Since Alexis was busy with the estate and Ilya seldom moved from his chair, she found herself often in his company when she went for walks; and he made a surprisingly pleasant companion. He would only talk a little; he listened well; and there was a kind of quiet strength about him that she found rather attractive.
Olga knew that she was beautiful. She was twenty-four now, with a long, elegant build, large and luminous blue eyes, flowing brown hair and a high-spirited grace that reminded any horse-fancier of some pure-bred Arabian. Marriage had added to this a comfortable good humour, that she had kept in her widowhood, and which made both men and women feel relaxed in her presence. She had the impression that Pinegin liked her, but she had not thought about it very much.
There were many delightful places to wander. Close by the house there was a long, shady alley in a grove of silver birches. Or one could stroll by the river, where the pine trees gave their scented shade. But Olga’s favourite walk lay through the woods to the monastery.
She loved the monastery. Since the reign of Catherine ended, a number of Russian monasteries – taking their inspiration, as in former centuries, from the great centre at Mount Athos in Greece – had found a fresh vigour and dedication to the things of the spirit; and some ten years before this movement had reached Russia. A few monks had even revived the ancient hermitage, the skit, that lay across the river past the springs.
Twice Olga walked over to the monastery with Pinegin and proudly showed him the little icon by Rublev that the Bobrovs had given so long ago. Though he said little, it seemed to her that he was impressed.
The second time they went, Olga took little Misha with her. For some childish reason, he seemed to be shy of Pinegin and would not walk beside him; but on the way back, when he got too tired to walk, the soldier quickly picked him up and carried him home: for which Olga gave him a grateful smile. ‘One day, if you like, we can walk over to the old springs and the monks’ hermitage across the river,’ she suggested. To which Pinegin gladly agreed.
So the days had passed: Pinegin sometimes out with a gun in the early morning; Ilya reading; walks in the late afternoon. In the evenings they played cards. Tatiana usually won, with Pinegin never far behind. Olga had a feeling that, had he chosen to do so, the quiet officer could have won more often.
Indeed, the only thing that gave her any cause for worry during those days had nothing to do with Pinegin at all. It concerned the estate.
There was nothing much wrong. It was more a succession of little things which, Olga was sure, could easily be put right. If, that was, Alexis would allow it. For if a new cart or a pump were needed, he would brusquely order the serf to try harder with the old one; he was also cutting down timber a little faster than he replanted. ‘Discipline’s needed, not money,’ he would say.
‘I watch over things in his absence,’ Tatiana told her daughter, ‘but he won’t let me make any improvements. And of course,’ she confided, ‘now that the Suvorins are gone, the income from the estates is less.’
Two years before, news had come from Siberia that Ivan Suvorin had died. As for Savva, no word of him had ever been heard. Olga was sad to see these small signs of decline in her old home, but not unduly worried. There were still miles of trees to be cut down before Alexis would be in any real trouble.
The only hint she might have had, in retrospect, came when one morning she was starting out for a stroll through the woods and casually asked Pinegin if he would like to join her. ‘I’d be glad to,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid a plain soldier must be rather dull company for you sometimes.’
And just to be pleasant she had replied, with a warm smile: ‘Oh, not at all, Fyodor Petrovich. In fact, I find you very interesting indeed.’
To her great surprise she thought she had seen him blush. But apart from an almost unconscious feeling of satisfaction, she had scarcely given it another thought.
It was one of the worthy, but slightly tedious, aspects of Alexis’s character that, like his mother and the majority of the village people, every Sunday he liked to go to church – and though nothing was said, it was quite clear that he expected everyone in the house to accompany him. He went not to the little wooden church in the village, however, where once a week a priest came to hold a service, but to the old stone church by the market place in Russka.
‘I wouldn’t mind going,’ Ilya told her grumpily, ‘except for that damned priest.’
The priest at Russka, it had to be said, was not a pleasant man. While the monasteries of Russia, at this time, were experiencing a revival, the ordinary priesthood was not. The priestly class was looked down on, socially and, quite often, for its morals; and the priest at Russka did little to improve this image. He was a large, bloated man with red hair and a brood of children who, it was said, stole food in the market place. The priest himself never let slip any chance of coming by either food or money. But every Sunday, Alexis insisted on standing through the long service to receive a blessing from this man’s large, fat hand; and Olga naturally accompanied him.
It was on the way back, one Sunday, when he and Olga were walking across the market to their carriage, that he turned to her and remarked: ‘Of course, he’s got no money, but if you want to marry Pinegin, you know I’ve no objection.’
Marry? She stared at him.
‘Whatever put that idea into your head?’
‘You seem to spend a lot of time with him. I’m quite sure he thinks you’re interested.’
‘Has he said so?’
‘No. But I’m sure.’
Had she led him on? She really didn’t think so. ‘I just never thought about it,’ she truthfully replied.
He nodded. ‘Well, you’re a widow and you’re rich. You can do as you please. But be careful.’ And then he added something that surprised her further. ‘Don’t trifle with Pinegin, though. He’s a very dangerous man.’
She wondered what he meant, but he wouldn’t say more.
She was very careful, therefore, in the coming week. She did not try to be distant, for that might have seemed rude. She was as friendly as before. But now several times she went out alone, or took her mother or Alexis if she strolled out with him. And all the time she watched the quiet soldier and pondered: was he so dangerous?
It was one afternoon in the first week of June, when the family was sitting at tea on the verandah, that they saw what appeared to be a small whirlwind approaching. The whirlwind came along the lane, vanished behind the trees, and then appeared at the gates of the little park. ‘Good God,’ Ilya exclaimed, ‘it’s a troika.’
There was in Russia no more noble conveyance. No one knew exactly when the fashion had begun – some said it came from Hungary – but if a young nobleman nowadays wanted to impress the world, he found the smartest coachman he could and harnessed up a troika.
The troika – also known as a unicorn – consisted of three horses running abreast. In the centre, between the shafts and under a brightly painted headboard, was the leader, who trotted. On each side were two wheelers, fanning outwards, who galloped – one furiously, the other coquettishly. It was difficult to handle, stylish, and the ultimate in elegance. And it was such an aristocratic carriage that now, in a cloud of dust, came whirling up the slope towards them.
As it reached the house, they could see two passengers within; but it was the splendidly dressed coachman, who now leaped down with a cry, who look strangely familiar and caused Alexis to mutter: ‘What the devil’s this?’
It was Sergei. And as he strode forward and, in the Russian manner, kissed each of them three times, he cheerfully announced: ‘Hello, Olga. Hello, Mama. Hello, Alexis. I’ve been exiled.’
He was bound to have got into trouble sooner or later. And as Olga reminded Alexis, one didn’t have to do much to be in hot water these days.
For one of the first acts of Tsar Nicholas, to ensure political order in his empire, had been to set up a new special police bureau – the so-called Third Department – and place at its head one
of his most trusted friends, the redoubtable Count Alexander Benckendorff. Benckendorff’s task was simple. The Tsar, who meant well, would consider reforms at the proper times; but meanwhile – however long this process might take – there were to be no more Decembrists. Benckendorff was thorough. Already his gendarmes, in their light blue uniforms, seemed to be everywhere. And in particular, the Department paid close attention to enthusiastic young gentlemen with too little respect for authority – men like Sergei.
In fact, it was Sergei’s boyhood hero Pushkin who had really started it. Pushkin was making a name for himself. Already, some of his first, brilliant writing had been published. And already, the young poet’s Ode to Liberty had landed him in trouble with the authorities. The Tsar had told Benckendorff personally to censor young Pushkin’s work. It was not surprising therefore that Sergei, longing to step into the limelight with his hero, should have hastened to produce something shocking of his own.
Sergei Bobrov’s poem The Firebird was printed at his own expense – a huge sacrifice for a young fellow on a modest salary of seven hundred roubles a year. Pushkin, to whom he immediately dispatched a copy, had sent a letter of generous encouragement: and in truth, for a first effort, it wasn’t bad. The firebird of his story was – needless to say – a harbinger of liberty. And in two days, before the ink was dry, Benckendorff had impounded it.
The author was so little known, the action of the Third Department so quick, that a week later Sergei found himself not a celebrity, but under orders to return straight to the family estate at Russka and stay there until further notice. And here he was.
‘There’s a letter for you, Alexis,’ Sergei went on. ‘Very important,’ he added, as he drew it from the recesses of his coachman’s coat.
It was from Benckendorff himself. Alexis took it, without a word.
At first it seemed all might be well. Besides his manservant, Sergei had brought with him a pleasant young man from the Ukraine, called Karpenko, whom he had met in St Petersburg. Between herself, Pinegin, and this Karpenko, Olga hoped she could keep Sergei and his soldier brother apart.
Alexis, she could see, was doing his best to be pleasant. He was somewhat mollified by Benckendorff’s letter.
‘We think,’ the great man had written, ‘that the young man is a harmless scamp; but it will do him no harm to cool his heels in the country for a while. And I know, my dear Alexis Alexandrevich, that I can rely upon you to keep a wise and fatherly eye on him.’
‘I’ll do that all right,’ Alexis told Olga.
But about Sergei’s high spirits he could do nothing.
Dear Seriozha. He made light of everything. No one could resist his good humour for long. Since Benckendorff, like Tatiana, came from the Baltic nobility, he insisted on bringing his mother his verses for censorship. Once he even wrote out the Lord’s Prayer for her. ‘For under the Third Department’s rules,’ he explained, ‘most of the Lord’s Prayer will have to go.’ And when he was able to prove that this was indeed the case, even Alexis could not help smiling.
He set about teasing old Arina at once. ‘Dear old nanny, my dove,’ he would say, ‘we can’t have an old thing with her head full of fairy tales looking after young master Misha here. He needs an English governess. That’s the thing nowadays. We’ll send for one at once.’ As for the little boy, he was immediately fascinated by this wonderful uncle who made rhymes and drew funny pictures. ‘Misha, you are my little bear,’ Sergei would say. And the little fellow followed him around everywhere.
Sergei and his friend made an amusing pair. Karpenko was a small, dark, twenty year old with rather delicate features, and very shy. It was obvious that he was devoted to Sergei, who treated him kindly. With Sergei’s encouragement, the Ukrainian’s soft brown eyes would light up and he would give brilliant imitations of everyone from a Ukrainian peasant to the Tsar himself. Karpenko taught Misha to do a little dance like a bear. And after the priest of Russka had come to call one day, the Ukrainian did such an explosively funny imitation of the fat man greedily ordering a meal and trying to rearrange his red beard over his huge stomach, that Alexis actually burst out laughing.
To little Misha it seemed that, after the cold winter and his mother’s death, he had found himself in a strange new world of wonderful sunlight and magical shadow that delighted him, but whose signals he could not always decipher.
For everywhere now, at the Bobrovo estate, a rich sensuousness hung in the air.
Young Arina, with her rather plump young body and her reddish-gold hair: Misha thought she was beautiful. Her blue eyes seemed to light up with excitement whenever she saw his Uncle Sergei or Karpenko. She was a little shy of Sergei though, whereas she would let the dark Ukrainian put his arm around her.
Uncle Sergei was a marvel: there was no doubt. Everyone loved him. He would talk with clever Uncle Ilya by the hour, often in French. And he was always happy to come and sit at old Arina’s feet where he would declare: ‘I’ve read all Krylov’s folk tales, but even he never told them like you, my dear.’ Misha was puzzled therefore when once he saw his father glaring at Sergei when the latter’s back was turned, and he asked his Aunt Olga: ‘Doesn’t Papa love Uncle Sergei?’
‘Of course he does,’ she told him. And when, rather shyly, he asked his father, Alexis said the same thing.
Often, when they all went for a stroll in the alley of birch trees behind the house, he would notice that Karpenko tried to walk beside Aunt Olga. Once he heard her say to Uncle Sergei: ‘Your friend’s in love with me,’ and then give a ringing laugh. Could Karpenko be in love with two women? the little boy wondered. And then there was Pinegin, with his pipe, his pale blue eyes and his white tunic. He was always there, quietly watching, giving a faint smile from time to time. Yet there was something about him, something hard and reserved, that made the boy afraid. Once, when they were all sitting on the verandah, Misha asked him: ‘Are you a soldier?’ And being told yes: ‘And soldiers kill people?’ Pinegin puffed on his pipe, then nodded. ‘He kills people,’ the little fellow announced to all the grown-ups, and everyone burst out laughing. Since he couldn’t see the joke, Misha gave up trying to understand things that afternoon, and ran off to play with Timofei Romanov.
To Olga’s relief, over a week passed without incident. Everyone knew that Sergei and Alexis must be kept apart. Everyone was careful.
She had forgotten how amusing he was. He seemed to know everyone and to have seen everything. He would tell her scandalous stories of the scrapes, duels and illicit affairs of everyone in Moscow and St Petersburg, but always with such unbelievable detail that she laughed so hard she had to hang on to his arm.
It was one evening, after listening to his stories, that she asked him curiously about his own love life. Had there been many women? she wondered. Whatever answer she expected, it was not what came next. Leading her to a quiet corner, he took a little book from his pocket and handed it to her. There were columns of names on each page, each with a little comment. ‘My conquests,’ he explained. ‘The ones on the left are platonic friendships. The ones on the right, I’ve had.’
It was outrageous. Nor could she credit the names. ‘The virtuous Maria Ivanovna slept with you, you rascal?’ ‘I swear.’ He gave her a graphic account. And she burst into peals of laughter.
‘I don’t know what we shall do with you, Seriozha,’ she said.
As the days passed, only two things troubled Sergei Bobrov. Neither could be mentioned to anybody.
The first was a tiny incident that had taken place the day before he left Moscow. He had been walking along the street with his manservant – a young serf from the Russka estate – when it had happened: and he had been so surprised that, before he could think, he had let out several incautious words – words that could be very serious for others. He had been unsure how much the young serf had taken in, but immediately afterwards he had sternly said: ‘Whatever you think I just said, you heard nothing – unless you want a thrashing. You understand?’ Then he ha
d given him a few roubles.
He had kept an eye on the fellow since they got to Russka and, as far as he could tell, all was well. After a week, he put it out of his mind.
But the other matter could not be so easily dismissed. It was in his thoughts every day; and for once, he did not know what to do.
It seemed a harmless idea. Even Alexis agreed when, in his second week there, Sergei suggested they should get up some theatricals. He had found some French versions of Shakespeare’s plays in the library. ‘Ilya and I will translate some scenes into Russian,’ he announced. ‘Then we can all play them.’ After all, it was something to do.
So why did Olga feel a sense of misgiving? She was not sure herself. At the beginning, as it happened, this new activity brought her two pleasant surprises. The first concerned Ilya.
She had never, in truth, had much respect for her oldest brother. She remembered how, five years ago, everyone had hoped that his tour of Europe would improve his health and inspire him to do something. Indeed, after staying in France, Germany and Italy he had finally returned looking slimmer and even purposeful. He had obtained a good post in St Petersburg and it seemed he might make a career. And then, after only a year, it was over: he resigned, left the capital and returned to Russka. True, he had tried to take part in provincial affairs, but soon became discouraged by the lack of progress and by his boorish fellow gentry. A sort of lethargy seemed to overtake him. And now here he still was, living with his mother, reading books all day and hardly getting out of bed before noon – just as he had been when she was a girl.
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