And now something even more exciting had happened. His father was in the Duma. He had gone to St Petersburg.
It had been a great step. After boycotting the first Duma, the Socialists had decided to participate in the second. ‘If we can get a large number of Socialists in,’ Peter had explained, ‘we can smash the Tsar and end this farce once and for all. Use the Tsar’s own Duma to abolish him!’
‘And then?’
‘A Constituent Assembly elected by all the people. A democratic government. All the Socialists agree about that.’
Freedom. Democracy. The new world was about to begin. And his father, the distinguished Professor Suvorin, was a part of it. Life was wonderful.
Yet there were still things that were puzzling. Why was it, for instance, that his Uncle Vladimir was so rich while they lived so simply themselves? ‘Your father has no interest in all that,’ his mother told him with a dismissive gesture. But as he got older this explanation did not seem quite enough. Though he and Nadezhda were like brother and sister, he knew their parents were not close. ‘If your father had his way,’ the little girl had once remarked, ‘Mama says you’d put us all in the street.’ And then, with perfect innocence: ‘If that happens, Dimitri, can I come and live with you?’ He had promised she could, but it had always seemed odd to him that his kind Uncle Vladimir did not understand the need for revolution.
And then there was his mother. Why was she always so anxious? Was it possible, Dimitri had wondered, to love people too much? When his father left for St Petersburg, Uncle Vladimir had offered to let Dimitri stay with them so that Rosa could accompany Peter. She had refused; yet ever since, each day, had constantly moaned: ‘Do you think your father is safe there? I’m sure something will happen to him.’ She would even fret at night so that, by morning, there were dark rings round her large eyes.
It was late March when the incident occurred. Peter Suvorin was away in the capital and Dimitri was returning from school one afternoon when, having followed an unusual route, he found himself in a long narrow street.
The street was empty. A few bare trees could be seen down the sides; here and there were patches of dark ice in the gutters. A dull grey light pervaded the place.
He was halfway down before he heard a scuffle and saw the little gang, and even then, it did not occur to him to be alarmed.
There were only half a dozen of them: four young men and two boys about his age. They came out of a courtyard and then walked along on each side of him for several yards before one of the young men spoke.
‘I think he’s one.’ They all continued to walk.
‘You do? Hey, boy, what’s your name?’
‘Dimitri Petrovich. Suvorin,’ he added as firmly as he could. He was not sure what this all meant.
‘Good Russian names, young Mr Suvorin. Shall we leave him, boys?’
‘Maybe. Look at his face though.’
‘True. We don’t like your face, Dimitri Petrovich. Why don’t we like his face, boys?’
‘Looks like a kike.’
‘Right, Dimitri Petrovich. That’s the problem. You sure you aren’t Jewish? Not at all?’
‘Quite sure,’ Dimitri answered with confidence, as they continued to walk.
‘What’s your mother’s name, boy?’
‘Rosa Abramovich,’ he replied.
‘Aha. Where’s she from?’
‘Vilnius,’ he replied, in all innocence.
‘A Rosa Abramovich from Vilnius. Then your mother’s a Jew, boy.’
‘She is not,’ he answered hotly. But they had stopped, and surrounded him. ‘She’s a Christian,’ he shouted furiously, not because he had anything especially against the Jews, but because the accusation was a lie. Seeing the boy’s genuine rage, the little gang hesitated.
And it was then that Dimitri did a very foolish thing. ‘Don’t you touch me,’ he shouted furiously. ‘My father’s a deputy in the Duma and you’ll be in trouble.’
‘Which party?’
‘The Social Democrats,’ he said proudly. And instantly realized his mistake. He had heard of the Black Hundreds of course – the gangs of right-wing thugs who beat up Socialists and Jews in the name of the Tsar. But somehow he had always thought of them as the large groups their name suggested; nor, since he was a good Russian, had he ever considered they could have anything to do with him.
‘Kike! Socialist! Traitor!’ The little fellow went down at once.
He had only received a black eye and several kicks in the ribs when a carriage entering the street caused his assailants to break off. Half an hour later he was safely back at home, and though shaken, was able to eat some supper.
But there was one aspect of the whole business that mystified him. ‘They said you were a Jew,’ he told his mother. And was therefore even more astonished when she confessed that it was true. ‘I converted when I married,’ she explained. They had never told him before.
And from that day, her nervousness seemed to get worse.
Strangely, whatever these events meant to his mother, they did not mark Dimitri; and this was due to an extraordinary aspect of his make-up.
It was to do with music.
Ever since he was a little child, Dimitri had thought in terms of music. From as long as he could remember, notes had suggested colours to him. As soon as Rosa showed him the different keys on the piano, each had possessed for him its own distinct character and mood. At first these discoveries belonged to a musical world which he associated with the instruments he played. But then, when he was nine, something else took place.
He had been in the little church beside his home one evening listening to vespers. The church had a fine choir, and the haunting melodies of the chanting were still with him as he left. It was sunset when he stepped into the street and the sky above Moscow was gold and red. For several minutes, he had stood gazing towards the glorious colours in the west.
And then, trying to express what he saw, he had chosen a chord. It was in the key of C Minor. After a moment, he had added another.
It was odd, he thought: he had chosen the chords. He had imposed them on that sunset. Yet as he looked, it was as though the sky were answering him, saying: ‘Yes, that is my sound.’ And in his mind the chords and the sunset became one.
He had walked back into the courtyard, next. There was the mulberry tree, the reddish light catching its upper branches, warm shadow below. And now he heard another chord and a little melody; and this time the music came so instantly that it was as if he had not chosen it, but heard it.
How wonderful it was. He felt suffused with a strange sensation of warmth inside his stomach. When a moment later some children ran out into the yard, and he was afraid he might lose his train of thought, he found that with an effort of will he could hold the chords in his mind so that they did not slip away. And he experienced a small pang of fear, which he did not understand, as though the sunset and the tree had said to him: ‘If you step forward now, little boy, you will lose yourself and belong only to music.’ And being uncertain what this meant, he had decided to preserve this blessed state of being in his mind, as, sometimes, he would preserve a dream, that he might return to it later.
That had been the start. His life had never been the same after that. By a small act of concentration he found that he could step back into this dream whenever he wished; soon the periods of contemplation grew longer, and might last for hours, during which his concentration grew so deep that he could have entire conversations with people, or eat a meal, and emerge with no recollection of these events at all.
Very soon, he had noticed other things. Once he stepped into his other world, it seemed to him that he was not inventing music, but listening to it – that the wonderful harmonies he heard came outside himself; they were given to him, though he could not say with certainty by whom or by what. And before long, the musical otherworld began to invade the everyday world, like a light encroaching upon shadow, so that even such mundane things as a carriage in the stre
et or a dog barking now seemed to Dimitri to contain their own music which he would joyfully discover. His whole mind, now, became crowded with musical phantoms: the people he saw every day, his schoolmasters, his mother, his Uncle Vladimir, came to be presences, each with a voice – his father a tenor, Uncle Vladimir a rich baritone – like characters in some wonderful opera that was as yet only partially revealed to him.
And – this perhaps was the most wonderful thing of all – it was often as if, stretching before him on an endless, symphonic plain, he could perceive the lives of all people and all things, including his own small life: so that his joys and sorrows became part of that huge, echoing process, and were returned to him as music. When the young men from the Black Hundreds attacked Dimitri, therefore, the pain they caused him only turned to music in his mind.
Two events took place that summer, however, which did make a deep impression upon Dimitri.
In June, the Tsar dissolved the Duma; and on the very next day, a new electoral system was announced. ‘The Tsar couldn’t stomach the Socialists,’ Peter announced on his return. ‘This new system is quite amazing,’ he remarked. Under the Tsar’s new rules, the vote of a landowner counted for that of roughly five hundred and forty workers. ‘The conservative gentry will have a majority. And I’m out for certain.’
‘But is it legal? Can the Tsar just break the rules like that?’ Dimitri demanded.
Peter shrugged. ‘It’s illegal according to the constitution issued last year. But since he made the rules then, the Tsar reckons he can change them now.’ He smiled. ‘The Tsar honestly believes it’s his duty to be an autocrat, you know. He thinks Russia is like a huge family estate he’s got to pass on to his son exactly as it was when his father gave it to him. He calls it his sacred trust.’ He shook his head wearily. ‘It’s so stupid it’s almost funny, really.’
But though his father was philosophical, young Dimitri could tell that he was inwardly outraged. There was another worrying side to these events, also. The Tsar’s new minister Stolypin was a highly able man, bent on reforming the backward empire. ‘But reforms can only take place after pacification,’ he had declared; and his pacification had been thorough. No less than a thousand people suspected of terrorist involvement had been executed last year – ‘Stolypin’s necktie’ Russians now called the hangman’s noose. Police spies were everywhere. Popov, and others like him, had wisely disappeared, perhaps abroad, and Rosa was constantly anxious about her husband. ‘I’ve done nothing to offend Stolypin,’ he would assure her. ‘But you know people who have,’ she would reply. And now for the first time, young Dimitri began to think of the revolution not as a joyous state that must inevitably come in the future, but as a bitter and dangerous struggle between his father and the Tsar. And it was this, rather than his encounter with the Black Hundreds, that made life seem darker to the boy.
The second event took place late that summer, when a letter arrived from the Ukraine. It was from Rosa’s childhood friend, Ivan Karpenko, and it contained an unexpected request. He had a son, just two years older than Dimitri – a gifted boy, he said – who wanted to study in Moscow. ‘I wondered if he could stay with you,’ he wrote. ‘He would pay for his keep, of course.’
‘We’ve nowhere to put him,’ Peter complained. But Rosa would not hear of any difficulties. ‘We’ll manage,’ she declared, and wrote at once to Karpenko that he should send his son. ‘He’ll be company for Dimitri,’ she said firmly. But both Dimitri and his father knew what she really meant. She was thinking: He’ll be a protector.
He arrived at the start of September. His name was Mikhail. And from almost the moment he came, Dimitri announced: ‘He is a genius.’
Mikhail Karpenko was a slim, dark, handsome youth with sparkling black eyes, who had just entered puberty; and it was certainly amazing what he knew. Within minutes of his arrival, they discovered that he was intensely proud of his Ukrainian heritage and his distinguished ancestor, the poet. ‘There’s been a big revival of our Ukrainian culture, you know, just in the last few years,’ he told Rosa. ‘And I’m part of it,’ he added rather grandly. But his interests were far wider than that. He seemed fascinated by everything to do with culture and the arts; and he absorbed new ideas with an astonishing speed. When Dimitri took him to visit his cousin Nadezhda, Karpenko seemed in his element, and quickly found favour there. Even the great man himself was impressed. ‘Why, it’s quite amazing the things you know, my little Cossack,’ he would say with a chuckle; and often he would come and sit with his daughter and Dimitri on one side and Karpenko on the other, his great arms round them, and relate all the latest news from the world of art.
It was an exciting time in the Suvorin family. For that year, in addition to his huge mansion, Vladimir had decided to build himself a new house, about a mile away. ‘A little retreat,’ he told them with a grin, ‘but an unusual one.’
This was an understatement. Only a handful of men in the world would have dared to do what the Russian industrialist now proposed. Which was nothing less than a whole house, constructed entirely in the style of Art Nouveau.
The design he showed Dimitri and Karpenko was astounding. Though the basic structure of the house was a simple, square box with a side entrance, there all conformity ended. Every window, every pillar, every ceiling, was shaped in the swirling curves of the Art Nouveau style. The effect was magical, plant-like. ‘It’s like some fabulous orchid,’ Karpenko remarked, which pleased the industrialist greatly. ‘It will have the latest of everything,’ he explained. ‘Electric lights. Even a telephone.’ Designers from France were coming to supervise the work.
And afterwards Karpenko remarked with awe to Dimitri: ‘Your uncle’s like a Renaissance prince.’
What a joy Karpenko was. The three of them – Dimitri, his cousin Nadezhda and Karpenko – soon became firm friends. The ten-year-old girl, sophisticated though she was, would listen fascinated to the handsome boy, with his flashing eyes and his infectious enthusiasms. This year, he was devoted to the new Russian poets who belonged to the Symbolist school. ‘Music,’ he would cry, ‘music is the supreme art because it reaches into the perfect, mystical world. But with words we can come close.’ And he would quote whole verses of Russia’s brilliant young poet, Alexander Blok, transporting them to a realm of mysterious goddesses, or to the end of the world, or the coming of some nameless messiah, while Nadezhda gazed at him with shining eyes. The two boys came to see her several times a week.
The gay intimacy of their afternoons together was only occasionally dampened by the presence of a rather serious sixteen year old.
It was November when they first began to notice that Alexander Bobrov had entered their lives. His father at that time had just become one of the Moscow deputies, for the liberal Cadet party, to the Tsar’s new and conservative Duma – which, after losing their estates, had been some comfort to the family. Since his own father had just been cut out of the Duma, however, this did not make Dimitri especially friendly towards the solemn youth. Nadezhda was polite, because he was a friend of her father’s. But Karpenko, only two years Alexander’s junior, made no secret of his contempt.
Alexander seldom said much. Having called upon Suvorin on some pretext, he would come in with him, or sometimes venture in alone, speak a few polite words to Nadezhda, and stand around for a short while, listening to their conversation rather awkwardly. And it was not long before Karpenko had found a nickname for him. ‘Look out,’ he would whisper, ‘here comes the Russian calendar.’
It was a clever joke. Though Peter the Great had reformed the calendar, he had used the old Julian system for counting the days; and whereas the rest of Europe had since transferred to the more modern Gregorian system, Russia and her Orthodox Church had stuck with the Julian. As a result, by the start of the twentieth century, the huge empire now lagged thirteen days behind the rest of the world. The cruel nickname exactly captured Alexander’s conservative mentality.
Whenever he saw young Bobrov, Karpenko woul
d speak enthusiastically of the coming new age, of the folly of the Tsar, and declaim the lines of Alexander Blok on Russia’s years of stagnation:
Let the ravens croak and fly
Over us who daily die
God, O God, let better men
See Thy Kingdom come.
And poor young Bobrov would watch, morosely.
It was the following Easter, in 1908, that a small incident made plain what was in young Bobrov’s mind.
As for everyone in Russia, Easter Day was a busy time in the great Suvorin house. Though neither Vladimir nor his brother Peter were religious, it never occurred to either to miss the long Easter vigil the night before; and on Easter Day the house was open to a constant stream of visitors. In the huge dining room, the long table was piled high with the rich foods that were allowed now the Easter fast was over. In the centre of the table were the two traditional Easter dishes: kulich, the creamy, thick bread decorated with the paschal sign; and the white sweet shaped like a little pyramid – the paskha. And everywhere, of course, decorated Easter eggs, some painted red, some in the Ukrainian manner covered with elaborate designs: people brought them, received them – several thousand eggs would be consumed in the huge Suvorin mansion. And all washed down with iced vodka.
The Bobrovs came by in the middle of the day, just after Peter Suvorin and his family, and so Dimitri and his friend were witnesses to the little scene. Young Nadezhda and her mother were both wearing the traditional festival dresses of Russian women. Mrs Suvorin also wore a high diadem – the kokoshnik – of gold and mother of pearl, which made her look more regal than ever. As was the custom, each arrival went from one person to another, kissing each one three times and exchanging the Easter greeting: ‘Christ is Risen’: ‘He is risen indeed.’
When young Alexander Bobrov reached Nadezhda, however, he did not pass on but paused and reached into his pocket and drew out a little box. ‘This is a present for you,’ he said gravely. Astonished the girl opened it, to find a tiny but beautiful little Easter egg, made of silver with decorations in coloured stones. It came from Fabergé.
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