‘I’m happy that you’re happy. It is so easy, my little one, to make you happy.’ I am full of tenderness for her.
‘I’m happy because you’ve taken me seriously and are treating me—I don’t know—as an equal. I’m far older than my age. People have often said so.’
You will always be my own sweet little girl, Alice. My lascivious child, my dreaming daughter-wife. I want the soft, sudden flesh, the sweet dunes, the little caves. The music of your shouts and your pleasure. I bite your neck, your throat, your shoulder. I will do whatever you want. I will say and become whatever you want, to keep you as I want you to be. This turn in her conversation begins to depress me. I ask her whom she would like to meet next. ‘That’s Van Geest, the banker, with Therese. And that, of course, is Count Belozerski. Our Lesbians are talking to Wilke, the jewel-thief. Would you like to meet him. He’s usually very grave and of course doesn’t talk much about his work.’ The salon is growing noisier, a trifle more boisterous. The General moves away from the fireplace beaming like a baby with Natalia on one arm and Aimee on the other, to sample the buffet. He is here, after all, to forget the War. There is champagne everywhere. The corks are a cannonade which mocks recent events. We banish Holzhammer and the doors are rolled back before we can approach the Russian novelist; the little ballroom is revealed where, on a curtained dais amongst potted palms, sits an all-woman orchestra. ‘How terrible,’ says the Princess as she sweeps past with her friend, 'that we should look to Vienna for our gaiety when she is presently causing us so much pain.’ And she and her lover boldly begin the dancing, to the applause of the others, who gradually begin to join them on the floor: by Clara and a scowling Stefanik, watching his feet and hers, Frau Schmetterling and the courteous Belozerski, by Alice and myself. ‘Ta ta ta, ta ta turn,’ shouts General von Landoff, spinning with Natalia. It is as if we are suddenly all much drunker. The real world is whirling silk and painted flesh, wine and perfume and flowers. Soon I am standing back and laughing as Clara dances with Poliakoff and Alice with Lady Diana. Skirts are lifted, ties are loosened, petticoats bounce in the warmth of the chandeliers. The orchestra is made up chiefly of middle-aged women, a little shabbily dressed, and respectable, but there are three young girls, all dark-complexioned and possibly sisters. It is the cellist who attracts my attention. She is as plump as the others but considerably prettier and playing with evident passion, her legs spread to accommodate her instrument, and her whole body swaying as she plies her bow, her eyes as rapt as a woman’s in the throes of love-making. Belozerski is talking to Natalia. ‘I had decided to visit the estate of a favourite old relative in the Ukraine,’ he says. ‘I’d spent most of my boyhood summers there but this was the first time I’d gone in winter. Earlier that year I received a pardon from St Petersburg so was no longer an exile, but by then had established a home in Paris and felt no great wish to uproot myself. However, this visit was as much to confirm my pardon as to satisfy curiosity about cousins and aunts and uncles, whom I had not seen in fifteen years. Most of the journey from the railway station was by troika, for it was snowing. I had forgotten how wide the steppe was. The snow was like a white ocean and trees stuck out over the horizon like the masts of wrecks. My wife, who is French, chose to remain behind so I was alone save for the old peasant who drove the troika. We were about half-way to the estate when memory suddenly came back. I have never experienced the like. It was a dream: I seemed to drown in recollections which were as vivid as the original events. I relived those summers, even as the sleigh moved rapidly over the snow, so by the time I arrived I was actually shocked to notice it was winter. The poignancy of that experience, my dear Natalia, is indescribable. It left me rather depressed. I mourned for lost opportunities and deeply regretted the ill-considered romanticism which had led me to take up the cause of nationalism. Yet I know my life has been worthwhile and far more interesting in Paris than if I had remained in the Kiev gubernia where I was born.’ He smiles wistfully. She smiles back in some astonishment, then turns to pour him another glass of champagne. Captain Mackenzie nods to me, on his way to speak to Count Stefanik. The Scotsman’s eye contains a kind of alert sweetness at odds with his battered and drug-ruined features. Alice and I join him. A scar causes his lip to curl in a sort of grin and his soft German, pronounced with a distinctive Scottish accent, is often impossible to understand. When one of us attempts English, however, it becomes plain that he is even less comprehensible in that language. He speaks enthusiastically with Rudolph Stefanik on the subject of balloons. He has seen them used for scouting, he says, and he has heard they had also been employed in the bombardment of Paris thirty years ago, although the Prussians had of course denied they had ever done anything so inhuman. He laughs. ‘Is Holzhammer denying the destruction of Mirenburg, I wonder? They are planning to dam up the river, apparently, and set it in a new course, so that we shall have no fresh water. Have you heard anything about that, von Bek?’ I have not. ‘I receive virtually no real news, captain. All we get here are fantastic rumours and a little gossip. We are a desert island. But you must be privy to a hundred revelations a night!’
‘I make it my business to hear nothing.’ He is almost prim. ‘It is necessary, I believe, to the rules of my particular trade. Confessors and the proprietors of opium-dens.’ He laughs. ‘We have something in common with lawyers, too.’
‘And doctors,’ says Alice.
Captain Mackenzie nods slowly. ‘And doctors, aye.’
Rudolph Stefanik moves his body in his clothes as if he is about to burst them and reveal a pair of wings. 'It would make good sense,’ he says. ‘If they were to dam the river. This whole campaign has been unprofessional. It causes needless suffering, both to troops and to civilians. The Austrians, of course, can be hopeless. I understood Holzhammer was trained in Prussia.’
‘Most of the Mirenburg officers received their schooling there,’ I tell him. ‘But they have had no practical experience. And the conditions are unusual, you will admit. Do you believe that Holzhammer has had as many desertions as they say?’
‘I was approached to find out. They wanted me to inflate the balloon and take her up on a fixed mooring. I refused. One shot would destroy my vessel—and me, for that matter. They are now talking of manufacturing their own airships. I said I would willingly give them advice.’ Stefanik smiles suddenly down on Alice. ‘As soon as this affair is settled I shall be only too pleased to take a pretty passenger into the sky and show her the world an angel sees.’ Her eyes are bright as they meet his. ‘Oh, I am not innocent enough, Count, to be able to see what an angel sees.’
‘But you are able to tempt as the devil tempted,’ I tell him, leading her away. He laughs. Voorman and Rakanaspya are deep in drunken conversation. Voorman is entertained by Rakanaspya’s seriousness. ‘The lure of this putrid sweetness!’ he exclaims. ‘How can you resist it?’
‘It is the lure of disease, of dissolution, of death—the yearning to absolve oneself of all political and moral responsibility,’ says the Russian earnestly. ‘It is often attractive to those who have had the strictest of upbringings, who display the greatest guilt about themselves and how they should conduct their behaviour in society. They are, indeed, guilty. Guilty of stealing from the poor. Guilty of creating wars and famines. They are responsible for murder and they come here to find a kind of death, a release, a punishment… He is a little incoherent. ‘They are the fathers of corruption!’ he concludes unsteadily.
Voorman giggles and turns to one of the floral displays. Lilies, lilies, lilies! I shall be a father to the lilies. I shall tend them as my own children. And when they die I shall bury them with proper ceremony and raise a stone to them and put more lilies upon it so that the scent of the living shall mingle with the smell of the dead. I know where my responsibilities lie. It is to the lilies!’