The Birds Fall Down (23 page)

“‘Just look,’ he said, ‘at this hut. They sent men to build it, facing south, so that I can sit here with the sun on my skin. They’ve put a telephone in the flat, so that my wife can call help if I fall, as I sometimes do, and everybody else is out. Oh, go to them quickly, they’ll give you the blood out of their hearts.’ He went on to tell me that when he and his wife went to your apartment they were always graciously received by Sofia Andreievna, and were given a meal of good Russian food in a little room, either by themselves or with some other Russians who’d been unfortunate, and afterwards they were taken back into Sofia Andreievna’s drawing-room where she’d be sitting with some friends and a priest or two from the church in the Rue Darou, and they would have edifying conversation, but it was not too pious, they would laugh a lot. There was. an intimate of the house whom they liked very much, who turned out to be the Monsieur Kamensky of whom I had been hearing the day before. Stankovitch seemed to have got a very accurate idea of him from searching his room, for Berr said that he talked with the priests and the Countess as piously as if he were a priest too, though he was an engineer, told them funny stories which made him and his wife laugh but were at the same time suitable for the nobility to hear, and gave them Russian newspapers and magazines, always of an improving kind, which his wife read to him in the evenings. ‘He’s a good fellow,’ Berr said, ‘but he’s not a fountain like the Count or the Countess.’ ‘Who else is in the house?’ I asked, but Berr, frowning, said, ‘How should I know? But you’re wondering if they’ve got too many poor souls round them, there’ll be no room for you? Oh, never worry about that.’ I could not go on questioning him.

“I felt I must go back to Paris and talk all this out with Gorin at once. The error he had made about Berr was monstrous. It was true that anybody might have been deceived by seeing Berr and his wife walking through the streets; the defence his pride had built up to conceal his affliction was convincing. But Gorin should have told the investigating comrades to do much more than merely follow Berr from his tenement in the suburbs to the Avenue Kléber, he should have insisted on them collecting material from his neighbours. Because of this gross technical blunder the spy who had passed himself off as Berr had used the confusion he had created as cover for the betrayal of comrade after comrade, and I, who was of value to the cause, had nearly risked my life by murdering a man whose death would have done us no good whatsoever. Also I had the most terrible feeling that, if I had killed the man who sat facing me so brightly, smiling out of his darkness, I would have been vile beyond simple vileness, the earth and the sea would have rejected my spirit, I would have fallen off the world through the atmosphere into the nothingness of space, rejected, rejected, rejected, not by your God, but by me, by me. By me. I did not want to talk to Gorin. I wanted to try him.

“I went into the hut and kissed Berr on both cheeks and said, ‘Good-bye, my brother, I must be on my way.’ He would not let me go, he held me close to him, and said soberly, ‘But, for the love of God, don’t go back to Paris yet. I’m blind but I feel things. You’re rigid with suffering, you’re like a poor soldier that’s lain wounded all night on a frozen battlefield. You’re not fit yet even for the short journey back to Paris.’ I was in agony as he spoke. I was afraid he would feel the revolver which I had slipped into the pocket of my overcoat. When I freed myself and moved away, he followed me, though he plainly felt afraid of moving when his wife wasn’t there, and his steps were short and hesitant. But he risked falling because he was so anxious about me. ‘Stay and sit here in the hut and get the good of the sun. It’s free,’ he told me, smiling. ‘Or go up to our flat, it’s number 36, that’s always been my lucky number, and tell my wife that I’ve sent you and she’s to make you some good Russian tea. For that’s something which Sofia Andreievna always gives us, and the little fellow Kamensky too, he sometimes gives us special tea he gets from a cousin who’s out in Samarkand.’ I could only stammer, ‘Porfirio Ilyitch, I’m not worth all this.’ He said, ‘You’re talking nonsense, for I can feel you’re a good man, wasted by abstinences. You smell only of soap and smoke, and what’s a cigarette? Stay with us, you can sleep on a mattress on the floor, and perhaps tomorrow it’ll seem to you that what you’ve done hasn’t been so serious.’ I was relieved that he hadn’t understood what I had told him, for of course I had done nothing. Unaccountably, I found myself weeping, and I was just able to stammer out, ‘I’m very grateful, but I can’t stay and I can’t explain why. It’s just that I have to hurry away for the sake of many people.’ Even then I couldn’t bring myself to go, I crossed the threshold and then turned round and stood still, looking back at him. That puzzled him, he knitted his brows and I could see he was listening intensely. He muttered to himself, ‘I suppose I can’t hear him walking over the grass,’ and he shouted past me down the slope, ‘Don’t think you’re lost, I thought I was and all my dear family with me, and we were all saved.’ I crept off, and from a safe distance I called back a wordless greeting.”

VII

Nikolai said, “Poor Berr. The poor blind one without an evil thought in his head, who gave so much to beggars when he was a janitor at the Law Courts, that it grew troublesome, they hung about the place. You nearly killed him. And if you had, the lie your friend so vilely told about him, the lie you so fatuously believed, would have lived after him. A most honourable man would have been remembered as a traitor and a spy. I’ve often cursed my police agents as thick-witted blunderers. Compared to you clever ones, they don’t look so bad.”

“How deeply privilege corrupts,” said Chubinov. “You are a kind man. You have been kind to Berr. But because you are an aristocrat your kindness towards Berr has lacked a heart. You have never troubled to learn his name.”

“I don’t see why, simply because I’ve raised up one of the afflicted, I should be put under the obligation of knowing his name,” said Nikolai. “God must know the name of every human being created from the beginning of time to its end, for He takes their whole experience in His bosom. But what difference does it make whether I remember or forget anybody’s name? I’ve given this man a hut where he can sit in the sun. It doesn’t make the sunlight less warm because I didn’t take a note of his name, and it certainly won’t make it any warmer that now you’ve used his name so often in your infernal maunderings I shall never be able to forget it. This is Western emotionalism. Your father never thought you would come to anything, and he was right. I’m not moved by your story, you know. You seem to be patting yourself on the back because you’ve found yourself respecting a good man. But your father and mother, my wife and I, and all the people on our side, have always respected such men. If you hadn’t gone off gipsying with all these professional criminals and atheists you never would have thought of doing anything else. Have you anything more to say that I would think better worth listening to?”

“Can’t you have patience with me, Nikolai Nikolaievitch? Isn’t it clear to you yet that I’ve a story to tell which is immensely important to you? Listen. I beg you to listen. I caught the train back to Paris, and I found myself in a strange state of mind. I had, as you will realize, many things to worry me—yes, yes, I know that it is I who have got myself into this mess, but am I in any worse mess than you are? I tell you, listen. My journey was in a sense very happy. Whenever I thought of Berr my heart glowed with joy. But at the same time I was appalled by the corruption I had discovered within the movement to which I had given my life, a corruption which seemed not less than that which had repelled me in the Tsardom. My mind kept on turning back to this filthy mystery I had uncovered, and I was anguished. When I got to the Gare du Nord I rang up Gorin’s hotel, the Hôtel de Guipuzcoa et de Racine, but they told me he was still not there; and when I rang up the
pension
at Montreux the proprietress told me that he had not returned there either, and though I tried to gain her confidence, knowing that she was a sympathizer, she repeated that she knew nothing of his plans. Her tone was indeed so impatient that the thought struck me, if Gorin was so wrong about Berr, was he wrong about this woman also, was he perpetually betraying the movement by a foolish credulity, previously quite foreign to him, perhaps the result of his recent ill health?

“I found myself standing outside the station in a state of bewilderment. This was so large a business, who could I take it to but Gorin? Just as a child who is hurt will run to its mother’s room, even if he knows that she has gone out, I found myself walking across Paris to the Hôtel de Ville until I came to Gorin’s hotel. I persuaded myself that I meant to go in and make inquiries to see if the concierge hadn’t made a mistake and he was really there all the time, but I hadn’t the smallest reason for supposing this, so I didn’t go in, but sat down at a table outside a café on the opposite side of the narrow street, and drank one cup of coffee after another. At first I was the only person there, and I sat with my face turned to the traffic and talked to myself. Then noon came, and the place filled up, and I had to behave normally. I found this a great effort, and I marvelled that anybody as unstable as I am had for so long been able to carry the burden of belonging to a secret society without betraying it; and I began to fear I might have done so. All my thoughts brought me back to the idea of betrayal, which seemed to pervade the air, so that everyone alike was tainted with it. I felt so guilty, though of what treachery I couldn’t define, that when the waiter brought me an omelet I had ordered, I eyed him as if he might be going to arrest me. But I found peace in thinking of Berr. I fell into a sort of happy trance, which lasted until I saw Gorin walking down the opposite side of the street towards his hotel. At the sight of the neat, small figure, walking so lightly yet so soberly, everything that I had been thinking and feeling seemed absurd, and everything that had happened to me that morning seemed trivial. I had nearly killed an innocent man, I had discovered that I was enslaved by a faceless iniquity, but all that seemed unimportant. I would have liked to push away my plate and bury my head on my folded arms and go to sleep, and let what was happening happen. But before Gorin turned in at the door of his hotel, he paused and surveyed the people on the terrasse of the café opposite, a routine glance, such as any of us would give when entering our lodgings, in case we were watched. His eyes passed quickly and without impertinence from face to face, and paused for one moment at mine. My heart stopped. I felt sinful and untidy. Of course I did not greet him. We never did that in the street. But a look crossed his face that I knew was a command, an intimation that he wanted to speak to me as soon as possible, and he turned and went into the hotel.

“As soon as I had paid my bill I followed him, and the concierge told me that he’d left word that I was to be sent up to his room. As I went up the stairs to the fourth floor I felt as sick as if I were going to consult a doctor about the health of someone I loved and feared was about to die; and I also felt bewildered by this misplaced emotion. For I had simply to tell Gorin I thought he had made a mistake, and the worst that could happen was that I might have to defend my point of view to the committee of the Battle Organization, a duty which I believed Gorin would make as easy for me as possible, since he was the fairest and least self-regarding person I’d ever known. Why then did I feel as if I were going to hear the words, ‘Yes, your mother has cancer’? And when I entered Gorin’s room I suffered another irrational change of mood. It seemed as if I had no good reason for coming to see him, and that as soon as I had said what was in my mind my own words would prove I’d made a fuss about nothing.

“He was standing by the window, looking down on the street below, and he made no move to meet me. From this and a certain withdrawal of himself in his greeting, I could see that he was as nearly annoyed as his nature permitted. ‘Vassili Iulievitch, you’ve forgotten the first duty of a revolutionary. Come over here and look what’s happening on the terrasse.’ True, a waiter was standing in front of the table where I had sat, and with shrugs and gesticulations was showing another waiter the dish of eggs which I had paid for but not eaten. He began to make ridiculous mouthings and wave his hands, and I recognized he was imitating the way I had behaved when I believed myself unobserved. I stepped back from the window in miserable embarrassment.

“‘The first duty of a revolutionary is never to attract attention,’ said Gorin, not unkindly. I could only mutter some disconnected words, and he said quickly, ‘Why, what’s the matter with you? You look as if you’d had some sort of shock.’

“I said, ‘You think that the spy in the Diakonov household is Berr. It isn’t Berr.’ And it was just as I had feared. Now I had told him of my discovery, it seemed absurd. My voice sounded thin, I felt as I might at a party when I was young if I had started a funny story and nobody had laughed, and it had suddenly come to me that the story was not funny at all, but I had to finish it.

“Gorin repeated, ‘It isn’t Berr? It isn’t Berr?’ and was silent for a moment, stroking his chin. ‘But this is interesting. It really is. Because for some time I myself have suspected that there’s something wrong there, something not quite as we had been led to believe. But all the same—’ and he spoke sharply, as if bidding himself not to be a fool, not to be seduced by idle talk—‘it must be Berr.’

“‘It can’t be Berr,’ I said, still feeling as though I were wasting his time as thoroughly as if I were telling him how many varieties of butterflies there are in Peru, or how many racehorses are owned by the Rothschilds. He asked quizzically, ‘And what makes you so very sure it isn’t Berr?’ My eyelids were heavy, suddenly I would have given anything to lie down and go to sleep.

“I answered, yawning, ‘Because he’s blind.’

“Gorin turned away and softly closed the window. “Why do you do that?’ I asked him. ‘It’s already too warm in here.’ He answered, ‘I want to shut out the noise of the traffic. You’re speaking so faintly that I can hardly hear what you’re saying. And I wanted to be certain I understood you. Were you really telling me that Berr is blind? Blind? What’s your reason for thinking that? It seems very unlikely to me.’ I answered him, ‘I know it. I’ve met him and spoken to him, and he’s blind.’