And whenever she came, he never failed, with a playful smile, to ask: ‘What news, then, from the big city?’
It was their special joke, and it referred not to St Petersburg, or even Moscow, nor even the provincial capital of Vladimir, but to Russka.
For the little town was now officially a city. True, it mustered little more than a thousand inhabitants; true, the road which led to it was only a dirt track, so deeply rutted that it was almost unusable – indeed, the river was still the best approach until the snows of winter came; but when Catherine had reformed the local administration fifteen years before, it had been decided that the little backwater should be raised, at least on paper, to the dignity of city. There were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of such cities in the Russian empire now – depressed little villages carrying this grandiose designation in preparation for the splendid new world that was to come. It was a contrast between official and actual reality which Alexander nowadays found rather amusing. ‘Have they mended the gate,’ he would ask, ‘in the big city?’
How he admired Tatiana. He came to do so more with every month that passed. His father had built a modest wooden house on the slope above Dirty Place – then never used it. But she had completely cleaned it up; she watched over the estates herself; the children seemed healthy. ‘But aren’t you terribly bored down here?’ he would ask. ‘Shouldn’t you go to Moscow or St Petersburg?’
‘Not at all,’ she always replied. ‘I find the country suits me very well.’ And gradually, as the months went by, the new realization began to dawn upon him. ‘I’ve sold the St Petersburg house,’ she informed him early in the first year. Then, two months later: ‘I hope you won’t mind, Alyosha, but I’ve dismissed the steward.’ A year later, after a good harvest, she told him: ‘I’m adding two little wings to the old house. I think you’ll like them.’ And to his astonishment, when he remarked that one day, when he was finally released, he’d try to pay off some of their debts, she smiled, kissed him and whispered: ‘We haven’t got any, my dearest.’
‘But how? Who gave us money?’
‘No one, Alyosha. The estates are quite profitable, you know. And,’ she smiled wryly, ‘our expenses in the country are modest, you see.’
He had said nothing, but after she had gone he sighed to himself and murmured: ‘The truth is, the best thing I ever did for the Bobrov family was to go to jail.’ It was an uncomfortable thought, and was soon followed by another: What use, then, will I be to my family even when I am released? The German girl had taken over.
Though he loved and admired his wife, he came often to ponder this, grimly, by day.
The dream that came to him by night was so absurd that it was laughable. It did not come very often; sometimes weeks, even a couple of months, might pass in between occurrences. But whenever the dream reappeared, it was always exactly the same.
It was the countess. She came to him just as she had that night years ago – a pale, insistent vision, staring at him, wagging her finger and hissing with an urgency that was as terrible as it was meaningless: ‘Voltaire. Voltaire.’
Why should this foolish dream upset him so? It was hard to say. Yet each time he had it, he awoke with a sense of emptiness and desolation that was hard to bear; he would awake with a cry that echoed round the monastery, and in the dim light from the dawn, he would find, even in the staring, angry eyes of the False Peter, a certain sense of comfort.
Once, after he had been in the cell for three years, the vision appeared as usual, but instead of speaking, the old countess just stared at him, with a quiet satisfaction; and then, obscenely, as if they were sharing some obscure joke about the world from beyond the grave, it seemed to Alexander that she winked. After that, the dream did not recur again.
It was a little before Christmas, in the year 1795, that Alexander heard a sled arrive in the courtyard of the monastery; its arrival was followed by a long pause then, to his surprise, he was taken out of his cell and brought to the one used for visits, and a few minutes later, a figure in a fur coat and hat was ushered in.
It was Adelaide de Ronville.
She had been visiting Vladimir. ‘And you know,’ she explained with a little shrug, ‘it’s not so far to Russka, in a sled.’
Alexander smiled. How moved he was that she should have made the journey. ‘How did you get in here? Did you bribe the monks?’ She nodded. ‘And where will you stay? You must go to our estate. You can’t get back to Vladimir tonight.’
‘Yes. They are expecting me there.’
He did not argue. ‘Let me look at you,’ he begged, and helped her off with her coat.
She stood before him. She was sixty. The lines on her face were more deeply scored, making an intricate network; yet when she turned her face up to his, it seemed to Alexander that, more than ever, the lines only accentuated and further defined what had been there. She made a slightly ironic little gesture with her mouth. ‘I grow old. These days, you know, there is nothing so wonderful to see.’
‘I do not agree.’
They talked for a little time. He asked after the countess, and learned that she was very frail, but otherwise unchanged. Had she forgiven him? ‘Of course not.’ He asked Adelaide about her own life. Had she a new lover?
‘Perhaps. Perhaps not. It’s not important.’ They talked quietly, just as usual, until a monk came to indicate that Adelaide must leave. As Alexander held her coat for her again, he lightly touched her arm.
For many hours after Adelaide had gone, he found to his own surprise that he was trembling; and by this understood, more certainly even than in years gone by, that he would always be the prisoner of this, the nearest that he had come to passion in his life.
On the last day of the year 1796, some seven weeks after the Empress Catherine the Great of Russia died, Alexander Bobrov was released from prison, having completed only four years of his sentence. For one of the first acts of the new Tsar, Paul, was to give an amnesty to almost all the enemies of the mother he detested. Alexander went to his estate nearby.
It was just three months later that Countess Turova also died. ‘Truly,’ everyone said, ‘an era has really passed.’ She left the bulk of her huge estate to Alexander’s distant cousin. And a quarter of it to Adelaide de Ronville, who married soon after.
The Duel
1802
High in the blue September sky a pale sun hovered, while from time to time small white clouds drifted over the endless plain.
As they passed, the clouds assumed many forms. One resembled a fish, open-mouthed as it crossed the azure sky; another a horse and rider; a third, perhaps, the witch Baba Yaga sweeping by.
They came from the east, in a leisurely procession, past the old frontier city of Nizhni Novgorod, where the mighty Volga meets the sluggish Oka, and into the huge loop in the R of Russian rivers that is the Russian heartland. Westward towards Moscow they came, over ancient Russian cities – Riazan, Murom, Suzdal and stately Vladimir. And some of them, too, passed over the small, shining ribbon of river that cut through the forest down to the little town of Russka and the village beyond.
How insignificant these places looked, seen from above: with modest wooden houses and the town, perched on its high river bank, facing the little white-walled monastery opposite. How still everything was. Did the sound of the monastery bells, tolling over the trees, reach up to the passing clouds? Surely not. The sky was silent but for the faint hiss of the breeze. For what were the lives, the loves and the fates of men to those clouds? They came from the vast eastern spaces where the natural order of things is, like the endless sky, unknowable, beyond mere human comprehension.
And could anything be less important than the subject the two peasants were discussing that afternoon? They were speaking of silk ribbons.
They were standing by the river bank. Behind them was the little village that belonged to Alexander Bobrov. The place had improved recently. There was a wooden footbridge over the river and walkways made of boards traversed the muddiest pla
ces. The huts, mostly raised off the ground, were in good repair. One or two, though retaining the arrangement of the traditional peasant izba, had an upper floor as well, and elaborately carved shutters as proof of the wealth of their occupants.
The two men were cousins, though separated by two generations. In common with fifteen other families in the village, they shared a descent from the girl Maryushka, the sole survivor of the terrible church fire in the reign of Peter, who had returned to the village long afterwards. As it happened, both men had been christened Ivan.
But there the resemblance between them ended. Ivan Suvorin was a giant. In him, it might be suggested, the genes of Maryushka’s father, once called Ox, had miraculously reproduced themselves without dilution. He was a head taller than any other man in the village. His arms were so powerful it was said he could lift a horse. He could chop down a tree in half the time it took anyone else. As for his face, even his massive black beard could not conceal its heavy features or the huge, shapeless promontory that was his nose.
His cousin, by contrast, was of only medium height and in shape almost perfectly square. He had a mass of wavy brown hair, soft blue eyes, and, when he chose, sang beautifully. He was a kindly man, though given to moods of depression that would lead him to sudden rages, or morbid tears. But these would pass as quickly as they had come, and he seldom hurt anyone.
His name was Ivan Romanov.
It pleased him that it was the same as that of the royal house: but in fact this was not an unusual distinction. The name which the imperial dynasty had chosen in the sixteenth century was amongst the fifty most common in Russia, meaning simply: ‘the son of Roman’, and pronounced, with the stress on the second syllable, Romahnoff. Nevertheless, Ivan Romanov was proud of it.
The two men were both serfs belonging to Alexander Bobrov. But there again, the similarity ended. For while Romanov worked the land and did wood carvings to help earn money to pay the landlord his obrok, Suvorin had been more enterprising. Starting with a single loom in the family izba, he had begun to weave cloth and sell it in the little market at Russka. Recently, however, he had discovered he could get a better price in the ancient city of Vladimir, a day’s journey away.
And now he wanted to make silk ribbons: and the question was, would his cousin Romanov like to come in with him?
The two men were accompanied by a ten-year-old boy, Suvorin’s son. He was called Savva and he was, as far as it was possible to be, a smaller replica of his father. As Romanov looked at the two Suvorins now, there was something about them that, he had to admit, made him feel nervous. What was it in those four piercing black eyes? He wanted to say it was cunning, yet there was no doubt that Suvorin was scrupulously honest. Perhaps they were just calculating. Yet it was more than that. There was something proud yet relentless about them, that was it, something unbending as if to say: ‘We are tall in stature and in spirit.’ Whenever he saw them, he remembered his mother’s favourite proverb: ‘It’s the tallest blade of grass that’s the first to be cut down.’
‘These silk ribbons are very profitable. We could all do well if you care to join us,’ Suvorin said.
Romanov still hesitated. He could use the money. He looked at them thoughtfully. And it was then that something struck him.
It was the boy: Savva. He was ten years old. And yet Ivan Romanov had never seen him smile.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll just stick to my wood carving.’
‘Suit yourself,’ Suvorin replied.
And they parted, not in any anger, but both parties understanding that, the offer having been refused, it would never be made again.
It did not seem significant to Romanov, at the time.
It was on that same day that, once again, Alexander Bobrov became a father. More or less.
As he held the child in his hands and inspected it, he felt conflicting emotions. There was, there must be, something wonderful, something holy, about a new-born child. As he looked down at Tatiana, who had gone through so much for him during many years, he gave her a kindly smile. ‘It’s a boy,’ he remarked.
Unfortunately, it was not his.
It had come as a shock to Alexander when, at the end of the previous year, 1801, Tatiana had been unfaithful to him. Strangely enough, it had come just as a new hope had entered his life.
The previous five years had been discouraging. Though Tsar Paul had released Alexander from prison, he had shown no desire for the former State Councillor’s services, and Alexander had remained, feeling rather useless, on the estate which his wife had run so competently without him. In a way, however, he was well out of St Petersburg, for the Tsar’s strange nature had soon turned to morbidness, then madness; and when a group of patriotic officers, in 1801, had murdered him and placed his son on the throne, all Russia had heaved a sigh of relief.
And Bobrov, too, had been filled with excitement. Young Tsar Alexander: the grandson whom Catherine herself had trained, autocrat of all the Russians, yet child of the Enlightenment. Youthful, beautiful to look upon, charming – the complete antithesis of his gloomy, narrow-minded father. The Angel, some called him. The Bobrov family had been planning to spend the winter in Moscow that year. In the month of November, suddenly fired with a new energy, Bobrov had left Tatiana and the children in Moscow and set out for St Petersburg alone. Perhaps, now, there would be some appointment for a man of his attainments. For two months he drifted about the capital, and received various promises which gave him hope, but nothing definite. In January he had returned.
It was a dashing young captain of Hussars who had found Tatiana alone, and who had quite captivated her before moving on with his regiment to the Ukraine. The officer was witty, amusing, and already had a score of such affairs to his credit. He was twenty-five; Tatiana thirty-one.
The young captain was discreet, one had to say that for him. Indeed, Alexander had not even been sure that the affair had actually taken place until the incontrovertible signs began to appear in Tatiana that spring. What should he do? He thought of a duel, but then learned that the fellow had been killed in a border skirmish; for a week he even dreamed of giving the bastard child away to one of his serfs’ families – that would teach Tatiana a lesson! But he knew he would not. After all, he told himself bitterly, any husband who leaves his wife alone in Moscow for two months is a fool. And, besides, he would tolerate no scandal. Nothing more was said about the affair; the baby would be treated as his.
He had already repaired his self-esteem by taking up with a pretty serf girl who worked in the house. Though he was cool towards Tatiana, he remained polite. He told himself that the child was an accident and that it was beneath his dignity to think about it any further.
It only remained to name the boy. The custom was simple: the firstborn son was usually named after his grandfather, others, often, by the saint’s day nearest their birth.
‘You are fortunate,’ the priest remarked to them when he came. ‘His name day is the feast of St Sergius.’ Sergei it was therefore.
That gave a name and patronymic of Sergei Alexandrovich, since he was the official father. Not bad.
‘Sergei.’ Tatiana smiled. And then, looking at the child, she called to him, using the diminutive of Sergei: ‘Seriozha, come to your mother.’
‘Of course,’ Alexander said to her calmly, ‘this one will not inherit anything of mine. When I die, you will receive a widow’s portion. You can provide for him out of that. Meanwhile, I’ll provide for his education.’
Tatiana inclined her head. The subject was not mentioned again.
And so Sergei Alexandrovich Bobrov came into the world.
Six months later, Alexander resumed relations with his wife. In 1803, a daughter was born. They called her Olga.
1812, March
What a tumultuous time this was, these days of war and peace. Who would have guessed that out of the fire of the French Revolution – the fire of liberty, equality, fraternity – would emerge this astounding conqueror who made th
e whole world tremble? Napoleon: hero to some, ogre to others. Did he mean, like Julius Caesar or even Genghis Khan, to rule the world? Probably. And though the enlightened Tsar Alexander – the Angel, they still called him – had tried to preserve Russia from the horrors of these European wars, it seemed now, in the early spring of 1812, that Napoleon and his formidable Grand Army were preparing to invade from the west.
All Russia trembled. The Orthodox Church declared that Napoleon was the Antichrist. The Tsar called the country to arms. And if there had been some amongst the gentry who felt that the golden age of Alexander had not lived up to its promise, that the expected reforms had been few and unimportant, all this was suddenly forgotten as, in drawing rooms all over the empire, they rallied to ‘The Angel’.
It was a chilly, overcast day before the start of spring. The snow still lay hard upon the ground, and the Bobrov family were sitting in the salon of their country house, waiting for news.
The house was typical of its kind: a narrow, two-storey wooden structure about eighty feet long. The walls had been painted green; the windows picked out in white. The centre boasted a simple classical portico with four pillars, all in wood and painted white, which provided a spacious verandah. Two little single-storey wings that Tatiana had added, of two rooms each, extended from the ends. From the house’s position near the top of the wooded slope, the village was hidden by some trees, but there was a pleasant view down to the river. Behind it were various outbuildings. A little to the left was a wooden hut, half-submerged into the ground; this was the ice house, where ice from the frozen river in winter was stored through the warm summer months. On the right of the house was the bath house: another squat building made of huge, unpainted logs. So peaceful did this ensemble appear, that one might have supposed it had always been there. In fact, however, there had been nothing before Alexander’s father and it represented a profound change in the life of the family and of the village.
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