The Birds Fall Down (50 page)

At last her father pushed away the papers, saying they were in order. “Thank heavens for that. I shall be glad to get away from here. That landlord’s in a bad way, poor wretch. This must have been a fine place till he got hold of it. But now the wreck’s complete. It’s an odd thing, I’ve noticed it not only in hotels and inns and shops that are running down, but when I’ve had to call on men who’ve been unfortunate in one way or another, something goes wrong with the buildings where they live or do business. It’s like going down into a vault. All disgrace smells alike. Differences in ruin are only matters of degree.”

So that was why he had not liked visiting the apartment in the Avenue Kléber. She supposed she could not blame him. It frightened her too, that the shadows in the passages seemed a kind of dust.

Her father pushed back his chair and stood up. “Now, Monsieur Kamensky, we’d better go upstairs and do our last duty. Just one or two things I want to settle.” He looked across at Laura and said, “Monsieur Kamensky is not coming to Paris with us, he is waiting here till your grandfather’s coffin is ready and will bring it back to Paris by a late train.” She sighed with relief. In a little while she would certainly be alone with her father, watching him change to what he used to be, as he heard her story and made plans for her safety. But he went on, “You’re quite sure they’ll be able to have the funeral the day after tomorrow, as they wish, they don’t suddenly change their plans?”

“It’s not a matter of the family’s wishes,” answered Kamensky primly. “It’s our fixed custom to bury our dead on the third day after death.”

“That’s good news,” said her father. “It’s important I get back to London as soon as possible. We politicians aren’t free agents, you know, and my Party’s run into some special difficulties lately. There’s a division coming on when all of us will be needed. So I’m glad that so far as I can see, I can count on leaving Paris the day after the funeral, or the day after that. There should be nothing to keep me. All I have to do is to get Laura off to her cousins in Florence or take her back to London with me. I must get her out of this atmosphere at once.”

He spoke with passionate insincerity, as if he felt he had suffered a wrong which gave him a right to say what he knew to be untrue, and rantingly too, as if he hoped to start an argument in which he would exercise that right still more freely. That was why she stayed silent, though it was in her mind to say, “Well, I don’t really like the atmosphere of Radnage Square much as it is just now,” or, “It isn’t my mother’s fault that her father has died in inconvenient circumstances, and it might have happened even if they hadn’t been Russian.” But Kamensky uttered a sharp exclamation before she could speak, and she turned on him in indignation. It was not for him to be shocked at insincerity. “Excuse me, Mr. Rowan—I’m sure you know very well what you’re doing but—would it really be worth your while to return to London for so short a time?”

“So short a time? But I will be staying in London. I’ve no intention of returning to Paris in the near future. I’m not my own master. I’m tied by my Parliamentary duties.”

“Your Parliamentary duties,” echoed Kamensky, nodding politely. But after a second incredulity got the better of him. “You’re really quite sure that you don’t mean to attend the Requiem of the Ninth Day?”

“What Requiem?”

“The Requiem held on the ninth day after death. If I may say so, we Russians regard it as very important.”

“What, another service!” exclaimed Mr. Rowan sinking back into the armchair. “From all I can find out, the funeral is interminable, but is that not the end of the business? On the ninth day, did you say? That’s seven days from now. I can’t stay till then,” he said miserably, “I really can’t.”

“A pity,” said Kamensky, still polite but awkwardly so, as if he did not wish to correct a superior, but he still thought that there was a misunderstanding here which had to be put right. “You must understand, this Requiem has an overwhelming religious significance for us. We have three supremely important Requiems for our dead which we think correspond with three stages in the soul’s journey towards judgment. On the third day after our beloved’s death we bury him, and help him with our prayers and rejoice with him because he has broken his bond with life and has been guided by his angels into the presence of God. There he is shown the wonders of Paradise and the beauty of righteousness—”

“Let me get this clear. You are now talking of a Requiem?”

“Yes, the first of the major Requiems.”

“Good God, is this an extra service, in addition to the funeral service?”

“No, it is the same. Or rather it is part of the funeral service.” He cleared his throat. Laura saw that he was going to make the whole thing even longer and more boring than it was just out of spite against her father. She tapped her foot with impatience at his malice. “I can explain how it fits into that—”

“No, no, continue about the Requiems.”

“As I was saying, on the third day after death God shows the soul the wonders of Paradise and the beauty of righteousness and he is allowed to contemplate them for six days. It is then that we gather together to celebrate the second Requiem, for the soul is about to face a fearful ordeal, since it is to be conducted to Hell, to watch the torments of the damned for thirty days—”

“The proportions are familiar,” said Edward Rowan: “six days in Paradise, thirty in Hell. But do you really believe all this?”

“Yes, we believe it, no, we do not believe it. Not all of us take the story literally, but it is sixteen hundred years since it was told to Saint Macarius by his angels, and it has been repeated and believed ever since, and now it is embedded in our minds and fulfils some function there, and so we don’t think about it very much any more. The question of belief hardly arises. We simply feel that when we attend the Requiem of the Ninth Day we are supporting our loved one in a time of anguish, and discharging an obligation which it would be shameful to repudiate—I don’t know if I’m making myself clear—”

“I understand perfectly.”

“No, Mr. Rowan, I don’t think you do. Not the whole of what I’m trying to say. You can’t understand it fully until you realize that the people who attend the Requiem will not be the ones you expect.”

“Well, I suppose that my wife’s brothers and sisters might manage to get to this second great Requiem. They certainly won’t be able to get here in time for the funeral.”

“They will attend neither the funeral nor any of the Requiems. They will not be allowed to leave Russia.” Kamensky forgot and spoke with naked authority. Also with hatred. He was glad these people were not allowed to bury their dead. Laura felt a prick of contempt for her father, because he did not notice this lightning flash of tyranny. Immediately Kamensky corrected himself. “At least,” he said, mildly and sadly, “I don’t think so. Though of course one doesn’t know. But we can take it that they will not come, nor will any of his old friends, whether they be in Russia, or outside it.”

“I hardly see why this can be relevant, I simply want to get back to London, which is very important for me, but I believe there are some friends of his in much the same state of unmerited disgrace, a family living at Pau, a general at Nice—”

“They will not come to any of the Requiems. The Countess has spoken of what she meant to do if this tragedy befell her, and now Madame Rowan will do it for her. She will write to these friends and beg them to stay at home so that their loyalty to her father will not be remarked by the authorities and the lives of their relatives still in Russia be clouded by suspicion. These people will therefore mourn at home before their own icons. They will not mind it very much. It has been the Tsar’s will to alienate them from all that is dear to them, and it has been God’s will that the Tsar’s will shall be so, and they will submit, even with gladness—”

“Yes, yes. You are telling me that some people would like to come to the services and will not be able to but for some obscure reason will be satisfied as much as if they did. But what has this to do with me? Who will in fact attend the Requiem?”

“The Ambassador and all the senior members of his staff,” said Kamensky, with relish her father ought to have recognized. “Yes, and all the most distinguished Russians resident in France or visiting it. They will not attend the funeral, they won’t hear of it in time, but the Requiem, yes.”

“The damned hypocrites,” said Edward Rowan. “I am sorry, Laura. I shouldn’t use such language in front of you, but they hounded the old man to his death.”

Kamensky gaped for an instant. “I may get away from him, he’s not so clever as I imagined,” Laura thought, “anybody who takes it that Daddy will be impressed by a bunch of diplomats can’t be very bright.” She wondered why Kamensky was working to keep her father in Paris till the Requiem of the ninth day. Perhaps he had not planned her murder till after that date.

Kamensky started again: “If I may say so, Mr. Rowan, since England is a monarchy you should be more sympathetic in your view of the situation. The Tsar has destroyed the Count, true. But it’s also true that the Tsar could not destroy the Count, since he was part of the Tsarist structure sanctified by God and immutable during time. The Count was born in honour and he must die in honour. Also, it must be concealed that it was necessary to destroy the Count, because public opinion does not understand that the Tsar, as the protector of the Russian people, has sometimes to commit acts which would be culpable if committed by a private person. Therefore the Russian Ambassador to France and his staff will attend the Requiem of the Ninth Day after the Count’s death just as if the Count had died in full enjoyment of the imperial favour.”

“Good God,” Edward Rowan exploded, “what has the fact that England is a monarchy to do with this sort of thing? And why, because these vultures convince themselves in Double Dutch that they’re justified in holding a religious service over the bones of my father-in-law after they themselves have picked them clean, why should I lend myself to the occasion?”

Again Kamensky was at a loss and had to feel about and had something up his sleeve for a fresh start. But she had a feeling that he was convulsed by secret laughter. “Well, it’s as I said, difficult to explain—but the service, being considered so important by us Russians—if you were absent—I don’t know how to put it, people might think, they might think—”

“What is it that they might think?”

“Well, I’m afraid that—I’m unfortunately quite sure that—though your family life is of course ideal—I understand that those who have the privilege of visiting your home feel positive awe—nevertheless, it would be thought among us Russians, who are simple people, not at all sophisticated, really, compared to Westerners—it would be bound to be thought if a wife appeared at a Requiem held for her dead father, and her husband was absent, that all could not be well with her marriage.” In the silence which followed he took out his handkerchief and passed it over his forehead. “And you know how it is with diplomats, if a story starts among them, it runs like wildfire.”

Laura looked downwards at her lap and braced herself against one of her father’s rare fits of fury. But it did not come, and she raised her eyes again. On his face there was a shocking expression of prudence. “I know the sort of thing you mean,” he said, easily, “and we can’t have that for one moment. So embarrassing for my wife. I’ll certainly attend the Requiem.”

Kamensky was cleverer than she had judged him, or perhaps only very well informed. He had known exactly what it was her father feared. Herself, she never would have guessed it. When Kamensky had begun to hint at a family scandal, she had expected her father to order him to leave the room. It might be that Kamensky would get her after all. For the first time she doubted her father’s capacity to defend her. When she came to tell him about the plot to murder her, and how Kamensky was Gorin, he might not believe her, so thoroughly was he convinced that in Kamensky he had his hand where it had lain through his life, on a useful underling. She felt so frightened, and so tired of being frightened that it occurred to her she might be looking plain, and she got up and looked at a mirror on the wall beside the fireplace. It was not much use as a mirror. The glass was the colour of a pond overhung by trees on a dull day, it made her face geeenish-white like a Christmas-rose. But the thing was pretty in itself. Two little gilt sphinxes supported the oval shagreen frame, and she stood fingering their tiny periwigs, the twists in their tails, pretending that there was nothing else in the world. Then Kamensky’s voice caught her ear, eager and young for his age, as it always was when he was turning the stalk of an apple ripe for falling.

“No, Mr. Rowan, I’m afraid I can’t tell you with certainty if a letter you write in the train and post when you get to Paris will reach London tomorrow. My poor correspondence is so unimportant that I’ve never made any close inquiries as to the time it gets delivered. But as it happens, I think you needn’t bother yourself with the problem. I have friends in the town, and when I called on them this morning I heard that their young son is going to London by the night train. A priest, he’s going to attend some sort of congress in London. If you should sit down and write your letter here, I’ll take it to him later in the day and he’ll post it in London tomorrow morning. He’s a reliable young man, he won’t forget. They are a good family, very responsible people. You have some writing paper in front of you, haven’t you? See, here’s a better pen. And let me clear away some of this astonishing salmagundi of papers to give you some space. Now write at your leisure, and as soon as you’ve gone I’ll take it straight down to my young friend, who’ll feel himself honoured by the commission. An English Member of Parliament will seem very grand to him.”

Laura whirled about and faced her father. “You can’t write a letter. Not now. We haven’t time.”

“Never mind about that. I must write this letter.”

“But we’ve got to catch the train.”

“There is another in an hour or two,” said Kamensky. “A slow train, but that does not matter now.”