The Birds Fall Down

by Rebecca West

  He was doing all the things that Laura did when she had to stop herself crying: blinking, pouting, raising his eyebrows, swallowing. She went to him and knelt at his feet and kissed his hands. It was a Russian thing to do, but she found it quite easy.

  Kamensky stammered, “Count, I have a real proof. But it has nothing to do with fact. Not with facts that one can test and make a note of for the next edition of the encyclopedia. Count, consider I could not be here if there were not a conspiracy against you. You may remember that when the Grand Dukes were killed I was far away, in Norway, working at that experimental power station north of Bergen. It was long before the news of your troubles reached me, and I could not understand the situation. I did not believe that the catastrophe had been caused by negligence on your part, for you are a perfect administrator, you might be a German. There were only two alternatives. Either your mind had failed you, or you were the victim of betrayal from within the Ministry, of a terrorist conspiracy, such as both you and I know so well. It was intolerable for me not to be with you in your misfortune. It was for that reason that I threw up my Norwegian post and came here to work in France. But I knew quite well that, if the first alternative was the case, my journey was in vain. If your mind was disordered, then your disgrace was the will of God, and there would be nothing anyone could do for you, except leave you to the care of God. You would have been rapt from me. I could not have reached you in the place where you would then have been, to have the honour of serving you. But if you were the victim of a conspiracy, if you were a martyr, then God was working on you through the wills of men, and my will also was a weapon. I could come close to you and fight for you with my weapons. When I came to you, you were here, you had not been caught up by the sleeve of God, you were not rapt from me. You are here, I assure you, you are here with your wife, you are with your daughter, you are with Miss Laura, you are with me, you are with Holy Russia. Therefore I know God has not disordered your mind. If he had, I should be lost and alone. But I am not. This proof lives only in my inner life, but you will have to forget all that you know before you can doubt it for that reason.”

  The old man whispered, “Alexander Gregorievitch, Alexander Gregorievitch, I believe, Alexander Gregorievitch.” He sank low in his chair and turned his face away from them, and presently was still. The dusk silted up in the room, weakly diluted by the flame before the icon in the corner. Outside the window the lit rooms in the tall grey houses across the avenue were yellow oblongs. They could hear Nikolai’s breathing and the sound of the city. The clock struck a gentle quarter, and the sleeping man stirred but did not wake. The door handle turned and Kamensky hissed, “Hush, Aglaia,” and she whispered, “No light?” He whispered back, “No light.” When the door had closed again, he said softly, “Miss Laura, that didn’t wake him. You can go to your mother now.”

  On the threshold she mouthed close to his ear, “You’re very good to my grandfather.”

  “No, it is you who were good.”

  “I did nothing.”

  “You listened hard. He was aware of it. It is all that matters to him now.”

  She went along the corridor, her eyes wet, and sat down on a carved Italian chest until she could be sure that they would stay dry. On the wall opposite hung a Persian rug, its lighter colours shining through the shadows. It was one of the Oriental carpets a Polish ancestress of hers had brought with her on her marriage into the family in the middle of the eighteenth century. “What a lot of things the Diakonovs possess,” she thought, “but they would be lost without Monsieur Kamensky, without this man who is poor and what they would still call unimportant, I suppose.” The tears ran down her cheeks in spite of her efforts. “How wicked the Tsar must be, and he will never be punished for the evil he does,” she told herself, and she walked up and down the corridor for some minutes, wishing it were possible for her to kill him. “Just imagine what it would be like if Queen Victoria or King Edward persecuted Papa like this,” she thought, and remembered with awe the innocence of England. She would not even have suffered like this over there. If she had been at home at Radnage Square and had not wanted to sit in any room because she had been crying, she would have gone up to the top landing, which was flooded with strong colourless light from the high north window, and Dolly the housemaid would keep on coming up, her glazed white dress giving back the brightness, to put the clean white sheets into the linen cupboard or take them out. Any conspiracy could have been blanched out of existence there or anywhere else in the house.

  But here her hiding-place ran dark between treasures from twilit room to twilit room where people were dim as if they had lived long ago, in an age smoky with tragedy, and were now foundered in the text of dull history books. It would seem that only a king, when kings had absolute power, was high enough to have fallen so far as her grandfather; and there was royalty in reverse in her grandmother’s shrunken body, she might have been his queen, waiting outside the prison where they kept him. In this blackness Kamensky shone good, and exempt from greatness. She went towards her grandmother’s bedroom, unafraid because he was not afraid. As she drew near, Aglaia came out and held the door open for her.

  Neither Sofia nor Tania heard her come in. Sofia was lying in bed, propped up on a high pile of pillows in the rosy shadow of taffeta curtains, crimson marabou feathers about her wasted wrists and corded neck, in her ears and on her fingers jewels big as the boiled sweets in a village shop, her face usurped by an old bird. Tania was standing at the end of the bed, looking like someone out of Romeo and Juliet, for her hair was loose on her shoulders and she was wearing a long clinging dress of pleated silk which her husband had bought for her at the Fortuny shop in Venice, but that was three years ago. The words which were rushing from her were English, and this showed they had been speaking about something Aglaia must not understand, for ordinarily they talked together in French or Russian. “I shouldn’t have written to you about my troubles, I see that now, Mamma,” she was saying, “but I didn’t know how ill you were, and I couldn’t bear all this alone.” She had her hairbrush in her hand, and she lifted it and swept it savagely down the full length of her hair, then spread wide her arms. “It is not bearable. If this is happening now, how do I know that it hasn’t happened often before and won’t happen often again?”

  Sofia shut her eyes and opened them again and spoke past her daughter. “Laura, Laura. How good of you to come in and see me again.”

  Tania turned round and sat down on the stool before the dressing-table and went on brushing her hair, holding herself badly, her back bent.

  Laura curtsied and said, “I just thought I’d come and see how you were, though I knew you’d be in bed. I’ve been looking out of the window, and it’s getting dark and the lights are coming out in all the houses, and it’s very pretty, and I felt sad and very fond of everybody.”

  “I know, I know,” smiled Sofia Andreievna, “such an ache, such a rush of affection, and no reason for it either, and all enjoyable. For perfection, somebody one doesn’t know should start playing Chopin in the next house.”

  “Dear Laura,” said Tania, but she could hardly speak.

  “How nice Laura looks,” said Sofia. “A wide space between her eyes and a neck long but not too long. The battle’s won. I’m glad. I like my good-looking grandchildren much, much better than the plain ones.” Laughing, she raised herself in bed, drew a powder puff from some cache and passed it over her face, and sprayed herself and her sheet with scent. “I am feeling so much, much better, for the last three days.”

  But she looked horribly ill, and she was wilting, withering, diminishing, though she still spelt magnificence, as a word retains the same meaning even if it be printed in smaller and smaller type. “I couldn’t,” Laura mourned to herself, “bear it if she died,” and she looked across the room at Tania, and thought again, but in a flame, “I couldn’t bear it if she died.” She wanted to throw her arms round her mother and do what she had always done when she was little, and her mother c
ame to say good night to her when she was in bed, she wanted to lift up her string of pearls and kiss her along the line of warmth they had left on her skin. But what she had to do now was to talk for a minute or two so that they might think she had overheard nothing, and then get out of the room. She said, “Grandmamma, may I ask a question? That lovely fawn robe Grandpapa wears, what’s it made of? It isn’t wool, is it, and it isn’t silk either. I don’t believe we have anything like it in England.”

  “Now, what is that robe made of?” Sofia pondered. “Tania, can you remember the name of the stuff? No? Actually it’s wool, but wool spun from the fleece of a strange animal, and Nikolai was given it by his cousin Vassili Sergeivitch, so I suppose the animal, whatever it was, must have existed on the big estate he had near Orenburg. But then he had property in South America, perhaps the animal was there. But it’s something very special, it’s supposed to be to vicuña what vicuña is to ordinary sheep’s wool. If you have to buy it, it’s fabulously expensive. The Indian princes like it. I remember when Prince Duleep Singh came to St. Petersburg years ago to make arrangements for becoming a Russian naturalized subject in case there was war between Russia and England, your grandfather had to go and see him at his hotel, and he was wrapped round in a great cloak of this stuff, though it was well on in the year, and he told your grandfather that it was valued by the Maharajahs. They’re not used to wearing heavy things, when they’re cold they like stuff that’s warm and light. At the time someone said the Baghdad Jews buy it too, they can afford anything. I hope you told your grandfather you admired his robe, he likes wearing it because it’s like a monk’s habit. To him, bless him, he never in his life knew the cost of anything, it’s part of the ascetic life, like fasting and getting up at four in the morning for the first service.” She laughed wickedly, sighed, dropped her eyelids, sighed, acted drowsiness. “Good night, my little darling, and thank you for coming to say good night to me.”

  As Laura closed the door she heard her mother’s voice rise like a sea-gull flying against the storm. She put her hands over her ears and went back along the corridor. She saw Susie Staunton’s gold-white hair, her vague mouth. In the end room her grandfather was still huddled in his chair, his deep breathing like a long, reasoned complaint; and the curtains had not been drawn. Across the avenue the lit windows were a brighter yellow and the houses were nearly black. The trembling flame before the icon seemed stronger. Monsieur Kamensky’s spectacles caught the light and shone like little moons laid on his dark face. They turned towards the opening door and he uttered a soft, wordless, welcoming sound.

  III

  In the drawing-room after dinner, Laura noticed, not for the first time, a coincidence. It was when her grandfather looked most like a prophet on an icon that her mind recalled certain phrases used by Dolly the housemaid at home in Radnage Square: “up the pole,” “barmy on the crumpet,” “ninepence to the shilling.” He was talking about England, and he was always at his dottiest when he chose that subject.

  “Tania, I’m quite contented with the way you’ve brought up Laura in a heretical land. She followed the liturgy with me quite nicely today. This can’t have been an easy achievement for my daughter, Alexander Gregorievitch. For everything is wrong in England, it must be wrong in England, corruption must be the main harvest of its fields, because the English have no religion. It is no use protesting, Tania. A wife’s loyalty must not seduce her into tampering with the truth when it concerns what is sacred. The English are Protestants, and Protestantism is the negation of religion. True, Protestantism is not as obviously distasteful as Catholicism, which reeks of the vulgarity of ancient Rome, whereas we of the Orthodox faith represent the imperial spirit, born in Rome, that is true, but purged by the sufferings it endured during the long sojourn in Byzantium, even to the last defilement by the infidel. May that offence be cleansed. Laura, do you pray regularly that your mother’s people may be given possession of Constantinople and restore it to its true place as our New Jerusalem?”

  “Well, no,” admitted Laura, and as Nikolai flung up his great hands she amended the answer. “Not so often as I should, I mean. There are,” she said, humbugging a bit to amuse Tania, though she would deny afterwards that she had been amused, “so many other things to pray for.”

  “True,” said Nikolai, “but never neglect for long this most urgent prayer, Laura, and never let yourself be misled into lukewarmness regarding this act of restitution by the apparent violence of Byzantine history. The violence of Byzantium, and of Byzantium’s child, Holy Russia, is the disguise of a healthy natural process. It is a mistake, a vulgar mistake, to regard a number of Byzantine and Russian Emperors as having been assassinated.”

  “Well, they weren’t alive after what happened to them had happened,” Tania interrupted.

  He pretended not to have heard. “Rather did they offer their lives as a sacrifice. They bore the burden of power on behalf of their people, and it is necessary from time to time that power be pruned, like all earthly growths.” He took a sip of brandy, twirled the glass between the palms of his hands, and said pensively, “It is a long time since tragedy visited Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle. I can’t understand why no Indian ever tried to assassinate Queen Victoria.”

  “Certainly a pity from the point of view of the Russian Foreign Office,” said Tania. “But go on telling us about the benefits of the Russian religion.”

  “It is the greatest gift to the human soul yet given. Remember Ancient Rome gave us nothing. It produced authors all too easy to remember, even impossible to forget, though the wise man would wish to do so. Now that I am wretched I am haunted by lines from that deplorable man of mean interests, Horace, that weaver of fairytales, Ovid, that cold heathen, Virgil, and I find no comfort in them. The Romans had sufficient insensibility to make them happy pagans, from whom nothing can be learned. The Greeks proved themselves greater by being wretched in their paganism. Oedipus Rex is a prolonged cry against the irrationality of a world not yet given reason by Christ. Happy are we for whom the Church took the form so inappropriately given their religion by Roman culture, and recast it in a form purified by Greek restraint, and then had its work blessed by the progressive revelation of the Trinity which has been vouchsafed to the Slav peoples. Alexander Gregorievitch, give me some more cognac.”

  As he set down his glass, he said kindly, “Tania, I am worried when I think of you sitting in that London drawing-room of yours. You must often be unhappy.”

  She stared at him under straight brows, her mouth pursed as if she had eaten something sour.

  “Well, you can’t find it easy to instil into our children wisdom not honoured by the community in which they live, such as the true doctrine of the procession of the Holy Ghost.”

  She made a sharp derisive sound, then agreed pleasantly. “But I’ve done my best.”

  “You really understand that doctrine, Laura? That the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father, and the Father alone, and that the belief that it proceeds from the Son—”

  “Is man’s invention,” supplied Laura. But if he were to ask her where that came from in the Church service she was lost.

  “Good. The full understanding of what that doctrine means will come to you later. Yet you should have some understanding of it now, considering the fortunate circumstances of your home. The Trinity is the means taken by God to enable man to comprehend Him, for it is the image of the family, it shows God as the Father. Think of your own father. All the essence of his being is confined to his family. He would not give to the outer world any of the feelings he gives to your mother, to your brothers, to you. Love flows from him to all of you, unfailing. He turns all his wisdom and forethought to the task of contriving unbroken happiness for your mother and all her children. Even so the love and forethought of God goes out to Jesus Christ His son, and the name of that love and wisdom and forethought, which is a thing in itself, is the Holy Ghost. It cannot proceed from the Son, because if it did He would be the Father. It is not
your brothers who provide you and your mother with happiness, it is your father, it is Edward Rowan. Your brothers will contrive the happiness of their families when your father is old and sits peacefully in the evening light with your mother, but now the rays of the sun are emitted by your father. Never cease to contemplate your family, Laura, it is the image of the Godhead.”

  “How well you put things,” said Tania, standing up. “It’s time Laura and I went to bed. We have to say good night to Mamma.”

  Next day his mind was still in England. As usual, Laura went out with him and Monsieur Kamensky for the afternoon drive, which was intended to take him to the rose-gardens at Bagatelle. But he grew tired, they had to turn back when they were not very deep in the strange amateurish forest of the Bois. His head dropped on his chest, his lids fell, but he was not asleep. He said, “You can’t think, Alexander Gregorievitch, how difficult it must be for my Tania and her husband. For the English have no religious belief, none whatsoever. As I said, Protestantism is not a religion.”

  “But surely not. I understood that there were many holy men at Oxford and Cambridge who made suitably humble inquiries into the truths of our Church. Think of Khomyakov’s long correspondence with William Palmer, who belonged to a college named after the Magdalen, either at Oxford or at Cambridge.”

  “An isolated soul here and there. But for the rest the piety of the English is a mockery. They want a prescription for social order, and union with God means nothing to them. They love power so greedily that they cannot bear to depute it to the elect who are fitted to exercise it. They must all have their share of it, even if such a swollen electorate means that the vote becomes worthless. They want England to be a Great Power, a strong country, as they say, and a nation can be certain of strength if it be composed of industrious, sober, honest people, who do not strike or kill their enemies, who do not lie or blaspheme or beg, and who keep themselves clean. So they pretend that this is what religion is for: to teach men and women to be moral. But we Russians know that religion is for the moral and the immoral. It is the love of God for man meeting with the love of man for God, and God loves the vicious and the criminal and the idle as well as He loves the industrious and the honest and the truthful and the abstinent. He humbles himself to ask for the love of the murderer, the drunkard, the liar, the beggar, the thief. Only God can achieve this sublime and insane relationship.”