The Birds Fall Down Read online

  Tania uttered a sharp cry of irritation, but Sofia laughed and for a second looked well and young and mischievous. As the mischief faded from her face she raised her hand and rubbed her knuckles against her lips, watching him as he replaced in his pockets the wallet, the coin-case, the envelope, the unnecessary passport which he was carrying just as if he were still in Russia, where they cared for such things.

  “Now it’s really good-bye,” he said happily.

  “Now it’s really good-bye,” she echoed.

  “A malediction on those cursed teeth, my little darling. We must be off.”

  “Mummie,” said Laura, “good-bye, Mummie. Dear Mummie. I wish I wasn’t going.”

  Tania looked at her with abstracted eyes. “Nothing can happen to you,” she said. “Monsieur Kamensky is putting you on this train that takes you all the way to Mûres, and at the other end Pyotr and perhaps Aunt Florence will be on the platform to meet you. You’ll be all right. Anyway you’re a pussycat. You always fall on your feet.”

  IV

  The little footman shut the door of the carriage, and Laura and Nikolai settled back in their seats. “What I was trying to tell you, Laura,” said Nikolai, “was that many people whose judgment on sport I respect think that a woodcock shoot is as nothing compared to a capercailzie shoot.” But as he spoke they heard a deep sigh from Monsieur Kamensky, and another which was more than that, a choked moan, and they saw that he was holding his left hand in the fingers of his right hand, and that his face was contorted with pain.

  “Dear Sasha, what is it?” cried Nikolai. Laura had never before heard him call Monsieur Kamensky by the affectionate diminutive. Perhaps it was for the first time. The younger man, even in his agony, had to smile with pleasure, before he faintly answered, “It’s nothing. Really it’s nothing. Only when the door was shut … my hand was foolishly in the way.”

  Nikolai roared like a lion. He threw open the carriage door and shouted to the little footman who was just climbing up to the box. “Here you, Jean, Claude! Tell Vissarion we won’t start yet, and you come back here. Here. Look into the carriage. See what you’ve done, Claude, René!”

  “I am called Louison,” said the little footman sadly. He was not a proper footman, he was only a houseboy whom the Diakonovs had taken on from the previous tenants of the apartment. Tania said that it was because her parents had never acquired the habit of dismissing servants, they thought of them as serfs bound to them by an unbreakable bond, and a boy without employment seemed to them a serf whose owners had disgracefully repudiated their obligations towards him. The boy was hidden under layer after layer of unreality by his benefactors, for not only were they wrong about his state, Nikolai always called him by the names of footmen he had employed nearly forty years ago, at the time when the family had a villa in Nice. “What have I done, Excellency?” asked Louison.

  “When you slammed the door you were a blundering little idiot,” said Nikolai. “You hurt the gentleman’s hand, you imbecile lout.”

  “No, no,” protested Monsieur Kamensky, “poor Louison was as careful as could be. It wasn’t his fault, it was mine.”

  The little footman drew back from the door, as if the incident were finished.

  “You impudent little ass,” shouted Nikolai, “are you not even going to say you are sorry?”

  “But, Excellency, I’ve not done anything,” said the little footman. “The gentleman says it wasn’t my fault, and indeed it can’t have been, for I didn’t shut the door until I’d made sure there was nothing in the way. Vissarion has taught me to do that, we practise it in the stables.”

  “You lie, you little wretch,” said Nikolai.

  “Don’t, don’t,” said Monsieur Kamensky, and Laura said, “Grandfather, please, let’s do something for Alexander Gregorievitch’s hand. Let’s go back upstairs and then Mamma’s maid can put on a fomentation. She’s good at that sort of thing. There must be lots of other trains.” She said to Louison, “Tell Vissarion not to start. We’re going back to the apartment to have Monsieur’s hand attended to.”

  Horror came into the little footman’s face. “But is the gentleman really hurt?” It was plain that till then he had attached no meaning to what Nikolai said, confident that employers were maniacs, always making trouble for trouble’s sake. “That I should have hurt Monsieur Kamensky! Monsieur Kamensky! Why, I wouldn’t hurt him for anything in the world.”

  “Oh, I know that, Louison,” said Monsieur Kamensky, and managed to laugh affectionately. He laid his injured hand on Nikolai’s arm and said, “Please, dear Count, let us forget this. I have a good reason for asking this. If I go back to the apartment now, the Countess would probably refuse to set out for the clinic, which she should do in a few minutes. If you came up with me, she’d be worried because you’d missed your train and would excite herself over all the plans which would have to be altered, the messages which would have to go to Mûres-sur-Mer, and if you didn’t, she’d distress herself because you’d have trouble in going unattended to the train. In either case—” he paused and looked steadily at Laura—“it would add greatly to Tania Nikolaievna’s anxieties.” They exchanged wise little nods, and he turned to the window, biting his lips as he shifted his position, and called out gaily to the little footman, who was staring in with appalled round eyes, “My child, it wasn’t your fault. My hand was very low down on the window, you couldn’t possibly have seen it. Don’t think of it again, and now ask Vissarion to drive quickly to the station.”

  They were all silent as the carriage turned into the Champs Elysées. Then Nikolai broke out, “Do you know what I am thinking of, Alexander Gregorievitch? I am thinking of the day when we drove to the station at Kiev.”

  “You shouldn’t think of that,” said Monsieur Kamensky, vigorously, almost as if he could bear no more of Nikolai’s reminiscences, of any kind whatsoever. “There is nothing,” he added more patiently, “to be gained by such thoughts. Evil men have created confusion, but God will one day make all things plain.”

  The old man would never leave go of his bitterness. “How did they know that it was the 10:05 and not the 11:15?” he grumbled. “Tell me that. If you could tell me that, I could die in peace.”

  Monsieur Kamensky, who was rocking himself and pressing his injured hand to his mouth, made a faint sound of dissent. “You will die in peace, whatever you know or don’t know. God is your friend. With such a friend, you have no need to know who is your enemy.” He spoke with mild censure, and the old man was for an instant abashed. But he got back into the saddle again. “Yes, but my enemy was the enemy also of the Tsar, of God’s anointed. Of God.” His voice was strong now he had re-established the importance of his grief. “Do you remember how the sunshine beat down on us that accursed day, when they stole on us, those who love neither the law of God nor eternity because it discloses the will of God, but rejoice only in fleeting time, which being incomplete tells lies. How hot it was. It was so stifling that when we heard the first bomb I thought it was thunder, and I said to Miliukov—”

  Monsieur Kamensky was forced to interrupt. “Count, Count,” he said faintly, “I am afraid I can’t go on. Please stop the carriage and I’ll get out.”

  “You can’t go on?” inquired Nikolai, mystified. “You want to get out?”

  “It’s his hand,” said Laura, leaning across the carriage and tapping on the glass.

  “His hand,” repeated Nikolai. “His hand? Ah, I remember. Poor Sasha, I am so sorry! But this is nonsense, we must take you to a doctor.”

  “Most warm-hearted of friends and patrons,” said Monsieur Kamensky, “that’s very kind of you, but if you stop at the next corner I’ll go to a pharmacy near by. I know the proprietor very well, and he’s a clever man who’ll deal with me for the moment and send me to a doctor if he thinks I need one.” The carriage had stopped, and the door had been opened, but Nikolai caught at his jacket as he got out.

  “Nonsense, no pharmacist is good enough,” he growled. “Let me tak
e you to Dr. Alanov. Though his consulting-room is sure to be crowded with duchesses and Jews, he’ll drive them out and see you at once for my sake, his grandfather was a serf on my father’s estate.”

  “This morning,” said Monsieur Kamensky gravely, swaying a little as he stood on the curb, “you wouldn’t find Dr. Alanov at home. He’ll already have arrived at your home in the Avenue Kléber, to take the Countess to her clinic. Good-bye, Excellency. Good-bye, dear Miss Laura.” His face was twisted by a sudden spasm of pain, and the little footman, who stood gaping at him, blubbered, “Oh, Monsieur, Monsieur, what have I done?”

  Monsieur Kamensky compelled himself to laughter. “My dear little Louison,” he said, “I’ve told you it wasn’t your fault, and even if it were, it’s nothing serious. I shall come up to the apartment tomorrow morning, at quarter past eleven, to take Madame Rowan to the clinic, and before I leave I’ll box your ears very hard, and that with both hands, just to show you how little serious it was. Now, get up beside Vissarion as fast as you can, and off to the station.” As they drove off he stood in an attitude of courteous farewell, hat in hand, his feet at attention, and his mouth set in a smile which, as Laura craned from the window to see the last of him, faded suddenly.

  “I hope the pharmacy isn’t too far away,” she told her grandfather, “he looks as if he were going to faint.”

  “It’s a curious thing,” Nikolai ruminated, “people are not as strong as they used to be. I don’t think that when I was his age I would have fainted just because I’d hurt my hand. I wonder if I have our tickets and my passport.”

  “Of course you have,” said Laura. “Don’t you remember, you took them out and went over them and put them back in your pocket just before we started.”

  “I did? I did? You must be right, but …”

  This had not happened before, not quite like this. Several times since she had come to Paris, he had shown forgetfulness, but what was forgotten had been eminently forgettable. It had been as if his mind were too full of memories and he had thrown away some that did not matter. But now the facts, even the most useful ones, were running out of his mind like water out of a cracked cup. The journey before her suddenly looked different. She would have to behave well, she would have to behave like Monsieur Kamensky.

  But when they came to the Gare du Nord her grandfather transacted the first business of the journey better than she had expected. He gave the porters reasonable directions in a voice like anybody else’s. But once they passed under the smoky glazed vaults of the station he paused and looked around him at the hurrying and cantankerous crowds, bowed his head, folded his hands behind his back, and strode on ahead, as if he were alone. She hurried at his heels, and after her hurried little Louison, carrying Nikolai’s leather attaché-case and her trinket-box. In the station, as in every French railway terminus she had ever seen, there was an atmosphere of threatening and causeless rancour, as of a revolution without an object. The porters pushing their barrows uttered cries less like warnings than demands for revenge, the passengers swept on in angry waves as if storming a palace to wring a constitution from an absolute monarch, instead of merely boarding trains for which they had been issued tickets. It was funny, but it was not kind. Had Monsieur Kamensky been there it would have been only funny. He would have looked at the black-browed crowds without yielding an inch to their ferocity, his bearded face relaxed and lineless like the face of someone in a holy picture, but lit by hidden laughter. When they reached their carriage her grandfather dropped an excessive number of francs into the porters’ hands, muttering in Russian, “Dear God, dear God, these creatures produced by a popular government,” and he helped her up the high steps, while he gave Louison a farewell tip and some last instructions.

  There were two women already in the carriage, sitting opposite their own reserved places, women dressed in heavy mourning, with round faces framed for contentment, but not at that moment contented. The older was saying, “It was indelicate of them to buy us the first-class tickets. If they had given us the money for first-class tickets, the handsome gesture was there, we would have given them the credit for it. I am sensitive to generosity, I am touched by it, and the fact that we would have travelled third and kept the balance wouldn’t have lessened my gratitude to them. As it is, I must reconsider my view of them.”

  “They meant to be kind,” said the younger woman.

  “Meaning is one thing and doing is another,” said the other, “and it’s the lack of delicacy which appals me. And always,” she added after some seconds, “will.”

  She hoped Grandfather would not hear them going on like that, popular government and God could get into the business at the drop of a hat. She wished they could go to Mûres-sur-Mer as she and her father and mother and brothers went to Scotland or Torquay, with nothing much coming up except that they were going to Scotland or Torquay. But when her grandfather sat down beside her he was mild, he was back in Russia before that had become a torment to him.

  “I’ve been trying to tell you all the morning about the capercailzie shoot, but people kept on interrupting us. The capercailzie were with us about the same time as the woodchuck. In April, would it be, or was that too early? I can’t remember. An exile gets confused about the seasons. But it was a time in the year when there was gaiety in the air, it was a pleasure like going to a ball when one is young, just to be alive. To get the capercailzie we had to go even farther into the forest than when we were after the woodcock, we drove sledges mile after mile, to where the marshes begin, then we went on foot, a long way on foot. It was a real ordeal, this shoot. I tell you I dreaded every year lest this time I should find I was too old and make a fool of myself in front of my inferiors. But I was still able to carry it off up to the last spring I spent at Datchina. I am still enormously strong.

  “The capercailzie isn’t like the woodcock. It is more of an aristocrat. It doesn’t give itself away by fighting itself blind and dead, it keeps its sense till the very last, and till then it hears everything even to the snapping of a twig underfoot. I’ve seen the whole thing a failure because of some lout’s single false step. Keeping absolute silence, that’s it. Standing still and waiting, feet on the frozen marshland, and staring up at the tall trees, the firs and birches, silhouetted against the night sky. They are sparser here. You hardly call it the true forest, it just straggles down into the marshes.

  “The hen-birds are hidden in the branches of the trees. You can’t see them. Even I with my sight which is so much keener than other people’s, even I could not see them. The capercailzie is like your grouse, you know, but of course much bigger, bigger than a pheasant, and very dark in colour. Then, suddenly, just before the dawn breaks, the cock-birds come. They fly swiftly, discharging themselves like arrows at the treetops, where they alight on the topmost branches. There they remain still, quite still, while the sun comes up. The wait seems endless, though probably it isn’t ten minutes, because you daren’t make the smallest movement, you hardly risk breathing. If the birds hear the faintest sound they’re up and spreading all over the sky, into the distance, as quick as a woman shaking out her fan, and you’ve come all the way for nothing. But if you stay quiet, all at once the cocks begin to sing. They’re serenading their mates in the branches below, the sun is on the cocks above, the hens are still down in the darkness. At first the song’s faint, one can just hear the soft chuck-chuck-chuck, but soon it swells, it’s their church choir.

  “Even then you can’t be sure you’re safe. As I told you, these birds keep their ears, they get every sound at this point, and sometimes they stop singing altogether, and there’s a hush, such a hush, you hear the blood beating in your head and you think they must hear it. It’s that which makes this shoot such a test. Keeping still like that exhausts a man’s nervous and muscular energy before he lifts his gun. We thought a man a remarkable shot if he could bag six or seven birds with the kind of guns we had when I was young. You see, there’s just one moment when one can get them, when one
has to twist oneself into the right stance and blaze away, and that moment comes at full dawn, when one stops thinking, ‘It’s getting light, hurrah, it’s getting light,’ and thinks, ‘It’s light, it’s broad daylight,’ surely it must have been light for quite a time, because the day tips into the dark sky as if someone were emptying the bottle bolt upright above it, filling it up to the brim. It’s then that the cock-bird’s lovesong rises to its height in one long note. Shrill, penetrating. It’s terrible to hear, in a way, that note, it’s like a cold finger slowly drawn down one’s spine. A very high note as it goes on. And it seems to stretch everything, one’s nerves, everything, even the sky. It’s then one shoots. The cocks know nothing when they’re singing this extraordinary note. The hens know nothing when they’re listening to this extraordinary note. They’re quite defenceless, both of them. They become the note itself. They’re nothing else.”

  The words crumbled on his lips. A line of saliva ran down from the corner of his mouth. Distastefully he wiped it away, and said, “It tires me to remember that note. Indeed I can’t quite remember it. But it was wonderful, that shoot.” He sighed, his eyelids drooped.

  She was not sorry. As he spoke she had been looking out of the window at Louison, who was standing in the correct position for a footman seeing off his master and family at the station, at right-angles to the door, with his arms crossed and his elbows in the palms of his hands. He had a babyish profile, with a snub nose and plump cheeks falling to a little round chin, and he was looking very sad, sad because he was too young to be sad, like a grieving puppy. She leaned from the window and said, “Louison, are you all right?”

  He started. “Oh, yes, Mademoiselle. Your grandfather gave me a gold piece.”

  “Well, that’s nice,” she said.