The Birds Fall Down

by Rebecca West

  “I have been caught up in something,” sighed Nikolai. “Do what you want with me. I feel as if I had let myself in for being fitted for a lot of clothes I shall never wear. Make haste. I want to think.”

  When Laura got back to the salon Catherine had taken away the tray with the chicken on it, but had left the bottle of still champagne and a glass. “How funny she should think I would want to drink more of that stuff,” she thought, “but then lots of people like it. Next time she comes I’ll get her to bring me something really nice, like Evian or Vichy or orangeade.” The emptiness of the room now seemed a threat that she had come to a place, or a time, where there was nothing. She would have liked to take down a ledger from the shelf over the desk, or to open the decaying hat-box, just to assure herself that objects existed and actions were performed, that people kept accounts and made hats, wore hats, travelled with hats; but her fastidiousness disliked touching other people’s belongings. She went to the window and knelt beside it. Now only one side of the paved street below was gilded by the sun, and the town was awake again, customers were going in and out of the shops, coming out brightly coloured from the doorways, crossing the pavements and entering the shadows and turning gray. The child and her book and the mongrel at her feet were on the sunlit side and shone in the strong oblique rays, their shadows lying long on the pavement, parallel with the shop-front. The little girl was not moving, she was simply waiting for her father.

  X

  The doctor touched Laura on the shoulder. She had fallen asleep while she was praying for a miracle which would bring her father to her at once, faster than the railway could do it. Looking up at the doctor, she asked, “How ill is my grandfather?”

  “It’s not easy to say.” He had lost all his affectation. His fine head was less like a plaster cast, he was blinking and polishing his pince-nez. The gesture sent a shudder running through her. The lenses might be clear glass. He might be on the other side, one of Kamensky’s men. True, his eyes, which were singularly beautiful, violet-blue and set far apart, had grown soft with concern for her grandfather, and even seemed to be a little moist as they met hers. That meant nothing: Kamensky would choose his lieutenants from people who could look like that when they did not mean it. But her suspicions left her, for he began to speak with a bewilderment which could not be pretence. It had the prick of hurt pride, and deceivers, she had noticed at school, were always proud of themselves.

  He was saying that he could not understand her grandfather’s case. The Count ought to be very ill, to go by his pulse, his blood-pressure, his respiration. “Yet he’s fully conscious, he’s talking vigorously, and he grasped my hand a minute or two ago—thinking we were saying good-bye, though of course I’ll be looking in every couple of hours or so—quite firmly, indeed, quite painfully. I understand he had a shock?”

  “A shock?”

  “Yes, I understand there was a man on the train—”

  How could he know that? He must be one of them.

  “A Russian, wasn’t it?” She could not speak. “Did I make a mistake then? Didn’t Professor Saint-Gratien tell me that you and your grandfather had been bothered by some Russian on the train?”

  “Oh, that. Yes, of course. There was a tiresome Russian on the train. I’d forgotten that. But it was nothing.”

  “Odd, I understood from my colleague that he thought you had been quite upset over it.”

  “No. Not really. To tell you the truth, I didn’t quite understand what was going on, but it was nothing my grandfather couldn’t have dealt with ordinarily, in spite of his age. They’re wonderful people, his family,” she told him, her voice shrill, as if she were lodging a complaint. “I can say it without being conceited, for I’m half-English. What they are is diluted in me. But the whole strength, it’s something tremendous. And for the family, he’s not very old. My mother says most of their relatives live into the eighties. Oh, you don’t know what the Slavs are like. They’re not like us, those people at the other end of Europe.” At the thought of the power of some of them, and how it might be exercised, she went over to a chair at the other side of the room and sat down with her head in her hands. “They’re not Europeans at all.”

  The Professor murmured, “Yes, everybody knows that the Russians are formidable, formidable. But all the same,” he objected sadly, “even Russians don’t live for ever.”

  “No,” she agreed bleakly. “We don’t live for ever. We haven’t the prescription for that.”

  “Not even for long, with such a pulse, such blood-pressure, such respiration rate. No, really, that he can’t do. Whoever he is. Is it really impossible, as Professor Saint-Gratien says you feel it is, for your mother to come from Paris? You’re quite sure?”

  As she shook her head she thought, “Will they never leave me alone?” It appeared the only sensible thing that she would have to tell them the truth, but that was impossible. “No, I’m sorry, if my mother was told she might tell a man who would come and kill my grandfather and me. Who is he? Well, he’s two people. Gorin and Kamensky.” But it sounded sheer madness.

  “I’m sorry to hear it. For this is going to be a very harrowing sickbed. Your grandfather, he’s in a highly emotional state. He cried out to me that he must go back to Russia, and that at once. I’ve never heard anything like the passion behind his cries. I avoid dishonesty in dealing with my patients, what happens to them is the will of the good God and it is my duty to acquaint them with it, but I felt obliged to assure him that he would be able to start on the journey after a few days’ rest, may God pardon me for the falsehood.”

  His eyes lay on her with a certain fixity. It might have been that he was racking his brains to think of a way to help her, it might have been that he did not believe her. But in any case, he was not being annoyed with her for being in a difficult position, making him feel he ought to do something about it. Gratefully, she said, “But don’t worry about me. My father’s coming. He’ll start from London the very moment he can. I’ll be all right.”

  “But have you heard definitely that he’s on his way? I understood from my colleague that—”

  “No. But he’ll come.”

  “I wish you had heard from him. A telegram or a telephone message. I know from experience how difficult it can be to get in touch with relatives in cases of emergency. There seems to be a malignant fate at work—”

  “But it’ll be easy to find my father. He’ll be either at home or at the House of Commons. There’s nowhere else he could be. He’s sure to come.”

  “All the same,” sighed the Professor, “I wish you’d had an answer.” There was a knock at the door and he grew calmer. “This may be some message. Come in, come in.”

  Something had gone wrong. The chambermaid Catherine came in slowly, her mouth a little open, her pale eyes wide, plainly the bearer of news so bad, and yet not so very bad, that they were enjoyable. “Professor,” she said, “Monsieur Saint-Gratien has sent along Madame Verrier to nurse the Duke.”

  “Madame Verrier!” repeated the Professor. “Not Madame—” his voice cracked—“Verrier?”

  A little woman with clear-cut features pushed past Catherine, dark and pale and slight, wearing a severe coat and skirt and hat, like a man’s, and carrying a black bag. Lowering her head as if about to butt, she said, “I am a qualified nurse as well as a midwife. And there’s someone ill here, isn’t there? So why are you surprised to see me, Monsieur the Professor?”

  “My grandfather is your patient,” said Laura, going into an impersonation of her mother, and holding out her hand. “I’m so glad you have come. I am Laura Rowan. How do you do?”

  The woman made a truce with the world just long enough to return the greeting, then said, “Now perhaps I might be taken to the patient, Professor.” They went into the bedroom and Laura was left with Catherine, who was still breathing heavily. “You know Madame Verrier?” asked Laura. “Why are you surprised to see her? Doesn’t she nurse as a regular thing?”

  “Oh, yes
, she’s a regular nurse. But it’s not suitable,” said Catherine. “It’s funny of Professor Saint-Gratien to have sent her. That’s all.”

  “Isn’t she a good nurse?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Catherine, looking this way and that in embarrassment. “She’s a good nurse all right. She never has an accident. Not like the others. But it’s not suitable.”

  “Lots of things that aren’t suitable are happening today,” said Laura. Then she caught her breath. “Madame Verrier isn’t connected with Russia in any way, is she?”

  “With Russia? No. Whatever made you think that? We’ve no Russians here in Grissaint except some students at the medical college, and a doctor or two, and she’s nothing to do with them. She’s the daughter of Brunois the watchmaker down by the Prefecture.”

  “She isn’t mixed up with politics? She isn’t a revolutionary, you know what I mean, a nihilist, someone who would throw bombs?”

  “Heavens, no. I never heard her worst enemies say that about her. She’s not a Catholic, of course, that she couldn’t be, doing what she does. That’s why Professor Barrault doesn’t like her. He’s a very good Catholic, the President of all our Catholic societies.”

  “But what is that this Madame Verrier does, then?” asked Laura. “Could she hurt my grandfather?” Catherine clapped her hand over her mouth to hide her laughter, and Laura shook with sudden rage. “Please go and get me some Evian or Vichy water.”

  “Yes, Mademoiselle,” said Catherine, trying to smoothe out the amusement on her face, and she turned at the door to say timidly, “I didn’t mean any harm, but it’s not suitable, not at all.”

  The Professor hardly spoke when he left. He simply kissed Laura’s hand and said, “I’ll be back before long, and in the meantime you will find Madame Verrier—” he almost moaned it—“very competent.” She did not dare ask him what it was that Madame Verrier did which showed her to be a bad Catholic, and the mystery became greater when the nurse came back into the salon. It seemed impossible she should have been a bad anything, and she even might have been uncomfortably good. She had clear grey eyes which probed and might easily accuse. She had taken off her coat and had discovered some speck adhering to the cuff of her very clean, slightly starched white blouse, and she scratched at it constantly with her exquisitely kept hands, frowning deeply. She was thin, not merely slender, but thin, as if she ate too frugally. At first she spoke in an argumentative tone, but this was evidently habit, her voice softened as she told Laura that her grandfather was sleeping and that she would call her when he woke.

  It was not long before she did. Through the shadows of the bedroom the old man was weakly complaining: “I long to receive Holy Unction, not only for the sake of the anointment, but for the sake of hearing the priests chant the hymns of the rite, which are of a special beauty. I hunger and thirst to hear them, and not a word will come back to me. Some of the prayers, yes, they are with me. ‘O Holy Father, Physician of Souls and Bodies, who didst send Thy only begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, which healeth every infirmity and delivereth from death.’ Yet is that right? It seems to me I’m making some mistake, but what? At any rate, the hymns are much dearer to me, they would give me back my lost power over myself, and of them I’ve forgotten every phrase.”

  “Please, dear, dear Grandfather,” said Laura, “you’re forgetting the hymns simply because you’re tired. Rest, and in the morning you will remember them.”

  “It isn’t entirely because I’m tired that I can’t remember the hymns,” said Nikolai. “It’s partly because my mind is in an impure state. I keep on thinking about Kamensky and wondering why he did not love me. Also the real reason I’m tired is because I can’t remember the hymns, not the other way round. Each of the services the Church appoints for an ordeal common to mankind is appropriate to that particular ordeal, to it and no other, and it alone can make that ordeal tolerable. Oh, God, give me back my memory of those dear hymns and take away my fatigue. Which is enormous. I feel as if I were about to fall through the mattress.”

  “When I can’t remember poetry at school,” said Laura, “I shut my eyes and don’t think of anything at all, and sometimes it comes back to me.”

  “I’ll try that,” said Nikolai, “but I am afraid I will think of Kamensky.”

  “No, you don’t think of anything if you do something funny with the front part of your head.”

  “Why, I knew that also when I was very young.” He grew still, so still that she sat back in her chair so that the bed curtain was between her and the sight of his stony whiteness, which could not have been more like stone or whiter, unless he died.

  His cry was happy. “I’ve remembered one hymn! How the words comfort me as they flow on to my tongue. Where are you, Laura? Listen, listen! This is the hymn to the Mother of God. ‘Like drops of rain dried up by the summer sun, my days which are evil and few, gently vanish into nothingness. O Lady, save me …’ But, Laura, my memory hasn’t come back. Not altogether. For this is beautiful, but it is not quite right. Ah, but now I remember. ‘Through thy tenderness of heart and the many bounties of thy nature, O Lady, intervene for me in this dread hour, O Invincible Helper.’ Strange, it’s not right. ‘Great terror imprisoneth my soul, trembling unutterable and grievous, because it must go forth from the body.’ It must go forth from my body. It must go forth from my body. Ah, now I understand.”

  He lifted up his voice in a shout which became a weak howl. The nurse opened the folding-doors and stood at the end of the bed, looking down at him with bent head and scrutinizing brows.

  “My memory is perfect. Of course it is perfect. We Diakonovs never lose our memories. My memory has simply more common sense than my foolish heart, which makes me desire the consolation of Holy Unction, which is no longer for me. The prayer and the hymns which are coming into my mind are those appropriate to my state. They come from the Office for the Parting of the Soul from the Body.”

  Laura cried out, “No!” The idea that he was dying shocked her as if it had never occurred to her before, as if she had not thought him dead at the station, as if she had not discussed his death first with Chubinov and then with the doctors. Until this moment some part of her had not believed that anybody could really die. “You’re ill,” she argued, “very ill, but you’re not dying.”

  “Allow your elders to know their own business best. I am on the point of death.” He began to pray again. “‘O our Lady, Holy Birth-giver, O Conqueror and Tormentor of the Fierce Prince of the Air, O Guardian of the Dread Path, help thou me to pass over unhindered, as I depart from earth. Lo, terror is come to meet me, O Lady, and I fear it.’”

  She sat quite still, covering her eyes, while the wild prayers flew about the room like bats.

  “‘Vouchsafe that I may escape the hordes of bodiless barbarians and rise through the abysses of the air, and enter into Heaven, and I will glorify thee forever, O Holy Birthgiver of God. O thou who didst bear the Lord God Almighty, banish thou far from me in my dying hours the Chieftain of Bitter Torments who ruleth the universe, and I will glorify thee forever.’” The nurse was standing at the end of the bed, crushing a tablet with a spoon in a glassful of water. “Who is she?” asked Nikolai. “But that I don’t really want to know. How vast is the number of people who exist, who even serve one, and whom one doesn’t want to know about. But I would like to know who that man was who told us that long story in the train. A senior police official, I suppose. Trust no one of his occupation. Do not trust me. Do not trust any of us, from the greatest man of state to the last lowest simpleton, who aid our Tsar in the sacred task of taking on the guilt of power in order that the common man may remain innocent. All, all of us are saved and tainted. But this man knew his business. You didn’t happen to hear his name?”

  “He was Vassili Iulievitch Chubinov.”

  “Really? I’m surprised at that. I knew him as a boy. He never showed any promise of being as good as that. All one could say in his favour was that he was a good revolver shot, and
there are not many of them. Someone must have worked hard to raise him to that level. I wonder who it was.” He lay staring through the wall beyond the end of his bed. The nurse held the glass to his lips and he drank the water without looking at her. “If only I had a secretary who could take down my thoughts as I dictated them. If only Kamensky was here.”

  “You shouldn’t think of doing anything tiring like that,” said Laura. “Try and go to sleep and tomorrow you can do everything you want.”

  “You don’t understand the obligations inherent in this event—my death, I mean. It actually is written in the rite, ‘Arise, O my soul! O my soul, why sleepest thou? The end draweth near and thou must speak.’ Go into the other room, dear child, while I think what words they are that I ought to speak. It’s not easy. For one thing, I should speak of my own sins, and though I know I’m a very sinful man, I’ve never been able to see what my sins are. They don’t seem comparable to the sins which have been committed against me. But I understand that before I die I must really convince myself that I also have been in the wrong. I will have to work hard on this during my last hours, I will have to concentrate, for up till now I cannot see how I have ever been anything but in the right. Also, little one, if I rave of the deceptions and injustices which have been practised on me, you might feel that the world was too horrible for you to bear, not realizing that though these afflictions should by logic be unbearable, God gives you strength to bear them. I have really been enjoying myself all the time. But my agonies also have been stupendous, and my groans over them might mislead you, so go away, my dear little girl, my dear little Tania’s dear little daughter. It is not because I don’t love you that I wish you to leave me, it is because I do.”

  She leaned over him to give him a kiss, and he said, “Tell the lacemakers not to sing so loud. I approve of them singing hymns while they work, but they are disturbing me.”