The Time of the Angels

by Iris Murdoch

  “Oh no. The Rector never entertains.”

  Eugene was not sure if he was glad or sorry. He had debated with himself whether, if he were asked to act as butler, he would say yes or no. He had been a butler in his time. At least he had acted the part of a butler with some success. All who saw him had taken him for a butler and even a good one. Eugene had not felt demeaned by this masquerade. He had also, in his time, acted the part of an odd job man in an hotel, a liftman in a shop, a porter in a school, and, for a short while, a barman. In fact his present job suited him well, though there was little money in it. He liked definite simple manual work and keeping things clean and tidy and being left to himself in his own corner. The job carried a tiny wage, besides the excellent rooms for himself and Leo. There was also a refugee organization which paid him a small stipend. He got along. The previous Rector had required very little of him and Eugene had got into pleasant habits of idleness. He liked to do something which he called meditating but which he knew was more like day-dreaming. He possessed no books except a few paperback novels, but he was a regular reader of historical biographies which he got from the library. He also had a little wireless set on which he absently listened to music. Yet he was interested in his new people and suddenly a bit disappointed that he would not be able to do his act as a butler for them.

  “And Miss Muriel, does she entertain?”

  “No, no. She keeps—to herself.”

  Eugene was not sure that he liked this self-assertive thin girl with her boyish head and sharp curious eyes. She had asked him a lot of questions about himself rather too soon.

  “The priest, the Rector—is he often ill like this?”

  “He’s not ill.”

  I have said something wrong, thought Eugene. He had assumed the priest was ill, as no one had been admitted to the house since he came, and he was often in bed in the mornings. Also his face was odd in some way. He alarmed Eugene a little, though he had been entirely if vaguely kind at their rare meetings.

  “Oh, well, good—I heard you turning Mrs Barlow away again this morning and I thought—Are you glad you’ve come to London, Pattie? Do eat up your cake.”

  “Yes. I don’t know. I haven’t really seen London yet. It’s nice to be near the river. Can you see the sea down the river?”

  “Oh no. The sea’s miles and miles away.”

  “I’ve never seen the sea.”

  “Never seen the sea!” How could anyone not have seen the sea? Surely the sea must somehow belong to the happiness of every child. He pitied her suddenly for that loss, as if in the deprivation of that essential experience she had dried up into a little wrinkled nut. “How dreadful—I suppose when your parents came from the West Indies—”

  “My father came from Jamaica. My mother was white, she was Irish.”

  I ought to have guessed, thought Eugene. She isn’t all that dark. I am hurting her. “Is it your mother’s name then—”

  “Yes—I mean you’d know, wouldn’t you. My parents weren’t married.”

  She minds, he thought. And she thinks I’m somehow getting at her. How can I tell her that it doesn’t matter at all. He wanted to reach over and touch her plump arm just above the wrist where it emerged from the tight pink jersey. He said, “It doesn’t matter at all.”

  “I know it doesn’t matter. Well, it does, it did. I had an awful time when I was little.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I can’t. It’s too awful. And anyway I’ve forgotten. Tell me about you, about when you were a little boy.”

  “Me—ach—”

  “If you don’t mind—”

  “No, I don’t mind.” It was a very long time since he had talked to anyone about himself, and almost as long since he had talked to a woman. Talking so naturally to Pattie he realized how rarely now he ever met a woman, apart from the wives of his friends, and even them he had scarcely seen since he came to live at the Rectory. He thought suddenly, I have a woman with me, alone with me in my room.

  “Where were you born?”

  “In St Petersburg—Leningrad, that is.”

  “Was that before they changed?”

  “Before they changed—yes. I was six when they changed.”

  “Were your parents rich people?”

  “Yes.” It was odd to say it like that. His parents had been rich people, very rich by any standards of today. But there had been a naturalness about their wealth which made it strange even to mention it.

  “So you grew up in a grand house with servants and all that?”

  “Till six, yes. We had two houses, one in St Petersburg and one in the country.”

  He remembered it all so very clearly. His Russian memories came in brilliant colour. All his other memories were monochrome. He could see the pink front of the big house by the Moika, with the fat curves of the stucco decorations, painted cream, dusty in the summer, crowned with snow in the winter. And the tall uncut grass at their country house, reddish with its flowers, almost concealing the long low wooden facade from the gaze of the hidden child. He hides in the grass while his mother calls him from the verandah. He sees through the rosy plumes of the grass her white spotted dress and the fringes of her slowly turning parasol.

  “You do speak such beautiful English.”

  “I learnt it at home as a small child. We all spoke English. I could speak it fluently before I left Russia.”

  “Were you happy as a child?”

  “Happy? In paradise.” It was true. He had been conceived and born in happiness, he had come to consciousness deep in a happy sea. He loved his parents. He loved his sister. He loved the servants. And everybody loved him and spoiled him. He was a little king. In the country he had his own pony and groom. In St Petersburg he had his own special sledge, with its horse Niko, and a servant, Fyodor, who always drove him when he went to see his friends. His boot crushes through the crisp sparkly surface of the snow and he climbs in. The brass fitments shine dazzling in the sun as if little lights had been placed here and there upon the sledge. The big fur rug is adjusted so that only his nose and eyes appear underneath his fur hat. The black leather belt which Fyodor is fixing is soft and smells of a special polish which is bought at the English shop on the Nevsky Prospect. The horse strains for a moment. Then there is effortless movement. The sledge skims, it flies. There is a faint singing. Faster, faster, dear Fyodor. The sun shines upon the snow of the road, creased and lined with the marks of other sledges. The sun shines upon the gilded dome of St Isaac’s and upon the slim finger of the Admiralty spire.

  “How lucky you are to have happy memories. That at least they can never take from you.”

  “They—yes.” They had taken almost everything else. But it was true that those six golden years remained an endless source of light. Their radiance did not pain him by any contrast. Rather he gratefully received a warmth from them even now. It was as if he had woven the duller, darker stuff of his life round and round that dear early time, like a sombre egg containing in its centre some glittering surprise, a jewel made by Fabergé.

  “But what happened then, when you were six?”

  “The Revolution happened. My parents fled to Riga with my sister and myself.”

  “And you left everything behind?”

  “Everything except some jewels. But they were worth a lot of money. We weren’t really poor in Riga, not at first anyway.” The memories are darkened now. Grown-ups whisper anxiously and fall silent when children approach. A round-eyed bewildered child gazes at a grey sea.

  “You must feel very bitter against those people who drove you out.”

  “I suppose we could have stayed. Well, it would have been difficult. No, I don’t feel bitter. Things were so dreadful before. Some people so rich and other people so poor. I expect it had to happen.” It was true that he did not feel bitter. There was a kind of cosmic justice in the ending of his happy world. Yet something was unjust, or perhaps simply unutterably sad. He loved his country so much.

  �
�Where is Riga?”

  “In Latvia. On the Baltic Sea.”

  “Oh. And how long did you stay there?”

  “Till I was twelve. My father was afraid that the Soviets would annex Latvia. They did in the end, but we were gone by that time. We went to Prague.”

  “Prague. In Czechoslovakia. Were you poor then?”

  “We were poor then. My father got a sort of clerical job with a firm of lawyers that knew our family. My mother gave Russian lessons. I gave Russian lessons too when I grew up. I went to the university in Prague.” Shut-in Prague. It had always seemed to him like a trap, a beautiful sinister cage. The big over-weighted buildings descended in cliffs of towers to the cooped-up river. They had had lodgings in a narrow street below the Strahov monastery. Being desperately, endlessly, cold in winter and listening to bells. Bells, bells in the cold.

  “So you’re a university man?”

  “Yes, I suppose I am a university man. But it was so long ago.”

  “Could you make enough money?”

  “Well, just. My father died when I was about twenty and things got more difficult. We all worked. My sister made clothes. Of course, there were a lot of Russians in Prague. We helped each other. We carried Russia with us. It lasted till then. But it was a sad time.” His father’s coffin tilts as it is carried up the steep street. The street is too narrow for the hearse. His mother and his sister stumble and weep but he is dry-eyed, hardening himself against pain. The hearse jolts on the cobbles. Bells.

  “And what happened then?”

  “Well, Hitler happened then. He cut short my studies.”

  “Hitler. Oh yes. I’d forgotten. Did you escape again?”

  “We tried to, but our papers weren’t in order. We were stopped at the frontier. My mother and my sister were sent back to Prague. I was directed to work in a factory. Later on I was sent to a labour camp.”

  “Was it dreadful? How long were you there?”

  “I was there till the war ended. It was fairly nasty, but others had a worse time. I worked in the fields. There was enough to eat.”

  “Poor—poor you.”

  “Look, I’ve been calling you ‘Pattie’ for days. Won’t you call me by my name, ‘Eugene’?” He gave it the English pronunciation of course. It had been a long grief to him that English people mispronounced both his first name and his surname. The beautiful Russian sounds had become a secret. Now he took almost a grim pleasure in the enforced incognito.

  “Well, yes, I’ll try. I’ve never known anyone with that name.”

  “Eugene.”

  “Eugene. Thank you. What happened to your mother and sister?”

  “My mother died of a stroke fairly soon. I never saw her after that time at the frontier, though I had some letters. My sister—I don’t know—she just—disappeared.”

  “You mean you don’t know what happened to her?”

  “Well, people did just disappear in the war. She disappeared. I kept hoping, for a while.”

  “Oh, I am sorry. What was your sister’s name?”

  There was a silence. Eugene had suddenly found himself unable to speak. A great lump of emotion rose inside him and seemed to surge out into the room. He gripped the edge of the table. It was years and years since he had spoken of these things to anybody. He said after a moment. “Her name was Elizabeth. Elizaveta in Russian.”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” said Pattie. “I shouldn’t have asked you to talk. Please forgive me.”

  “No, no. It is good for me to talk. I never tell these things. You do me good. Do go on asking me. I can answer any question you ask.”

  “What happened then when the war ended?”

  “I was in various refugee camps. Eventually I was in a camp in Austria.”

  “And how long were you in the camps?”

  “Nine years.”

  “Nine years? Why so very long?”

  “Well, it was difficult to get out. There was so much muddle and one was pushed from one place to another. Then later on I married my wife in the camp. Tanya was her name. Tatiana, that is. She was Russian. And she had T.B. And no one would take us with the T.B. It was a matter of finding some country that would take us, you see.” He had never intended to marry Tanya. It was Leo who had decided that matter.

  “And what did you do all those years in the camp?”

  “Nothing. Well, a little black market. Mainly nothing.” He recalled the long wooden hut among the pine trees. His bunk was in the corner. The thing was to get a corner. Later he and Tanya shared a small hut with another couple. They had arranged a few things round them, pinned pictures to the wall. He had not been too unhappy, especially when there was Leo. It was odd, after seven years of killing work, nine years of idleness.

  “Did you ever think of going back to Russia?”

  “Yes. I did think of it then. Tanya didn’t want to. I think I would have been afraid to anyway. And then there was religion.” He lifted his eyes to the icon. With gentle inclined faces the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost conferred around their table with the white cloth. Their golden wings overlapped, entwined. They were melancholy. They knew that all was not well with their creation. Perhaps they felt that they themselves were drifting quietly away from it.

  “Oh, you’re a Christian, Russian Orthodox Church.”

  “No, not now. I’m nothing now.” During the war his religion had consoled him, more perhaps as a memory of innocent and good people than as any personal faith in a saving deity. In the years of idleness it had slowly faded as indeed almost everything had faded in those years. He had given up his country for a God in whom he no longer believed. But no, he would never have had the guts to go back. Yet he had thought about Russia so much in that camp, lying on his bed through interminable summer afternoons, feeling hungry and smelling the pines and the creosote, and had imagined himself surrounded again by his own language and his own people.

  “The picture, the icon. Did you have that with you all the time?”

  “Not all the time, no. It was my mother’s. After she died some friends of ours in Prague took it, that lawyer’s family. Then after the war they traced me through the Red Cross and brought it to me in the camp. It’s the only thing that was there and is here.”

  It was odd to think that it had hung in his mother’s bedroom in that house in St Petersburg. His mother’s bedroom was dark, full of wavery hanging curtains, laces and nets. It was stuffy and smelt of eau de Cologne. It was even stranger to think the icon had made that journey than to think that he himself had. Perhaps because he had grown old and the icon had not.

  “It’s lovely. It must be worth an awful lot.”

  “It is. I was always thinking someone would steal it in the camp. I think they might have done only they were a bit afraid of it, superstitious about it. I keep my room locked here—there are always sneak thieves about in this part of London. I meant to say to you to always lock up carefully. It might frighten a thief even here though. It’s supposed to be a miraculous icon. It belonged to a church before it came into our family, and they say it used to be carried on a procession once a year round the town, and while it was out it made all kinds of things happen, people suddenly confessed their crimes or became reconciled with their enemies.”

  “Has it done any miracles for you?”

  “No. But then I deserve no miracles. I have lost my faith.” He had lost his country and he had lost his faith. The great dark glittering enclosed interior of the Russian church had been a home, a house for him, for so many years of his childhood and his youth. A bearded Russian God had listened in that darkness to his supplications and his prayers, chided his failings, forgiven his trespasses, loved him. Very slowly it had come to him that after all the building was empty. The vast presence was simply some trick of the gloom. There was nothing but the darkness. And now he had a son who could not conceive of God.

  “I love the icon,” he said. “I burn incense for it. It’s like feeding it. It’s more than a symbol.” Yet w
hat could it be but a symbol? He was a sentimental superstitious man. He loved the icon because it had been his mother’s and had lived with them in Petersburg. Perhaps it somehow satisfied his defeated sense of property. He loved it too as a blank image of goodness from which all personality had been withdrawn.

  “And you came to England?”

  “In the end, yes.”

  “And then—?”

  “Nothing special then. I worked in various jobs. And here I am now talking to Pattie.” How had the years passed? Well, they had passed. Sometimes in memory the time seemed telescoped and it seemed that it was Hitler who had knocked on the gates of St Petersburg. His manhood had been somehow casually taken from him. Fifteen years in camps, the whole middle of his life. More than that, indeed, since he had never really stopped living in a camp. In England he had moved on from one shanty and nissen hut to another. He was living in a camp even now. He had made his corner. That was all.