The Birds Fall Down Read online

Katinka and Aglaia exchanged another dramatic glance. “Oh, there’s no question of that. Even if she’d felt like doing anything so rash, we wouldn’t have let her. But she was taken by Monsieur Kamensky.”

  “Ah, that excellent little Kamensky,” sighed Tania.

  “Indeed, we don’t know where we’d all be without him. It’s a pity he can’t be here all the time. But he has to follow his profession. However, he’s back now, and he’s out with her this very minute, and he’ll bring her back as soon as he can. But you know how devout she is. She’s probably forgotten the time. And if the poor lady was happy, he wouldn’t like to bring her back to a sense of what was going on.”

  “Not even to remind her about you,” said Aglaia.

  “Soon we will have to give a great ball for our little Laura,” said Nikolai. “Your grandmother will stand beside your mother at the head of the staircase as she stood beside your mother at her first great ball, and you will stand beside your mother.”

  “Madame Tania hasn’t changed since her first ball,” Katinka said to him, in the tone nurses use to children when they are telling them to eat up something, and Aglaia spoke in the same style. “Nobody will know which is the mother and which the daughter.”

  “Laura will be wasted in England,” Nikolai told Tania. “The English have next to no ceremonies. She should have been coming to us in St. Petersburg now. She might have stayed with us for a long time. She might have been a demoiselle d’honneur at court as you were.”

  “I couldn’t do it,” said Laura, looking up into his clouded amber eyes. She felt she had to make him understand that. She knew he was disgraced and had now no influence at court, yet he had this magicianly air, she was afraid he might be able to bring about impossible things, including this. “I wouldn’t be any good at the Russian court or the English. I’ve got to be presented next year and I hate it. I’m frightened. I’ll do the wrong thing and we’ll—” She was going to say, “We’ll all be sent to the Tower,” and then checked herself. Nikolai had been sent to the Tower.

  The servants, seeing that things were going better, were backing out. “You wouldn’t do the wrong thing, Laura,” said Tania. “I thought I would, but something comes and takes over. After all, the family has been doing it for so long, we’re wound up.” She went to stand by the fireplace, rested her elbow on the chimney-piece, between a chalcedony frog and an agate tortoise. Her small hat, trimmed with a bird, her close-fitting blouse, and her long skirt, cut in the slanting lines of a tacking yacht, gave her the shape of a swift force prepared to go into action. “After all, Laura,” she said in an undertone, “Grandmamma can’t be so bad if she goes out at all. And to one of our services. You have to be pretty strong for that. The Almighty always feels he can’t outstay his welcome with us.” To Nikolai she said, “The silly girl doesn’t realize one can do anything one really wants to.”

  “She would have looked superb in the demoiselle’s ruby velvet dress,” said Nikolai.

  “Laura doesn’t want to look superb,” said Tania. “Do remember she’s half-English, and so doesn’t care much about drama. But the English are a sentimental people. Laura prefers to love people rather than to be a person. She’s prepared to love you and Mamma though she doesn’t know you as well as I would like. She loves me,” she said, in a sudden flight of rapture, looking in the glass as if the reflection of her face confirmed what she said. “I don’t want to look as I did at my first great ball. I’d be grateful enough if I could look like myself, if I don’t just fall to pieces and be nobody, be dust. But I’m kept together because my children love me. Laura loves me quite a lot. Papa, does it mean a great deal to you that your children love you?” When he vaguely smiled and nodded, she turned round and begged him, “Hasn’t it meant a great deal to you that we love you so much, in this time, in this bad time, since all this has happened to you? Haven’t you found it true that the love of your children makes up for anything that can happen to you?”

  Nikolai answered, “Yes, yes, it means a lot. A family life is one of the few real joys we’re vouchsafed here on earth. Sit down and rest. Presently they’ll bring you some tea, some Russian tea. I hope your brothers send you tea regularly, as they do to us, real tea from Russia. But they may not, they’ve never been in England and they don’t know how dreadful English tea is. Much that’s drunk there is that rubbish from India. Even that appalling stuff from Ceylon.”

  “We love you so much,” Tania went on. She had turned again to the glass and was combing her hair with one of her hatpins. “I didn’t know till this last year how much I loved you. You and Mamma on the one hand, the children on the other. Nothing,” she said, her face distorted with pain, “can really hurt me, because of that love.” She spun round, crying, “Isn’t that Mamma talking out there in the corridor?”

  It was frightening, when one wanted one’s mother, for her to want her mother too. But that was being a selfish beast. The door did not open at once. There was a weak twisting of the handle as if someone outside was trying to turn its massiveness with one hand, and then a call for help. Then Pyotr held the door open and her grandmother came in, leaning heavily on the arm of a small bearded man whom Laura recognized as Monsieur Kamensky, though chiefly because she remembered that he had looked very like a lot of other people, and so did this man. Whoever he was, Madame Diakonova pushed him away when she saw Tania and Laura, stretched out her hands, and took a step towards them, and then came to a halt, shaking her head and smiling shyly, as if she expected a scolding.

  “Mother!” said Tania in a whisper. “Mother!” She caught her hat to her bosom and drove her hatpin through the bird which trimmed it, as if she were killing something which must not be permitted to exist for one more moment.

  “Well, I warned you I wasn’t feeling healthy as a peasant,” said Sofia Andreievna, with a little laugh, and the two women stood quite still, looking at each other.

  Laura hated her grandfather for what his grief had made of this apartment. It was horrible to see what breathing the poisoned air had done to her grandmother. In the past, before her grandfather had gone into exile, Sofia Andreievna had visited them often in Radnage Square. Then she had been almost as beautiful as Tania, though in a quite different way, for her hair was black and her face a smooth oval and she was not at all barbaric; and she was very grand, prodigiously so, considering that she was small and slight. She had an immense amount of jewellery, all the stones very large, and she had furs that were as weightless and warm as good weather; and she possessed only what would have been for anybody else best clothes. Even in bed, she was grand, wearing jackets frothing over with feathers between sheets she brought from Russia, sheets of linen so fine that it was dark, under bedcovers that dripped heavy Venetian lace to the floor. But within all this magnificence, and under the other weight of her years, she remained supple as a young animal. On her very last winter visit she had hunted regularly in Leicestershire, rushing back to town glittering with well-being, ready for whatever was going in the way of operas and theatres and dinner parties and balls. They said she owed her vitality to her descent on her mother’s side from a Polish family famous for strength and longevity; an ancestress of hers had ridden out at the head of an army of her serfs to do battle against an army commanded by her own great-grandson.

  None of that stock died before eighty, or lost their health before they died. She could not be much more than sixty, Laura calculated. She had been married at seventeen to her middle-aged bridegroom, her eldest son was a little over forty. But now she might have been an ugly and weakly old woman. Her neck had been round and white, but now the flesh had shrunk away under her chin and her neck was a narrow fluted tube, and her face was like a mask of stretched hide stuck on top of it. She did not look only ugly and old, she looked poor, like the women in the slums between Radnage Square and the Fulham Road. Her hair had lost its colour and its lustre. It might not have been washed and brushed for a long time. Her eyes, which had been heavy-lidded and almost vacuously ser
ene, stared anxiously out of deep sockets, as if she were wondering where the rent would come from. She must be got away at once, back to Radnage Square, fed on butter and cream and allowed to rest, and given a chance to swim at the Bath Club. She would soon be all right. She was so very strong. It was all a question of getting her out of this apartment.

  Her grandfather said, with mild patriarchal censure, “My dear wife, where have you been?” Having received a murmured apology, he went on, “Now look at our Tania and see how well she is, and look at our little Laura and say who she is like.”

  “My darling Tania,” said Sofia Andreievna, “don’t make such a sad face. It’s not so bad really.”

  “Oh, Mother, Mother,” whispered Tania. She let her hat slide out of her hands on to the floor, crossed the room and laid her arms about her mother’s wasted body, resting her golden head on the thin shoulder.

  “It’s not so bad,” repeated Sofia Andreievna, “and during the last three days I am much, much better. Ask Monsieur Kamensky.”

  “Oh, without a doubt the Countess has improved lately,” agreed the small bearded man, in a pleasant voice. She had forgotten his voice as she had forgotten nearly everything about him, yet it was charming, so unhurried, so good-humoured. “I’ve been away, I’ve been being an engineer instead of doing what I like and being a humble friend, and now I’m back I see a great improvement.”

  “But isn’t Laura exactly like her mother, Sofia? And doesn’t that mean that she’s exactly like my mother?” cried Nikolai, exultantly. Then concern sallowed his skin, dimmed his eyes, made him petitioning and humble. He was sorry for his wife after all. But no. He thought of her for hardly a moment. “Kamensky. Alexander Gregorievitch. While you were out I thought of something. I once had some correspondence with a man named Botkin. It might have some bearing on my case. I thought of a little, little thing, which might have some significance. Could you get me out the file? Is it too much trouble? I don’t want to give you too much trouble.”

  “You couldn’t do that, Excellence,” said Monsieur Kamensky. “But I’m afraid you’ll have to wait till the morning. That file was sent down to the bank with the Muraviev material. A mistake in judgment, mine more than yours. But in the meantime read what I have here for you. It’s a copy of a letter from Souvorin about the way things are going in St. Petersburg. You’ll see from the envelope who received it. As an indirect gesture of respect to you, he sent it to me yesterday, with obvious indications that it wasn’t for my eyes but for yours.” Nikolai gave a sigh of pleasure and snatched the letter from his hand and sat down in an armchair by a lamp. Monsieur Kamensky bent over Laura’s hand and said, “Good evening, Miss Laura,” and as soon as he sat down beside her said in a quick undertone, “Please, Miss Laura, look happier. Sofia Andreievna is talking to your mother now, but she might look over here, and all day long she has been saying to me, ‘I hope the little one will not be frightened when she sees what my horrible toothache has done to me.’”

  “Is that all it is, toothache!” exclaimed Laura in relief. “Is it really only toothache?”

  “So she would tell you,” he said, taking off his spectacles and polishing them. “Persistent toothache. On many nights it gives her no sleep at all. Before long she will have to have a number of teeth extracted. That is why she wanted your mother to come over and be with her for a little time.”

  “You’ve taken a weight off my mind,” said Laura. “I can’t tell you how glad I am it’s only that. I was quite frightened. It is awful for anybody to be ill, but for my grandmother of all people, it’s far worse. Don’t you feel that?”

  “I feel it very strongly,” said Monsieur Kamensky. “All your family is extraordinary. Sometimes I speculate whether your grandmother was as wonderful when she married your grandfather, for I think him one of the most marvellous people who has ever lived, and some of his genius might well have rubbed off on to her. But now I have watched her enduring this illness I know she brought her own genius with her.”

  He believed in laying it on with a trowel. It was embarrassing. It seemed silly to say, “Oh, no,” but the alternative was to say, “Yes, we are wonderful, aren’t we?” But she forgot her annoyance, for a wave of scent had broken over her. It was too medicinal to be scent out of a bottle. But it made her think of gardens. It was the scent of something which grew in a big patch by the greenhouse in the house they rented every year outside Torquay, a herb called tansy. It seemed to be coming from Monsieur Kamensky’s handkerchief, and that made her want to ask him a question. But it was impertinent. She did not ask it.

  Though Monsieur Kamensky had not seemed to be watching Tania and her mother, he was up on his feet as soon as they started to move towards the door and was there to open it for them. Then he sighed, looked round the room, went to the hearth-rug and picked up Tania’s hat, picked two strands of wool off it, and laid it on a table. Then he paused beside Nikolai and moved the lamp so that a stronger light fell on the sheets of paper which the old man was reading, with absorption so profound that a stranger might have thought him a peasant who had never learned to read with ease. Kamensky lingered for a second to look down on him, frowning, and he came back to Laura murmuring, “I wonder if he should have stronger spectacles. Perhaps Pyotr can remember when he last went to an oculist. Now we can sit down and make ourselves comfortable. Don’t trouble about your grandfather. That’s a very long letter he’s reading, and an interesting one. Monsieur Souvorin is the editor and the owner of the Novoe Vremya, our Times. He is not a good man, he is a liberal at heart, and liberalism is not for Russia, but he’s intelligent and what he says will keep your grandfather’s mind occupied for hours. Let me put this cushion behind your back, you’ve been travelling all day. Now you’re grown-up you’ll see that there really is some sense in the way that your elders cosset themselves. But tell me, what’s the question you thought of asking me a moment ago and then didn’t? It’s no use denying it, Miss Laura, for I saw your eyebrows go up and your lips part, and if you’d been whole-Russian the words would have been out, but your English half gagged you. See, I know everything. You must own up.”

  “But it was so silly, and not the sort of thing one ought to ask people.”

  “Ask me,” said Monsieur Kamensky, “I am not people. I am Alexander Gregorievitch.”

  “This is all twaddle, like tea with the headmistress or the vicar calling,” thought Laura, “but he likes me. It’s nice to be liked by almost anybody.” She said aloud, with a smile, “The truth is, I smelt your handkerchief, and I remembered how you had told me last time I was here that you went straight from your home in South Russia to Moscow High School, and it was the first time you had ever felt the cold of the North, and you got such terrible chilblains and your grandmother made up a herbal ointment for them—it was you who told me that, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, it was me,” said Monsieur Kamensky. “And I probably told you that it was the first time she had shown me any kindness since I had broken it to her that I would rather be an engineer than a priest.”

  “You didn’t, actually,” said Laura, untruthfully. “You were going to tell me, and someone came into the room. Tell me now.” He might as well tell her the story over again, it would be something to talk about.

  “Well, if you are so kind as to listen to me, I’ll admit to you that the news made her really horrid to me. She gave me nothing to eat except kasha—I don’t suppose you know what that is.”

  “Of course I do, it’s porridge.”

  “And she didn’t mind if she burned it. This was terrible, because up till then she had given me very good things to eat, like the beef and cabbage stew we call stschi, and those little stuffed pastry turnovers called piroki, and all sorts of wonderful soups, and she was very good with mushrooms. And all those titbits stopped the minute I chose to be an engineer. If I may speak of such things, it was as if I had declared myself in love with some undesirable girl, when all I had done was to avow a passion for nuts and bolts, dynamos a
nd accumulators. Then one day it all ended, as suddenly as it had begun. The weather got cold, and I started having chilblains, and they were so painful that every time I had to put on my boots or take them off, the tears ran down my cheeks, and one day it happened that she was passing through the hall when I was putting on my boots and suddenly she thrust back my head and glared down at me. ‘You’re crying,’ she said. ‘Have you at last repented on your wickedness in turning away from the service of God and breaking the heart of your grandmother who so loves you?’ I couldn’t bear it. I shouted at her, ‘Don’t talk nonsense, this is something real, I have chilblains.’ She went into the kitchen without saying a word, and I thought she would write to my parents and tell them to take me home. But when I came back in the late afternoon the house was full of the smell of tansy ointment and there was stschi for dinner. And she put the tansy ointment on my chilblains and gave me two platefuls of stschi, and we never had another cross word.” He stopped, silently chuckling.

  She could not understand the story, and though she smiled back, she raised her eyebrows. He explained, “About what it is to be a priest and what it is to be an engineer she had not the faintest idea. But chilblains, they had always been in her world since her childhood, and she knew all about them and how they hurt. So her heart bled for me.” He nodded, looking Asiatic, his drooping eyelids smooth as wax in a chemist’s pot, the corners of his mouth turning up in minute folds. “That taught me a lesson I’ve always found it useful to remember if I have to deal with difficult men. When they are hard, they are probably dealing with things they do not understand. If one brings them back to what is familiar to them, they become soft.”

  Absently, she thought, “How funny. He is talking as if he were someone important, like my grandfather, like my father. But perhaps he sometimes builds things that are quite big, bridges and dams, and then he might have people under him.” Aloud she asked, “What did she look like, your grandmother?”