The Polyglots by William Gerhardie Page B

seemingly simple task of finding us an empty table, of which the number, in proportion to the tables occupied, was vast. Around us stood the waiters—internationals all: a race unto themselves—with that look of theirs betraying that their minds were only set upon a share of what I had in my breast-pocket. And because I was palpably allergic to such menials as porters, waiters and the like, I talked in a loud unconcerned voice, calculated also to reassure myself, and generally assumed the attitude of a gastronomic connoisseur and a man of the world—as though I were Arnold Bennett. Sylvia was studying the menu, and the enormous head waiter bent over her chair. And I looked at him with dark hatred. Among other things, Sylvia wanted chicken. There were two kinds of chicken. A whole chicken cost 500 roubles. A wing, 100 roubles. The rate of exchange, be it remembered, at that time was only 200 roubles to £1 sterling. The enormous head waiter strongly recommended the whole chicken. ‘Straight from Paris in an aeroplane,’ he said. I felt cold in the feet.
    Sylvia hesitated dangerously. ‘I don’t think I want as much asa whole chicken. I’ll have a wing,’ she uttered at last. I breathed freely.
    ‘But the wing is larger than the chicken, madam,’ said the fiend. I longed to ask him to explain that curious mathematical perversion, but a latent sense of gallantry deterred me. I felt like clubbing him. But civilization suffered me to go on suffering in silence. ‘
Go away
,’ I whispered inwardly. ‘
Oh, go away
!’ But I sat still, resigned. Only my left eyelid began to twitch a little nervously.
    ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll have the whole chicken, then.’
    Five hundred roubles! £2 10s. for a solitary chicken! My dead grandfather raised his bushy eyebrows. And I already pictured to myself how under the removed restraints of matrimony, probably in my braces and shirt-sleeves, I would exhort my wife to cut down her criminal expenditure.
    There was a variety of ice-creams at ‘popular prices’, but Sylvia ordered a silly dish called ‘Pêche Melba’—and proportionately more expensive.
    ‘What wine, darling?’
    ‘French,’ she said.
    ‘But what kind?’
    ‘White, darling.’
    The waiter bent over the wine list and pointed to the figures which were double those he did not point to. ‘But what kind?’
    ‘Sweet. The sweetest.’
    And, according to the waiter, the sweetest wine concorded with the highest figure on the list.
    How I hate extravagant drinks! How I hate extravagant food! What I really wanted now, if I could have my way, was eggs and bacon and hot milk.
    ‘Yes, that will do,’ she said.
    The waiter, bowing, whipped his napkin under the arm and retired with the air of one who has his work cut out. The band struck up a gay waltz, but in my soul was darkness.
    ‘Whatever is the matter, darling?’ she enquired.
    ‘This soup,’ I said. ‘It’s damned hot. And why should I eat soup?’
    ‘You eat soup at home.’
    ‘At home I eat it—whether it’s there or not—I mean I eat it—I don’t care—because it’s there. Automatically.’
    ‘Well, eat it here as you would at home,’ she said. ‘Automatically.’
    ‘But here—oh, well, never mind.’
    Spreading the table-napkin on her knees, quickly she brought her fingers together and bending a little and closing her eyes, hurriedly mumbled grace to herself. Then she began to eat the soup, dreamily rolling her eyes.
    Meanwhile, the waiter had returned. ‘I regret, madam, but no more whole chickens left. Only the wing.’ And that moment the music seemed exhilarating.
    ‘Cheer up,’ I said.
    ‘In that case,’ said she, slowly recovering from the blow, ‘I’ll have something else.’
    In front of us were two women of twenty. ‘Look at those two grannies there,’ Sylvia called out aloud.
    ‘Sylvia!’
    She smiled a beautiful bashful smile: her mouth was closed, only the lips withdrew and revealed a portion of her teeth. A