The Birds Fall Down (24 page)

“‘When did this meeting occur?’ asked Gorin, almost languidly. ‘A lot depends on that, for if it was a long time ago and you’ve just realized it, he may have been cured, and if you’ve just met him he may only recently have gone blind. But he can’t have been blind, surely, all the time, it’s just not possible.’

“‘I met him this morning,’ I said, ‘but he’s been blind for some time.’ ‘You met him this morning?’ asked Gorin. ‘But why?’ Then he corrected himself, ‘I don’t mean “why,” for I suppose you met him by accident. You surely wouldn’t have tried to contact an agent without my permission. But how did it happen?’ ‘In the strangest way,’ I said, ‘but please let me sit down.’ ‘My poor Vassili, certainly you shall sit down, you aren’t at all yourself today,’ he murmured, and he pushed me into the wicker armchair which was the only comfortable seat in his poor room. I leaned back and closed my eyes and told him, ‘I went up to see him at his home, and I found he is blind.’

“Gorin came and stood over me and asked, with some amusement in his voice, ‘But Vassili, don’t you simply mean that when he met you he behaved as if he were blind? For from all I have heard he’s very cunning, as such an experienced agent would have to be, and he’s more reason than most to be cunning, for he’s terrified that one of his family who’s a reactionary will find out that he’s one of us and denounce him. It’s probable that unless you were introduced to him by a comrade in whom he had confidence he’d pretend to have lost his sight, just in order to throw you off the scent.’ The idea of Berr pretending to be anything that he was not made me laugh aloud, though I kept my eyes closed. ‘No, he quite simply can’t see.’ ‘How can you be so sure?’ said Gorin, speaking in a more sarcastic tone than I had ever heard him use before. ‘Because,’ I said, feeling as if I were stepping off a cliff, ‘I looked at him through a window and pointed a revolver at him, and he did not flinch.’

“There was a silence and when Gorin spoke again it was very gently, with not a trace of anger or derision. ‘Vassili, Vassili, what’s this you’re telling me? How did it come about that you pointed a revolver at a comrade, whom anyway you shouldn’t have had anything to do with? You’re only an associate of the Battle Organization, we’ve never accepted you for terrorist work. You’d no right to take such a responsibility upon yourself, particularly when you’re treading on such delicate ground. For though I think you’re wrong, and I think Berr is not blind, and a very active agent, and a very loyal one, I must admit there are certain complications concerning the surveillance of the Diakonov household which are very strange, very strange indeed. But now you must tell me your story, for you haven’t yet given me the slightest clue as to how and why you’ve been behaving in such a very odd way, by your own showing.’ His tenderness overcame me. I covered my face with my hands, I felt the most urgent need to cleanse my breast by confession, though I didn’t know of what sin I felt guilty. But I was quite ready to acknowledge that I had been utterly unworthy of the cause, and had endangered it by my rashness and frivolity. But Gorin sighed, ‘And so grotesque that all this should happen round Berr! Poor old Berr!’

“The sound of Berr’s name brought his image to my mind. I saw the man I had been talking to only two or three hours before, the man who sat in his hut holding a sprig to his nostrils, patient like a saint on an icon, the man whose only fault had been that he seemed arrogant though he was not, the man who had spoken of receiving charity not abjectly nor ungratefully, but with pure joyousness, as if the giving and receiving of alms was a dance. But I didn’t think, as you might expect, ‘How guilty I am for having tried to kill this innocent man.’ I thought simply, ‘That is an innocent man,’ and I became fixed in contemplation of him, like a compass pointing to the north. It was as if what he was, the pure substance of him, wiped out my offence against him. I understood for the first time what is meant by the forgiveness of sins.

“‘But your story,’ said Gorin, standing in front of me, ‘let’s have your story.’ He had a right to hear it, so I told him everything, beginning with my arrival in London and the scene in the actress’s lodging and what the yellow-haired boy had told me, and ending with my meeting with Berr in his summer-house, though of that I did not speak fully. I did not tell him what Berr had said to me in the way of pity. I had great difficulty in getting it all out, because my real inclination was simply to go on thinking about Berr. When I was forced to turn my mind away from him, or share my knowledge of him with Gorin, I was overcome by drowsiness, my lips felt thick, my limbs were heavy. I told my story in a demented way, for sometimes I spoke in terms of self-abasement and sometimes aggressively, and these changes occurred without relation to what I was saying at the moment. I would have given anything to go to sleep, and when I’d come to the end of the story I actually rolled over on my side in the chair and fell into a doze. Gorin passed a cool hand over my forehead, and said in the tones of a doctor dealing with a delirious patient, ‘Rest as long as you like, there’s no reason why we should be in a hurry to discuss such a very complicated affair.’ But after a few minutes I felt better, I sat up and saw that he had opened the window and was sitting on the ledge, with his face buried in his hands. I said to him, ‘You see why I had to hasten to you. All this has to be put before the committee as soon as possible, because of course the man who told you that Berr is the spy in the Diakonov household is the same traitor who handed over Primar, Korolenko, Damatov, and God knows how many of our comrades to the police.’

“I was astounded by the effect of these words on Gorin. He always spoke very softly in a moment of crisis. Now he asked in a shrill voice, ‘Why did you say that?’ Though his face remained smooth—it always did—he was rocking as if he had been struck, he had to put out his hands to steady himself on his narrow seat. ‘I’ve too much responsibility to bear as it is!’ he went on in the same shrill voice, which he lowered to a harsh, grating whisper, just as uncharacteristic. ‘I can’t cope with all these fanciful stories. You’ve told me that a certain unknown man looked at our poor friends out of the Diakonovs’ doorway in the Avenue Kléber, you’ve told me that in your opinion a certain unknown man has been lying when he represented that Berr was the spy working for the Diakonov household. But the Diakonovs’ apartment is probably crammed with Tsarist spies and you have no proof at all that these two actions are the work of one and the same—’ I interrupted him to say, ‘No proof is required, that I can see. It’s self-evident.’ A gust of fury swept through me, I had pains to stay civil as I added, ‘And you need not whisper.’

“‘Yes,’ agreed Gorin mildly, ‘it’s absurd of me to whisper. But I’ve so much on my mind, and this I find the last straw.’ He stood up, folded his arms and looked down at his feet, as he often did when he had to solve a difficult problem. ‘You see, I can’t follow you at all in this theory, I can’t see why you say these two actions must have been committed by the same man.’

“I was aghast. I had come to bring home to this man a failure in efficiency, committed in a dangerous field, of which I had hardly been able to believe he could be guilty. But by his incapacity to grasp the obvious point I’d put before him, he seemed to be showing that he was capable of quite gross stupidity. Yet again and again when I’d seen him fall into just this attitude, leaning against some ledge or balustrade, folding his arms so that his cuffs, which were always very white and clean, projected from his sleeves, and staring down at his small, shining black shoes, calling on his resources to solve some snare set for our cause by its cleverest enemies, and always there had issued from his lips the subtlest cunning and the most loving and lovable wisdom. I said to him, ‘You can’t have heard what I said.’ He raised his eyebrows in mild mockery, and I went on, unable to bear this change in him, ‘Listen, when the man looked out and saw that the actress had noticed him, he waved his hand to her in a way that made her think he was a vulgar bourgeois in need of a streetwalker, and as she is a pure woman she gave him a proud and disgusted look, and passed on, forgetting her first suspicion that he was a police agent interested in her companions. He exploited her chastity. And the man who has told you that Berr is the spy in the Diakonov household has made use of certain meritorious circumstances in the life of the Diakonovs and the Berrs to induce you to believe a lie. He’s exploited the Diakonovs’ generosity which makes them befriend the Berrs, and he’s exploited the arrogant air which poor Berr assumes rather than cringe under his affliction. God forgive him, he’s exploited Berr’s blindness itself. Don’t you see that in both cases, someone clever and not at all well-bred, not at all
nice
, as the English say, picks out something creditable in a person and ruthlessly turns it to her or his disadvantage? We can take it, surely, that the person responsible for each of these ruses had some connection with the Diakonov household. Surely you go on and take a further step and admit that it’s as unlikely that two people frequenting the same house should possess the same complex sort of character which would permit them to be at once able, perceptive, louche, and treacherous, as it is that they should both be of extraordinary appearance and exactly alike?’ “My words appeared to me, and still appear, perfectly reasonable. So I was again astounded when Gorin replied, ‘But what you’re saying doesn’t seem to me to mean anything at all. Surely any sensible man with an ordinary amount of ingenuity would think of waving his hand in the manner you describe if he wanted to put a respectable woman off the scent, and surely any such man, with the same not-so-uncommon qualities, would have chosen Berr if he wanted a scapegoat for the spying in the Diakonov household, for the very reasons you’ve given, that he was a blind pensioner of the family. There’s no trace of idiosyncrasy about that. By God, Vassili, just look twice at this matter of blindness! Supposing that you were being chased by the police through the streets and you saw a woman giving money to a beggar with a certain air of unction, wouldn’t you knock against her, explain that you were blind and wanted to cross the road, on the off chance that when the policemen came up with you they wouldn’t recognize their quarry in a blind man who was being led by a woman?’

“I shook my head. ‘What, you wouldn’t?’ asked Gorin. ‘No,’ I said, ‘no.’ Gorin shook his head. ‘I hope,’ he said kindly but reproachfully, ‘that this isn’t because you have forgotten that we must forget our private scruples when the good of the cause is at stake.’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘it’s just that it wouldn’t enter my head to do any such thing.’ ‘That only shows,’ said Gorin shortly, ‘that you have no experience of terrorist work.’ I answered, ‘I’m sorry, I am still of the opinion that these two actions must have been committed by the same man, and I believe that man to be the unknown traitor in our ranks who has handed over to the police comrade after comrade, ending with Primar, Korolenko, and Damatov.’ Gorin turned away from me, shrugging his shoulders, and to strengthen my appeal I added, ‘The same man who not so long ago also destroyed Vesnin, Patopenko, and Komissaroff.’ For the third time in this conversation I was astounded by the effect of my words on Gorin, and felt that I had never really known the man. He spun round, tweaked my sleeve, put his face close to mine, and spoke as if he were trying to rouse a drunkard whom he was trying to induce to leave a burning house. ‘Vassili, Vassili, what’s the matter with you? What in the world is there to lead you to suppose that these two actions, performed here in Paris, can have any relation to a whole series of quite different actions performed in Petersburg, Moscow, Kharkov, Odessa, Kiev, Warsaw, Helsingfors, and Stockholm? For God’s sake give me any evidence if you have it, but if you haven’t stop tormenting me with this nonsense.’ I answered, ‘It’s hard for me to think of evidence, for I’m absolutely sure already that these two tactical exercises in treachery and the grand strategy behind them are the work of one and the same man.’

“Gorin bent low over me and cried in exasperation: ‘But who do you suppose this someone to be?’ Shutting my eyes again, that I might the better think of Berr, I found myself murmuring, ‘I believe it’s Kamensky.’ ‘Kamensky!’ exclaimed Gorin. He put his hands on my shoulders and began to shake me. ‘Vassili, what are you talking about! What maggot has got into your head? Kamensky, that nincompoop, that mediocrity! Why, we searched his rooms and found nothing but icons and pitiful maundering tracts and a diary such as a little girl of twelve might have kept! How could this idiot, who is just able to be Sofia Andreievna’s lap-dog, how could he be this wonderful spy who has tricked us all, this mixture of Machiavelli and Judas? Or do you, Vassili, know something about Kamensky that the rest of us don’t?’ I found myself spreading out my hands in a gesture of despair and saying, When Pilate asked, “What is truth?” he got no answer except from his own heart.’ As when I had said, ‘I believe it is Kamensky,’ I hadn’t known what I was saying till after I had said it. And I believed that only because there was a sort of silence about the name of Kamensky.

“He went on bending over me saying nothing but suddenly straightened up. There were voices in the corridor outside. Gently and pleasantly he asked, ‘Have you told anybody to meet you here?’ I exclaimed, ‘Ask anybody to meet me here, in your room, without first getting your permission? Of course not, Gorin!’ Though he smiled and nodded and pressed my hand, he did not speak again until there came the sound of a door opening and shutting farther down the corridor and we heard the voices no more. ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘what is it you know about Kamensky?’ ‘Why, nothing more than I have told you,’ I said. ‘Then you’re guessing,’ he said. ‘You should never do that. One mustn’t guess if one is a revolutionary, one must draw logical conclusions from observed facts, for revolution is a science and revolutionaries must work by scientific method.’ He went slowly to his bed and sat down on it. After some minutes he said in a low tone, ‘I must put an end to the whole thing.’ Then he gave a little laugh and said, ‘No, I don’t mean that.’ I was surprised he hadn’t meant that, for obviously he ought to put an end as quickly as possible to the state of affairs in the Diakonov household. ‘I mean we must have a thorough investigation, before the committee, of how matters stand in relation to Berr and Kamensky. You must understand, Vassili, that although I’ve been tearing your story to shreds, it’s only been to make you defend it as fully as you can. For though the situation in the Diakonovs’ apartment isn’t quite as you see it, there is, as I told you earlier, something wrong there.’ He went over and stood looking out of the window, then turned and spoke to me with an air of abrupt good sense. ‘I only regret that I can’t tell you all the details, but that I can’t do till I’ve put it up to the committee. You see, our real contact there is, and always has been, back in Russia as well as here, the Count’s footman, Pyotr. He’s a very sound fellow who’s been with us from his early youth, and he’s been of the greatest service to us, because his apparent simplicity led his employer to trust him absolutely. For example, he was always allowed to go in and out of the Ministry, to take down special dishes if the Count was going to give visitors luncheon at his office, or to deliver notes which had arrived at his private house during the day and seemed to demand his attention. That’s how he was able to act as our intermediary with Pravdine. Well, shortly after the Diakonovs made their desolate hegira to Paris, Pyotr informed us that he’d found a new sympathizer to keep his master under surveillance, and this was Berr. And I think you’re wrong about Berr, but I have to own that you may be right. There are other suspicious factors. I wish I knew. Perhaps you saw the wrong Berr? Just think, Vassili, I’ve continually been going to that house in the Avenue Kléber myself. I’ll trust you with the secrets we’ve had to keep next our hearts—the apartment above the Diakonovs’ is empty, and Pyotr has possessed himself of the key, and he’s put in a kitchen-chair, on which I’ve spent many a most uncomfortable hour waiting for him to find a chance to slip away and bring me papers which had been collected, so we thought, by Berr. But … but … Well, I can’t tell you of the things that have come up during the last few weeks. Still, you’re shrewd, you’re undoubtedly shrewd.