Futility by William Gerhardie

three-quarters of an hour. General Bologoevski then continued about the situation. He spoke for an intolerably long time, stopping only once or twice to inquire about the soup and whether it was coming. The clock in the corner chimed midnight, and then one. I was now devilishly hungry, and the General looked misused and maltreated. I shouted for the waiter, who with eyes closed slumbered in a standing posture in the distant corner of the room.“What about that soup?” I repeated in excited tones when the waiter showed signs of recovering consciousness.
    “Soup?” he asked, “Well, you see you can’t have soup nowadays … unless you choose to wait—”
    “Wait!”
I said.
    “Three-quarters of an hour or so,” he said.
    Whereupon the General rose. He rose in a threatening manner. It seemed to me that the General’s manner of rising was deliberately remonstrative, a protest undisguised.
    “General!” I shouted, as he ran across to his hat and sword. “Come back and have something. A chicken cutlet. General!”
    But he was gone. I sat alone at my table and waited for the cutlet. As I looked before me I observed sitting at a distant table a man with a familiar face. I could not believe it. My heart leapt within me. I dashed from my chair.
    “Nikolai Vasilievich!”
    “Andrei Andreiech!”
    “Is it possible? Is it really you?”
    Nikolai Vasilievich was kissing me on both cheeks, in confirmation of his identity.
    “Well, I never thought that you were here! I never thought that you could be here, Nikolai Vasilievich.”
    “I am here,” said Nikolai Vasilievich sadly.
    “And who else is here, who else, Nikolai Vasilievich?”
    “All,” sighed Nikolai Vasilievich.
    “All! How do you mean all?”
    “
All
.”
    “Fanny Ivanovna here?”
    “Yes, she is here.”
    “Nina?”
    “Yes, she is here.”
    “And Pàvel Pàvlovich?”
    “Yes, both Pàvel Pàvlovichi are here.”
    “And Eberheim?”
    “Yes, he is here too … they’re all here.”
    “You don’t say so!… And Čečedek?”
    “All here—all.”
    “And Vera?”
    “Yes.”
    “And Sonia?…”
    “Yes, all—my wife and all.”
    “Which wife, Nikolai Vasilievich?”
    “How do you mean? I only have one—Magda Nikolaevna.”
    “Oh, you haven’t married Zina then?”
    “No, but she is here. They are all here—all her family … Uncle Kostia … all.”
    “How are they all? Tell me, Nikolai Vasilievich … the grandfathers dead, I suppose?”
    “Oh no, both here. But I don’t think—nobody thinks—they can last very long now, either of them.”
    “Oh, they’re alive. That’s good.… And so Magda Nikolaevna is here too—with Čečedek, of course.”
    “Yes, and Eisenstein.”
    “She has married Čečedek?”
    “No, she has married no one—except me, of course. But I expect it won’t be very long now till I get a divorce.”
    My voice dropped to a confidential whisper. “Why are they all here, Nikolai Vasilievich?” I asked.
    “Andrei Andreiech, don’t ask me. Why is it that they followed me here all the way from Petrograd? And when I had to go over to Japan just for a fortnight on a matter of business … well, they all followed me there … all … every one of them!… You see, they are, so to speak, economically dependent on me. That is why I suppose they follow me about wherever I go. Weare inseparable—financially. We are a chain. Russia being what she is to-day—disjointed, with neither railway nor postal communication that you can rely on, they simply have to be where I am if they are to get money out of me. I quite understand their position. So they follow me, you see.…”
    “Nikolai Vasilievich!” And I shook him long and warmly by the hand.
    We sat together long into the morning, and Nikolai Vasilievich complained of his lot. The mines, it seemed, were still the chief deterrent to his happiness. His family, he said, had decided to leave Petrograd and go east because their house, which,