标题: 1920.01 在阳台上 作者：William Mcfee [打印本页] 作者: shiyi18 时间: 2022-6-15 18:44 标题: 1920.01 在阳台上 作者：William Mcfee On a Balcony
By William Mcfee
JANUARY 1920 ISSUE
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I
THERE are some men whom a staggering emotional shock, so far from making them mental invalids for life, seems, on the other hand, to awaken, to galvanize, to arouse into an almost incredible activity of soul. They are somewhat in the same case as the elderly expressman who emerged from a subway smash untouched, save that he began to write free verse. Those who do not read free verse may consider the comparison too flippant. But the point must be insisted on, that there is far too much talk of love and grief benumbing the faculties, turning the hair gray, and destroying a man’s interest in his work. Grief has made many a man look younger.
Or, one may compare the emotions with wine. The faculties of some men become quiescent with wine. Others are like Sheridan writing The School for Scandal right on through the night, with a decanter of port at his elbow getting emptier as the pages (and Sheridan) got full; or like Mozart, drinking wine to stimulate his brain to work, and employing his wife to keep him awake at the same time.
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There was a singular disparity between the above trivial reflections and the scene upon which they were staged. I was seated on the balcony outside my room on the third floor of the Grand Hotel Splendid Palace at Smyrna. I was to leave that afternoon for Constantinople, having been relieved, and I had been watching with some attention the arrival of the destroyer upon whose deck, as a passenger, I was to travel.
I was distracted from this pastime by the growing excitement in the street below. Greek troops, headed by extremely warlike bands, were marching along the quay, gradually extending themselves into a thin yellowish-green line with sparkling bayonets, and congesting the populace into the fronts of the cafés. A fantastic notion assailed me that my departure was to be carried out with military honors. There is an obscure memorandum extant in some dusty office-file, in which I am referred to as ‘embarrassing His Majesty’s Government ’ — the nearest I have ever got to what is known as public life. The intoxication engendered proved conclusively that public life was not my métier.
But I was not to be deceived for long on this occasion. Motor-cars drove up, bearing little flags on sticks. A Greek general, a French admiral, an Italian captain, and a British lieutenant of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve jumped out of their respective chariots and, after saluting with the utmost decorum, shook hands with the utmost (official) cordiality. Looked at from above, the scene was singularly like the disturbance caused by stirring up a lot of ants with a stick.
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By this time it was perfectly obvious that something more than the departure of a mere lieutenant of reserve was in theair. I knew that Royal Naval Volunteer Lieutenant, and the hope, the incipient prospect, of another taste of public life died within me. After all, I reflected (and this is how I led up to the other reflections already recorded), after all, one must choose between Obscurity with Efficiency, and Fame with its inevitable collateral of Bluff. There is a period, well on toward middle life, when a man can say such things to himself and feel comforted.
I knew that Royal Naval Volunteer Lieutenant, and I began to recall some remarks he had made the previous evening at dinner. He had said something about some big man coming. This was at the British Naval Residency, which was to be found, by the intrepid, in the Austrian Consulate. The British Naval Residency filled the Austrian Consulate very much as a penny fills the pocket of a fur overcoat. You could spend a pleasant morning wandering through the immense chambers of the Austrian Consulate and come away without having discovered anyone save a fat Greek baby whose mother washed in some secret subterranean chamber.
I was supposed to be messing at the British Naval Residency. I had even been offered by my country’s naval representative (this same Royal Naval Volunteer Lieutenant) the use of any room I liked, to sleep in, if I had a bed, and bed-clothes to put on it. He even offered me the throne-room — a gigantic affair about the size of the Pennsylvania Terminal and containing three hassocks, and a catafalque like a halffinished sky-scraper. At night, when we dined, an intrepid explorer who, we may suppose, had reached the great doors after perils which had turned him gray, would see, afar off across the acres of dried and splitting parquetry flooring, a table with one tiny electric light, round which several humans were feasting. If his travels had not bereft him of his senses, he might have gathered that these extraordinary beings were continually roaring with laughter at their own wit. Out of the gloom at intervals would materialize a sinister oriental figure bearing bottles whose contents he poured out in libations before his humorous masters.
This frightful scene (near on midnight) was the British Naval Residency at dinner. And I ought to have paid attention, — only I was distracted by an imaginary bowstring murder going on in the throne-room beyond the vast folding doors, — and then I would have heard the details of the function taking place below my hotel windows. But it is impossible to pay attention to the details of a ceremonial while a beautiful Circassian, on her knees between two husky Ottoman slaves who are hauling at the cord which has been passed in a clove-hitch about her neck, is casting a last glance of despair upon the ragged and cobwebbed scarlet silk portière. It may be objected that, as the tragedy was an imaginary one, I was not compelled to dwell upon it. The reader and I will not quarrel over the point. I will even make him a present of the fact that there are no beautiful Circassians in that part of the world. They have all been kidnaped and carried away to the seraglios of our popular novelists, who marry them, in the last chapter, to dashing young college men of the ‘clean-cut’ breed. But the British Naval Resident’s cook is an artist, and the British Naval Resident’s kümmel, while it closes the front doors of the mind to the trivial tattle of conversation, draws up the dark curtain that hangs at the back and reveals a vast and shadowy stage, whereon are enacted the preposterous performances of the souls of men.
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II
But however hazy I might be myself about this event, all Smyrna seemed cognizant. As I sat on my balcony, I was joined by the children of the family in the next room. Who the family in the next room may be I am somewhat at a loss to explain. At first I imagined they were a family of Russian refugees named Buttinsky; but Katia, the eldest, who is ten and speaks French, says her father is a major of artillery and is named Priam Callipoliton. From occasional glances through the open door while passing, one imagines that a married major in the army of the Hellenes has a fierce time when he is at home. There are three beds in the room, besides a gas-stove and a perambulator. Leaning over my balcony railing one early morning, and poking with a walking-stick at an enigmatic crimson patch on the Callipoliton window-sill, I discovered, to my horror, that it was a raw liver, left out to keep cool.
Priam seems to be fairly hard at it at the front. Madame, a shapeless and indomitable creature, regards me with that look of mysterious yet comfortable camaraderie which women with large families seem to reserve for strange bachelors. I like her. She uses my balcony (having none of her own) with a frank disregard of the small change of etiquette which is beyond praise. I come up from the street in the middle of the morning and find Madame and the femme-de-chambre leaning comfortably on my balcony-rail, a sisterly pair, each couple of high French heels worn sideways, each broad-hipped skirt gaping at the back, each with a stray hank of hair waving wildly in the strong breeze blowing across the glittering gulf. If I cough, they turn and nod genially. If I explain apologetically that I wish to change, they nod again and shut the big jalousies upon me and my astounding modesty.
And if they are not there, the children are. Katia is the possessor of three small sisters and a small brother. They are Evanthe, Theodosia, and Sophia, with Praxiteles sifted in somewhere between them. They were rather amazing at first. ‘ Êtes-vous marié ? ’ they squeaked in their infantile Hellenist trebles. ‘ Pas encore ’ only made them point melodramatic fingers at a photograph, with their ridiculous black pigtails hanging over their shoulders. ‘ C’est lui, peutêtre. Oui? Très jolie!’ And the pigtails vibrated with vehement nods.
They use my balcony. Praxiteles has a horrifying habit of sitting astride the rail. Katia takes the most comfortable chair and asks me genially why I do not go and make a promenade. ‘Avec votre fiancée,’ she adds, with enervating audacity. And I am supposed to have the exclusive use of this room, with balcony, for three pounds (Turkish) per diem!
The point, however, is that, if this be the state of affairs on ordinary days, on this particular morning, my balcony, like all the other balconies, is full. Madame and the femme-de-chambre are there. Katia, Evanthe, Theodosia, Sophia, and Praxiteles are to be heard of all men. Praxiteles endeavors to drag an expensive pair of field-glasses from their case, and is restrained only by main force. George, the floor-porter, a sagacious but unsatisfactory creature, who plays a sort of Jekylland-Hyde game with the femme-dechambre, comes in, on the pretence of cleaning the electric-light fittings, and drifts casually to the balcony. George, descended no doubt from the famous George family of Cappadocia, if rung for, goes away to find Marthe, the femme-de-chambre. Marthe appears, merely to go away again to find George. It is a relief to see the two of them at once, if only to dispel the dreadful notion that George is Marthe and Marthe a sinister manifestation of George.
It is a gratifying thing to record, too, that all these people are perfectly willing that I should see the show as well. Katia, commanded by Madame, resigns the best chair, sulks a moment on one leg, and then forgets her annoyance in the thunder of the guns booming from the Greek warships in the roadstead. I forge my way through and find a stranger in the corner of my balcony.
For a moment I am in the grip of that elusive yet impenetrable spirit of benevolent antipathy which is the main cause of the Englishman’s reputation for icy coldness toward those to whom he has not been introduced. Now you can either break ice or melt it; but the best way is to let the real human being, whom you can see through the cold blue transparencies, thaw himself out, as he will in time. Very few foreigners give us time. They jump on the ice with both feet. They attempt to be breezy and English, and leave us aghast at their inconceivable fatuity. While we are struggling within our deliquescent armor, and on the very point of escaping into the warm sunlight of genial conversation, they freeze us solid again with some frightful banality or racial solecism. The reader will perceive from this that the Englishman is not having such a pleasant time in the world as some people imagine.
However, the stranger on my balcony turns out to be, not a foreigner, but another Englishman, which is an even worse trial to some of us. He is, of course, smoking a cigarette. He wears an old straw hat, an old linen suit, and his boots are slightly burst at the sides. His moustache and scanty hair are iron gray. His eyes are pale blue. While he talks they remain fixed upon Cordelio, which is on the other side of the gulf. No doubt, if he were talking in Cordelio, they would be fixed upon Smyrna. He wears a plain gold wedding-ring. His clothes are stylish, which is not to say they are new. They might have been worn by a wealthy Englishman abroad, say nine or ten years ago. No Greek tailor, for example, would hole all those buttons on the cuffs, nor would he make the coat-collar ‘lay’ with such glovelike contiguity to the shoulders. Also, the trousers hang as Greek trousers never hang, in spite of their bagginess at the knees.
Keeping a watchful eye upon Cordelio, he bends toward me as I sit in my chair, and apologizes for the intrusion. Somehow the phrase seems homelike. Greeks, for example, never ‘intrude’: they come in, generally bringing a powerful whiff of garlic with them, and go out again, unregretted. They do not admit an intrusion. Even my friend Kaspar Dring, Stab-Ober-Leutnant attached to the defunct Imperial German Consulate, would scarcely appreciate the fine subtlety implied in apologizing for an intrusion. It may be that so gay a personality cannot conceive a psychological condition which his undefeated optimism would fail to illuminate. And so, when the stranger, who is, I imagine, on the verge of forty, murmurs his apology for his intrusion, I postulate for him a past emerging from the muzzy-minded ideals of the English middle class. He adds that, in fact, he had made a mistake in the number of the room. Quite thought, this was number seventy-seven, which was, I might know, the official residence of the Bolivian vice-consul, a great friend of his. Had arranged to see the affair from the Bolivian vice-consul’s balcony. However, it did n’t matter now, so long as I did n’t mind — What? Of course, I knew what was going on. There! There he is, just stepping out of the launch. That’s Skaramapopulos shaking hands with him now. English, eh? Just look at him! By Jove! who can beat us, eh? And just look at that upholstered old pork-butcher, with his eighteen medals and crosses, and never saw active service in his life. Too busy making his percentage on — What? No, not him — he’s been asleep all his life. Oh, it was a game! However, now he’s come, we may get something like order into the country. Did I mind if he took a few notes?
I did not mind. I tipped a member of the Callipoliton family off one of the other chairs, and begged my new friend to sit down. I fetched my binoculars and examined the scene below, where a famous British general stood, with his tan-gloved hand at the salute beside his formidable monocle, and was introduced to the Greek general, the French admiral, the Italian captain, and the British lieutenant. ‘A cavalryman,’ I muttered, as he started off down the line of Greek troops, hand at the salute, the sun gleaming on his brown harness and shining spurs. The Greek band was playing ‘See the Conquering Hero Comes,’ very much off the key, and it almost seemed as if the tune was too much for the conquering hero himself, for he dived suddenly into a motor-car and moved rapidly away. Whereupon the band took breath and began to form fours, the yellowish-green lines of troops coagulated into oblong clots, the motor cars, with their little flags swarming, whooped and snarled at the crowds from the cafés and side-streets, and the quay began to assume its wonted appearance (from above) of a disorganized ant-heap.
And my balcony began also to thin out. The Callipoliton faction dwindled to Madame, who was established on a chair at the other end, elbow on the rail, contemplating Mount Sipylus like a disillusioned sybil. Katia bounced back for a moment to inquire, in a piercing treble, whether my baggage was ready, and if so, should George descend with it to the entrance-hall?
I informed her that, if George was really bursting to do something useful, he could go ahead and do as she said.
She bounced away, and later the baggage was found down below; but I am inclined to believe that George sublet the contract to the Armenian boots and merely took a rake-off. George is built on those lines.
‘ So you are a reporter,’ I remarked to my friend, eyeing the mangy-looking notebook he was returning to his pocket.
‘Oh, yes,’ he assured me, adding hastily, though I had made no comment, ‘I’m getting on very well, too.’
He did n’t look it, but I let that pass. You can never tell these millionaires nowadays. I thought I was safe in asking what paper he worked for.
‘I’ve an article in to-day’s Mercure de Smyrne. You’ve seen it, I suppose?’
I had n’t. I’d never even heard of it. I had read the Levant, the Independant, the Matin, the Orient, and so forth; but the Mercure was a new one on me. It came out of his pocket like a shot — a single sheet with three columns on each side, three fourths of the back occupied by an insurance company’s ad.
‘This is mine,’ he informed me, laying a finger on a couple of paragraphs signed ‘Bijou.’
The article was entitled, ‘Les Bas de Soie,’ and was in the boulevardese style dear to the Parisian journalist.
‘You write French easily?’ I said, quite unable to keep down my envy.
He waved his cigarette.
‘Just the same as English,’ he assured me. ‘Italian and Spanish also.’
‘Then for the love of Michael Angelo why do you stop here in this part of the world? You might make your thousands a year on a big paper as a special commissioner. Why don’t you go home ? ’
III
Well, he told me why he did n’t go home, though not in so many words. If the reader will turn back to the beginning, he will see some reflections upon the behavior of men under emotional shock and stress. It is possible he may have already turned back, wondering what those remarks portended, what it was all about anyway. Well —
It seems that Mr. Satterley Thwaiteson (I quote his card, which he pressed upon me) had been in the Levant some time. He had had a very pleasant probation as articled pupil to an architect in Norwich, — did I know it? — and had made quite a hobby of studying French architecture, in his own time, of course. Used to take his autumn vacation in Northern France, visiting the abbeys and ruins and so forth. Got quite a facility, for an Englishman, in the language. Perhaps it was because of this that, when he had been in a Bloomsbury architect’s office for a year or so, and a clerk of works was needed for a Protestant church which some society was erecting in Anatolia, he, Satterley Thwaiteson, got the job. ‘Secured the appointment,’ were his exact words, but I imagine he meant, really, that he got the job. He came out, on one of the Pappayanni boats — did I know them? — and as far as I could gather, got his church up without any part of it falling down before the consecration service. Which, considering the Levantine contractor’s conceptions of probity, was a wonder.
So far Mr. Satterley Thwaiteson’s history seemed simple enough. Like many others of his imperial race, he had gone abroad and had added to the prestige of the English name by erecting a Protestant church in a country where Protestants are as plentiful as pineapples in Labrador. But — and here seems to be the joint in the stick — he did n’t go home. All the time regarding Cordelio across the gulf with his paleblue eyes, an expression of extraordinary pride and pleasure comes over his features, and banishes for a few moments the more permanent indication of a man who had lost the art of life. Extraordinary pride and pleasure! He did n’t go home. Never did go home. It is obvious that the memory of this emotional treachery to the call of home is something to be treasured as one of the great things in life. No, on the contrary, he got married out here. Yes, a foreigner, too — a Roumanian. And they did n’t get married in his wonderful Protestant church either, for she was a Roman Catholic. ‘Here’s a photo of her as she was then.’
He takes from his pocket an old wallet stuffed with folded letters, and fishes out a small flat oval frame that opens on a hinge. There are two portraits, photos colored like miniatures. One is the Mr. Satterley Thwaiteson of that day fifteen or sixteen years ago, not so different save as to the hair, of which there is not much at present. But the woman is beautiful. In these days of high-tension fiction, when novelists, like the Greek in one of Aristophanes’s plays, walk about, each with his string of lovely female slaves, it is tameenough to say a woman is beautiful. And perhaps it would be better to say that this woman in the little colored photo was startling. The bronze hair piled high, the broad fair brow, the square indomitable chin, the pallor contrasting with the heavily lashed brown eyes, the exquisite lips, all formed a combination which must have had a rather curious effect upon the studious young man from Norwich via Bloomsbury. Filled him with pride for one thing, or he would n’t be showing this picture to a stranger.
But what struck me about that girl’s picture, even before he fished out a picture postcard photo of his family taken a month or two ago, was something in her face which can be expressed only by the word rapacity. Not, be it noted, a vampire. If the truth were known, there are very few vampires about, outside of high-tension fiction. But I saw rapacity, and it seemed a curious thing to find in a woman who, it transpired, had married him and borne him children, eight in all, and had made him so happy that he had never gone home.
For that was what had aged him and paralyzed him and kept him there until he was a shabby failure — happiness. That was what brought to his face that expression of extraordinary pride and pleasure. As I listened to his tale I wondered, and at the back of my mind, on the big shadowy stage of which I spoke, there seemed to be something going on which he forgot to mention. And when he showed me, with tender pride, the picture-postcard photo of his wife and her eight children, I could not get rid of the notion that there was something rapacious about her. Even now she was handsome, in a stout and domineering kind of way. It was absurd to accuse such a woman of rapacity. Was she not a pearl? Everything a woman should do, she had done. She had been fruitful, she had been a good mother, a virtuous wife, and her husband assumed an expression of extraordinary pride and pleasure when he showed a stranger her portrait. His happiness in her was so rounded and complete that he would never have another thought away from her. He would never go to England again. Was not this marvelous?
As I pondered upon the marvel of it, I heard him telling me how he had found some difficulty in making a living out of the few architectural commissions which happened along, and gradually fell into the habit of giving lessons in English to Greeks and Armenians who were anxious to achieve social distinction. And when the war came, and he was shut up with everybody else in the city, he had to depend entirely upon the language lessons. And then, of course, he ‘wrote for the press’ as well, as he had shown me. He was very successful, he thought, taking everything into consideration. Why, he would get three pounds Turkish (about four dollars) for that little thing. Always signed himself ‘Bijou.’ His wife liked it. It was her name for him when they were lovers. And though, of course, the teaching was hard work, for Armenian girls were inconceivably thick-headed, and sometimes it occupied him twelve or fourteen hours a day, yet it paid, and he was happy.
And in the very middle of my irritation at him for harping on what he called happiness, I saw that I was right, after all: that girl had been rapacious. She had devoured his personality, fed on it, destroyed it, and had grown stout and virtuous upon it. His hair was thin and gray, he had a hunted and dilapidated look, and his boots were slightly burst at the sides. And he was happy. He had abandoned his profession, and he toiled like a packhorse for the bare necessities; yet he was happy. He was proud. It was plain he believed his position among men was to be gauged by his having won this peerless woman. He rambled on about local animosities and politics, and it was forced upon me that he would not do for a great newspaper. He would have to go away and find out how the people of the world thought and felt about things, and I was sure he would never consent to do that. His wife would not like it. And he might not be happy.
It is evening, and the sun, setting behind Cordelio, shines straight through my room and along the great dusty corridor beyond. In the distance can be seen those antiphonal personalities, Marthe and George, in harmony at last, waiting to waylay me for a tip. On the balcony is the mother of all the Callipolitons, elbow on the rail, contemplating Mount Sipylus like some shrewd sybil who has found out the worthlessness of most of the secrets of the gods.
When I have packed an attaché-case, I am ready. The destroyer on which I am to travel to Constantinople is signaling the flagship. In an hour she will depart. I go out once more on the balcony, to contemplate for the last time the familiar scene. The roadstead sparkles in the sun and the distant waters are aflame. The immense heave of the mountain-ranges is purple and ruddy-gold, and in the distance I can see white houses in quiet valleys above the gray-green of the olive grounds. There is one in particular, among great cypresses, and I turn the binoculars upon it for a brief sentimental moment. As I return the glasses to the case, Madame regards me with attention.
‘Vous partez ce soir, monsieur?’ she murmurs.
And I nod, wondering why one can detect nothing of rapacity in her rather tired face. ‘Oui, madame, je partis pour Constantinople ce soir,’ I assure her, thinking to engage her in conversation.
So far, in spite of our propinquity and the vociferous curiosity of Katia, we have not spoken together to any extent.
‘Et après?’
‘Après, madame, je vais à Malte, Marseilles, Paris, et Londres. Peutêtre, à l’Amérique aussi—je ne sais pas.’
‘Mon dieu!’ She seems quietly shocked at the levity of a man who prances about the world like this. Then comes tire inevitable query, ‘ Vous êtes marié, monsieur?’ and the inevitable reply, ‘Pas encore.’
She abandons Mount Sipylus for a while and turns on the chair, one highheeled and rather slatternly shoe tapping on the marble flags. ' Mais dîtesmoi, monsieur; vous avez une amante de cœur, sans doute?’
‘Vous croyez ça? Pourquoi?’
She shrugs her shoulders.
‘N’importe. C’est vrai. Vous êtes triste.’
‘Oui. Mais c’est la guerre.’
She was silent a moment, observing later that I was a philosopher, which was flattering but irrelevant. And then she said something that I carried away with me, as the destroyer fled over the dark waters of the Ægean.
‘Oui, c’est la guerre, mais il faut que vous n’oubliez, monsieur, que chaque voyage est un petit mort.’
I left her there, looking out across the hard blue glitter of the gulf, when I went down to go aboard.
在阳台上
作者：William Mcfee
1920年1月号
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I
有一些人，一次令人震惊的情感冲击，远远没有使他们成为终身的精神病人，相反，似乎唤醒了他们，激励了他们，唤起了他们几乎不可思议的灵魂活动。他们的情况与那位从地铁事故中走出来的老年快递员相同，他没有受到任何影响，只是开始写自由诗。那些不读自由诗的人可能认为这种比较太轻率了。但必须坚持的一点是，有太多关于爱情和悲伤使人能力减退、头发变白、破坏人对工作的兴趣的言论。悲伤使许多人看起来更年轻。
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到了这个时候，很明显的是，有些事情不仅仅是一个普通的预备役中尉的离开。我知道那个皇家海军志愿兵中尉，而我内心深处对另一种公共生活的希望，即初露端倪的前景，已经死了。我想，毕竟（我就是这样导致了已经记录在案的其他反思），毕竟，人们必须在有效率的隐蔽性和有不可避免的虚张声势的名声之间做出选择。有一个时期，在接近中年的时候，一个人可以对自己说这样的话并感到安慰。