The Birds Fall Down by Rebecca West Page B

the Avenue Kléber, and your hair was hidden under a hat and you were alone and not speaking to anybody, there is another thing I would notice about you.”
    Smiling as if she were eager to hear what it was, she thought, “How odd, he would notice me, I would not notice him. How unkind of me.”
    “I would say to myself,” he continued, “‘How wonderful, a minute ago I would have sworn that round me there were only Frenchmen and a few English and Americans, and I was a lonely foreigner, but now I am not alone any more, for here is a Russian young lady.’”
    It did not strike her at once what he had said. Then she exclaimed joyfully, “No, you can’t really mean that! Oh, I would be pleased if that were true. You actually think I look Russian?”
    “Indeed I do,” said Kamensky, “and I will even be more exact. It is not only that you have a certain resemblance to the ladies in St. Petersburg and other parts of Russia who are your relatives. It is that in every Russian town there is always one young lady who makes the men of the town discontented with even the nicest of all the other young ladies—and all those special young ladies have something in common with you.”
    “My head’s turning round and round,” said Nikolai, pushing himself back from the balcony railing, his great head falling back on the thick column of his throat. “I must sit down.”
    They helped his rocking hugeness to his armchair. As the old man sank down among the cushions his loosely swinging arm struck Kamensky’s spectacles from his nose. “Go, Alexander Gregorievitch,” he panted, “get my medicine from my night-table. Not the white tablets, the yellow.” Kamensky said, “Yes, yes, dear Count,” and bent down to pick up his spectacles, but Nikolai cried, in a weak, howling whisper, “What are you doing? My tablets, my tablets, I must have them.” Kamensky straightened himself, sighed, and hurried from the room.
    Laura picked up the spectacles and sat down with them on her lap. “Grandfather is being ridiculous,” she thought. “He brought all this on himself, hanging over the balcony, it’s quite a height. That’s all it is. He should be ashamed to make such a fuss about nothing when it’s Grandmamma who’s really ill. I wish I could tell him so. I can’t think why nobody ever stands up to him.” To pass the time she played with the objects on the occasional table beside her: a lapis lazuli paper-weight; a miniature of one of her ancestresses, young but many-chinned among ringlets and scarves; a snuff-box made of that spectral black-and-silver mixture of alloys known as niello , its design depicting the Cathedral of St. Sophia at Kiev; a round box made of varnished plaited straw and containing some sugar almonds rough with age. Again she had the feeling that the bric-à-brac in this apartment were getting old in the same way as its occupants, they were tedious as if they were deafish and blindish and slow. She wondered why Kamensky had not come back, and reflected that it might be hard for him to find the tablets without his spectacles, and picked them up, ready to take them to him. But probably he had not come back because he had gone to tell Tania that her father was ill. “He does everything that’s necessary, always,” she said to herself, and for lack of anything else to do she put his spectacles on her own nose.
    She burst out laughing. The lenses were plain glass. Now she liked him more than ever. Her father had told her that many Japanese and Hindus with perfect sight wore spectacles simply for the sake of looking wise, and it was delightful that Monsieur Kamensky, who was so modest and kind and selfless, should have, as his only detectable fault, this innocent vanity which did not harm a soul.
    “Grandfather, Grandfather,” she called, folding the gold wings over her ears, eager to let him into the joke, for she knew he was really nice, and would not laugh at Monsieur Kamensky except in a loving