Flight Without End

IX

Extract from Tunda’s diary.

Yesterday, at half-past ten at night, the steamer Grashdanin arrived, three hours late. I stood by the harbour as usual and watched the crowd of porters. Many remarkably well-dressed persons arrived, firstclass passengers. They were, as usual, Russian Nepmen* and some foreign traders. Since I began writing this diary I have taken a special interest in foreigners. Before, I never used to notice them. The majority come from Germany, only a few from America, some from Austria and the Balkan countries. I can easily tell them apart; many come to me at the Institute in search of information. (I am the only one in our Institute who can speak French and German.) I go to the harbour, assess the nationality of the foreigners and am delighted when I have guessed aright. I don’t really know how I recognize them. I would find it difficult if I had to list the national characteristics. Perhaps I tell them by their clothing, not any single item of dress, but their entire bearing. Sometimes it is possible to confuse Germans and Englishmen, especially in the case of older men. Germans and Englishmen often have the same ruddy complexion. But the Germans have bald patches, the English usually thick white hair so that their ruddy faces seem even darker. Their silver hair doesn’t exactly inspire my respect. On the contrary, it seems at times as if the English grow old and grey out of dandyism. Their rosiness has something unnatural about it and — I don’t know how to put it — something godless. They seem as unnatural as hunchbacks in strait-jackets. They walk around like advertisements for gymnastic apparatus and tennis-racquets, guarantees of a youthful old age.

On the other hand, many of the older men from the Continent look as if they were advertising office furniture and comfortable chairs. They grow wider from the hips downward; both their knees knock together; their arms are so close to their trunk that they appear to rest on soft, wide, leather chairbacks.

Yesterday there arrived three Europeans, whose country of origin I could not determine at first glance. They were a lady, a small, elderly, broad-shouldered man with a brown face and dark-grey beard, and a younger man, dark, of medium height, with bright eyes which were almost white in his dark-brown face, a very small mouth, and strikingly long legs in white linen trousers which hugged his knee-joints like a second skin.

The small bearded man was a little reminiscent of those coloured stone and plaster gnomes to be found among the flower beds in so many gardens. Somehow I found this gentleman’s healthiness, the high-spirited brown face in its bearded setting, offensive. He walked beside the long-legged man and the tall lady with quick short steps, he almost skipped along beside them. It really gave the impression that he was an animal led by the lady on a slender lead. He made frisky movements, once he threw his soft, light-coloured hat in the air just before they climbed into the cab. Two porters followed them with trunks.

I think to myself that, at home, the movements of the bearded man must be slow and carefully studied. It is when travelling that he is lively. There was a lot of noise, and also they spoke so softly that I could not hear even though I strained towards them.

The lady in the middle was the first elegant woman I have seen since I returned from my last leave in Vienna.

They came to see me early today.

They are French. The gentleman is a Parisian lawyer and also writes for Le Temps. The lady is his wife, the young man his secretary. The young man is one of the few Frenchmen who understand Russian. It is probably for this reason, and on the lady’s behalf, that he has come with them to Russia.

When the lady looked at me, I thought of Irene, of whom I have not thought for a long time now. Not that this lady was anything like my betrothed!

She is dark, very dark, her hair is almost blue. Her eyes are narrow, she looks at me with elegant shortsightedness. It is almost as if she did not care to look at me openly and directly. When she speaks to me, I always expect some command. But it does not occur to her to give me a command. I should probably be delighted if she were to condescend to give me some commissions.

At times she drums with the index, middle and ring fingers of one hand on a book, a chairback, the table. It is a slow drumming and a kind of rapid caress. Her nails are white and slender, bloodless nails; her lips, as if in deliberate contrast, are painted red.

She wears narrow grey shoes made of thin glove-leather, I could trace them with a pencil.

The secretary — whose name, according to his card, is Monsieur Edmond de V. — said to me:

‘You don’t speak French like a Slav. Are you Caucasian or Russian?’

I lied, I told him that my parents were immigrants and that I was born in Russia.

‘We are spending three months in Russia,’ said Monsieur de V. We have been to Leningrad, to Moscow, to Novgorod, the Volga, Astrakhan. In France we know so little about Russia. We imagine that Russia is in chaos. We are surprised by the general order, but also by the high cost of living. For the same money we could have explored all the French African colonies — if they were not so tedious.’

‘Are you disillusioned then?’ I asked.

The bearded lawyer threw a glance at his secretary. The lady looked straight ahead; she did not want to become involved in our conversation, even by a glance. I noticed that all three were disconcerted by my question. Perhaps they did not wholly believe in our public order. Possibly they took me for an informer.

‘You have nothing to be afraid of. You can tell me what you think quite safely. I don’t belong to the police. I make scientific films for our Institute.’

The lady threw me a rapid, narrow glance. I could not tell whether she was angry or whether she believed me.

(It occurs to me now that I may have disappointed her. Perhaps she liked me only as long as she was able to imagine that I hid some secret.)

However, Monsieur Edmond de V. spoke to me, with friendly eyes but with a disdainful mouth, so that I did not know which feature to trust. Monsieur de V. said:

‘My dear sir, please don’t imagine that we feel any anxiety. We are furnished with the best credentials, so that it is almost as if we were on an official mission. We would let you know if we felt disillusioned. No, we do not. We are delighted with the hospitality of your authorities, your people, your nation. We see only — I can speak for all of us — we see only the ethnological, the Russian aspects of what you postulate to be a fundamental social change. For us, Bolshevism is as Russian — forgive the comparison — as Tsarism. Besides — and here I find myself differing from my hosts — I have the hope that you will pour much water into your wine.’

‘You probably mean,’ I countered, ‘wine into your water.’

‘You exaggerate, my dear sir, I appreciate your civility.’

‘Perhaps you are being provocative?’ said the lady, and stared into space.

It was the first sentence she had addressed to me directly. Yet she did not look at me, as if she wanted to make it clear that, even when she spoke to me, she said nothing that was unequivocally for myself alone.

‘I trust that you are joking and don’t suspect …’

‘It was a joke,’ interrupted the lawyer. When he spoke he wagged his beard; I tried to decipher from its movements what he had said.

‘Perhaps you may care to tell me something about France. It’s seldom anyone comes here from your country. I know nothing about it.’

‘It is difficult to describe France to a Russian unacquainted with Europe,’ said the secretary, ‘and especially difficult for us French. In any case, you would not gain an altogether accurate impression from our books and newspapers. What can I say? Paris is the capital of the world, Moscow may well become so one day. In addition, Paris is the only free city of the world. We have living among us reactionaries and revolutionaries, nationalists and internationalists, Germans, Englishmen, Chinese, Spaniards, Italians, we have no censorship, we have statutory education acts, upright judges —’

‘— and an efficient police force,’ I put in, because I knew this from the accounts of a number of communists.

‘You’ve certainly nothing to complain about as far as your police are concerned,’ said the lady. She still did not look at me.

‘You have nothing to fear from our police,’ opined the secretary. ‘If you should ever wish to visit us, naturally not with hostile intentions, you can always count on me.’

‘Absolutely,’ asserted the beard.

‘I shall come with the most peaceful intentions,’ I affirmed. I realized how artless I must have looked. The lady looked at me. I regarded her thin red lips and said, awkwardly and childishly, for it seemed to me that I had to exaggerate my clumsy candour further: ‘I should like to visit you — on account of your wife.’

‘Ah, how charming you are!’ exclaimed the beard very quickly. Perhaps he was afraid that his wife might say it. Notwithstanding, he could not prevent her from smiling.

I would willingly have said to her: ‘I love you, Madame.’

She began to talk as if she were quite alone.

‘I could never live in Russia. I need the asphalt of the boulevards, a terrasse in the Bois de Boulogne, the shop-windows of the Rue de la Paix.’

She fell silent as suddenly as she had begun. It was as if she had spilled a shower of fragrant glittering objects before me. It was for me to pick them up, to admire, to praise.

I looked at her for some minutes after she had stopped speaking. I remained expectant of further glories. I was really waiting for her voice. It was deep, penetrating and shrewd.

‘One can’t live anywhere as well as in Paris,’ began the secretary again. ‘I myself am a Belgian, so this is no local patriotism.’

‘You are from Paris?’ I asked the lady.

‘From Paris; we would like to visit the petroleum fields this afternoon,’ she said quickly.

‘If you have no objection, I’ll accompany you.’

‘Then I would prefer to work and not go until tomorrow morning,’ spoke the beard.

Before our appointment I ate in the vegetarian restaurant, as I was not hungry. Also, money was running out. My wages were not due for ten days. I was afraid that the lady might require a carriage — I might just be able to pay for it. But what if she asked for more? If she suddenly wanted to eat? I could hardly expect to be repaid by the secretary.

I ate without appetite. At half-past two I was standing in the scorching sunlight in front of the station.

After twenty minutes she arrived in a carriage, alone.

‘You will have to travel just with me,’ she said. ‘We have decided to leave Monsieur de V. with my husband. He wants to wander around in the town and is afraid that he won’t make himself understood.’

We sat among street-vendors, workers, half-veiled Mohammedan women, homeless boys, lame beggars, hawkers, white confectioners who sold oriental sweetmeats. I pointed out the drilling towers to her.

‘How tedious,’ she said.

We arrived at Sabuntschi.

I said: ‘There’s no point in looking at the town. It would be too tiring, it’s hot. We must wait for the next train. We’ll go back.’

We travelled back.

When we got out in Baku we were ashamed of ourselves. After some minutes we looked at each other simultaneously and laughed.

We drank soda-water in a small booth, buzzing with flies; a nauseating fly-paper hung at the window.

I became very hot though I drank water incessantly. I had nothing to say, the silence was even more oppressive than the heat. But she sat there, unaffected by the heat, the dust, the filth which surrounded us, and only occasionally repelled a fly.

‘I love you,’ I said — and, although I was already quite red from the heat, became even redder.

She nodded.

I kissed her hand. The soda-water seller regarded me with malice. We left.

I walked with her through the Asiatic old town. It was still broad daylight. I cursed it.

We wandered about for two hours. I was afraid that she would get tired or that we might encounter her husband and the secretary. We reached the sea for no special reason. We sat on the quay, I kissed her hand repeatedly.

Everyone looked at us. A few acquaintances greeted me.

Night fell quickly. We went into a small hotel; the owner, a Levantine Jew, recognized me. He thinks I am a man of influence and is probably glad to know something intimate about me. He has probably promised himself to make use of his secret sometime.

It was dark, we felt the bed, we could not see it.

‘Something’s stinging me,’ she said later.

But we did not turn on the light.

I kissed her, her finger pointed now here, now there, her skin glowed in the dark, I pursued her dancing finger with trembling lips.

She got into a carriage, she will return tomorrow morning with her husband and the secretary. She will say goodbye. They are travelling to the Crimea, and then from Odessa to Marseilles.

I am writing this two hours after having made love to her. It seems to me that I must write it down so that tomorrow I shall still know that it really happened.

Alja has just gone to bed.

I don’t love her any more. I find the quiet curiosity with which she has received me for months artful. She receives my love as a silent person submits to the tipsy or talkative …

They came next day to say goodbye to Tunda.

‘I purposely detained Monsieur de V. yesterday,’ said the lawyer. ‘I am convinced that one cannot show two persons as much as one. According to what my wife told me yesterday, you must have seen a great many interesting things.’

The lawyer really resembled a dwarf, though no longer the harmless kind standing on a green lawn but one dwelling among sinister rocks.

They made their farewells like strangers. ‘Here,’ said the lady before she left, giving Tunda a piece of paper with her address.

He did not read it till an hour had passed.

From that day on, Tunda realized that there was nothing left for him to do in Baku. The women we encounter excite our imagination rather than our hearts. We love the world they represent and the destiny they mark out for us.

What remained from the foreign woman’s visit was her remark about the shop-windows of the Rue de la Paix. Tunda thought of the shop-windows of the Rue de la Paix as he looked out his old papers.

It was an open order, Number 253, with a round stamp, signed by Kreidl, Colonel, made out by Sergeant Palpiter. The yellow paper, frayed in its creases, had become a sort of sacrament; it was smooth, it felt like tallow and had the slipperiness of candles. Its purport was unmistakable. It stated that First Lieutenant Franz Tunda was to proceed to Lemberg for kitting out.

Had he not been taken prisoner a day later, this official journey would have become a small furtive spree to Vienna.

The name Franz Tunda stood there so large, so strong, so meticulously recorded, that it almost emerged from the surface of the document to assume a life of its own.

Names have their own kind of vitality, as do clothes. Tunda, who had been Baranowicz for several years, saw the real Tunda emerge from the document.

Next to the open order lay Irene’s photograph. The pasteboard was crumpled, the portrait faded. It showed Irene in a dark, high-necked dress, a serious dress of the kind one puts on when being photographed for a warrior in the field. The expression was still lively, flirtatious and shrewd, an accomplished blending of natural talent and the retoucher’s art.

While Tunda was looking at the picture he was thinking of the shop-windows of the Rue de la Paix.