Berezovo

by A J Allen

  “But Lienochka, the role is perfect for you. The woman even has your name: Yeliena.”

  “No! The very idea appals me! What would people say?”

  “Does it matter?” he asked with a shrug. “Whoever I choose, I shall be criticised for not choosing someone else.”

  “I’m sorry, Vasili,” said Yeliena, smiling, “but the suggestion is preposterous. I am sure it was well meant but no, thank you.”

  “Think about it for a moment before you decide,” the doctor insisted.

  “I have already decided,” she replied. “I can’t act. I would be terrible. I would be so scared that I would forget all my words.”

  “But I could rehearse you, my dear. And it’s a very short play, no longer than half an hour. And for some of that time you are not even onstage.”

  “No, Vasili,” she repeated firmly. “I don’t want the part. I have no intention of making a fool of myself in front of my friends just because you are directing the play.”

  They paused, aware that what had begun as an idea was turning into an argument in front of their guest. Chevanin, shifting uneasily in his chair, was staring fixedly at the carpet. But if Yeliena believed that the vehemence of her words or the awkwardness of the moment had buried the matter, then she was mistaken. With a wink in Chevanin’s direction, her husband returned to the attack.

  “Everybody thinks you would be excellent,” he cajoled her. “Why, I was talking to Maslov and he agreed. In fact, it was he who originally put the idea into my head. Apparently, ‘Yeliena’ is one of the author’s favourite names. Think of ‘Uncle Vanya’ for instance and…”

  “Maslov?” snapped Yeliena. “Since when have you started taking advice from the town’s bookworm?”

  She turned beseechingly to Chevanin.

  “Anton Ivanovich, I implore you! Please tell my husband the truth. That I could not play the part even if I wanted to.”

  “Chevanin, don’t you dare say a word,” ordered the doctor. “Yeliena, let’s have no more arguments. You are the perfect choice. After all, you have a fine singing voice.”

  “Is it an operetta now?”

  “No, but…”

  “Well, then. Whether I can sing or not is really neither here nor there, is it?”

  “Ah, but there you are mistaken, my dear,” said the doctor. “What I was about to say, before you interrupted me, is that the most important part of an actor’s skill is the ability to project his or her voice. Your voice is so pure, so profound, that even when you are speaking softly, you can be easily understood from far away.”

  “Clearly not!” exclaimed Yeliena.

  Misunderstanding her reference, the doctor persisted in his argument.

  “No, it is true. When you speak I can hear you from the top of the house.”

  “Are you suggesting that I shout?” Yeliena accused him, getting angrily to her feet. “Oh, this really is too much!”

  “No, I think what Vasili Semionovich means,” intervened Chevanin hastily, also rising to his feet, “is this: you know how the bell of the Church of the Nativity can be heard even at the other end of the town? This is not because it is particularly loud, but because it is well made. It has a clean, clear timbre.”

  Looking up, the doctor nodded his encouragement and gestured to Chevanin to continue.

  “Your voice is like that bell, Yeliena Mihailovna,” the assistant went on smoothly. “Even if you whispered the words would be quite distinct, whereas, in comparison, most people would sound as if they were mumbling. It’s a gift, of course. A great gift.”

  “A gift!” echoed the doctor triumphantly. “Chevanin has hit the nail on the head. Your voice is as clear as a bell.”

  Pointedly ignoring her husband, Yeliena resumed her place on the sofa and gave Chevanin a fleeting smile.

  “Thank you for the compliment, Anton Ivanovich, and so gallantly put too. But it won’t alter my decision. How could I look the town in the face after making a fool of myself onstage? Besides,” she added, “you know very well what people would say. They would say that I was only given the part because the doctor was directing the proceedings.”

  “Let them say what they like,” broke in the doctor. “Let them accuse me of nepotism, I don’t care. There are plenty in this town who are only where they are today because of who their children married. Take Pobednyev, for instance. No, you shall have the part simply because you are the only person who can do it justice.”

  Yeliena pounded her fist against the cushions of the sofa in frustration.

  “But think, Vasili! What would people say? The wife of the town’s doctor appearing like a painted woman on the stage? It would be a scandal.”

  “Would you prefer me to give the part to someone like Irena Kuibysheva then?” demanded the doctor. “I imagine that she would love to play ‘Yeliena’.”

  In despair, Yeliena turned once again to the doctor’s assistant.

  “Anton Ivanovich, would you be so cruel as to force your wife to undergo such a humiliation?”

  Chevanin shrugged unhappily. “How can I answer you, Yeliena Mihailovna?” he replied. “I am not married and I am not directing a play. However, if my wife was as gay and as talented as you, then I would consider it a crime not to give her the opportunity to take the part, if she so wished. Moreover, given the circumstances as they are, with the town threatened by an outbreak of typhus fever, it could be argued that by doing so, she might make the doctor’s position more, rather than less, popular.”

  “Lienochka!” said the doctor sharply. “I forbid you to take any notice of what Chevanin says. My assistant has too much of the creeping Jesuit about him for his own good. The reason I want you to accept the part is simply that, after reading the play, I honestly believe that you are the best candidate.”

  But the damage had already been done. Yeliena knew that Anton Ivanovich had spoken the bare truth. He had reminded her of her duty: to support her husband in his work and all that he chose to do. She felt the spirit of resistance, already fragile before Chevanin had spoken, now begin to ebb away, leaving her uncertain whether to laugh or cry, so ridiculous she found the notion of herself acting in a play.

  “What kind of creature did you have in mind for me?” she asked, staring wretchedly down at her lap.

  “No creature at all,” said her husband quickly, “but an attractive and intelligent woman just like yourself. Her name is Yeliena Ivanovna Popova. A landowner’s widow with dimples, just like you.”

  Yeliena sniffed disconsolately and said nothing.

  “I mean the dimples, my dear, of course. Obviously, you are not a widow yet!” said the doctor, adding with a chuckle, “nor shall be for a long time to come, I hope.”

  Slowly Yeliena raised her eyes to meet his.

  “That remains to be seen,” she said darkly.

  Chapter Seven

  Saturday 3rd February 1907

  Berezovo, Northern Siberia

  Madame Pobednyev lay on her back, her shift still rucked up across her plump shoulders, and smiled to herself. Accounts had been settled; she had paid for her new outdoor suit.

  A cold draught from under the bedroom door made her shiver. Reaching down, she drew up the blankets that had been kicked to the bottom of the bed during their lovemaking and covered herself. Her husband’s embraces had been, as usual, urgent and clumsy and she marvelled how he could still be excited by her perfunctory responses. The very predictability of his advances bored her. Lying beside him, she recalled Madame Kavelin’s description of how Leonid, her husband, made love. (“It is like he’s climbing a mountain. One hand here, one knee there. The next hand here…”) It was the same with her poor Tolly, except that the pig kept his trousers and boots on. Perhaps it was the same with all husbands. She could ask Irena Kuibysheva…

  The invisible weight beside her began to snore softly as a cold trail of semen starting to trickle down the inside of her right thigh. Quickly reaching beneath the blankets, she wiped it off with her hand. B
ringing her wet fingers up to her nose, she sniffed them and then with great deliberation smeared the seed across the back of her husband’s shirt. He gave a sleepy grunt of protest.

  Father Arkady could say what he liked about giving and sharing, she thought, it was all lies. There was only one law: the law of supply and demand; all the rest was for fools and virgins. Yes, Irena Kuibysheva would know; about Kavelin anyway. One thing was certain, that young lady did not have to put up with any nonsense just to prepare her own husband for a dressmaker’s bill. If anything, it would be the other way round. Illya Kuibyshev, Leonid Kavelin, Pavel Nadnikov; they were all the same. Big men in a small town who thought they owned everybody. Hard men while they were flaccid but oh so pliable when they were hard. They didn’t own Matriona Fiodorovna Pobednyeva, that much was definite.

  Pulling the bedclothes up to her chin, she wriggled further down into the bed. Although she could not admit it to anyone – they were, after all, bloodthirsty terrorists and traitors – the whole business of the convoy’s arrival was very exciting. Doubly so because she had been sworn to secrecy and knew that she was the only woman in the whole town who was aware of what was approaching up the Great Tobolsk Highway. How she was longing to see the faces of the other councillors’ wives when the time came to meet the convoy!

  She had already sketched out in her mind an exact order of events. Captain Steklov’s troops would be drawn up on either side of Alexei Street in their best parade dress uniforms. Behind them, the townspeople would be jostling and craning their necks to see what they could. The prisoners would be marched in chains down the centre of the boulevard, guarded by Colonel Izorov’s men until they reached the dais that would be erected in front of the town hall, upon which would be sitting the elite of Berezovo. Kuibyshev, Kavelin, Nadnikov, Izminsky; they would all have their seat, but pride of place in the centre of the raised dais would be given to His Excellency Mayor Anatoli Mikhailovich Pobednyev, her Tolly, and herself. Once the miserable prisoners had been assembled before them Tolly would rise and, resplendent in his dress uniform, the mayoral Sash of Berezovo carefully visible between the fur edges of his coat, deliver his speech. Following that, the prisoners would be marched away to their cells and he would lead her into the Hotel New Century for the official banquet. She would be the only woman on the dais; Tolly had promised her that. It would be nothing less than a personal triumph.

  She grinned to herself in the darkness, recalling how he had first discovered Colonel Izorov’s little conspiracy. She had woken in the middle of the night to find her husband’s side of the bed empty. At first she had thought little of it and had tried to get back to sleep but when he had not returned after twenty minutes she had become concerned and, grumbling, had risen from their bed and had gone to look for him. She found him downstairs and… The sight that had greeted her eyes still made her giggle. There he had been, dressed only in his night shirt and wearing his best hat, striking dignified attitudes in front of the living room mirror. She had thought that she would die from laughing, her sides had hurt so much! But listening to his sheepish explanation, she had realised that their hour had come. The name of Pobednyev would be forever linked in the annals of Berezovo with the reception of the exiles. They might even have a street named after them, who knew?

  Bundling her husband back into their bed, she had bargained her silence for her place on the dais. Now her mind was racing and she grew restless as she went over the many decisions that still had to be made. So much depended upon the maintaining the element of surprise. The tailor Polezhayev had already asked several pointed questions about her purchase. He was no fool; he could smell business a hundred versts away. And then there were the finer points of protocol to be considered, especially with the seating arrangements on the dais. Did Dr. Tortsov have precedence over the school teacher Nikolai Dresnyakov? And Father Arkady: should he be to the right of the Mayor, next to Colonel Izorov, or to the Mayor’s left beside the revenue officer? And then there was the matter of the mayoral address. She couldn’t leave that to Tolly, otherwise they would be stuck there all day and catch their deaths from cold. There were so many arrangements she had to attend to, starting with that evening’s dinner for the hospital administrator. Tolly had insisted that they gave the maid the night off and the meal wouldn’t cook itself.

  Drawing her arm back, she dug her elbow into her husband’s ribs. He grunted again in protest and rolled away from her. About to give him another dig, she stopped herself. Stealthily, she let her fingers measure the distance across the crumpled bed sheet between his body and hers. If her reckoning was correct, Tolly was now laying precariously close to the edge of the bed; the slightest movement would precipitate him over into the narrow gap between the edge of the bed and the wall. Suppressing another giggle, she felt for the small of his back. Holding her breath, she drew her hand back and then gave her husband a tremendous shove. She was rewarded with the sound of his startled cry and a muffled thud as his body hit the floorboards.

  That will teach him to wear his boots in bed, she thought.

  The Mayor had been held in the grip of a pleasurable, if disturbing, dream. It was a dream so vivid that even the manner of his rude awakening, when it came, seemed unremarkable; a natural continuance of what he was experiencing.

  Like a bird he was flying over the town. It was late spring or perhaps early summer, for he could feel the heat of the sun on his back and see the nodding heads of the green rushes that grew from the rich black soil along the riverbank. To his left, Berezovo spread out below him; most clearly the long straight bar of Alexei Street with the three golden cupolas of the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary shining dully at one end, and at the other, the window panes of the town hall winking in the sunlight. Banking effortlessly, he circled the rooftops, swooping down Hospital Street and soaring over the market square where he could make out diminutive figures pointing up at him in alarm and wonder. He knew that they were shouting at him but his ears heard nothing except the sound of the gentle insistent rush of the wind that fanned his face and ruffled his hair. He exulted in his ability to fly, and felt sorry for the earthbound creatures below him.

  He allowed himself to drift lower, hardly having to move his arms at all to correct his altitude. As he glided over the scattered upturned faces, he was able to identify one or two of them. There were the merchants Shiminski and Nadnikov and, standing near them, the taller figure of the blacksmith Chirikov, one hand on his hip, the other shading his eyes from the glare of the sun as he stared impassively up at him. He saw Nadnikov half-heartedly raise one hand to wave to him and watched as Shiminski pulled it down and begin remonstrating with him. Other figures joined them and soon a small crowd of people had gathered, each arguing and gesticulating to each other. They were angry with him, because he was able to fly and they could not. Unable to stop even if he had wanted to, Pobednyev retraced the path of his flight down Alexei Street. As he passed the upper storey of the Hotel New Century, he caught a glimpse of a naked young woman watching him from a window of one of the rooms. Her face seemed familiar, but he could not recall her name; she had let down her hair and her nakedness confused him. Could it be Irena Kuibysheva? He hoped so. He waved shyly as he flew past her, but she did not respond. Someone unseen was calling to her from inside the room and she turned away and vanished from view.

  Saddened, he turned north and flew over Menshikov Street and Ostermann Street, passing so close to his own house that he could see the grain on the roof timbers. The bell of the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary began to toll ominously and out of the corner of his eye he could see that the crowd in the market square had grown in size until it could be numbered in hundreds. Slowly at first and then faster and faster it began to follow him, its countless feet raising clouds of dust as it surged this way and that, trying to anticipate his next change of direction. A few, not watching where they were going, were stumbling and falling and were being trampled underfoot by the rest of the
crowd. He worried that they might be badly hurt and he would be blamed.

  Although he knew that the crowd could not catch him as long as he flew at this altitude, something was preventing him from flying back over their heads. He was being forced always to move away from them. Relentlessly they drove him away from the town, towards the river. Looking beyond the river, he saw the distant line of trees in the wood and sensed that if he could reach them he would be safe. He could sit in a treetop and wait for them to tire and abandon their pursuit. He flew faster, skimming over the brown waters of the Ob, racing for the cover of the trees.

  The shouting had died down behind him. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw that the crowd had stopped at the riverbank. Since they were no longer pursuing him, he began to slacken his speed. Deep within himself he felt a twinge of foreboding. Something was wrong: the citizens of the town had not been stopped by the waters of the river; rather, they were standing along its bank as if waiting for something to happen. Uneasy now, he turned his gaze back to the oncoming trees as he skimmed across the uncultivated belt of marshland. Too late, he spotted the line of hunters waiting patiently for him to fly into their sights. As if by some prearranged signal, he saw them raise their guns as one and fire. Noiseless puffs of smoke mushroomed from their barrels. Desperate, he twisted away, trying to climb out of range as fast as he could. The first bullets began to spiral past him, humming like angry bees. He twisted his body this way and that, trying to evade them, but there were too many. He felt one smash into his ribs and was surprised to find that its impact had not hurt him. Still he flew on, beginning to enjoy himself once more. Then a second bullet hit him squarely in the small of his back and suddenly his arms had lost their strength, sending his body crashing to the ground.

  Lying pinned between the bed frame and the wall, he was still uncertain as to whether he was still dreaming or he had died in his sleep and gone to the Kingdom of Eternal Night. Either was possible. Wherever he was, it was certainly very dark.