Futility

When the Simbirsk, of the Russian Volunteer Fleet, had at last completely vanished, carrying away the three sisters to Shanghai, I came back to my room at the hotel. I had just moved in there. It was a bare and dingy room in a small and shabby hostel. A bed was eventually provided, but in lieu of bedsheets I was to lie on a dirty tablecloth which was to serve again as tablecloth next morning when I had my breakfast.

“Is this sheet clean?” I asked.

“Yes,” said the boy-attendant.

“Quite clean?”

“Quite.”

“Sure nobody slept on it?”

“Nobody. Only the boss.”

Big drops like tears fell on the windowpane and instantly made room for others. A ruined writing-table stood in the corner. I sat down. I fingered a typically Russian pen with a no less typically Russian nib, such as one is likely to encounter in almost any Russian government department, and dipping it repeatedly into ink that was like syrup, I made a bold beginning.

When night came I lay there on the tablecloth, hungry and worried by enormous hungry bugs that bit like dogs, and thought of Nina, Sonia, Vera, Nikolai Vasilievich and his unconventional family. In the morning the rain ceased.

It was somewhat in the manner of an Ibsen drama with retrospective revelations that I was initiated into the complicated affairs of the Bursanov family. I had been asked to call by the three sisters, all speaking simultaneously⁠—a charming bouquet, the queen among whom I recognized only too well, and I called on them one evening in midsummer at their dacha, at a seaside place ten versts from Petersburg, a little bashful perhaps for I had not been invited by their elders; and I was met by the “bouquet” in the hall of the little wooden structure that hung out above the sea. They sprang out to me successively, introducing themselves in order of age.

“Sonia!”

“Nina!”

“Vera!”

They were then sixteen, fifteen and fourteen. I think I had told them that day when I had first spoken to them that I could not for the life of me distinguish one from the other, and had deliberately mixed up their names. It was, of course, poor fun, but they, then almost children, had seemed grateful for it and giggled, possibly for want of anything better.

I was led into a room full of people whose relationship I did not yet comprehend. By the presiding posture over the samovar I thought that I could recognize the mother, and I walked up to her, and she put me at my ease, talking Russian, I noticed, with an unmistakably German accent.

“You don’t any of you resemble your mother very much,” I told Nina afterwards.

“She is not our mother,” Nina said. “She is⁠ ⁠… Fanny Ivanovna.”

In addition there was Uncle Kostia, who, from what I could see, was living on the resources of his younger brother, Zina’s father. Uncle Kostia was a writer. Yet, though he had attained middle age, Uncle Kostia had never published a line. His two departments were history and philosophy, and everyone in the family had the greatest respect for Uncle Kostia and thought him very clever. Later I had occasion to observe Uncle Kostia at closer range. He would wake up extremely late and would then sit for hours on his bed, thinking. He did not communicate his thoughts to anybody else; but all the members of the family took it for granted that Uncle Kostia was very clever. Uncle Kostia rarely dressed and rarely washed. When at length he parted with his bed he would stroll about through all the rooms in his dressing-gown, and think. No one spoke to him because, for one thing, all were frightened of displaying their ignorance in conversation, for Uncle Kostia was very clever, and also, I think, because they were loth to interrupt the flow of Uncle Kostia’s thoughts. At length he would settle down at a writing-table near the window in his brother’s study, and then for a long time Uncle Kostia would rub his eyes. In a languid manner he would dip his pen into ink and his hand would proceed to sketch diagrams and flowers on the margin of his foolscap, and Uncle Kostia would stare long at the window. Perhaps a buzzing fly endeavouring to find an exit would arrest his flow of thoughts, or would promote them⁠—who knows?⁠—but Uncle Kostia would grow very still: and

I ordered chicken soup. The General talked loosely about the Siberian situation. About five minutes after I had ordered soup the waiter returned without being called and very amiably volunteered the information that the soup would be served immediately. When, three-quarters of an hour later, I asked the waiter about the soup, he repeated “Immediately,” but the word now somehow failed to inspire in us the same confidence. The General talked of the Siberian situation for about an hour and a quarter, when we observed that the soup had not been served. I again called the waiter.

“What about that soup?” I asked.

“I am afraid, sir,” said the waiter, “you will have to wait a while, for soup is a troublesome thing to prepare nowadays.”

“How long?”

“About three-quarters of an hour.”

General Bologoevski then continued about the situation. I gathered that there was a General Horvat who had formed an All-Russia Government, and that there was also a Siberian Government, defying General Horvat on the one hand and the Bolsheviks on the other, and that there were various officer organizations grouped about this or the other government, and some rather inclined to be on their own, all looking forward to a possible intervention by the Allies. After an hour or so had elapsed I interrupted General Bologoevski by observing that the soup had not yet been served, and I called a waiter who was passing and told him to fetch the waiter who had been serving us.

“He has gone to bed,” came the answer, “and I am on the night shift.”

“Oh!” And I inquired about the soup.