The Beginning of Spring

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  ‘No matter, I have Columbus tyres from Provodnik’s. Provodnik sells only the best, and makes me a special price. They will go over any road, and in the worst weather.’ Ben confirmed this, although Mikhailo, Kuriatin’s chauffcur, promoted from head groom, had never let him get a proper look at the engine and hadn’t, Ben thought, really got the proper hang of it himself.

  Kuriatin was in high spirits. He knew Charlie couldn’t understand anything he said, but treated this as a jest, to be overcome by noise and persistence. ‘You’ll come back deaf,’ Frank said. ‘I shall be responsible for you to Nellie, you know.’ He told Bernov, who as part of his own plans for advancement had taken a course in commercial English, that he’d have to go along as interpreter.

  ‘You surprise me, Frank Albertovich. A day’s work at the Press will be lost if I go on this expedition, and if they want to attend Vespers at the monastery we shall have to stay the night.’

  ‘You won’t get as far as that.’

  ‘You anticipate a breakdown?’

  ‘If that happens, get Mikhailo to check the carburettor. This Russian petrol is very low on benzine.’

  ‘What is a carburettor? I wish you were coming with us,’ said Bernov, and Frank felt a surge of affection for him, which was replaced when he got to work by remorse. Reidka’s had settled down at once into its new arrangement, giving him an indescribable sense of quietened anxiety and present satisfaction, such as he had had as a small boy when watching a bee-hive or a top. During the day, new official regulations arrived, requiring that hence forward all fines for absence or drunkenness should not be held back by the firms concerned, but should be paid into an account under government control, where the Ministry of the Interior would decide, eventually, how the money could best be spent for the benefit of the workers. The fines didn’t amount to much, but Frank knew that Bernov would have enjoyed deciding whether the small amount of lost income was an overhead, a variable cost or an abnormal cost. Anxious detail was a relief to him from the large-scale schemes which he was already beginning to see would never, alas, find a place at Reidka’s. And now, instead of a day of delicious close evaluation and adjustment, he had to rattle, in deep embarrassment, through the chilly landscape on Kuriatin’s outing. But Frank knew he couldn’t have asked Selwyn to go. Although Kuriatin’s change of heart hadn’t lasted long, only, indeed, until the next working day, there was no knowing when, in Selwyn’s presence, it might return, and Frank couldn’t see how a change of heart would fit in to a day out in the Wolseley.

  He was late home, having helped to read over the proofs of Three Men in a Boat. He had something to eat, of sorts, in Markel’s Bar. When he got back, Lisa brought in the children to say good-night, something which had never happened to him before, and which he thought only happened in other families. It was most unusual, to begin with, for them all to agree to go to bed at the same time.

  ‘Is Uncle Charlie back?’ asked Dolly

  ‘No, he isn’t back yet.’

  ‘Do you think they’ve had a puncture?’

  ‘Very likely,’ said Frank. ‘All cars have punctures.’

  ‘They ought to make them all with solid wheels, like Trojans.’

  ‘Perhaps, but people want to be comfortable.’

  ‘I don’t see that Uncle Charlie ought to stay here much longer,’ said Dolly. ‘He hasn’t brought Mother back with him, and he can’t tell us when she’s coming, either.’

  ‘Don’t you care anything about your uncle?’ asked Frank, with a straightforward desire for information. Annushka, born to take life in the way easiest to herself and to extract from any situation only the aspect which did her most credit, shouted, ‘I love my Uncle Charlie!’

  ‘He seems to like everything so much,’ said Ben, trying to render justice, ‘we’re not used to that.’

  ‘And his visit hasn’t led to anything,’ said Dolly. ‘He isn’t supposed to be here just to enjoy himself.’

  Frank pointed out that Charlie’s train tickets to London, via Warsaw and Berlin, were booked for the 28th of March, Russian calendar, and it was the family’s business to see that he enjoyed himself till then. He would rather have liked Dolly to give him a hug, but she had apparently decided against this. All day, ever since he could remember, Frank had been used, in Moscow, to physical human warmth, and not only when he was a child. Even now, his Russian business contacts frequently threw their arms round him, so did his servants and his employees, while the tea-woman and the yardman, if he didn’t manage to stop them, kissed his hands. All that Dolly gave him was a fearless, affectionate glance.

  Frank sent all the servants to bed and said that he would sit up for Karl Karlovich himself. At half-past ten Kuriatin and his party came back, not in the Wolseley, which had started to pour out smoke and had been abandoned, with Mikhailo, a few miles out of Moscow, but in a broken-down horse and carriage which was all they’d been able to hire on the spot. Kuriatin was noisy and anxious to show that everything had been a success, Bernov looked tired, shrunken and sober, Charlie was his usual self. He saw nothing amiss with their day. He hadn’t, he explained, taken any vodka as he thought it might be affecting his bowels, but he had had a few glasses of kvass, the Russian beer made, they told him, out of bread, which was just as remarkable, when you came to think of it, as if they’d made bread out of beer. Clever people, the Russians. It didn’t matter that they’d never reached the church. When you’d seen one Orthodox church, you’d seen them all. And at the traktir they’d had a special dish, a fish-pie with a hole in the top, into which you crammed caviare.

  ‘Mr Kuriatin’s treated me very liberally all day,’ he went on. ‘I’m beginning to see that over here the expression “friend of the family” means just what it says.’

  ‘So it does in England,’ said Frank.

  ‘I shouldn’t have understood, of course, without Mr Bernov here, and his useful gift of tongues. He was explaining to me on the way back what Mr Kuriatin was saying, I mean about how much he felt for you and how he’d like to do something more for you.’

  Kuriatin, who had caught his name, nodded, laughed, rolled his eyes and emitted sounds, though not quite at the same time. He was like a mechanical figure in a secondhand toy shop, slightly out of kilter.

  ‘He wants to take the three children into his household, Frank, for as long as need be, so that you’d be free of all responsibility. What do you think of that? It seems his wife is a motherly soul who can’t have too many kiddies in the house. And it wouldn’t cost you anything. He held out his arms wide, just like he’s doing now, and said, “Let them regard me as their second father.” Didn’t he, Mr Bernov?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bernov. ‘He repeated that more than once.’

  ‘What’s he saying now?’ asked Charlie.

  ‘He’s saying that a man who has drunk vodka is like a child: what is in his heart comes straight to his lips.’

  ‘Is that a traditional saying?’

  ‘It may be,’ said Bernov, ‘I’ve never lived in a village and I’m not familiar with traditional sayings.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter anyway,’ said Frank. ‘He doesn’t really want to adopt my children. It’s just a general expression of good-will, or more likely the opposite.’

  ‘Surely, as a business man, he’ll be as good as his word!’ Charlie cried. ‘Surely he’s the soul of hospitality.’

  ‘Of course he is.’

  Suddenly bored, Kuriatin got off the sofa with a plunging motion and, not waiting for the samovar, made his way out, yelling for his coat and boots. The carriage had been kept waiting in the drizzle. He drove off, without offering Bernov a lift.

  ‘It’s of no importance, Frank Albertovich, I’d prefer to take a tram in any case.’ Bernov struggled into his galoshes. ‘This time, however, you’ve asked too much of me. I’m your cost accountant and I should prefer to confine myself to my daily duties.’

  Charlie was tired and went straight to bed, still praising and approving. This damp weather w
as so much healthier than a hot, dry climate. A good thing, really, that the Wolseley had broken down, because up to then it had seemed to make Mr Bernov a bit unwell. But Mr Kuriatin had known what to do, and at the traktir he’d made him take a special remedy, a draught of mothballs dissolved in vodka.

  ‘It’s a useful tip, really. One ought to write all these things down somewhere handy. Well, Frank, I’ll say goodnight.’

  20

  It seemed, on the day before Charlie was due to leave, as though he had been there for as long as they could remember. He had taken to eating kasha, two or even three bowls of it, at breakfast, with a lump of butter in each. ‘I shan’t get this at home,’ he said. He had, he felt, got a pretty good general look at Russia. On his drive with Kuriatin and Bernov he hadn’t been far out of the city, but far enough, he thought, to see what the rest of the country and its agriculture must be like.

  ‘I saw cabbage stumps everywhere. There’s too much reliance on the cabbage in Russia, Frank. If I have any criticism, it’s that these people aren’t like our allotment-holders at home. A farm or a factory can make a loss, but an English allotment, never. And that brings me to my other point.’

  The other point had to be left for the time being, because it was a fixed principle in Norbury that nothing of importance must be discussed in front of the servants.

  ‘Even though they don’t understand me they might gather the sense of my gestures and facial expressions. You don’t want them to know your business.’

  ‘Everyone knows my business,’ said Frank.

  Charlie walked with him as far as the tram-stop. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t seen your place of work. But I daresay a rest will do me no harm. And Dolly has promised to come with me to the Rows after school and interpret for me to the shopkeepers, so that I can get a few little presents to take back home. Now, that brings me to the point I was unable to make at breakfast.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘It’s about the kiddies. That offer of Kuriatin’s – there’s a rough diamond for you, if you like – it set me thinking. You turned that down, but how does this strike you – suppose I were to take the three of them with me tomorrow when I go back to England?’

  ‘Look, Charlie –’

  ‘I’ve surprised you, haven’t I, Frank? But it’s a grief to me that your kiddies don’t know their native land. We were talking about allotments – well, they’ve none of them ever seen one. I daresay they’ve never even seen a vegetable marrow. And then, you know, I find it a bit lonely in the house at times.’

  ‘You want them to live with you permanently?’

  ‘Think it over, Frank. I know you’re not having an easy time, even if we haven’t talked much about it. Think it over during the day, and see how it appeals to you.’

  ‘Your father looked quite put out,’ Charlie said to Dolly, as they walked into the Trading Rows. ‘I hope I didn’t speak out of turn.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it now,’ Dolly told him. She was in tearing spirits, wearing her new fur-lined overcoat over her school uniform, and totally in charge. ‘We’ll get your presents first. Then you can give me some tea, and I’ll tell you what I think.’

  They climbed to the Upper Rows, the top storey of the great market, intersected in each direction by glass-covered corridors from which the moving mass of shoppers, also under glass, could be seen swarming forth and back. The middle storey was for wholesale. Upstairs, they faced half a mile of merchandise, laid out for ready spenders. Dolly’s eyes shone.

  ‘Just a few items,’ said Charlie feebly. ‘There are neighbours who’ve been good to me, there’s the vicarage, and I suppose the Choral Society and one or two people at work.’

  ‘What are you taking back for Mother?’

  ‘I’m not sure of her whereabouts, Dolly dear. Otherwise, you know, I should have –’

  Taking his list away from him, Dolly dragged him rapidly forward. ‘This is the grocery section. Not the imported groceries, the Russian things. Tinned Sturgeon in wine, potted elk, dried elk, caviare of course, but this isn’t the best kind, partridges in brandy. Then down this way there’s the galanterya, amber beads, kid gloves, silk fans with pearl handles, velvet babies’ boots, all that sort of thing, or you can get peasants’ feast day dresses, you don’t have to buy the whole dress, you can just get a kokosnik or a shugai. Now we’re getting on to the gold and silver and jewellery and the religious objects.’

  ‘I can’t afford these things, Dolly. Can’t we take a short cut? In any case, they wouldn’t do for presents, religious objects would look quite out of place at the vicarage.’

  ‘They’ve got pearl ear-rings here. They’re only river pearls, though.’

  As she spoke she turned her head towards him. Charlie was taken aback to see, what he’d never noticed before, that her ears were pierced in an altogether foreign way, and that she was wearing a pair of gold sleepers.

  ‘When did you have that done, dear?’

  ‘Oh, when I was two weeks old, I suppose. Annushka’s are just the same.’

  He said awkwardly. ‘Perhaps you’d like me to get you some of these pearls, then?’ Dolly laughed. ‘I’ve got plenty of them at home. We’re not allowed to wear them at school.’

  Taking pity on him, she turned left at the crossing point of the next glass corridors, and they bought a number of small birchwood objects and a cigar-case. She counted his change and recovered, without argument, another thirty kopeks. Charlie had to be careful with his purchases, all of them wrapped by now in coarse paper, or, said Dolly, they might break.

  To get a glass of tea, they had to go down to the restaurant, which was in the basement of one of the sandstone towers of the Rows. But the place was dismayingly full, the air thick as gas and thronged with customers’ elbows on the shove.

  ‘We won’t stay here, we’ll go and have tea with Selwyn Osipych.’

  ‘I don’t know where he lives, Dolly, and surely he’ll be working at the Press.’

  ‘No, he won’t. My father goes in every day, except some times not on Saturday. Selwyn doesn’t go in on Thursdays. They’re both in on Fridays because it’s payday. No one’s allowed by law to be paid on Saturdays or the eve of feast-days, to stop them getting drunk the next morning.’

  ‘That’s all very well, but it may not be very convenient to call if he’s not expecting us,’ Charlie pleaded.

  Selwyn lived in the east Miasnitskaya, just where it changed from a prosperous to a doubtful quarter. One street further and you were among the brothels, male and female, the Khitrovo market which was not much like the shops in the Rows, and the lodging houses where job-seekers, cholera suspects, military deserters and wanted criminals hid themselves by day. Dolly would not, in the ordinary way of things, have been allowed so far to the east of the Miasnitskaya. But she knew the house, and brazenly rang for the doorman.

  ‘See if Selwyn Osipych is at home.’

  ‘He has rooms in this house, but he is scarcely ever here.’ Selwyn, however, came down himself to greet them.

  ‘You should have told me –’

  ‘I know,’ said Charlie. ‘But I’m not at the helm this afternoon. We couldn’t get tea at the Rows.’ Behind the other two on the stairs, he persevered with his explanation. ‘Well, you’re both of you very welcome,’ Selwyn insisted. Dolly raced up first. Selwyn’s room was lit only with paraffin lamps and the red glow of the stove.

  ‘I don’t have electricity here,’ he said, ‘or tea, I mean tea as such. I make an infusion of the nine herbs of healing – buttercup, rattray, marguerite, dead nettle, wild parsley, St John’s Wort, clover, balsam and grass. I gather them in summertime, and dry them out on my return.’

  ‘Those herbs of healing are for sick cows,’ said Dolly.

  ‘Healing knows no barriers, Dolly.’

  ‘Dead nettles, ugh! Send the doorman out for some tea and a lemon.’

  The doorman, however, was at the ready to sell some of his own supply. Indeed, he’d got it out as soon as
he saw that Selwyn Osipych had visitors. Few wanted to drink an infusion of the nine herbs. Charlie felt that perhaps they were being difficult guests, and said that the grass and buttercup mixture sounded very interesting, and he’d been recommended something like that for asthma.

  ‘Each plant is under the patronage of a different saint,’ said Selwyn. ‘These things aren’t purely medicinal.’

  The room had a ceiling of carved wood, which repeated the pattern of the gables. It was painted white, and Selwyn had got a carpenter to put up row after row of bookshelves, which held not only his books but his shoe-making tools, his needle and thread and his jars of herbs. The same carpenter had made the plain wooden chairs and table, jointed without a single nail. Charlie looked round for something to praise, but was reduced to, ‘Nice place you’ve got here.’

  ‘I’m not sure that it’s nice,’ said Selwyn, quietly. ‘I looked for somewhere to live here because it’s on the edge of the Khitrovo market.’

  ‘Is that a good place to shop?’

  ‘Yes, if you want to find whatever’s been stolen from you during the last six months, or have yourself tattooed, or get an abortion.’

  Charlie frowned, glancing towards Dolly. ‘Say no more. I suppose the rent is pretty reasonable, then.’

  ‘Selwyn Osipych doesn’t mind so much about the rent,’ said Dolly. ‘He lives here because he likes to walk about at night among the unfortunate.’

  ‘It’s quite true that I don’t need much sleep,’ Selwyn said. ‘And there are times late at night when the souls of men and women open naturally, as is the case with certain plants.’

  ‘Shall I put on the kettle?’ Dolly asked. Selwyn had one of the very few kettles in Moscow. There was no word in Russian for it. He had brought it back several years ago from a visit to his home town, Tunbridge Wells.