by A J Allen
“I don’t know!” wailed Katya.
She began to cry again. Chevanin squeezed her hand gently.
“Tell me everything that has happened.”
“I don’t know,” she repeated, shaking her head helplessly. “I went to the market to do the shopping this morning and when I came back they were shouting at each other. They were saying terrible things, sir,” she added, her eyes opening wide. “Terrible!”
“What time was this, exactly?”
“At about nine o clock,” the maid said with a sniff.
Just the time when I was waiting for him at the surgery, he thought.
“What sort of things did they say? Try to remember.”
“Just things,” she told him. “The Doctor said that he did not have time to argue with her… with Madame… and that she was not to be so stupid and that he had genuinely sick people to look after…”
“The Doctor called Madame Tortsova stupid?”
“Yes, Anton Ivanovich! And then she said that he was the stupid one if he expected her to be here when he returned and…”
Katya voice broke again as the tears returned.
Chevanin put a consoling arm around her and waited until her sobbing had stopped.
“And then,” she continued, “he said that he could not care less what she did as long as she didn’t bother him any more. Then the Doctor left and Madame started to cry and ran upstairs to her room. Then, about half an hour ago, the doctor sent a message to say that he wouldn’t be home for lunch and that he had gone to the hospital. I told Madame and she ordered me to fetch her travelling case down from the attic and started to pack her things.”
With fresh tears streaming from her eyes, Katya looked imploringly into Chevanin’s face.
“Oh Anton Ivanovich, it was awful!” she said, choking back her tears. “What could I do? I had to get her travelling case down from the top of the wardrobe. I had to!”
Removing his arm from around her shoulders, he clasped both her hands in his.
“Now think, Katya. Has this never happened before?”
“No, Anton Ivanovich,” she said firmly. “There have been a few tiffs every now and again, mainly about the Doctor and how hard he works. And about money, of course, but that’s all, honest!”
“So she has never threatened to leave him before?” he insisted.
“No sir, I swear!”
His mind racing, Chevanin debated what to do. If the row had been about him, then it was up to him to put it right. He would try and speak to Yeliena Mihailovna and tell her that if anyone should leave Berezovo then it should be him, and not her.
As he sat on the sofa beside Katya he had been unconsciously patting and stroking her hand as he sought an answer to the dilemma that he had created. Now, having reached a decision, he tried to pull his hands free but the maid clung onto them desperately.
“Let go of me, Katya.”
“What are you going to do, Anton Ivanovich?”
“I shall speak to Madame Tortsova myself. Now, let go!”
“But you mustn’t!” she cried in alarm, clinging ever more tightly to him. “She told me that nobody was to disturb her. Oh, please don’t! It’ll get me into such trouble!”
Pushing her away from him on the sofa, he struggled to his feet.
“Good God, Katya!” he snapped angrily. “What’s the matter with you?”
Straightening his cuffs, he looked down at the unhappy girl.
“Don’t be too stupid, Katya,” he sneered. “What do you think she will do? Hand you your notice as she steps out of the door? Now get back to the kitchen and prepare some tea while I go and speak to your mistress.”
Turning to go, he raised one finger in warning.
“And Katya,” he said menacingly. “Not one word of this, do you understand? Not to Father Arkady, not to anyone. Is that clear?”
Rubbing her hand, the maid nodded resentfully.
Discarding his overcoat, Chevanin left the room and stood for a moment looking up the dark flight of stairs. Sounds of movement could still be heard above him as more doors and drawers were opened and shut. Swallowing deeply, he began to climb the stairs.
He had visited the upper storey of the Tortsovs’ household twice before. Once when the Doctor had allowed him to use his bedroom to change in before they had attended an official dinner at the Hotel New Century and upon a second and more memorable occasion, after he had fallen into the Ob during a summer boating excursion and had had to wait until dry clothes had been found for him to wear. Neither occasion had prepared him for the feelings of confusion and dread that he now felt as he stood listening at the top of the stairs. The sounds of movement had stopped. He found that he was holding his breath, as if he were waiting for some signal that he should proceed. When it came – a single footstep – he was galvanised into action. Taking a few quick steps across the landing, and wincing as he did so for the floorboards creaked infernally beneath his feet, he knocked on Madame Tortsova’s door three times in quick succession.
Immediately he cursed his haste: he had knocked too loudly. It had sounded abrupt, intrusive; as if he had a right to be there.
“Katya?” he heard Yeliena ask querulously.
Biting his lip, he hesitated for an instant then, grasping the door handle, he twisted it and opened the door slightly.
Stepping back so that the interior of the room was invisible to him, and vice versa, he called out.
“Madame Tortsova, it is I, Anton Ivanovich Chevanin. May I come in?”
The wooden door did not prevent him hearing her audible tut of annoyance.
“Wait a moment, Anton Ivanovich.”
The rustle of clothing suggested that he had disturbed her in the middle of changing her clothes, adding to his sense of awkwardness.
“You may come in now.”
Slowly pushing open the door, he shuffled inside, saying as he did so:
“I apologise, Madame Tortsova, for disregarding your wishes but I had to speak to you. Please forgive me.”
Yeliena Mihailovna was standing by her dressing table, examining an array of combs and hairpins. She did not look up.
“What is it, Anton Ivanovich?”
He glanced quickly around the room. It was similar to how he remembered the Doctor’s had been, only smaller. On the bed lay a heavy brown travelling case. Its lid had been closed hurriedly, trapping a small triangle of white cloth in its leather jaws.
“Katya told me that you were upset. Is there anything I can do?”
“No, thank you.”
She began picking the combs up one by one and dropping them into a large leather purse.
“Please, Yeliena Mihailovna,” he insisted. “Please let me help you, I beg of you. Tell me what is the matter.”
Picking up a small tortoise shell hairbrush, she turned to face him.
“There is nothing the matter, Anton Ivanovich,” she said calmly. “I am leaving Berezovo for a few weeks, that is all. Why I am leaving is a matter between Vasili Semionovich and myself. Between husband and wife, you understand?”
Pushing the door to, Chevanin sat on the edge of the bed.
“But you can’t,” he told her stubbornly. “Where will you go in the middle of February?”
“It’s all arranged. I am not disappearing into the blizzard, like a tragic heroine,” she said with a thin smile as she replaced the hairbrush. “Real life is not like that. No, I shall go and stay with my sister in Tobolsk for a few weeks.”
“But you won’t be able to take a sleigh along the Highway until tomorrow at the earliest,” he protested, “and when you do, you will have to travel for a fortnight through the plague villages and there are bands of marauding Yakuts along the Sosva. Please, I beg you, don’t go. Wait a few days at least.”
He watched as, picking up the hairbrush again, Yeliena began to draw its bristles repeatedly across the palm of her hand.
“No, I must get away,” she said, half to herself. “I must.”
“Yeliena Mihailovna, please, listen to me!” insisted Chevanin. “If this is all my fault, forgive me. It is I who should go, not you.”
She stood for a moment, as if hypnotised by the bristles bending against her outstretched palm.
“I beg your pardon, Anton Ivanovich?” she said vaguely. “What are you saying?”
“I was asking you if I am the cause of your distress. Am I to blame?”
She looked at him, as if seeing him there for the first time, then seemed to collect herself. Dropping the hairbrush into the leather purse she hurriedly continued the preparations for her departure.
“No, of course not,” she replied. “Why ever should you think that?”
“Because… because of how badly I behaved yesterday when the Doctor was at Pirogov’s. What I said…”
“Oh that? It was just a piece of foolishness. I have already forgotten about it, I promise you.”
Looking down at the floor, Chevanin felt a flood of misery wash over him. There seemed nothing left that he could do or offer that would prevent her from going.
“Please don’t go,” he begged her quietly. “If you go I shall have nobody. You and the Doctor are like a family to me. Like my mother and father. How can you go?”
Yeliena Mihailovna turned quickly to face him, an appalled expression on her face.
“Don’t ever say that!” she shouted angrily. “Don’t ever say that. Not even in jest.”
“But it’s true,” he said pathetically.
Laying the purse down on the dressing table, she came over to him and sat down beside him on the bed.
“Listen, Anton,” she said earnestly, “you are young. In many ways, you are still a boy. What happens between Vasili Semionovich and myself is not your fault. You must believe that.”
Reaching over, she took one of his hands and held it in hers.
“When two people who are married stop loving each other, it can only be a matter of time before they start hating each other. Now, I still love Vasili Semionovich enough to see that I must go before that happens.”
“But the Doctor will never hate you! Never!”
“The opposite of love is not hate, Anton,” she told him gently. “It’s indifference. Vasili has become indifferent to me, otherwise he could not have done what he has done. My departure will cause him some difficulty for a short while, but that is all. In time, even that will pass.”
“But how can you say that, Yeliena Mihailovna?” he protested. “Anyone can see how much he cares for you. If you go now, you will break his heart.”
Stopping himself just before he added “and mine”, Chevanin rose from the bed and began to pace up and down the room.
“I know you told me not to ask,” he went on, “but what has he done that could be so terrible that you feel you must leave town?”
Looking down at her hands, Madame Tortsov began fiddling with her wedding ring.
“Have you ever read The Bear?” she asked quietly.
“The Bear?”
“Yes, the play that my husband decided I should act in. With your help, if I recall.”
Chevanin shook his head.
Returning to the bed, he sat down beside her and reached for her hand but she evaded him, keeping her fingers folded securely on her lap.
“What about the play?”
“It concerns a widow who is mourning for her husband,” she explained, a bitter smile playing across her lips. “Ironic, isn’t it? Here I am, mourning my husband’s love and he is still alive and directing the play. Well, anyway… This widow is beset by creditors and one of them, a bully called Smirnov, comes to dun her for her husband’s debts.”
She gave a deep sigh and for a moment they sat together in silence. Watching her in profile, Chevanin longed to lean over and take her in his arms. Instead he bowed his head and waited for her to continue.
“Eventually,” she went on wearily, “quelle surprise! He becomes her suitor and the curtain falls on them locked in a passionate embrace. The script is quite specific on that: ‘a passionate embrace’. That means they kiss one another. It’s a silly play. It’s meant to show how – even with position, property and money of her own – a woman still needs a man to make her life complete. Perhaps it’s true. I don’t know.”
Suddenly she became more animated, her hands burrowing deeper within her lap as she rocked slightly to and fro on the edge of the bed.
“But never mind that. What matters is that my husband, my husband, Anton Ivanovich, has cast me in the role as the woman and Modest Tolkach in the role of Smirnov. My husband, mark you, expects me to embrace and to kiss Modest Tolkach in front of the whole town. Tolkach! I ask you, is that the action of a man who still loves his wife?”
“Impossible!” exclaimed Chevanin.
“I’m glad you find it as incredible as I did.”
“But… are you sure?”
“Sure?” she snapped, rising from the bed. “Of course I’m sure!”
“And… this is why you are leaving?”
As quickly as her temper had flared up it now seemed to disappear, as if the effort of maintaining her anger had become too much for her. Standing up, she walked back to her dressing table and picked up the last comb.
“Oh, there are many, many other reasons,” she told him. “But this, this is the last straw. The straw that broke my back.”
“No, Yeliena Mihailovna!” exclaimed Chevanin. “You must not say that. You mustn’t go. There has to be another way to settle this. Vasili Semionovich would never have done this willingly.”
“Ah, but you forget, Anton. He doesn’t care for me any more. Or he wouldn’t have allowed this to happen.”
“No, there must be a reason,” insisted Chevanin. “He must have been forced into giving Tolkach the part somehow. I wasn’t there at the casting, so I don’t know, but I do know this much. You can’t just leave like this, at least not until you have found out the truth. Then you can go or stay as you wish.”
Returning to the bed, she leant down and cupped his cheek in one hand.
“Dear Anton Ivanovich!” she murmured sadly. “Always the crusader.”
Taking her hand, he held it tight.
“I am not a child, Yeliena Mihailovna,” he said quietly. “If you leave the Doctor now, you will have no choice but to stay at the hotel until you can find a sleigh willing to take you to Tobolsk. Within an hour, the whole town will know. Then all the Doctor will have to do is go and fetch you back, probably with the help of Father Arkady. You must think of your humiliation. You have nothing to lose by waiting until you find out the truth of the matter. Will you trust me? Will you let me help you?”
Unable to bear his burning gaze, she turned her head away.
“If you can prove that Vasili was somehow forced to give Tolkach the part, then I shall stay.”
Releasing her hand, he stood up. The impulse to do something, to give some sort of a sign of his true feelings, rose within him again. For a second time he resisted it. Walking to the door, he opened it then turned on his heel to face her.
“Unpack your bags, Madame Tortsova!” he declared in dramatic tones that brought a smile to the face of the Doctor’s wife. “I shall not fail you!”
* * *
Goat’s Foot’s izba lay less than two hundred sazhenes as the birds flew across the wilderness at the eastern end of Menshikov Street. But, because the ground was so treacherous with its deeply dug drainage ditches hidden by the snow, Chevanin did not attempt to take the direct route across the fields. Instead, keeping to the road, he turned right at the end of Menshikov Street and walked past the Town Hall and the livery stables. He had not eaten anything since rising that morning but he felt no hunger, only a cold fire within him as he thought of Tolkach locked in a passionate embrace with Yeliena Mihailovna.
She had been right. He had become a crusader, pledged to protect the sepulchre of her body from the sacrilege of the Beast. He shook his head in wonder. Try as he might, he could not imagine
how the Doctor had allowed that man to take the role opposite his own wife. Pulling up the collar of his worn overcoat, he quickened his step. It was not inconceivable that the wily peasant he was on his way to visit would already know something about it. Goat’s Foot knew most of what happened in Berezovo; even better, it was said, than Colonel Izorov himself.
The road along which Chevanin now trudged was beginning to widen as it left the town and swung north east bringing the peasant’s shack into view. On the Imperial Map which hung in one corner of the town’s library, the route was marked as the continuation of ‘The Great Tobolsk Highway to the North’. Locally, it was known as the road to Obdorskoye.
Chapter Three
Tuesday 6th February 1907
Berezovo
Noi Nikolayevich Pyatkonov, known to the world as Goat’s Foot, watched with satisfaction as the steaming stream of his urine arched and fell through the bottomless bucket at his feet. The bucket had been his own invention. For months it had hung, derelict, from the rafters of his gornitsa, its bottom rusted away from years of neglect. The sight of it had irked his wife and she lost no opportunity to remark upon it whenever she had occasion to enter the outbuilding and interrupt his work there, calling him a collector of other people’s rubbish and a useless tinker. But Goat’s Foot had just smiled and kept digging the hole in the corner and when it was deep enough, even she had had to admit that a bottomless bucket could have a purpose. Scavenging a broken door from Belinsky’s yard by dead of night, he had placed it over the excavation and then had rough sawn a small hole into which he forced the bucket. By standing over it, it became a funnel through which he could relieve himself, no matter how drunk he was, without turning the floor of the gornitsa into an evil smelling slurry. What more could anyone ask?
His wife had not praised her husband for his ingenuity – what woman ever did? – but at least she had stopped nagging about the bucket. Now she had a new complaint: the privy was unsafe; it would collapse beneath her.
Why should the board give way, he had shouted, except at the grotesque sight she presented to it? What more could she want besides warmth and privacy? If he hadn’t suspected that she would stay in there all day and neglect her duties around the home, he would have built her a seat so that she could sit there like a Tsarina on her throne, shitting on the heads of the People. No, there was the board, there was the bucket and there was an end to it.