Russka (115 page)

And I am supposed to live here, he considered, and continue this terrible system. These people and these hideous factories, will feed my family. It was all so terrible. He did not know quite what he wanted out of life, but with a kind of desperate urgency he muttered under his breath: ‘Anything, anything – I’d even haul barges up the Volga, but not this.’

It was just as they were leaving the dormitory that Peter Suvorin chanced to glance back, and caught sight of something he was not meant to see.

At the far end of the dormitory, with his back to Peter, a youth of about his own age was doing an imitation of Savva Suvorin for his friends. Considering that he was small and pinched in appearance, it wasn’t bad. Seeing Peter watching, however, the others made warning signs, and the young fellow stopped and turned.

It was a shock to Peter. He had seen most kinds of expression on men’s faces, but he had never seen naked hate before. The youth either did not know it showed, or didn’t bother to conceal it: either way, it was unnerving.

My God, he thought, this fellow thinks I’m like Grandfather. If only he knew the truth! And then, even worse, he realized: But
why would he even care that I sympathize with him, when I’m a Suvorin? And he fled.

He knew the young man slightly. He seemed harmless enough. His name was Grigory.

Natalia walked briskly along the path towards Russka. As soon as she had seen her father returning glumly from his interview with the village elder, she had slipped away. No doubt he would be looking for her by now.

She knew exactly what was in store for her. She would be sent to the Suvorin factory, and expected to stay there as long as the family needed her wages to make ends meet. She dreaded it. I’ll be a spinster and a slave all my life, she calculated.

She was determined to do better than that. When she was a little girl, because Misha Bobrov had always been friendly towards her father, both she and Boris had been sent to the little school in Russka for three years, where they had learned to read. Poor though she was, this unusual accomplishment had given her a secret pride, a belief that somehow – she had no idea how – she would amount to something.

But although she had guessed what it would mean for her, she had encouraged Boris to go. She loved him. She knew it had to be. At least he may be happy, she thought. And her plan – the plan of which she had spoken to Boris?

There was no plan. She had no idea what to do.

She pushed her scarf more tightly round her head as the damp air made her face smart. She could only think of one possible way out.

She was going to see Grigory.

Misha Bobrov and his wife Anna were beaming with pleasure.

It was just as dusk was falling that day that the little carriage arrived at the Bobrovo estate; and to their amazement, Nicolai jumped out, ran to embrace them, and announced: ‘I got leave from the university to come home early – so here I am.’ And when he added that he had brought a friend, Misha happily replied: ‘The more the merrier, my dear boy.’ And, taking his son by the arm with that gentle Bobrov gesture, he led the way inside.

Misha Bobrov always counted himself a lucky man that he got on so well with his son. He still remembered the brooding
atmosphere that surrounded his stern old father Alexis and had always resolved never to allow such bad feeling at Bobrovo again – which came naturally to him anyway, for he was a kindly, easy-going man.

Above all, he was always delighted to let the boy argue with him. ‘Just like dear Sergei and old Uncle Ilya,’ he’d say. Indeed, he was rather proud of his own skills in debate; and even if – as one expected with young people – Nicolai sometimes became heated, Misha never minded. ‘The boy’s basically sound,’ he’d tell his wife afterwards. And when she thought he’d let Nicolai go too far he would reply: ‘No, we must listen to the young people, Anna, and try to understand them. For they are the future.’ He congratulated himself that this strategy had clearly proved correct.

The two travellers were tired after their journey, and after eating they both expressed a desire to retire early. ‘But I can see we shall have some splendid discussions with these young men,’ Misha remarked to Anna, as they sat in the salon afterwards. ‘One may not always like what goes on at universities, but our young people always come back full of ideas.’ He smiled contentedly. ‘I shall have to be on my mettle.’

Only one thing puzzled him. It was absurd, really, but he had a curious sense, the moment he had set eyes on him, that there was something vaguely familiar about Nicolai’s friend. Yet what the devil was it?

Yevgeny Pavlovich Popov. That was how the ginger-haired fellow had been introduced: it was a common enough name. ‘Have I seen you before?’ Misha had asked.

‘No.’

He had not pursued the subject. Yet – he was sure of it – there was something about the fellow … And that night, as he lay for many hours, too excited to sleep, this little conundrum was one of many matters the landowner turned over in his mind.

The arrival of his son always made Misha Bobrov think about the future. What sort of estate would he be able to hand on to the boy? What sort of life would Nicolai have? Above all, what did the boy think about things. I must ask him about such-and-such, he’d think. Or, remembering some pet project of his own: I wonder if he’d approve of that? So it was that, in the darkness, a host of subjects crowded into his head.

And it was typical of Misha Bobrov that, although for him personally things had gone rather badly, he remained convinced that, in general, they were going well. ‘I am optimistic about the future,’ he would declare. It was one of the few matters upon which his wife could not agree with him.

In fact, on the Bobrov estate, things were going extremely badly. For if the Emancipation had disappointed the peasants, it had hardly been any better for the landowners either.

The first problem was old and familiar. By 1861 Misha Bobrov, like nearly every landowner he knew, had already pledged seventy per cent of his serfs against mortgages at the State bank. In the decade after Emancipation, half the money he received as compensation went straight to the bank to pay off these debts. Furthermore, the State bonds that he was given in part payment – the bonds which the peasants were struggling so hard to pay off – were slowly losing their value as Russia suffered a mild inflation. ‘Those damned bonds are already worth two-thirds of what they were,’ he had remarked to Anna just the week before.

Because he was in debt and short of cash, Bobrov found it hard to pay for labour from his former serfs to cultivate the land he had left. Some had been rented out to peasants; some leased to merchants; and some, he feared, would soon have to be sold. Most of his friends were selling land. Each year, therefore, he grew a little poorer.

Why then should he be optimistic?

There were several reasons. The Russian Empire was certainly more settled and stronger than when he was a young man. After centuries of conflict, the vast empire seemed to be reaching out, at last, to its natural frontiers. True, the huge territory of Alaska, in 1867, had been sold to the United States. ‘But it was too far away,’ Bobrov would say. And meanwhile, Russia was consolidating her hold on the distant Pacific rim of the Eurasian plain where the new port of Vladivostok, opposite Japan, gave promise of a vigorous Far Eastern trade. Down in the south, after the débâcle of the Crimea, Russia had once again secured the right to sail her fleet in the warm Black Sea; and to the south-east, she was gradually absorbing the desert peoples beyond the Caspian Sea, with their fierce ruling princes and rich caravans. In the west, the last uprising of the Poles had been crushed and Russia – closely allied now with Prussia – was at peace with her western neighbours. And
if, some said, the Prussian kingdom and its brilliant Chancellor Bismarck seemed a little too hungry for power, what was that to the empire of the Tsar, which covered a sixth of the land surface of the globe?

But the real reason why Bobrov was optimistic was because of what he saw inside Russia itself.

‘We’ve seen more reform in the last fifteen years,’ he would point out, ‘than at any time since Peter the Great.’

It might be that, in private, Tsar Alexander II only wanted to maintain order in Russia; but having decided that reforms were needed to do so, he had made amazing progress. The creaking, ancient legal system had been totally reformed. Now, for the first time in eight hundred years of Russian history, there were independent courts, with independent judges, professional lawyers, open to all men and conducted, not in secret, but in the open. There was even trial by jury. The military had been reformed: all men, noble and peasant, were liable to be chosen by lots for service – but six years only, not twenty-five. And in all but the elite regiments, a man of humble birth could even become an officer. ‘God knows, we can only do better than we did in the Crimea,’ Misha liked to say to fellow gentlemen who complained of this mixing of classes.

But the reforms which pleased Misha Bobrov the most were the new local assemblies.

For these were the bodies known to history as the
zemstvos – zemstvo
meaning: ‘of the land, the community’ – in the country; and the
dumas
– the
duma
being the ancient Tsar’s council – in the towns. And Russia had seen nothing like them before. In every district, town and province, these assemblies for local government were elected by all taxpayers, whether gentry, merchant or peasant. ‘So now,’ Misha cheerfully claimed, ‘Russia has entered the modern world of democracy too.’

True, the
zemstvos
and
dumas
had only modest powers; and key posts like that of governor and the police chiefs were all appointed by the Tsar’s government.

True, there were also some special features in the election. In the towns, for instance, the votes were weighted by how much in taxes was paid: the great majority of the people therefore, who only contributed a third of the taxes, could only elect a third of the council members. In the country, similar weighting, and a series of
indirect election, ensured that in the provincial
zemstvos
, over seventy per cent of the members belonged to the gentry. ‘But it’s the principle of the thing that matters,’ Misha declared. ‘And all the classes have a say.’

Besides – and this was, perhaps, the thing Bobrov liked best of all – these
zemstvos
gave men like him a role in society. As a service class, the nobles might have been passed by; their serfs might have been taken from them; but in these local
zemstvos
, however modest their power, a noble like himself might still preserve the illusion that he was important and useful to his country. ‘We have always served Russia,’ he could still say, with a trace of satisfaction.

It was just before he fell asleep that a possible solution to the puzzle concerning his familiar guest occurred to Misha Bobrov.

Devil take it, he thought. Didn’t the young fellow say his patronymic was Pavlovich? And didn’t that horrid old priest at Russka, with the red hair, have a son called Paul Popov – a petty official of some kind in Moscow. Could this ginger-haired fellow be the priest’s grandson, then?

It was an amusing thought. He decided to ask him in the morning.

Yet when morning came, and Misha descended to the dining room where he expected to find the two young men at breakfast, he was greeted by his manservant with a most curious bit of news.

‘Mister Nicolai went out with his friend just before dawn, sir,’ the fellow said.

‘Before dawn? Where to?’

‘Down to the village, Mikhail Alexeevich.’ And then, with obvious disapproval: ‘They were dressed as peasants, sir.’

Misha looked at the man. He was not usually given to inventing stories.

‘Why the devil should they be doing that?’ he demanded.

‘I can’t understand it, sir,’ he replied. ‘They said,’ he hesitated for an instant, ‘they said, sir, that they were going to look for work.’

And Misha Bobrov could only wonder what on earth this could mean.

Grigory was nineteen, with a pinched face and long, oily black hair which was parted, rather sadly, down the middle. He was not
strong physically, and God had cursed him with teeth which gave him pain almost every day. But he was determined, in his quiet way. Determined to survive.

He was also frightened of Natalia Romanov, who loved him.

He had been one of a family of eight. His father had been a household serf who had drifted into casual labour in Vladimir and who, as soon as they were ten, had sent his children out to work. About once a month he had tied Grigory to a wooden bench and flogged him with birch twigs which he had thoughtfully wetted first. Yet, despite this, Grigory had been fond of him.

His father had not minded when, at the age of thirteen, Grigory had said he wanted to leave home. Indeed, Grigory had the impression that his parents were rather glad to get rid of him. But before he left, his father had given him one piece of advice to take with him on his road through life.

‘Take what you can from women, Grigory. But watch out. Sometimes they seem kind, but deep down, they want to hurt you. Remember that.’

He always had.

And now this girl. What did she see in him? She was pretty, lively; her father had his own holding: by Grigory’s standards, the Romanovs were rich. He could make her laugh: but then, with his sharp, rather cruel humour, he could make almost anyone laugh. He could make people laugh who hated him, and whom he hated.

So what could she want with him?

And why, in the name of the Lord, had she, that last night, asked him to marry her? He had looked at her with suspicious astonishment before gruffly replying: ‘I’ll have to think about that.’

When the two young men dressed as peasants appeared in the village that morning, nobody at first knew who they were – until Arina, coming out of the house took one look and called out: ‘Holy Master Nicolai, how you’ve grown!’ And a moment later, at the old woman’s insistence, they were inside the Romanov
izba
sitting by the big warm stove and eating sweetmeats.