by Rebecca West
“I wonder who he was,” said Kamensky, thoughtfully.
He was not so clever after all. If he had not known the man was Chubinov he would have asked her to describe him. So that he would not remember the omission afterwards, she said, as if answering a question, “Thin and middle-aged and shabby. He wore spectacles and he was mousy, no particular colour. But he might have been all right once. I mean, it wasn’t surprising that they had known each other in Russia long ago.”
“What was it they had been talking about on the train?”
“Well, I don’t know. I told you, I was in a different compartment, my grandfather sent me there.”
“But afterwards didn’t he tell you anything about their conversation?”
“Afterwards? Monsieur Kamensky, you don’t understand. When I say that my grandfather talked nonsense after he was taken ill on the train, I really mean it. He didn’t talk about this man at all until we got here, and then he only spoke about him once, and then said that he’d told fairy-tales you’d tell children. There was something about a blind man being able to see the time on a clock miles and miles away.”
“Ah. And that was all?”
“All I heard, though of course he was rambling the whole of the afternoon and evening, and I may not have listened to every word; and I wasn’t in his room all the time, I came in here. But most of what he said I got, and it had nothing to do with the present. It was all about things that had happened when he was quite young, like going to Persia before the roads were finished, and of course he recited reams and reams of the liturgy.”
“So that was all,” said Kamensky. He sighed as if about to faint.
Then he rose and poured himself another glass of champagne and came back to his chair. She watched his fingers loosen and clench, loosen and clench round the stem of his wine-glass, and told herself that she must not grow careless and let down her guard too soon, simply because she saw that he was telling himself the same thing. “Forgive me,” came the honeyed voice through the half-light, “but I can’t, I really can’t hold back a question which comes from the sheerest selfishness on my part. I’m ashamed of wanting to ask it, even in the presence of death, which makes egotism look so petty a folly. I must know: did your grandfather speak of me in his last hours?”
She waited, like a chessplayer pondering the next move.
“Don’t hesitate to answer, even if you think the truth may wound me. Remember that I’m a believer. If he remembered me with affection, that’s good. But if he didn’t, if his soul was alienated from mine at the hour of departure, and we know that such things happen under the terror of death, my prayers will bring me near to him again in the hereafter, we will be united by God’s grace and in His presence.”
One should shut one’s ears to this, as one should turn one’s eyes away from the apes when they were doing odd things in the corner of the cage; but it was so interesting.
“Yet I must ask whether he spoke of me, because I’m weak, weak like a wife who attaches importance to her husband bringing her back a present from a visit abroad, even though his whole life is one long proof of his devotion to her. All the same I can’t feel ashamed of my weakness, for it comes from my grief.”
She found herself saying, in an icy voice, “Your grieving heart is like your bandaged hand.” That was suicide. Now he must realize she knew he was a traitor.
But he said, “How sympathetic you are to remember my hand in the midst of your shock and sorrow! But how I wish my heart pained me only so much as my hand. Isn’t it strange how any physical pain is more tolerable than mental pain?” With difficulty he reminded himself of his duty to make quite sure. “All the same, I must ask you—it’s really necessary for my peace of mind—did your grandfather speak of me, for good or for evil?”
“I don’t like answering you,” she said, “because all I have to report is such a little thing, considering all you’d done for him and his family. My grandfather only mentioned you once. He was talking about the time he was in Persia, and about making the roads, and he said, ‘I wish I had Kamensky here to take this down,’ and then he repeated your name twice. ‘Sasha, Sasha,’ he said, I’m sorry, but that’s all there was. But he did sound fond of you when he repeated your name.”
“It is enough, till the hereafter,” said Kamensky, quietly. “I am glad I was persistent in asking the question, for I like your answer. ‘Sasha, Sasha,’” he repeated under his breath. He sipped his champagne, his face smooth again, his eyes wandering placidly round the room. He put down his glass with an exclamation of mild impatience, and went over to his hold-all and tidied up the straps, putting each into its own buckle, then went back and settled into his chair, easy as a fed cat. That was comprehensible enough. When he left Paris he must have thought himself obliged to kill all the three people who knew he was Gorin; her grandfather, herself, and Chubinov, and three times run the risk of being caught and guillotined. Now her grandfather needed no killing: God had done that. As she had not heard what Chubinov told her grandfather—and she was sure Kamensky believed that now—there was no need to kill her. That left only one person to be murdered, and he might be an easy victim. As Chubinov ran for safety, his adoration would slow him down, it would spin him round so that those spaniel eyes could have a last look at the idol. Hatred of Kamensky flared up in her, she went over to the table and took the plate of food he had pushed away and set it in front of him. “You’re drinking, you might as well eat too,” she said, her mind rushing away from her into a savage childish fantasy that the food might turn into poison.
He thanked her so softly that she could not hear the quite long sentence. “What? what?” she asked through her clenched teeth. “You’re moving about the room as your mother sometimes does,” the murmur came, “with a certain impatience, but still with grace.” She went on straining her ears, but hardly got it. “As if you were trying to make the world turn more quickly on its axis. And not only that. At this moment you want to break the world’s orbit and send it circling to some other part of the universe, where there is no death. Ah, I know quite well how you’re feeling. For what shall I do without Nikolai Nikolaievitch?”
“What indeed?” she grimly echoed. He was still eating, but his glass was empty and she opened the other bottle.
“He was the centre of my being,” said Kamensky. He had forgotten the sleeping nurse, and his voice was loud and of a piercing beauty.
“He must have been.” It was true. The apartment in the Avenue Kléber must have been to him what the House of Commons was to her father, what the Stock Exchange is to a stockbroker.
“He made me what I am,” Kamensky went on. She pointed to the sleeping nurse and he lowered his voice again. “You don’t seem surprised. You should be. It’s very unlikely that a man like me, of no family, born in poverty, with serf blood, should have been made by a great noble, and when I say made, I mean mentally created, just as a son is mentally created by his father. Don’t you want to know why he affected me so strongly? But I suppose,” he said, very faintly, “that you feel no curiosity whatsoever about me.”
She was not safe for ever. She must remember that as soon as Kamensky discovered that Chubinov was not in London, and his spies would find that out, he would know that she had lied to him, and he would pursue her like an animal, a bloodhound sent after a convict. She had better learn all she could about the animal. “No curiosity? About you? You’re wrong about that. I’d rather know all about you than about anyone else in the world.”
She watched him slowly raise the glass to his lips, his hands shaking, a shy smile brightening in his beard, everything about him tender and fluid. Even his glasses seemed to give back a melting light. “So,” he said. “So. I’ve just heard the most wonderful words that anyone has ever said to me.” He drank again. “Oh, if I could tell you everything!”
“Why can’t you?” She put the question, but she was amazed that he wanted to go on talking. He had asked her if she knew what the man on the train had tol
d Nikolai, she had lied to him, he had believed the lie. Why could he not be contented, and go away, and let her get to sleep?
“It’s difficult. That something exists doesn’t mean that it can be completely described. A grave disharmony. But I’ll do my best. Miss Laura, this is an age full of temptation and confusion. I don’t allude to the sins of the flesh. I’ve never wanted to commit the grosser faults. But intellectually, morally, it’s so easy to go wrong today. Well, Nikolai Nikolaievitch lifted me right out of the bog where I might have splashed about until I drowned. He was a perfect example of the true Russian nature, as it’s been formed by Orthodox Christianity, a traditionalist, a monarchist, an imperialist, a Pan-Slavist, though without any taint of rebellion, of attempts to claim the right of judgment in practical politics. He was more Russian than mere Russian human beings can be, he was like a tree in the Russian forest, its roots deep in the Russian soil, he was like the limitless Russian plain. He was matter not for history only, but for geography. Well, it was in a sense a waste, my friendship with him. True, I escaped pettiness in the service of his greatness, but who am I but Alexander Gregorievitch Kamensky, a simple engineer, who comes from nowhere, who knows very few people, who could not lay out to advantage the spiritual wealth he gave me. I’ll give you a better idea of what his influence meant if I tell you about a friend of mine.” His voice became indistinct, he did not seem to want to finish his sentence. “A more original man. He was to Nikolai Nikolaievitch as the anvil to the hammer. Because of what your grandfather gave him he performed an interesting feat, perhaps of importance to history.” The silence fell.
“You were telling me about your friend.”
“Wait a little,” he said. “There’s something else. More important.”
“What’s that?”
“Your shadow on the wall. No, don’t turn round. You’re spoiling it. You’ll have to let me describe it. It’s just a shadow, a piece of wall darker than the rest. But it’s such a particular shadow. The stupidest person in the world would see it wasn’t cast by a man, that it’s a woman’s shadow. That it’s a lady’s shadow. It’s a shadow cast by a beautiful young Russian lady. Of a certain sort. Well-bred and gentle. Above all, gentle.”
Now she knew that he was laughing at her. It could be that she had not deceived him, that he had recognized her rage against him. She would have to keep her head and not lose her temper while he made fun of her.
“Pictures which tell so much about their subjects are called masterpieces,” he went on. “Your shadow is a masterpiece and a gentle one. Have you been to Venice? Ah, that’s a great thing to have still before you. Well, in Venice, most of the pictures are too great, too splendid, right up on your grandfather’s level, but in some of the churches, behind the altars, there are gentle masterpieces, like your shadow.”
For a time he simply sat there, holding his glass, but not drinking, not eating, not speaking, not moving. The persuasion came on her that he was very happy. Why should that be? Was he perhaps waiting for a signal to set in motion some plan which could not fail? Or was he just waiting, with time in hand, because everything was settled, and it would be done much later, somewhere else, when he was far away?
He said at last. “The way the gas is trembling because it’s turned so low. The way the light and the shadows are trembling on the walls.”
“Yes?”
“It’s as if they were keeping time with something inside oneself. Not one’s heartbeat. They’re too slow for that. But something.”
She broke the long stillness by saying: “Your friend, you were telling me about your friend. What was it that Nikolai Nikolaievitch caused him to do?”
As if he had not heard, he asked, “Do you go to the opera in London? Do you go to Mozart’s operas?”
“Yes, Figaro and Don Giovanni. We don’t like Wagner.”
“I don’t know much about music. I’ve not had the leisure for that. All my life I’ve been starved of time as the poor are starved of bread. But it always seems to me that the songs Mozart writes for women aren’t just arias, they’re, as you might say, receptacles for storing the essence of femininity. When I hear them I think of the scentmakers down on the Riviera, distilling the scent of their jasmine and carnations and storing them in beautiful bottles. Such as I suppose your mother and you have on your dressing-tables.
When the actresses sing those arias, it’s as if the crystal stopper had been taken out of one of those bottles, and the fragrance floats into the air, at once intoxicating and sobering us, exhilarating us and making us unchangeably serene.”
She wondered how he dared talk such nonsense, with her grandfather lying in the next room, and his authority still harsh about them.
“To think of you sitting in an opera-house, in the grand tier, perhaps next to the Royal Box, wearing a white dress, wearing a pearl necklace—for diamonds are only for married ladies, aren’t they?—when all the lights are turned down and only the stage is bright, and one of the world’s great singers is standing before the footlights, pouring out her heart in one of these arias, and her voice rises above the dark auditorium and you’re there in the darkness, so quiet and attentive—if I came into such a dark theatre, and I could not see anything at all, I’d wait till my eyes got accustomed to the darkness and I’d look about and finally I’d see the outline of a head turned towards the stage, just the outline, just the silhouette, and I would know it was you.”
But his spies would have told him the number of her seat.
“The femininity Mozart seeks to evoke is what your mother and you represent at its highest. Such beauty has great value as a philosophical concept.”
If he must talk nonsense, why such silly nonsense? Did he himself think it meant anything? “What, you mean that just being beautiful like my mother has anything to do with philosophy?”
“Don’t say ‘just being beautiful.’ Oh, it’s such a thing, this beauty. And the philosophical concept I’m speaking of is most serious. It’s called the doctrine of Sophia, of heavenly wisdom, and it holds that woman’s beauty is the image on earth of the beauty in the cosmos, which is the wisdom of God as it is extended into the universe. Becoming flesh and uniting the Creator and the Creation, with no breach between them. The doctrine was formulated by a Russian thinker with whom I don’t agree, but whose genius I can’t deny: Vladimir Soloviev.”
“Your friend,” she reminded him. “You said you’d tell me about your friend.”
“Ah, yes, my friend. It was he who brought me to Soloviev. Originally he couldn’t tolerate him, but under the influence of your grandfather he came to revere him.” He got up, refilled his glass, and stretched a deliberative hand over the plates of food. “Soloviev,” he murmured, and popped into his mouth a square of toast spread with prawns, which had garnished the salmon. He went back to his chair and sank deep into it, its rounded back framing him like a conch, his knees comfortably crossed between the two gilt dolphins’ heads on the arm-ends, with a kind of contentment which suggested that he was sitting in warm water. “An opera,” he said dreamily, “an opera. A nightingale. It’s not only the sound which matters, it’s who listens to it. Who’s in the darkened auditorium, who opens her casement on the moonlit garden.”
“Such queer twaddle,” she thought, and her attention wandered. How long would it take Kamensky to realize that Chubinov was not in London, that she had been lying, that she must be killed? And, what was more important at the moment, when would he stop talking and let her to go sleep? She found she was listening to the end of a sentence and had not heard its beginning.
“… and after my friend and I had spent two years together at the University, we felt like brothers.”
“Which university was that?” she jeered. It had been like a geography lesson in the train, when her grandfather and Chubinov had talked of the universities where Gorin and Kamensky had or had not studied: St. Petersburg, Karlsruhe, Darmstadt, Moscow, Berlin.
Without noticing the gust of laughter which esca
ped her because he had to think for a minute, he answered, “Berlin. We were there, yes, for more than two years. But it did not make us any less Russian. I can’t imagine anybody more Russian than my friend. So inevitably he suffered.”
“What from?”
“That’s a curious question. Why, what all of us young Russians suffered from. Do you know the poems of Pechorin? An insignificant man. He died a Roman Catholic, which is quite wrong for a Russian. We can belong to the Orthodox Church or become atheists, but only the most contemptible among us, the unbaked loaves, can adopt the Latin faith. Nevertheless, Pechorin wrote some wonderful lines. Listen. ‘How sweet it is to hate one’s native land, and eagerly await its annihilation.’ Pechorin wrote that.”
“Well, I knew at once it wasn’t by Rudyard Kipling.”
“Of course not. It couldn’t be written by anybody but a Russian. Only a Russian could feel this, Miss Laura, and it is what all Russians who love Russia passionately must feel and do feel. So inevitably they must suffer, and my friend felt it more than most, so his sufferings were great indeed.”
“Uncomfortable for him.” She could not help yawning.
“You’re not using the right word. It’s rarely that I have to suggest that your Russian is anything but perfect. But you don’t mean ‘uncomfortable’—you mean ‘tragic’”
“No, I don’t. I mean uncomfortable. Your friend wasn’t tragic. Not like Othello. Not like King Lear.”
“There’s evidently a misunderstanding, but let us pass on. My friend is, in fact, very like Hamlet.” He brooded for a moment, then, smiling complacently, took another prawn. “Extremely like Hamlet. Well, he felt as I did, under the influence of Nikolai Nikolaievitch, being deeply impressed by the bravery with which he had faced the problem of Russia. Do you know what the problem of Russia is? I will tell you.” He wagged a forefinger at her. “In our Russian society there is a minority of informed men and women with cultivated minds, who are ready to forgo all personal advantages and determine the course of history so that for ever morality is imposed upon the State. But the majority, the vast majority, of men and women, are passive as brute beasts. Their fates are determined by the blind flight of events, and therefore when they die they fall to dust, without having done anything to impart meaning to life and eliminate injustice and misery. It is the business of the intelligent minority to convert the unintelligent majority into a majority as enlightened as themselves.”
