The Birds Fall Down (27 page)

VIII

If Kamensky was Gorin, Laura thought, it was terrible that he had used the same forks and spoons, eaten off the same plates, and drunk out of the same glasses as the Diakonov family, and sat at the table as it had been furnished by their dead. The silver equipage had been given to an ancestor by Catherine the Great: a string of silver elephants trod a narrow silver track on the shining white cloth round a larger elephant on a column, like the one in the square in Rome. The forks and spoons were different from the Georgian ones they used at home in Radnage Square, they were French. Another ancestor had taken his bride to Paris just before Louis XV had issued his decree requisitioning his subjects’ silver to pay for his wars, and they had taken back to Russia two great chests of it. The glasses had come from Prague, from another honeymoon, and they had survived a hundred years, only because they were always washed in a basin lined with several layers of flannel. People had forgotten what the plates were, and there were so many services nobody bothered whether they were Meissen or Sèvres. Some were Chelsea but were painted with Japanese landscapes. They had the childish look that belongs to a picture of a place by someone who has never been there. All were so beautiful she looked at them every time. Now, if Nikolai went into the dining-room and said, “Take all these things away for ever, they are spoiled,” he would be right. It would be no use just washing them.

At home in Radnage Square they would pretend there was no problem, everyone would eat off the polluted ware, and it would be a sort of poisoning. There was some good in being Russian. But perhaps Kamensky was not Gorin.

Nikolai and Chubinov were talking languidly, two tired men, about the origins of Kamensky and Gorin. Chubinov was saying that Gorin was forty-three years old and was born at Lyskovo in the Grodnensko province, and had studied at the University of St. Petersburg until the police began to harry them, then at Karlsruhe, and later at Darmstadt, where he had taken his diploma in engineering. Nikolai was saying that Kamensky was forty-one, was born at Kharkov, and had taken his degrees in engineering at Moscow and Berlin. That was certain. The Ministry had checked. “And Darmstadt too,” said Chubinov, “we checked that.” They were silent.

“What does Gorin look like?” Laura asked.

“He is dark. His eyes and hair are dark, and his face is unlined, considering his age.”

“Kamensky is dark, dark and short, pleasing but not distinguished,” said Nikolai.

“Gorin is not short,” said Chubinov, “he is not much shorter than I am.”

“But you are short.”

“For you who are abnormally tall, it’s difficult to get a conception of normal height.”

“But what’s Gorin like?” asked Laura. “What would you tell somebody to look out for, if they had to meet him at a railway-station?”

“Well, he’s a Russian. It isn’t only that his cheekbones are high, he’s got the Slav signature on his face. If you met him anywhere you’d say, Ah, here’s one of us.’ I really can’t think of anything else. I’ve often thought it strange that such a remarkable man should have such an ordinary appearance, for to tell the truth hundreds of thousands look exactly as he does.”

“Millions of Russians look exactly like Kamensky, provided they’re not of noble birth,” said Nikolai. “But God forbid we should hang a man because he looks so like a great many other Russians that maybe he might be another man who also looks like a great many other Russians.” He spoke with a hint of cunning.

“Gorin also looks as if he wasn’t noble,” meditated Chubinov. “I should think his father was probably a minor functionary in a not very large town, or perhaps a merchant, but in a small way of business. But he has, now I come to think of it, one physical trait as outstanding as his mental endowments. He has the eyes of an eagle. I’ve never known a man in middle life with such sight. Walking on the hills above Zürich, I’ve known him tell the time by the clock on a tower in the heart of the city, though not the youngest among us could see anything but the round dial.”

“Then Gorin’s not Kamensky,” said Nikolai in calm and disagreeable triumph. “Kamensky’s almost blind. I’ve never seen him without his spectacles. He’s helpless without them.”

“No, Grandfather,” Laura said, “he isn’t.”

He looked at her out of the corner of his eye as if they were both Orientals and should not be speaking so directly.

“Don’t you remember that the other day I tried on Monsieur Kamensky’s spectacles?”

His glance did not soften.

“I tried to tell you, but you were angry with me. What I wanted to say was that Monsieur Kamensky’s spectacles are glass, plain glass. He can see as well as anybody.”

Without a pause Nikolai answered, “Thousands of our minor functionaries do that. Wear spectacles which are plain glass. I’ve come across the practice again and again among those not wellborn. It’s a sign of distinction among the undistinguished. A claim that one’s not coarsely perfect, like one’s cousin the peasant. That my friend Kamensky, of whom I know nothing ill, wears such spectacles is no proof that he’s Chubinov’s friend Gorin, who seems to be all one might expect of his pack of enlightened scoundrels.”

Chubinov said gently, “So you’re determined not to ask, just to die. I can’t do so. I feel it’s my duty to live until I’ve discovered the truth and proclaimed it.”

“There’s no need for anyone but God to know the truth,” said Nikolai. “The part of man is to obey, and for obedience one does not have to know the truth. One has only to pay attention to the command.”

“Please, Monsieur Chubinov,” said Laura, “does Gorin put anything on his hands? Monsieur Kamensky uses an ointment which his grandmother made for him when he got chilblains, with a herb in it which has a very strong smell.” She stopped, astonished, even after all that had happened, by the horror on his face.

“In winter-time his room reeks with the stuff.”

“People of that class always smell to high heaven from October to April, with the salves and messes made up for them by their old women,” said Nikolai. “It is no proof of anything.”

“Gorin’s salve,” said Chubinov, “is made from a herb we call
pizhina
in Russian.”

“We call it tansy. It’s very green and it doesn’t grow very high but it isn’t flat on the ground either. Would that be
pizhina?
”

“I’ve never seen it,” said Chubinov. “For me it’s a puff of steam from a bathroom door. When I was a little boy my mother and my aunts used to put
pizhina
leaves in their baths, and my German tutor used to sniff and say,
‘Ach der gute Rainfarn,’
and I recognized the smell again in Gorin’s room.”

“
Rainfarn
. I don’t know that word. In French it’s
la barbotine
, that’s what Mummie calls it.”

“We’re lost unless a cook comes into the carriage, or someone carrying a German-French dictionary,” said Nikolai. “This is an absurd conversation, belittling to us all. If one’s stabbed, one doesn’t spend one’s last breath guessing what tradesman sold the dagger.”

“But of course Kamensky’s Gorin,” said Laura, and shook with fury. “There’s something that makes it certain. Grandfather, don’t you remember? The way he got free this morning when he was bringing us down to the station. He cheated in the same mean way as the man who waved at the actress, as the man who lied about Berr. Monsieur Chubinov, my grandfather has a little footman, he’s just a boy, you must have seen him with us at the station, he’s really too young to be a footman. He’s very nice. He’s devoted to Monsieur Kamensky, he says he’s been very kind to him. When we were all getting into the carriage outside my grandfather’s apartment,

Monsieur Kamensky pretended that the little footman had slammed the door on his hand and hurt him. The poor boy said he hadn’t, but Kamensky pretended he was in great pain and went on humbugging and humbugging, shamming not only that he was hurt, but shamming too that he was making light of it, and that for the boy’s sake. I wish this wasn’t true.” She stopped for a minute and prayed. “God, let all this not have happened.” But there was no answer. She went on, “Finally he pretended he was in such pain he had to get out of the carriage and go to a pharmacy where he could get his hand bandaged. But of course he was going off to the Café Viborg. And the boy was terribly upset. Oh, certainly Kamensky’s Gorin, and he ought to be killed.”

Nikolai was staring out of the windows at the fields. “It’s not so bright as it was,” he said. “Every time the sun goes behind a cloud in France you see the country’s damp as a sponge.” He shuddered, dropped his chin on his chest, closed his eyes, and softly asked a question.

“Oh, speak clearly!” groaned Chubinov. But it was not for him to complain. He had covered his ears as if he did not want to hear.

“I asked you,” said Nikolai, “whether the name of Kaspar meant anything to you?”

“Nikolai Nikolaievitch, why did you not ask that question an hour ago?”

“For the same reason that you’re not answering it now.”

They sat side-by-side in silence, looking out at the dull day. When the sun came out of the clouds they turned their faces away from the brightness.

“Well, here it is, the bitter morsel,” sighed Chubinov. “Kaspar is the Party name of Gorin. Only those of us who know him intimately call him Gorin. To all others he is Kaspar. Since you’ve asked this question, I suppose that Kaspar is the name used by Kamensky when he acts as a police spy.” He broke the silence that followed by crying out quite loudly, “Nikolai Nikolaievitch, this is all your fault. None of this would have happened if you had been true to your own class, to your own kind. How could you take a police spy into your home? Blind as you are with bigotry, infatuated with your imagined duty to defend reaction, how could you let a police spy sit on your chairs, breathe the same air, talk with you, eat with you, meet your women folk? Even if the jackal cleans the gutters outside your house, the jackal is a jackal.”

“But he wasn’t a police spy like other police spies,” said Nikolai. “Perhaps being with your kind corrupted him. He used not to be vile, he was a good, good man. He came to my notice first when I was at the Ministry of Ways and Communications. He was in charge of some important pumping operations which had to be done when they laid a railway-line over that marshland down by Vologda. Good God, he cannot be a villain, he simply can’t. Up there we had an epidemic of typhus among the workers, and he behaved like a saint, he was fearless, he was a father to the sick, he caught the sickness himself, and all this when he might have got leave to come back to Moscow, for he was among the experts whom we could not afford to lose. When the doctors sent him to us to convalesce he wanted to return long before he was fit; I had to keep him with me by pretending I needed an extra secretary for the moment, and in a very short time I realized he was a subordinate beyond one’s dreams. An excellent engineer, with much knowledge of the newer work done in Germany and France, particularly in the field of hydraulics, and so good, so pious, so gracious. Charity bubbled up in him, the janitors and the cleaners and the old clerks all loved him, and if he came to me one day weeping, to tell me that he could give information regarding the iniquitous proceedings in certain revolutionary circles, you, Vassili Iulievitch, you know quite well why that was, and that it was neither unnatural nor dishonourable. How can you have the impudence to transfer to him the shame that lies on you!”

“I’ve not the slightest idea what you’re talking about,” said Chubinov.

“I’m talking about his brother,” said Nikolai, heavily.

“Gorin’s brother? He hasn’t got one.”

“Not now. But he had one.”

“No, never. Three sisters, yes. But I’ve heard him say several times that he had never had a brother. Indeed, when we were at Montreux he told me that it had always been his great desire to have a brother, and that he’d found a substitute in me.”

Trembling, Nikolai hissed, “Kamensky had a brother. Younger than himself. He was enticed into joining your organization when he was a student at Kharkov. Suddenly the boy appeared in Petersburg at Kamensky’s lodgings and begged his older brother for his protection, saying that he’d been ordered by your committee to shoot the Governor of Kharkov, and that he’d suddenly realized he could not kill, he could not break the law of God. So he refused. No actual threat was made by your committee, but he’d become aware that he was going to be punished for his resistance to evil, and he feared the worst. Kamensky left the boy in his lodgings, went to the house of a friend who had a telephone, and tried to ring me up to ask for an appointment next day, but I was out. When he returned to his lodgings the boy was gone. Vassili Iulievitch, have you so many crimes on your conscience that you do not remember this one?”

“I don’t remember it because it never happened. It couldn’t have happened. For some reason which I can’t bring to mind at the moment, we’ve never contemplated murdering the Governor of Kharkov.”

“An odd omission. You must try to recall the reason, and tell me about it some time. But either you are lying, or you know nothing about the workings of your own organization. Your father was quite right in all he said about you. For there was such a boy. We found him. When Kamensky, in a frenzy of grief, was so far beyond himself that he ventured to come to my house in the middle of the night, a great liberty for a man in his position, we alerted the police both in Petersburg and back in Kharkov. After four days a peasant reported to the police that at a time which was a few hours after Kamensky’s brother had disappeared, he had seen three men carrying a young man whom he supposed to be drunk into a villa on the Peterhof Road. A couple of nights later he passed the villa and it was in darkness, and a neighbour told him that the family was away on a long visit to the Crimea. That puzzled him, and he told the police, who went in and found the body of Kamensky’s brother in the kitchen. A noose had been thrown round his neck and the rope had been slung on to a meat-hook in the ceiling. The wretched boy had been slowly strangled. Be careful how you speak of this. I went with Kamensky. I saw the boy’s tongue lolling from his mouth. I am a soldier. But I had not seen any such thing before.”