by Rebecca West
“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.”
Chubinov stammered, “What was the name of the villa?”
“What a thing to ask. I don’t remember. It was ten miles out on the Peterhof Road.”
“Ten miles out on the Peterhof Road. A corpse hung from a meat-hook in the ceiling. The ton
gue. Nikolai Nikolaievitch, that wasn’t Kamensky’s brother. It was a student named Valentine. A traitor. A shameful traitor. He had led the police straight to one of our printing-presses. It was no mistake. Gorin took his papers off the body.”
“The police found papers on the body which showed he was Kamensky’s brother.” Nikolai’s voice fell to a whisper. “If you had seen how Kamensky wept.”
The train stopped at a station and the two men did not speak again until the guard’s trumpet sent it pushing on.
“This is the end of my life,” said Chubinov.
“If I say that, it has no meaning, simply because it is true,” said Nikolai Nikolaievitch. “But in any case, I do not feel what you convey when you say that. It keeps on running through my head that the messengers came to Job and told him that fire had come down from heaven and burned up his servants. I do not feel that my servant Kamensky has done anything. I feel something has been done to him.”
Presently they began to talk like policemen again. “I have to admit,” said Chubinov hesitantly, “that there was always something mysterious about the case. We never actually knew who had performed the deed of vengeance, and it was premature. The committee was in the course of examining the proofs of Valentine’s treachery, but it had not come near to the stage of giving orders for his punishment. Then Gorin found an unsigned note at his lodgings telling that three of our members could wait no longer and had trodden the viper under their heel, and it gave the address of the villa on the Peterhof Road. Gorin picked me up at my home and we went there at once. It was a terrible scene. Gorin is exquisitely sensitive. I’ve often heard him say that while he would dare to commit any murder in order that the tyrants who are strangling Russia should pay for their crimes, he can never reconcile himself to the harsh necessity that to make a murder, a sentient being has to be murdered.”
“I see that’s awkward for him,” said Nikolai Nikolaievitch. “But don’t worry. He showed himself quite robust that night. For if he took Valentine off the meat-hook for you, he must have put him back on it for me.”
“I had forgotten, I had forgotten. But you don’t mend anything by your mockery,” said Chubinov.
“From our side,” said the other, “there was something odd. We found Valentine’s baptismal certificate in the Kharkov church records, and his school registration, but he had never attended Kharkov University. It turned out that Kamensky had never seen him there or had any proof that he was enrolled there. You see, I am like you, I slip back into thinking that he was honest. Well, the tale Kamensky then told us was that he supposed that the boy’s revolutionary friends had seduced him into consenting to spend his days, on some illegal activity before the term started, so he never went there at all.”
“You should have known what could have been behind that,” said Chubinov. “Some boy called Kamensky died after leaving high school and before getting to the university, and our people stole his identity for one of our workers.”
“Yes, that ghoulish trick I should have recognized by this time. But to get back to our loved one. He came into my office the next day, grief-stricken, enraged, alone, helpless, weeping—weeping again—and with a peculiarly touching quality about his tears. He asked if he might join your organization and report on its doings, so that he could expiate the guilt which lay on him for not having protected his young brother from your devilry. Well, as I said before, this reaction seemed neither unnatural nor dishonourable. I was then given to understand, and until you came into this compartment it was never suggested to me that I should doubt it, that he presented himself to your organization, pretended that he believed his brother’s disappearance was due to the Secret Police, gained your confidence, and thus enabled us to punish many criminals and avert many crimes. In my personal relations with him I experienced a curious pleasure. Now I know all about him, or more about him, the only virtue I can credit him with is courage, but he seemed to have all the virtues, and one more than is named, a kind of gaiety. And when I was disgraced he did not waver. I have come to love him. And I am not such a fool as you think,” he suddenly roared, “for he was on our side. Assuredly he was on our side. He must have been on our side, he gave us your Vesnin, Patopenko, and Komissaroff. Yes, and many others of your abominable breed.”
“He was on our side,” said Chubinov, changing his glasses. “He in his own person planned the executions of Dubassoff and Sipyagin and Plehve—yes, it was he who coached the cab-driver in getting his horse to move on slowly while he seemed to be trying to restrain it, so that Sazonoff could use it as cover up to the very last moment, when he ran out and threw the bomb which freed us from the butcher of Kishinev, the past master of pogroms. Without him the Grand Duke Serge would be alive today—”
“Do not speak to me of that death,” Nikolai begged him, with sudden gentleness. “Every time I hear of it I sin. I loathed the Grand Duke Serge, he was the incarnation of that evil which must not be blamed, since it arises out of stupidity, and is thus, God help us all to understand, plainly God’s will. When there is any mention of his assassination I fall straight into sin, I blaspheme, before I know what I’m doing I thank God he is dead. Again and again I’ve done penance for this, and again and again I offend. This too is part of the trouble you’ve made for all of us, you accursed murderers.”
“But it’s you, not we, who are the murderers. We are the instruments of justice. No guilt rests on us. There is blood on our hands, but it is turned to glory by the rectitude of our cause. How strange it is that one of us two should have lived a life which is like a noble poem and the other a life which is that poem’s ignoble parody.”
“One day you’ll learn which side it was that produced the parody,” Nikolai promised, “from the lips of the Lord himself,” he added spitefully. He called to an attendant who was going down the corridor. “What’s the next station we stop at? Grissaint? It is a big station? With frequent trains back to Paris? Good.” His eyes went back to Chubinov. “Forgive me, I shouldn’t mock a dead man. And you’re a dead man, Vassili Iulievitch.” “No,” said Chubinov. “Not yet.”
“I think you will be very soon. I’m going to die quite soon. Not at once, but quite soon. My granddaughter and I will get out at the next station, this Grissaint, or whatever it’s called, and take the next train back to Paris. My duty dictates that step, because there’s no more direct route I know of between Northern France and St. Petersburg, and that’s where I must go. If the Tsar wishes me to return to Russia in order to humiliate me and accuse me of a crime I have not committed, and insult me by pardoning my innocence, then to Russia I must go.”
“No,” said Laura, “no. Can’t you think for one single moment of Grandmother?”
“I’ve spent my whole life telling my inferiors that the Tsar’s will is sacred, even when it ordered their destruction. There’s no reason I can see why I should alter my attitude when it is myself whom he wants to destroy. So I must return to Russia and there I will die, either in prison or out of it, from rage. But it will take some time to wear me down to that. But you, Vassili Iulievitch, you will be dead quite soon.”
“You underrate me and the Party. I will get out at Grissaint too. Which is quite a large place. We have some members there. Some sympathizers, I should say. I will take the first train to Paris which is not an express, which stops at all stations. I’ll get out at the last but one stop before the Gare du Nord, or perhaps the last but two. Then I’ll walk and take a bus, walk and pick up a cab, and so on till I get to my hotel near Les Halles. I’ll have to keep in mind, of course, that at any moment Gorin may try to kill me, and dodge him while I get a telegram in code sent off to my committee in St. Petersburg, acquainting them with his treachery, and I’ll embody the same information in an express letter to the Paris representative. Oh, God, oh, God, do you know what I was thinking then? I was thinking that I must get Gorin to help me, he’s so good at drafting messages. But when I’ve done all this I’ll be able to take the train to Berlin, and on to St. Peters
burg, without fear. We’re really very, very highly organized,” he said, taking off his spectacles and beaming through his tears, “and a man who has lodged an accusation against a fellow-member in the proper form will never be molested on his way to headquarters. It would make it look too bad for the accused person.”
“Imbecile of all imbeciles, you’ll never be granted the immunity which is ceded to a member who is lodging an accusation against a fellow-member of your organization, because already, as you sit in this compartment you are a member of your organization who has had a charge lodged against him by a fellow-member, the trinity of evil who is Kamensky who is Gorin who is Kaspar. Let me draw your maimed mind to some aspects of your situation which don’t seem to have occurred to you. Do you suppose that a police spy like Kaspar, well-paid and, what is more, in a peculiarly happy position, thanks to my folly—do you imagine for a moment that however disloyal he was, he could wish success for a plan to assassinate the Tsar at a naval review, or anywhere else, but particularly at a naval review, where a small number of conspirators would have had to be admitted to a restricted area comparatively easy to supervise? A police spy who let that happen would not only lose his job, he’d find himself in prison, possibly in Siberia for life. Of course Kaspar had to upset the Rurik plans as soon as you idiots had begun to carry them out. And of course he had to make it seem as if he hadn’t done the upsetting and someone else had, and that someone else is you.”
“Yes, I suppose that is the only reason why I had those beautiful days by Lake Geneva, with those marvellous young men,” said Chubinov indistinctly.
“With those blood-stained Benjamins. Yes. You can take it too that for the same reason you were sent off to London to fiddle about with your infernal printing-presses, churning out rubbishy lies under the shelter of a criminal democracy, and that for the same reason the actress was dispatched to London to tell the faithful there that the three conspirators had been arrested. And what a stroke of luck that was for Kamensky, for Gorin, for Kaspar that she looked into the courtyard and saw him and was able to tell that story in front of idiots of your own kind, while you gave yourself away with that fatuous face of yours, so honest that it’s past a joke, that it makes one vomit even if one’s on the side of honesty. All your expression gave away was that you had guessed the three young men were Rurik conspirators. But Kamensky, Gorin, Kaspar, had made certain that these English simpletons thought that what you were giving away was that you had arranged for their arrest. And they became so suspicious of you that you recognized it, even you who if you had been in Moscow when Rostopchin burned it wouldn’t have noticed that anything unusual was going on for at least twenty-four hours. By the way, how funny to think of you of all men being got into trouble by an actress!”