The Birds Fall Down

by Rebecca West

  “Nikolai Nikolaievitch,” said Chubinov, “what you are now saying shows that you haven’t understood what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “It’s you who don’t understand,” said Nikolai. “For years I’ve suspected that there had been a conspiracy against me, that some descendant of Judas had wriggled on his belly into my home and into my Ministry and had stolen my secrets and distorted them so that I was disgraced. But I’d no proof and it’s well known that such suspicions are often the first signs of insanity. A letter suddenly had a profaned and fingered look, my keys had or had not a tiny particle of wax on them. So I was haunted by the fear that I was mad and might do all the things that madmen do. I had heard of madmen stripping off their clothes, and was afraid that some day I might show my nakedness, perhaps to innocent children, or that I might become violent, and that would be a serious matter with a man of my strength. Nobody would be able to overcome me. Also I had heard of lunatics who turned against their families, and I love mine, though I have often had to chasten them. My dread even cast a shadow on the brightest radiance which shines upon my life. Since my disgrace God has been very good to me, He has been with me constantly, when I say His name it is a living thing on my lips. But lunatics often believe themselves to be visited by God when that is a deception of the Devil, as they show by their blasphemies and their indecorous gestures. But now you have told me that I was the victim of a conspiracy, and I am not mad. You couldn’t have done me greater kindness.”

  Chubinov was on the point of weeping. “What, you thought you were mad? Oh, my poor venerated one, oh, Nikolai Nikolaievitch, I never dreamed of this suffering! But couldn’t you have gone to a good doctor, who would have told you that you weren’t? The science of psychiatry has made marvellous advances in the last few years.”

  “You’re idiotic like an idiot in Gogol,” chuckled Nikolai. “You’re such a fool that you achieve a certain eminence by being such a supreme example of your type. I’d like to give a great party in your honour, such as I used to give when I was young, with the gipsies coming in to sing, and immense quantities of champagne and brandy, costing money which should have gone to the poor.” He laughed hugely into his beard, but Chubinov rose and stood over him.

  “But you can’t take it like this!”

  “But I can. I’m disgraced, I can devote myself to God and forget about my disgrace, and I can thank God for letting me know through your imbecility that I am not mad. It’s all over and done with.”

  “But no. No. It’s still going on. Listen. We have that last letter from Roller, the very last one, the one he wrote when he was taking the waters at Vichy. The one in which he said no, he could not come to visit you in Paris, because the Tsar had expressed a wish that he should not.”

  “Oh, that letter,” breathed Nikolai.

  “You don’t like thinking of it. No wonder. He was the friend of your childhood. He didn’t like writing it either. That could be told from the disorder of his handwriting which is usually exceptionally neat.”

  “Well, the poor devil has his own Judas in his own office. You have covered Russia with such Judases. It’s horrible, but I don’t see how it affects me.”

  “But you’re wrong. We didn’t get that letter from him. We got it from you.”

  “From me? But I got it only a month ago.” Nikolai was frozen for a moment, then he cried out in a cracked shout, “How do you know that whoever copied it for you got it from me and not from Roller? He may have told you so. But all spies, even the ones who spy for the right side, are liars.”

  “Believe me, you must believe me, we got it from you.”

  “It can’t be so. I am in exile, and exile is the misery which even other forms of misery pity as truly miserable, but it has one source of contentment, I am alone now with those I know and can trust. Vassili Iulievitch, you have been cheated. Dealing with cheats, you are bound to be cheated—was it not so with me? Your Judas got that letter from Roller.”

  “No. No. It came from you, from your home.”

  “You cannot prove it.”

  “Oh, yes, I can prove it. But don’t make me do it. Miss Laura, try to get him to believe me. Oh, don’t look at me like that, Nikolai Nikolaievitch. How is it that I still feel I must obey you? Well, it was the tearmark which proved it. There, I’ve said it. The great tearmark in the middle of the page. The man who copied it told me about it. Court officials aren’t much given to weeping before they are disgraced. Roller hasn’t been disgraced, and never will be. He is a lesser man than you, and nothing great and tragic and beautiful will ever happen to him as it happens to you. But reading that letter from your old schoolfellow in your study in the apartment on the Avenue Kléber, of course you wept. Don’t you remember shedding that tear? I’m sure you do. You’re ashamed when you weep, you don’t forget it. Oh, Nikolai Nikolaievitch, now do you believe me? And do you see what it means? You’re still being spied on. Not, as you may perhaps have suspected, by people who hang about your doors, who look at you through binoculars from a window across the street. But inside your own house, in your own rooms, you’re watched all the time. Oh, don’t look at me like that. I have to tell you this. I have a reason.”

  V

  “I repeat, Miss Laura, you are arrogant like your grandfather. I don’t deserve your reproaches. Yes, I see that your grandfather is looking very ill, though I don’t think he’s actually had a stroke. But no, I could not have stopped my story at the point where it simply dispelled his fear that he is mad. Yes, you may have been making signals, but I was doing what I have to do. I have to do it, will you not understand, I have to do it. I must tell your grandfather a long and complicated story, for both our sakes. I am not, as you put it, talking and talking and talking, I am telling the story in an orderly fashion. I spent hours last night in taking full notes of what I have to say and arranging them under the headings of A, B, C, and D. We’ve now reached the end of section A. By the time we’ve reached the end of D, though he will be no happier, as I warned you, he will at least have the relief of understanding what has happened to him, and you’ll be grateful, yes, even you will thank me. And what was the meaning of that expression you applied to me in English? What you said to me in French was disgraceful. Disgraceful. The upbringing of such girls as you is even worse than I had supposed. But I demand to know the meaning of that English expression. I demand.”

  “It doesn’t matter. But as for A, B, C, and D, my grandfather will be dead before you’re half-way through it.”

  “I will not. This miserable son of an admirable father could not possibly kill me. Sit down, both of you.” Nikolai took his time when they had obeyed him, smoothing the knees of his trousers with shaking hands, putting his fingers behind his beard to straighten his tie, breathing slowly in and out of his great nostrils. “I wish I had a secretary to take notes of all this,” he murmured, and Laura knew he was thinking of Monsieur Kamensky. But perhaps that was not such a good idea. Then he said in a businesslike tone, “Vassili Iulievitch, you and your terrorist friends have over a long period been receiving information about me and you are here because you wish to discuss your informant.”

  Chubinov would not speak until he had moistened his lips. “I know and I do not know.”

  Nikolai said, “You have the desperate aspect of a man who has at last decided to tell the truth after a lifetime of lies.” He reflected, and nodded. “I see the situation. A tells you he’s getting information about C through B. But really he’s getting it from D, whom he wishes to shield from inquiry. This often happens to us on our side of the fence. We’ve found that it’s no reason for doubting the honesty of A or the validity of the information he brings in.”

  “It often happens to us too,” said Chubinov. “Deception is there but the truth also. One can’t always work by the book.” They exchanged nods. They were speaking quietly again and with a comradely air. Laura was reminded of the way the policemen had talked to each other when they went round the house in Radnage Square the morni
ng after burglars had taken the silver. It was a curious thing to find one’s family talking like that. “The affair, however,” Chubinov went on, “is more complicated than that. Indeed—indeed, Nikolai Nikolaievitch, it might save us both much pain if you could tell me whether you yourself have any idea who it can be that’s spying on you. Is there any man who comes and goes about your house and yet absents himself so often that he might be living another life somewhere else?”

  “There’s one such man,” said Nikolai. “You, Laura, know who I mean—” She nodded and they smiled at each other. “But he’s not the spy.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked Chubinov. “It isn’t,” he went on apprehensively, “that you feel that the man is good and loves you very much and wouldn’t betray you?”

  “It’s partly that.”

  “I might have guessed it. People who are very cruel—and you’ve made countless hundreds, no, thousands, weep—they’re always sentimentalists.”

  “How utterly you are abandoned to evil! The mere mention of goodness and trust confuses you. But these are side-issues. The man of whom I speak couldn’t be the spy for quite another reason than his noble simplicity and his devotion to me: an official reason.”

  “Can’t you tell me what it is?” asked Chubinov piteously. “I wouldn’t repeat it. I give you my word for that. After all, my father was your friend.”

  “What have you not done,” asked Nikolai, “since my friend begot you?”

  “Since I was born,” replied Chubinov, “I’ve lived as much like you as possible. My father admired you above all other men, and it’s been my aim to be a second you, but I’ve done my imitation, as you put it a moment ago, on the other side of the fence.”

  One of the Frenchwomen said to the other, “You said they’d settled their family dispute. Now listen to them yapping. I tell you, that’s how family disputes always get settled. We’ll never be real friends with Melanie again.”

  “This is what I told you,” said Laura. “You talk and talk and talk. Do get to the point. You mayn’t think my grandfather’s ill, but I do.”

  “Arrogance, sheer arrogance,” said Chubinov. “Miss Laura, you are deformed by your class. Well, Nikolai Nikolaievitch, if you will not help me, I’ll have to give you the whole story. Tell me, does the name of Gorin mean anything to you?”

  “It does indeed,” said Nikolai. “I’ve never been able to forget a disreputable connection between you and him. When you were still at Moscow University and had just begun breaking your father’s heart by joining the Union of Social Revolutionaries, you started a seditious journal named The Morning Star. In its first number, which I am pleased to say I contrived should be the last, you published an article calling for the assassination of the Tsar. The only sympathetic response you received was from a man named Gorin, who was then an engineering student at the polytechnic in Karlsruhe in Germany, and played a prominent part in a Union of Expatriate Social Revolutionaries which had been started by the Russian students there, God forgive them.”

  “That’s the man,” sighed Chubinov. “But did you ever meet him?”

  “No. I never even saw him. He came to Moscow shortly after he wrote to you, but we didn’t arrest him. We hardly troubled to watch him. It was ascertained that he was of no importance.”

  “Of no importance?” repeated Chubinov, raising his eyebrows.

  “Quite negligible. He was one of the older men in the movement, older than you, much older than you, and in such poor health that he was always retiring to somewhere in the South to a certain sanatorium.”

  “Now, why do you say that?”

  “As to his age, we had his birth certificate. He was born in Baku. I don’t know why I remember that, but I do. As for the sanatorium, it regularly reported his admission and his discharge. He was visited there by the police on one or two occasions.”

  Chubinov said, “No. At some point your men went wrong. Gorin wrote to me about my call for the assassination of the Tsar, yes. But none of the rest fits.” His manner was dispassionate, professional, brooding, and Nikolai answered in the same tone. “There could very well be a confusion. Gorin is a common name, and one lazy official, or one lazy morning indulged in by an active man could substitute your Gorin for my Gorin on the records for ever. Do what one can, such things will happen.”

  “Mm,” agreed Chubinov, reflectively, and again they were policemen. (“Sergeant, there’s a pane here that’s been taken out and put back recently.” “Yes, but not last night. There’s three kids in the house, see if one of them hasn’t sent a ball through the window a week or so ago.”) Chubinov went on, “I’d better tell you about my Gorin, the one who quite certainly wrote to me about my article. He’s no older than I am. He was born in Lyskovo in the Gordnensko province. I’ve never known him to be ill till recently, and I doubt if even now he’s gone to a sanatorium. He’s a man of nondescript but pleasing appearance, so indeterminate that I don’t know why it pleases. He is,” he said hesitantly, “a wonderful man. Tell me, didn’t any of your men who spied on the students at Karlsruhe, didn’t any of them tell you that Gorin was a wonderful man?”

  “They reported his height, the colour of his hair and beard and his eyes, and his treachery and blasphemies,” said Nikolai. “Nothing else would be in their line of business. We are not composing fairy-tales like your lot.”

  “Well, Gorin, my Gorin, is a wonderful man. An old professor at Karlsruhe who was a German but was on our side said to me, ‘It’s a pity that future generations will know nothing of your friend. He can have no future for he’s spending himself on the present. Nobody can meet him without becoming a better man, without being purged of all trivial or base thought, all crude instincts. He can never achieve a great historical act or a scientific discovery or a work of art, because all his force is expended on his elevated personal life. Be happy,’ he told me, ‘for your friend is bestowing on you what would have enabled him to write another Hamlet or add a third part of Faust.’”

  “German professors gush like young ladies but are not so pretty,” said Nikolai.

  “The years have not made this praise of my friend seem anything but literally true. Not that Gorin ever gives any proof of outstanding intellectual gift. Of course he knows where he is with the philosophic fathers of our Party, with Kant and Hegel. He’s against Marx and for Mikhailovsky, he’s always ready to demonstrate lucidly and without heat that the existence of our movement refutes Marxist dogma, for it’s born of the intelligentsia and the people, and couldn’t be termed a class movement. He’s warned us often that we must listen to Nietzsche’s call for a transvaluation of values but must close our eyes to his hatred of the state.”

  “You speak of names that will be forgotten in twenty years’ time,” said Nikolai. “Except, of course, Kant and Hegel. But you have misread them. They prove our case, not yours.”

  “Yes, they can be read both ways,” said Chubinov dryly, and again changed his pair of spectacles for the other. “But one way is wrong and one is right. Ours is the right way. But all that isn’t really Gorin’s field. He’s never been attached to the theoretical branch of the Party. He was an organizer of our practical activities.”

  “You mean he’s a damned murderer,” said Nikolai.

  “I was about to say that his field was friendship. One would be sitting in the dark in some wretched lodging in a strange town, afraid to light the lamp because some comrade had been arrested, some plan aborted, and there would be footsteps on the rickety stairs, one’s heart would sink, there would be the five reassuring taps on the door, the handle would turn, the unknown would enter and annul the blackness with the spark of a match, would bring out a little dark-lantern and through the half-light there would show the face of Gorin, smiling. And then, with so little demand for thanks, he would set down on the table a loaf and some sausage and a bottle of vodka and perhaps a precious revolutionary book, and it would be as if there were no such thing as despair.”

  “The only one of y
ou who had the sense to think that you might need a dark-lantern, the only one who knew where and how and when to buy bread and sausage and vodka,” said Nikolai. “There was no reason, was there, why you shouldn’t have had all these things by you? It is an extraordinary thing that suddenly village idiots have become enormously prolific, and their spawn has all joined the intelligentsia. Well, while the men and women who truly love the people were training as schoolteachers and building hospitals and going to schools of agriculture, you were sitting in garrets—either before you had done mischief or after you had done it—sustained by your infernal Gorin who might have added a third part to Faust, though even the second was too many, all feeling like little lambs.”

  “Oh, Gorin was certainly no lamb,” said Chubinov. “He was a wolf. He has in his time slain many. And always, from the beginning, with your help.”

  Nikolai looked at him with hooded eyes.

  “Did you never wonder how one of our members presented himself at the Ministry of the Interior in the guise of the aide-de-camp of the Grand Duke Serge, and was shown straight into the presence of General Sipyagin? It was because Sipyagin had received a letter that very morning, forged in your handwriting, on your private note-paper, sealed with your seal, and making an allusion to a funny story he had told you when he had dined with you at your house a week before. The letter told Sipyagin that the Grand Duke Serge was sending him a newly appointed aide-de-camp who would not know the routine and should be shown straight into the Ministerial office. Gorin arranged all that for us.”

  “I’ve only your word for it,” said Nikolai.

  “Better take it,” said Chubinov. “For that story, and for much else. A railway worker and a schoolteacher both went one day to see the Governor of Ufa. Neither had had any opportunity to learn his habits. But they climbed over a wall and went straight to a secluded corner in the cathedral garden where he went every day to sit and recite the day’s prayers. And he had told you this was his custom in a letter you had received a fortnight before. So Gorin had told us.”