Grandmother was lifted up again, and the whole crowd of us set out, following the armchair down the stairs. The general walked as if stunned by the blow of a bludgeon on the head. Des Grieux was mulling something over. Mlle Blanche made as if to stay, but then for some reason decided to go with everybody else. The prince at once set out after her, and only the German and Mme la veuve Cominges stayed upstairs in the general’s suite.
CHAPTER X
AT SPAS—AND, IT SEEMS, all over Europe—hotel administrators and managers, when assigning rooms to their guests, are guided not so much by their demands and wishes as by their own personal view of them; and, it must be noted, they are rarely mistaken. But grandmother, God knows why, was given such rich quarters that they even overdid it: four magnificently decorated rooms, with a bathroom, servants’ quarters, a special room for the maid, and so on, and so forth. Indeed, a week earlier some grande duchesse had stayed in these rooms, which fact, of course, was at once announced to the new guests, to raise the price of the suite. Grandmother was carried, or rather rolled, through all the rooms, and she examined them attentively and sternly. The manager, an older man with a bald head, respectfully accompanied her on this first inspection.
I don’t know who they took grandmother for, but it seems they thought her an extremely important and, above all, a very rich personage. They at once entered in the register: “Madame la générale princesse de Tarassévitchev,” though grandmother had never been a princess. Her prestige probably began with her having her own servants, a separate compartment on the train, the endless number of unnecessary valises, suitcases, and even trunks that arrived with her; and the chair, grandmother’s brusque tone and voice, her eccentric questions, asked with a most unabashed air and brooking no objections, in short, grandmother’s whole figure—erect, brusque, imperious—rounded out the universal awe in which she was held. During the inspection, grandmother sometimes ordered them to stop the chair, pointed at some piece of furniture, and addressed unexpected questions to the respectfully smiling manager, who was already beginning to turn coward. Grandmother put her questions in French, which she spoke, however, quite poorly, so that I usually translated. The manager’s answers were for the most part not to her liking and seemed unsatisfactory. Besides, she somehow kept asking not about essentials, but about God knows what. For instance, she suddenly stopped before a painting—a rather weak copy of some famous original on a mythological subject.
“Whose portrait is that?”
The manager declared that it was probably some countess.
“How is it you don’t know? You live here and you don’t know? What’s it doing here? Why is she cross-eyed?”
The manager was unable to give satisfactory answers to all these questions and was even at a loss.
“What a blockhead!” grandmother retorted in Russian.
They carried her further on. The same story was repeated with a Saxony statuette, which grandmother inspected for a long time and then ordered to be removed, no one knew why. She finally badgered the manager about the cost of the bedroom carpets and where they had been made. The manager promised to find out.
“What asses!” grandmother grumbled and turned all her attention to the bed.
“Such a magnificent canopy! Unmake it.”
The bed was unmade.
“Go on, go on, unmake it all. Take away the pillows, the pillowcases, lift up the feather bed.”
Everything was turned upside down. Grandmother inspected it all attentively.
“A good thing they don’t have bedbugs. Take off all the linen! Remake it with my linen and my pillows. Anyhow, it’s all much too magnificent, an old woman like me doesn’t need such a suite: I’ll be bored by myself. Alexei Ivanovich, come and see me often, when you’re done teaching the children.”
“Since yesterday I no longer work for the general,” I replied, “and I’m living in the hotel completely on my own.”
“Why’s that?”
“The other day a distinguished German baron and the baroness, his wife, came here from Berlin. Yesterday on the promenade I addressed him in German without keeping to the Berlin accent.”
“Well, what of it?”
“He considered it insolent and complained to the general, and the general dismissed me the same day.”
“What, did you abuse him, this baron, or something? (Even if you did, it wouldn’t matter!)”
“Oh, no. On the contrary, the baron raised his stick at me.”
“And you, you dribbler, allowed your tutor to be treated that way,” she suddenly turned on the general, “and dismissed him from his post to boot! You’re dunderheads—you’re all dunderheads, I can see.”
“Don’t worry, auntie,” the general replied with a slight tinge of haughty familiarity, “I know how to handle my own affairs. Besides, Alexei Ivanovich did not report it to you quite accurately.”
“And you just let it pass?” she turned to me.
“I wanted to challenge the baron to a duel,” I replied as modestly and calmly as I could, “but the general was against it.”
“Why were you against it?” grandmother turned to the general again. “(And you may go, dearie, come back when you’re called,” she also turned to the manager, “no point in standing there gaping. I can’t stand his Nuremberg mug!)” The man bowed and left, without, of course, understanding grandmother’s compliment.
“Good heavens, auntie, duels really aren’t possible,” the general answered with a smile.
“Why aren’t they? Men are all cocks, so they ought to fight. You’re all dunderheads. I can see, you don’t know how to stand up for your country. Well, lift me up! Potapych, arrange it so that two porters are always ready, hire them and settle it. No need for more than two. They’ll only have to carry me on the stairs, but on the level, on the street, they can roll me—tell them that; and pay them in advance, they’ll be more respectful. You yourself must always be with me, and you, Alexei Ivanovich, show me this baron on the promenade: I’d at least like to see what sort of von baron he is. Well, so where’s this roulette?”
I explained that the roulette tables were in rooms of the vauxhall. Then followed questions: how many are there? do many people play? Does it go on all day? How is it set up? I answered, finally, that it would be best of all to see it with her own eyes, and that it was quite difficult to describe it just like that.
“Well, then carry me straight there! Lead the way, Alexei Ivanovich!”
“Why, auntie, are you not even going to rest after the trip?” the general asked solicitously. He seemed to be in a bit of a flutter, and they were all somehow perplexed and began exchanging glances. They probably found it slightly ticklish, even shameful, to accompany grandmother straight to the vauxhall, where she, of course, was capable of committing all sorts of eccentricities, but now in public. However, they themselves had all volunteered to accompany her.
“Why should I rest? I’m not tired; I’ve been sitting for five days as it is. And then we’ll go to look at what sort of springs and medicinal waters they’ve got and where they are. And then…what was it you said, Praskovya—a point, was it?”
“A point, grandmother.”
“Well, if it’s point, it’s point. And what else is there here?”
“There are lots of things, grandmother,” Polina hesitated.