"He was testing you?"
"Yes, and I f-failed. When I lost the ability to be two b-boys, I apparently also lost the ability to...conjure, or c-control, the old entities. I became ill-shakes and fever-with what he elected to d-d-diagnose as malaria, though I've never had the usual r-relapses. And I was sent home to Ig-England. A year later I went off to Westminster school, and my f-f-father made it clear that I was to go on to T-Trinity College, Cambridge, as he had done, and which I d-did. But I had a-a n-nervous b-b-breakdown, at Westminster! Do y-you know why?"
Elena looked away from the circling gulls to face him, and she laughed in surprise. "No," she said. "Why?"
"Because of the unrelenting Christian instruction. Really! They did j-just k-keep on at us about Original Sin, and our individual s-sins, and how each of us m-must either submit to k-k-Christ, surrender our wills to His, or s-suffer the eternal wrath of God. I dee-dee-denied all of it. I was an atheist even then-though, thanks to my f-father, I was an atheist who was m-mortally afraid of graveyards, and of the Roman Catholic s-sacraments, and of tall storm clouds and th-thunder at twilight."
He looked out at the sea. The red sun had sunk below the horizon, leaving glowing golden terraces of cloud hung across the whole western half of the sky, but no cumulus clouds were rearing their shoulders and shaggy heads out there. The ring of seagulls was closer, though-a quarter of a mile away, halfway between the rocks and the cliff highway now.
"We should g-go inside somewhere," he said nervously. "Get something to d-drink."
"They're only birds. And no microphone can detect our talk out here. When were you actually inducted into the Soviet service? You say your father was your recruiter in an unspecific sense-who recruited you specifically?"
"Recruited. Into a t-t-treasonous cause, right? You resent that, the fact that s-secretly I was an agent of communism all along. H-how old were you in 1931?"
"Older than most my age."
"Well, exactly, your p-parents were k-killed by fascist monarchists, the right-wing C-C-Catholic lot, isn't that so?-in Madrid, when King Alfonso fled Spain; and a few y-y-years after that you were an orphan precociously working as a wireless t-telegrapher among the Loyalists. You see I r-r-remember everything about us. But in England in 1931 the b-betrayed Labour Party was v-voted out, and a coco-a Conservative National Government!-was voted in. You sh-should sympathize-the common p-people had been viciously fooled by sin-sin-cynical propaganda, and anyone could see that mere d-democracy could never lead to real p-peace."
He realized that he was frowning when the bandage over his forehead tightened, and he wondered, Do I still even believe that? Really?
"And so," he went on, thrusting the thought away, "when another Cambridge student, this Guy B-B-Burgess fellow, approached me about d-doing s-secret work for Mother Russia, I was-amenable. Burgess had me tr-travel to Austria in the autumn of '33, when I was twenty-one years old; and with my B-British p-passport-and Cambridge accent!-I was able to be a useful network courier, c-carrying p-packages from Vienna to Prague and Budapest. In '34 I was s-sent back to work in England by one of the great old European illegals-he was a dedicated Communist and a Cheka officer, but he had been a C-C-Catholic p-priest before the horrors of the first war made him lose his f-faith, and when he was d-drunk he used to weep about the Cheka work he'd done, imposing collectivization on the Russian f-farms-"
"'I could not bear the women wailing, when we lined the villagers up to be shot,'" said Elena in a quiet voice, clearly quoting. "'I simply could not bear it.'"
And Philby was suddenly nauseated. He leaned on the cliff railing and stared at the circling birds in the gathering twilight. "You-knew Theo Maly?" he croaked.
"I met him in Paris, in 1937." Philby could barely hear her voice through the gauze over his ears. Her shoes shifted audibly on the pavement, and when she went on it was in a stronger voice, and she again seemed to be quoting someone: "Thistles, weeds-plants. Did Maly ever talk about such things with you, my dear?"
"Jesus!" burst out Philby, so loudly that a European tourist couple stared at him as they wheeled a perambulator along the sidewalk. "Yes, my dear," he went on more quietly. "Yes, he did m-mention the amomon root to me-right at the end, when he had received his s-summons to Moscow and he knew he was g-going there to be g-given the, the schuss. And in fact he did tell me he was going by way of Paris."
"The Stirnschuss," said Elena. "The bullet in the forehead."
Philby shifted to look around at her, and she was touching her own forehead, under the white bangs.
"Yes," Philby said, "th-that was the word he used. We were drinking in a London p-pub in early '37, and he t-told me, 'They will kill me if I go to Moscow -Stalin won't any longer continue to employ an ex-priest. But if I don't go, they will simply send someone to kill me here; and I don't want to give them the vindication of any disobedience on my part.' And then he-he said that, as a p-parting gift, he could offer me...eternal life. When I asked him what he m-meant, he explained that a C-C-Catholic p-priest can n-never abdicate his sacramental powers, and he offered to b-baptize me right there at the table, and then-he was drunk-to hear my c-c-confession, absolve me of my s-sins, if I would repent and have a f-firm purpose of amending them, and finally to order some bread and wine so that he could consecrate them and give me the"-he paused, and spoke carefully-"the Communion, the Eucharist."
"Ah, God," said Elena softly, taking off her sunglasses.
"Pitiful to see him b-break down so, at the end," agreed Philby. "I told him, 'No, th-thank you'-civilly enough, for he was an old f-friend, and drunk-and then he sighed, and said he could in that case offer me a more p-p-profane sort of eternal life."
The seagulls had been joined by pigeons from the cliffs, and the two sorts of birds were flying together in a wheel against the sky, which had lost its gold now and showed only the colors of blood and steel. Philby touched his chest, where Feisal's diamond hung on a chain under his shirt.
"There is apparently a k-kind of plant," he said slowly, "like a thistle, that g-grows at remote spots in the Holy Land. And you and I, my dear, have each seen enough of the sh-shameful supernatural to be at l-l-least ho-ho-open-minded to the idea that some specimens of this plant are inhabited, by the old entities. Maly said that when the r-rebel angels f-fell at the beginning of the w-world, some weren't quite bad enough to rate Hell, perhaps weren't developed or c-complete enough to have fully assented to the rebellion. In any case, they were truncated, compressed, c-condemned to live forever unconsciously as a k-kind of thistle-immortal still, in the a-a-aggregate at least, but on a sub-sentient level. They can be awakened, b-briefly, by a certain pprimordial, antediluvian rhythm, something s-similar to what the old illegals and the Rote Kapelle called les parasites."
The wheeling seagulls had disappeared in the darkness below the cliff at his feet. Low tide, he thought vaguely. They'll be feeding.
"And if a p-person awakens one of these vegetation-bound angels," he went on, "and then eats it with the p-proper sacramentals, sugar and garlic and l-liquor and such, that p-person will share in the angel's immortality, will n-never grow old or suffer f-fatal injury or illness. My father had known something of this-in the Gilgamesh story, a g-god tells the man Upanishtim to build a boat and take into it 'the seed of all living creatures,' and Upanishtim and his family do it, and s-survive the flood-and long afterward, Upanishtim gives Gilgamesh a th-thorny plant that will restore youth. But b-before Gilgamesh can take it home to his people, an old s-s-snake!-comes out of a well!-and eats the plant, and immediately c-casts off its old skin and returns, y-young again, to the well. So the plant w-w-worked as promised, but Gilgamesh d-didn't get it."
"Maly did talk to me about this!" exclaimed Elena. She went on, almost to herself, "Oh, I think he did; I will have to tell old Cassagnac that my answer in 1941 was not accurate." She looked up at Philby, her eyes gleaming in the light from the hotels across the street. "I was only twelve, but Maly said that the Serpent in the Garden of Eden tempted Eve with the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in order to keep her and Adam away from the other tree, the Tree of Life, which-"
"Who's that?" Philby shouted.
He had grabbed her arm with his left hand, and with his right he was pointing at the taller of the two rocks out in the bay-for he had just noticed a silhouetted figure standing in the meadow on the inaccessible top. It was far too remote for him to be able to tell if it was a man or a woman...but one of its arms was waving. It was beckoning.
"Don't move," he added in a whisper, for with a sound like sudden rain the birds now swept up from the abyss below the cliff and were circling low over Elena and himself-the pigeons and gulls made no cries, but the flutter of their wings was like rushing banners, and Philby was now aware of an invisible third person here. Had the third person drawn the attention of the birds, or of the thing that animated the birds?
Philby's chest was suddenly cold. Is that thing aware that I'm trying to beg off, here? he thought. Trying to forsake the old covenant?