Futility by William Gerhardie

Author:William Gerhardie [Gerhardie, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-1-61219-155-3
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2012-09-18T04:00:00+00:00

IV

MUCH OF MY EXPERIENCES MUST NOW APPEAR IN the nature of a farce. This is not my fault. A good deal of life is a hilarious farce, and yet, as in the case of the affiliation of Nikolai Vasilievich’s family, it all comes about in the proper constitutional way, through a string of human motives. For a week or so Nikolai Vasilievich kept on applying to the Admiral for a coupé in his train to Omsk, in the teeth of implacable refusals. Then, after much opposition from the Admiral, and a passionate, though somewhat vague attempt on the part of Nikolai Vasilievich to identify his personal misfortunes with that of “honest” Russia, and the doings of the Czechs, the miners, and the punitive expedition whose disinterestedness he had begun to doubt, with that of international Bolshevism, this was conceded. But on hearing of this step, Fanny Ivanovna at once concluded that Nikolai Vasilievich was trying to escape from her—a suspicion she always entertained—and she immediately applied to see the Admiral in person and asked for two additional coupés, to accommodate her and the three sisters. The Admiral was a sailor and a gentleman. He promised her two coupés. I forget which wing of the family was the next to apply. I remember that every day that week our waiting-room was crowded with petitioners. The Admiral said No. He found himself saying No innumerable times each day. Now it is an intrinsic part of the Russian character that it does not accept No for No. It is constitutionally incapable of doing so. Its institutions are all a negation of that principle. And what is more, it refuses to confine that fact to within the Russian border. It regards it in the light of world-wide application, assuming that it is indeed nothing less than human nature.

The Admiral still said No. He held that it was not human nature but just Russian nature, and as an illustration of his point he meant to show that when an Englishman says No he does mean No. But none of them would understand the Admiral’s interpretation of No. They had all grown up with the idea that No meant Yes after an adequate amount of pressure and insistence. The pressure was of various kinds, according to the age, sex and nature of the applicant. There were tears, entreaties. There were questions, such as the “object” of the Allies in Siberia, since they monopolized the best trains and refused to help the Russians in their primary needs. There were direct questions which it was thought must needs shatter the impregnability of the Admiral’s No, such as, for instance: Did the Admiral wish to starve them, as he evidently did, by cutting them adrift from Nikolai Vasilievich, the bread-winner?

The Admiral still said that No was No, and would they please understand it? They all replied that No was not the point, the point being: What were they to do without Nikolai Vasilievich? Whereon the Admiral replied that when he said a thing he meant it, this being the sterling value of British character.

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