Suddenly Agafya, her head covered with a white handkerchief, went down on her knees before Frank and implored him to have mercy on Korobyev.
‘That’s all rubbish, Agafya. He was taking forty-seven kopeks a week off your wages.’
‘I’m on my knees to you, Frank Albertovich, sir.’
‘Yes, I see you.’
‘You heard him say he’s the father of a family.’
‘It’s a disgrace if he is,’ said Frank. ‘He’s not married.’
Agafya, satisfied with the dramatic effect she had made, returned, like an old sentry to his post, to her samovars and to her campaign, in which no settlement seemed possible, with the storekeeper, over the issue of tea. The tea came, not in leaf form, but in tablets. These were charged as Consumables, but Frank thought they might just as well go down under Maintenance Materials. Forbidden to smoke, everyone at the Press was impelled to drink black tea not only at the stated hours, but if they could, all day.
From that morning Frank took on the job of overseer himself, or you might say there was no overseer at Reidka’s, only a manager who worked rather harder than most. Even so, the change would not have been possible without Tvyordov.
This man was the only compositor to be employed year in year out, on a weekly wage. The other three were on piece work. He had a broad, placid face, and the back of his head, covered with short greying stubble, gave the same reassuring impression as the front. Work started at Reidka’s at seven, and at one minute to seven he was in the composing room. It took him a minute exactly to get his setting rule, bodkin, composing-stick and galley out of the locked cupboard where they were kept. These were his own, and he lent them to no one. Tvyordov did not take any tea at this time. He put on a clean white apron which hung from a hook by the side of his frame, and a pair of slippers which he brought with him in a leather bag. Then he stepped into his frame and put his German silver watch on the lower bar of the upper case into a clip of his own construction, which fitted it exactly. The watch had a second hand, or sweep. Tvyordov spent no time in distributing the type from the reserves of the thirty-five letters and fifteen punctuation marks, that had always been done the night before, but started straight away on his copy, memorized the first few phrases, filled his composing stick, adjusted the spaces and took a sounding from his watch to see how long this had taken and to set his standard for the day. This was not an absolute measure. It depended on the weather, the copy, the proportion of foreign words, but never on Tvyordov himself. If at any point later on in the day he found that he had pushed down his last space a few seconds too early he would wait, motionless and untroubled, then shift his setting rule down at the watch’s precise tick. When the stick was lifted into the galley he grasped the letters lightly as though they were a solid piece of metal. This was difficult, the apprentices trying it were often reduced to tears, but during the past four hundred years no easier way had apparently been discovered of doing it. In this way he could set one thousand five hundred letters and spaces in an hour.
At three minutes to ten Tvyordov took a cup of tea, which necessitated going down to the canteen, and went to the washroom. This was one of the breaks made compulsory by the unions during the brief period after the government had been frightened by the disturbances, when they were allowed to negotiate. It was said that when Tvyordov had taken to the streets he had been wounded, or damaged in some way. A great many shots had hit people for whom they were not intended. There was certainly no sign of any damage now.
After his tea, at ten o’clock, Tvyordov took his lunch, and at eleven he lifted his type again, his head and body sympathetic to the ticking watch. At twelve he went home for his dinner, and in the afternoons was less silent, but only marginally. There was something indescribably soothing in the proceedings of Tvyordov. There was nothing mechanical about them. There were many minute variations, for instance in the way he washed the type free of dirt and, while it was still just moist enough to stick together, lifted a small amount on to his brass slip, resting it against the broad middle finger of his left hand. No one could tell why these variations occurred. Perhaps Tvyordov was amusing himself. What would he consider amusing? On Saturday nights, when Agafya was seeing to the oil-lamp in front of the composing-room’s ikon, Tvyordov wound up the office clock. On his way home, on Saturdays only, he stopped for five minutes exactly at Markel’s Bar for a measure of vodka. On Monday mornings he arrived thirty seconds earlier than usual, to clean the clock glass for the week. No one else was trusted to do that.
There was no mystery about Tvyordov’s attitude to the machine-room. Linotype, he felt, was not worthy of a serious man’s carefully measured time. It was only fit for slipshod work at great speed. To make corrections you had to reset the whole line, therefore you had orders not to do it. The metal used was a wretchedly soft alloy. Monotype, after some consideration, he tolerated. The machine was small and ingenious, and the letters danced out as they were cast from the hot metal, separate and alive. They weren’t as hard as real founder’s type, still they would take a good many impressions, and they could be used for corrections in the compositors’ room. When, or even whether, Tvyordov had been asked for his views was not known, but Reidka’s did monotype, and no linotype.
Probably the very fact that Tvyordov was known to work there had attracted commissions to Reidka’s. There was plenty of small work, for which hand-setting was still necessary. Reidka’s printed parcel labels, auctioneers’ catalogues, handbills of rewards for information leading to the arrest of thieves and murderers, tradesmen’s cards, club cards, bill heads, bottle wrappers, doctors’ certificates, good quality writing paper, concert programmes, tickets, time sheets, visiting cards, circulars of debts, posters (in three colours, if wanted, at a third more per 100). Frank also accepted leaflets and some magazines and school books, but no newspaper work, and no poetry. There was one exception here, Selwyn’s poems, entitled Birch Tree Thoughts, which would soon be ready for the press, and where could they be printed but Reidka’s? Birch Tree Thoughts was at the censor now, and since all poetry was suspect, would perhaps be more carefully read there than it ever would be again. But Frank didn’t expect requests for printing from revolutionaries or politicals. These people seemed to be able to produce, almost at will, the illegal manifestos and threats that livened the bloodstream of the city. Frank wondered, and even sometimes tried to calculate, how many printing presses were hidden away in students’ garrets and cellars, in cowsheds, bath houses and backyard pissoirs, hen coops, cabbage-patches, potato-stacks – small hand-presses, Albions probably, printing on one side only, spirited away to another address at the hint of danger. He imagined the dissidents, on Moscow’s a hundred and forty days a year of frost, warming the ink to deliver one more warning. Printer’s ink freezes readily.
When he judged he had the feel of things at Reidka’s, Frank made a call on all the other shops and offices in Seraphim Street. There was a regulation imposing tax on new businesses according to the amount of nuisance they caused to the neighbours. To circumvent this, Frank suggested that he should contribute to the street’s welfare by paying the wages of a nightwatchman, to patrol the street up to the point where it joined the Vavarkaya. There was a room over Markel’s Bar where he could sleep during the day.
‘But Frank, there’s a hint of bribery here,’ said Selwyn.
‘Put the wages down to overheads,’ Frank told him.
6
In 1911, then, Dolly was eight, and wore a sailor suit with a pleated skirt, banded with rows of white. Ben was seven, and also wore a sailor suit, with buttoned boots. Both of them had sailor hats made for them at Muirka’s, bearing the name of a British ship, HMS Tiger. Dolly was preparing for her entrance to the Gymnasium. She was almost a schoolgirl, but was not afraid to grow older, because she knew that there was in store for her some particular greatness. Towards autumn, Annushka was born. She was delivered by the midwife, the babka. Dr Weiss, long since back in Moscow, came in later, competent, ca
rbolic-scented, eager to talk to Frank about his personal investments. When he had gone, the babka sprinkled Nellie and the baby with holy water and brought tea brewed from raspberry leaves. She had already told Frank to buy a small gold cross and chain, and this was put round Annushka’s neck, to remain there for the rest of her life. Dolly and Ben, who had no gold crosses, demanded them.
‘Shall I get them?’ he asked Nellie anxiously. She was a woman and had the heavy end of the whole business to carry. She answered that he’d better, if he didn’t want to be plagued. This struck him as not really fitting the case. Dolly never plagued, it was her habit to ask for things only once.
Charlie wrote regularly, to Frank rather than to Nellie, who was much less likely to answer. He gave a good many details about his health, about the funeral of King Edward VII, and about the Choral Society’s monthly concerts, regularly enclosing the programmes. When Annushka was born he wrote at length, enclosing a five-pound note. His letter went on.
You say that the situation is uncertain in Russia and that you believe you ought to be ready to pull up stakes if necessary, but that you must not grumble at that, well, Frank, I would say that at this moment you must be the better off of the two of us – it continues to be a bad winter here, a black frost last night, and I’ve been told by several acquaintances here that in their houses the contents of the chamber-pots froze, which I believe is very rarely recorded in the South of England, cap that if you can. Then there’s the political aspect. Whereas from what you say you have a passable set of workpeople at the Press and a steady foreman, England is now a place of nothing but trouble and strife, which they call popular agitation. We have now eight hundred miners on strike, and if you can tell me how Old England is to be kept running without coal, and how coal can be spirited out of the ground without miners, then I’m not the only one who would be obliged to you. Then the railwaymen are out again, there are troops standing by this time, very different from twenty years ago. You will ask me, are not their grievances very real? Well, what will you say to this, the Printers, too, not only going on strike as far as their daily work is concerned but producing their own sheet, which is dignified by the name of a newspaper. Yes, I am being asked to read with my second cup of tea, instead of my Daily Mail, this revolutionary sheet, for I consider it no less. When all this began, The Times said that ‘the public must be prepared for a conflict between Labour and Capital, or between employers and employed, upon a scale such as has never occurred before,’ or it may have been ‘such a scale as’, I have not the exact words in front of me.
Nellie said that it was quite enough if one person in the household read Charlie’s letters. ‘He used to talk like that, too. You can’t have forgotten that.’
‘I suppose he’s got time on his hands since poor Grace died,’ Frank said. ‘His letters do seem to be longer. Well, he sends his love.’
‘We don’t know him,’ said Dolly. ‘We don’t know our Uncle.’
‘I’ll send him a message in general terms from the lot of you.’
‘You can borrow my Blackbird, if you like,’ said Ben. This was his new fountain pen, which troubled him. It was guaranteed not to leak, but writers and school-children knew better. Ben wished to be relieved of the responsibility of the Blackbird, without losing his own dignity.
To Selwyn also Frank had made it clear that he might have to sell Reidka’s, and take his family home, in the next few years or so. Opinion in the British community was divided. The British consul, who was only in Category 3, had no opinion to give. Frank thought the chances of having to leave Russia were about fifty-fifty, but wanted to know how Selwyn would be placed. Selwyn replied that he considered himself as a stranger and a pilgrim, who ought always to be ready to move on. There were Tolstoyan settlements, he believed, everywhere in Europe, there was one, for example, at Godalming.
‘You have to bring your skills to such places, of course, but that is all that is asked.’ He’d bring management accounting, Frank thought, poetry, music, spiritual advice, shoe-making. In summer, he knew, Selwyn wove his own birch-bark shoes before he took to the roads. They just about lasted the trip. He came back through the Sukhareva Market to the north of Moscow, bought himself a pair of leather boots there, and went back to Reidka’s.
Long before his death last year Tolstoy had fallen hopelessly out of fashion with thinking Russia, but not with his foreign disciples, and certainly not with Selwyn. What Tolstoy had thought of Selwyn, Frank was not too sure. Selwyn had been welcome at his Moscow house in Dolgo-Khamovnicheski Street, and Frank believed that he had first met Tolstoy at the Korsakov private lunatic asylum which adjoined the property. Tolstoy had forbidden any repairs to the fence, so that the patients could put their hands through gaps and pick the flowers if they felt like it. There were regular concerts at Korsakov’s, got up by the innumerable charities of Moscow. Selwyn had a fine tenor voice, a reasonable tenor voice anyway, which was what passed for a fine one in Russia, the land of basses, and – never having been known to refuse an appeal to his kindness – he had given a recital one evening. What he had sung Frank didn’t know, but some of the patients in the audience had become restless, and others had fallen asleep. Selwyn, who told the story without a hint of vanity or resentment, had sung on, but afterwards, since there was no applause, he had taken the opportunity to apologize to Tolstoy, who was sitting in one of the back rows. At the time Tolstoy made no reply, but a few days later he had said: ‘I find you have done well. To be bored is the ordinary sensation of most of us at a concert of this kind. But to these unfortunates it is a luxury to have an ordinary sensation.’
‘Are you going to sing for them again?’ Frank had asked. ‘Of course, if Dr Korsakov invites me. But he thinks the experience shouldn’t be repeated too often.’
Frank didn’t in any way contest the greatness of Lev Nicolaevich, but his hopes for the immediate future of Russia lay with the Premier, Piotr Stolypin. Something about Stolypin’s neatness, quietness and correctness, his ability to keep his head, his refusal, when Rasputin tried to hypnotize him, to be affected in the slightest degree, his decision to accept the premiership even though his enemies had tried to dissuade him from politics by blowing him up in his own house and crippling his young daughter, who had lost both her feet – something about all this suggested that Stolypin might, in Nellie’s phrase, not be got the better of. Stolypin asked for ten years in power. He gambled on ten years. By offering government loans to Russia’s one hundred and seventy-nine million peasants, so that they could buy their own land, he intended – if he was given ten years – to prevent revolution. Stolypin, however, had, as part of his official duties, to accompany the Tsar to a gala performance at the opera house in Kiev. He was in disgrace with the Imperial family and so was not invited to the royal box, but given a seat in the stalls. When he stood up in the interval he presented an excellent target to a terrorist agent in the theatre, who had been unwisely hired by the police as a security man. Stolypin was shot through the lungs and liver, and died four days later.
A memorial fund was opened, but foreigners living in Russia were not allowed to contribute. Frank was sorry about this.
‘But would you call him a just man?’ Selwyn asked anxiously.
‘No, not at all, he fixed the elections and he fixed the members of the Duma, but then the Duma wasn’t designed to work in the first place. He didn’t make any profits for himself, though, and he saw there was a way for the country to survive without a revolution.’
‘A man of courage.’
‘Certainly, or he wouldn’t have stood up in the theatre.’
Stolypin had asked for ten years, and had been allowed five. In the September of 1911 he was lying in state in an open coffin in Petersburg, just at the time when Nellie felt recovered enough after the birth of Annie to get up and go out a little. She leaned heavily on Frank’s arm. They walked a short distance.
‘How does it feel being a mother of three?’ he asked, not able to contain his love a
nd pride for the new child. ‘It’ll take up all my time,’ Nellie said. ‘Still, it took up all my time when I only had Dolly.’ ‘I hoped Dunyasha would be useful to you. That’s all she’s supposed to be doing, being of use to you.’ ‘That Dunyasha!’ said Nellie.
They took a taxi to a café on the edge of the Alexander Gardens. There was not a breath of wind, and under the glowing white sky tinged with pink from the horizon which seemed to fume with a warning of frost, the scant leaves were hanging motionless from the lime trees. The waiters who had to serve the tables outside the café were wearing their overcoats over their long aprons. It was the first sting of autumn. In two weeks the statues in the gardens would be wrapped in straw against the cold, all doors would be shut and all windows would be impenetrably sealed up until next spring.
7
These sudden decisions of Nellie’s – but Frank could really only remember one, in her bedroom in Longfellow Road, that hot afternoon, with just enough breeze, after Frank had drawn the blinds, to make the tassel at the end of the blindcord tap against the window. And she’d accounted to him then for what she felt. In the two years since Annushka was born, had she grown unaccountable?
At first it seemed to him that Nellie must be coming back, and he wired to all the railway stations between Mozhaisk and Berlin. After that he wired to Charlie every six hours. After three days Charlie wired back – Nellie not here, but guaranteed safe and well. Then, as though offering a respectable substitute, he added, shall be coming to Moscow myself shortly. In the confusion, which rapidly became the monotony, of loss it was something to have a fixed point when things must change or be changed, if only by the arrival of Charlie. That was not quite the same thing as wanting him to come, but it meant that Frank had to make arrangements and give instructions, two ways of bringing time to order.
The Beginning of Spring Page 5