Russka (117 page)

‘These things take time.’ He paused and looked seriously at the young man. ‘Do you really believe that everything in Russia is rotten?’

‘Of course. Don’t you?’

And there, of course, was the problem. As Misha Bobrov gazed at Popov, he could not honestly deny the charge. Russia was still pitifully backward. The bureaucracy was famous for its corruption. Even the elected
zemstvo
assemblies, of which he was so proud, had no influence at all on the central government of the empire, which was the same autocracy as in the days of Peter the Great or even Ivan the Terrible. Yes, of course, his beloved Russia was rotten. But wouldn’t it improve? Weren’t enlightened, liberal-minded men like him making a difference? Or was this rude and frankly unpleasant young man right?

Only now, as he silently pondered this question, did Anna Bobrov suddenly speak up. She had listened to their exchange. Of the philosophical content she had understood not a word. But one statement she had clearly grasped. ‘You say that the state of Russia is rotten, Mr Popov,’ she declared, ‘and you are absolutely right. It’s a disgrace.’

Nicolai turned to his mother in surprise. ‘And what should be done about it, Mother?’ he enquired.

‘Done?’ She looked astonished. ‘How should I know?’ And then, speaking unconsciously for the vast majority of the Russian people, and in a tone of voice which proclaimed that the statement was obvious: ‘That’s for the government to decide!’

‘Madame,’ Popov smiled ironically, ‘you have just solved the entire problem.’

And it was clear to them all that – God bless her – she certainly thought she had.

The discussion ended after that. But, as well as feeling hurt by Popov’s words, Misha Bobrov was left with the sad and uncomfortable feeling that a gulf had opened between him and his son: that there was something about Nicolai and his friend that he did not understand.

In the days that followed, the weather swiftly grew warmer. In the Bobrov house, everything seemed very quiet. The two young men went out, each day, to work with the villagers and returned home tired. Everyone avoided further discussions, and when Misha occasionally asked if their researches were progressing well, they assured him they were. ‘Young men do get strange enthusiasms sometimes,’ he remarked doubtfully to his wife. ‘I suppose there’s no harm in it.’

‘Being out of doors is very good for Nicolai,’ she replied. And Bobrov had to agree that the boy looked uncommonly fit. Young Popov, he thought, sometimes looked rather bored.

For his part, Nicolai was delighted with everything. He enjoyed the physical work and the company of the peasants who, though he could never really be one of them, seemed to get used to him; indeed he was delighted when, after a week, Timofei Romanov actually forgot for a moment who he was and cursed him as thoroughly as his own son for digging a trench in the wrong place.

Above all, though he had moved amongst the peasants since his childhood, it was only now, he realized, that he really understood what their lives were like – the crippling payments, the shortage of land, young Boris’s need to get out from the nagging claustrophobia of his parents’ house, and the resulting, miserable prospect of the Suvorin factory for Natalia. And it’s our fault, the gentry’s, that they have to live like this, he thought. It’s true that we are parasites upon these people, who have nothing to gain from the way that Russia is run.

Yet as he observed the village, he noticed other things too. He had learned a little from books about agricultural methods in other countries; and so he now understood that the practices followed at Russka, as in most of Russia, were medieval. The ploughs were wooden, since iron ones were too expensive. The ploughlands, moreover, were still arranged in strips, with wasteful ridges of
unploughed earth between them. And since these strips were regularly redistributed, no peasant ever had a personal holding he could call his own, which he might have cultivated more intensively. When Nicolai once suggested this solution to Timofei, however, the peasant only looked doubtful and remarked: ‘But then some people might get better land than others.’ Such was the immutable way of the commune. ‘Anyway,’ Timofei confessed to him, ‘our greatest problem now is that every year, the crops we sow yield less and less. Our Russian soil is exhausted and there’s nothing you can do.’

It was this statement that, for the first time, led Nicolai to question his father in detail about the village. Was Timofei correct? To his son’s surprise, the landowner’s answer was remarkably informed.

‘If you want to understand the Russian village,’ he explained, ‘you have to understand that many of its problems are of its own making. This soil exhaustion is a perfect example. Six months ago,’ he went on, ‘the provincial
zemstvo
hired a German expert to study the question. The basic problem is this: our peasants use a three-field system of crop rotation – spring oats or barley, together with potatoes; winter rye; and the third field fallow. And, quite simply, it isn’t efficient. In other countries they’re using four-, five-, six-year rotations and growing clover and ley grass to replenish the land. But in our backward Russia we don’t.

‘However, the greatest problem here,’ he continued, ‘is Savva Suvorin and his linen factory.’

‘Why so?’

Misha sighed. ‘Because he encourages the peasants to grow flax for making linen. It’s a valuable cash crop. The trouble is, they substitute it for oats or barley in the spring sowing and the flax takes more goodness from the land than anything else. So – yes – the land here is getting exhausted, and flax is the main culprit. It’s the same all over the region.

‘But do you know the two greatest ironies of all? First, our people do grow ley grass, which would replenish the land: but they grow it in a separate field instead of putting it into the rotation. So it does no good. Second, in order to compensate for the lower yields, they take more pasture land and put it under the plough; and by doing that they reduce the livestock they can graze – the
livestock whose manure is the only other thing they have to put goodness back into the exhausted land!’

‘But that’s a cycle of insanity,’ Nicolai said.

‘It is.’

‘And what’s to be done about it?’

‘Nothing. The peasant communes won’t change their customs, you know.’

‘And the
zemstvo
authorities?’

‘Ah,’ his father sighed. ‘I’m afraid they’ve no plans. It’s all too difficult, you see.’

And Nicolai could only shake his head.

Yet there were cheerful times too. Nicolai and Popov would often sit in the
izba
with the Romanov family, and Anna would relate the very folk tales she had told Nicolai’s father as a child. Popov usually sat quietly to one side – he had not become close with the family – but Nicolai would happily sit beside her and encourage her to tell him not only tales, but stories of her own life too. She several times told him of the awful famine of ’39. And she would happily relate her life as a serf girl in the Bobrov household.

‘I see you have that same gesture,’ she once remarked to Nicolai, imitating the Bobrovs’ gentle, caressing motion of the arm, ‘that your father has. Ilya Alexandrovich had it too. And your great-grandfather, Alexander Prokofievich.’

‘Really?’ Nicolai was not even aware of this family characteristic. ‘And Uncle Sergei – did he have it?’

But for some reason this set the old woman off into a high cackle of laughter. ‘Oh, no. He had something else, Master Sergei did!’ And she went on laughing for several minutes, though nobody there knew why.

It was after one of these pleasant conversations however, when Popov had gone out, that Arina one evening drew him aside. She seemed unusually agitated. ‘Master Nicolai, forgive a poor old woman, but I beg you, don’t you get too mixed up with that one.’ She gestured to the door.

‘You mean Popov? He’s a capital fellow.’

But she shook her head. ‘Stay away from him, Master Nicolai.’

‘What’s he done?’

‘That’s what I don’t know, see? But please, Nicolai Mikhailovich. He’s …’ she looked confused. ‘There’s something wrong with him.’

Nicolai kissed her and laughed. ‘Dear Arina.’ He supposed Popov must seem strange to her.

Many subjects went through Popov’s mind as he had made his way, one afternoon, along the lane that led through the woods to the little town of Russka. One of them concerned a hiding place.

What he needed, he thought, was a small but private spot. A shed would do. But it would have to be somewhere that could be locked up and where nobody ever came. There was nowhere like that at Bobrovo.

The article in question, carefully dismantled, was packed in pieces in a locked box in his room, which he had told his host contained only books. Soon, he judged, it would be time to use it.

Well, no doubt something would turn up.

Generally speaking he was pleased with his progress. Though he had some doubts about young Bobrov’s character, it seemed to him that Nicolai would serve his purpose here quite well. He had also kept his eyes open for others who might be useful. Young Boris Romanov, for instance, had engaged his attention: a fierce spirit, he thought. Popov had spoken to him several times in a general way, but given the young man no inkling, as yet, of what was afoot. One had to be careful.

There was only one thing, really, which had taken him by surprise when he arrived at Russka: and this was the influence of the nearby factories and the Suvorins who owned them. Clearly they were important; he needed to learn more about them; and so, leaving Nicolai at work in the fields that day, he had come past the monastery, over the bridge and into the busy little town.

For some time he wandered about looking at the grim brick cotton mill, the warehouses and the sullen rows of workers’ cottages. And he was starting to become rather bored, when he suddenly caught sight of a lone figure, walking dejectedly along by some stalls in the market place, who instantly engaged his attention.

He moved towards him.

It seemed to Natalia that she was making progress.

Grigory had let her kiss him.

The kiss had not been very satisfactory, it had been salty; and
she had felt him grow tense, uncertain what to do with his lips; she realized he had never kissed before. But it was a start.

Though Natalia had not been sent to the factory yet, she was sure it was imminent. Boris had not changed his mind, and, since there was nothing to be done about it, the family would all help him to build a new
izba
at the far end of the village. Once he left, her own fate seemed inevitable. And though she had not yet told her father anything about her young man or her plans for him, she continued discreetly to meet Grigory every few days and to work on him patiently.

She often talked to him about life in the village. She also told him about the two strange young men.

Grigory enjoyed hearing about Nicolai and Popov. He was not able to understand why anyone would go and work in the fields if they did not have to, and he tried to imagine what they were like.

So it was with great curiosity, early one evening, that he turned when Natalia suddenly pointed across the market place in Russka and declared: ‘Well, I never! There he is – the ginger-headed one. I wonder what he’s doing.’

And so indeed did Grigory. For the curious stranger was deep in conversation with young Peter Suvorin.

A month had passed; the ground was dry; spring was giving way to early summer and at Bobrovo all was quiet.

Why then should Misha Bobrov be so worried?

It was Nicolai. At first he had looked so well: he had come home each day from the fields, flushed from his work, but relaxed; he had even caught a little sunburn from the spring sun. Misha, though he was still consumed with curiosity about the two young men, had left them alone and carefully avoided any further discussions. So the days had passed: everything had been peaceful, even pleasant. And then something had begun to go wrong.

It was around the end of the second week that Misha had noticed the difference in his son. At first it was a slight pallor; then his face had started to look pinched and worried, and when they spoke together, there seemed to be a barrier between them. Nicolai had sometimes been defiant in the past, but he had never been cold and distant before. Yet now he seemed determined to become a stranger to both his parents. In the last few days he had
become increasingly irritable too. What had got into the boy? Was it something about the village, perhaps? Misha asked Timofei Romanov if he had noticed anything; but the peasant told him that Nicolai seemed cheerful enough at his work.

It must be that friend of his, Misha concluded. I wish I knew more about him. Indeed, he confessed to himself, I wish I knew anything about what these two young men were thinking.

His chance came, rather unexpectedly, on a Sunday. It was Anna Bobrov who was the cause.

Misha only went to church on the great feast days, but his wife went every Sunday, sometimes twice; and it had always been the custom for Nicolai, when he was at home, to accompany her. She had been disappointed, therefore, when he had made excuses all this month. But the worst had come that morning when she had asked – ‘Are you leaving me to go to Russka alone again?’ – and Nicolai had turned on her irritably and, in front of Popov, told her in a cruel tone: ‘I’ve better things to do than waste my time on you and your God.’ She had been so shocked and hurt that Misha had put on his coat and gone with her himself; and that afternoon he had resolved: Something must be said.

It was late afternoon when he came upon the two young men. They were sitting in the salon. Outside, the light was starting to fade and Nicolai, who had been making a drawing of his friend by the window, was just closing his sketch book when Misha quietly entered the room, lit the lamp on the round table, and picking up a journal, sat down comfortably in an armchair. He nodded to Popov, who was staring thoughtfully out at the park, and then remarked pleasantly to Nicolai: ‘Forgive my saying so, but your mother was rather hurt by you this morning.’

The rebuke was merited, yet instead of acknowledging his fault, Nicolai only turned and stared at him. Then, quite suddenly, he gave a high-pitched laugh. ‘You mean because I didn’t go to church?’ He shook his head. ‘The church is just a tavern where people get drunk on religion. I can get drunk on vodka if I need to.’