on an envelope, as well as in the eyes of several ladies. Le petit dropped this message with considerable graceful scorn. She could see the canker of the rose mouth, the angry blaze of brilliantine. Though not for her alone. Across the distance she could see also the swelling ducts of Henriette, as she gathered prawn shells from other people’s plates. The prawn shells rustled and creaked, rustled and creaked. In the hands of Henriette the dream became a purgatory. For choice she would have worn the body of a tango, sleek and supple, violet-scented. She would have sat in chairs of which the flesh returned the pressure of her thighs. But Henriette was the everlasting vache. Stung by the example of the General’s gadfly note, she breathed, and shifted weight, but she still failed to dissolve le petit in the melancholy of her cow eyes.
‘Ah, j’ai mal au coœur,’ lowed Henriette.
‘Tête à claques!’ le petit murmured. ‘Où sont les bouchées à la reine?’
Through so much business, of dialogue and forks, the General’s note still floated. Its madness shocked the room into an appearance of reality, in which tables and chairs assisted the rite of eating, and the bamboo étagère had never stood any nonsense. Tufted with sparse palms, the upright structure of the étagère made the reasonable Ludmilla more distinct. Though even she had disappointed, taking God too often from the cupboard, and tramping the roads to Kiev. Theodora felt disconsolate. Under her hand the General’s madness was waiting for an answer. She remembered the days, before Ludmilla, when behaviour was more or less predictable. That is, she liked to think she could remember, but she suspected the only certainty is death.
So she took out her fountain pen, which was a travelling present from the boys, and holding it rather upright, wrote:
It should be quite simple. We could meet in the lounge, or the garden, whichever you prefer. I look forward with the greatest pleasure to a chat.
T. Goodman
Mademoiselle Berthe coughed away the silence.