Russka (139 page)

Several times they had visited the monastery. And in the second week of June, Arina took them across the river and along the little path to the old springs, which utterly delighted Karpenko. ‘How Slavic!’ he cried. And then: ‘How pagan.’

The evenings Dimitri especially enjoyed. For sometimes, while the others laughed and talked in the library, he would quietly sit at the piano and try out his own tentative compositions. It was on these occasions that he discovered a new and extraordinary feature of his uncle’s character. For sometimes, as he was playing, he would be aware of Vladimir softly entering the room and sitting in the shadows. But often as not, when he came to a pause, his uncle would come over, gaze thoughtfully at the keys, and then in
his rich baritone suggest: ‘Why don’t you try it this way?’ Or: ‘If you changed the rhythm here …’ And – this was the remarkable thing – Dimitri nearly always found that, unknown to himself, it had been what he wanted to express all along. ‘How do you know my mind like that?’ he would ask. ‘Am I composing, or are you?’ To which his uncle would reply, with a touch of sadness: ‘To some, Dimitri, it is given to create. To others, only to understand the creative act.’ And Dimitri could only marvel at this man, with whom he felt he was developing an even closer bond.

It was the day before he was due to leave that Karpenko drew Dimitri to one side and said: ‘Let’s go for a walk. Just the two of us.’

‘Where to?’

‘An enchanted place.’ He grinned. ‘The springs.’

Their walk was delightful. Karpenko was at his charming best, full of infectious laughter, and as they went along, Dimitri reflected how lucky he was to have such a friend. How handsome he was, he thought admiringly. Though fifteen, Karpenko had suffered few of the disadvantages of adolescence. He was nearly always in a sunny mood. The beginnings of his beard were so soft he scarcely needed to shave, his smooth skin was quite without blemish; he might have been conceived by a Renaissance sculptor like Donatello. Their slight difference in age precluded any rivalry: Karpenko knew more than Dimitri, but shared his knowledge freely and always with kindness, like a protective elder brother. Best of all, behind the façade of his jokes and brilliant manner there lay a deeply thoughtful nature that Dimitri loved and respected.

And it was in this last vein that, after they had rested on the mossy ground by the springs for a while, Karpenko suddenly turned to him rather seriously and remarked: ‘Tell me, Dimitri, have you ever heard the proposition they call the Extraterrestrials Argument?’

Dimitri shook his head.

‘It goes like this,’ Karpenko explained. ‘Imagine that beings arrived from another planet and saw how we live – all the injustice in our world. And they asked you: “What are you doing about it?” And you replied: “Not much.” What would they say, Dimitri? How could they understand such madness? “Surely,” they’d say,
“any rational being would put such a state of affairs right, as his first and most pressing duty.”’ He looked at his friend earnestly. ‘Don’t you agree?’

‘I do.’

‘So, what I wanted to say, before I leave, is – shouldn’t we commit ourselves to do something, to make a new and better world, you and I?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Good, I knew you’d agree.’ Slowly and solemnly now he reached into his pocket and drew out a pin. Then he pricked his finger and drew blood and handed the pin to Dimitri. ‘We’ll make a pact, then,’ he said. ‘Blood brothers.’

And young Dimitri flushed with pride. It was the fashion just then, especially among young men in revolutionary articles, to use the ancient custom of blood brotherhood. But to think that Karpenko was doing him such an honour! Dimitri took the pin and did the same. Then they pooled their blood.

Karpenko had only been gone four days when Mrs Suvorin, receiving a message that her sister in St Petersburg was ill, felt obliged to depart. Nadezhda and Dimitri remained, however; with Vladimir and Arina there, it hardly seemed that they could come to any harm. And so a pleasant week passed.

It was the custom for the stable boys to take the horses down to the river each day. If they were being watched, this was done in an orderly manner; but if not, they would mount them bareback and, with loud whoops, go careening down the slope. Little Ivan, whenever he could escape Arina’s watchful gaze, would slip off to join in.

If Nadezhda had not been watching, that warm July day, perhaps Dimitri would not have done it; but seeing the nine-year-old Ivan looking cheerfully down at him from a horse in the stableyard, he suddenly decided: If the little boy can do it, so can I. And a moment later he had clambered on to a horse himself, and was moving out towards the slope.

First a walk, then a run: the horses were excited. Hoofs pounding on the hard ground; wild cries; the ground both coming to meet him, yet falling away at the same time. Dimitri clung to the horse’s mane. There was dust everywhere, a smell of sweat. Suddenly he felt a branch from a sapling slap him in the face and
cut him. He laughed. Then he was losing his balance. How foolish. Next he was falling, headlong, as the flanks of the other horses rushed by. Then the ground, or was it the sky, hurled itself at him.

Dimitri heard his leg snap. In that strange, silent moment before the searing pain, he heard it quite distinctly. And he was still just conscious when Nadezhda came running down the slope to where he lay.

Dimitri did not realize, for some time, that things would never be the same.

They had put his bed downstairs, in the big, airy room where the piano was. He was not too bored. There were plenty of books. Arina frequently came in and Nadezhda would happily sit and chatter in her inimitable way. But he looked forward most to the time when his Uncle Vladimir would come and talk or read to him by the hour. The only thing he missed was that, for the present, he could not play the piano.

And then his mother came.

If there was any consequence of his accident that Dimitri would never have foreseen, it was that it would change his view of Rosa. What had she been to him until then? The loving mother who had helped him take his first steps in music; the woman who adored his father; the selfless, strangely sad figure who worried incessantly about her husband and her son. She did not look well when she arrived. Her large eyes were haggard. Her black hair was streaked with grey, and because it was both thick and long the effect was to make her seem unkempt. He loved her but felt sorry for her, because she could not be happy.

It was Vladimir who revealed another side of her. ‘You must rest, now you are here, Rosa,’ he urged. ‘And,’ he added firmly, ‘you must play. We cannot allow this young man to be without music.’ And to Dimitri’s great surprise, the very next day, she began to do so.

How strange it was. He had never heard her play before. He had known that once she had played. Often, when he was younger, she would help him over a few bars here and there, where he ran into difficulties, and from this he knew that she had considerable technique. But for some reason she would never sit down and play. Now, however, hesitantly at first, she began to do so: simple
pieces the first day or two. Then a Beethoven sonata or two. Then pieces by Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and other Russians. She would play for an hour, then two, her face sometimes frowning with amusement as she asked her fingers to perform tasks they had not done in years, sometimes smiling gently. And as he listened, Dimitri was more and more astonished. She is formidable, he thought. A major talent. He could hear it coming through in every phrase. By the fifth day, the transformation in Rosa was astonishing. It was as if she had shed her sad persona like an unwanted skin. She had drawn her hair back more tightly, so that it no longer seemed untidy. Fresh air and several nights sleep had relaxed her face and smoothed out the lines. Now she threw her head back in calm triumph as the Beethoven ‘Appassionata’ flowed like a wave from her fingers. And often Vladimir stood beside her.

‘I never knew you played like that,’ Dimitri remarked one day; and almost added: ‘Or that you were so beautiful.’

‘There are many things you do not know,’ she replied gaily, and strolled out, with a laugh, on to the verandah with Vladimir and Nadezhda.

And then, just as suddenly, it ended. It was a sunny afternoon. Rosa had been there ten days. The day before, Vladimir had brought her the scores of some studies by his favourite of all the Russians composing just then, the brilliant Scriabin. They were wonderful pieces, as delicate and measured as a Chopin prelude, as haunting as one of the Russian Symbolist poems of Alexander Blok. Rosa was playing them while Vladimir basked in an easy chair, a seraphic smile on his face. And unusually Dimitri had fallen asleep.

Rosa had stopped playing when he began to awaken, and Vladimir was standing beside her at the piano. They obviously imagined he was still asleep, and though they were speaking in low tones, he heard most of their words distinctly.

‘You cannot go on. I’ve been telling you for three years.’ His uncle’s baritone voice, gently persuasive. ‘I can’t bear to see it.’

‘There’s nothing to be done. But, Volodya …’ Dimitri had never heard anyone use this diminutive form of his uncle’s name before. ‘Volodya, I’m so afraid.’

‘You need sleep, my little dove. Stop tormenting yourself. At least stay with me here a while.’ Vladimir paused, apparently to
think. ‘I have to go to Berlin and Paris next spring. Come with me. We can go to one of the spas for a health cure. I think you know you will be safe with me.’

Dimitri stared, his eyes wide open. He saw his mother touch Vladimir’s large hand affectionately. ‘I know.’

Dimitri sat bolt upright, then winced with pain. He saw their two faces turn towards him: his uncle’s irritated, his mother’s distraught. Then Vladimir said, as calmly as though nothing had happened: ‘Ah, my friend. You have woken up. Let’s all have some tea.’ And Dimitri himself could not make out what it was he had just heard.

The next morning, Rosa announced that she must return to Moscow. ‘I’ve been away from your father for too long,’ she told him. ‘I worry about him so.’ And once again her face looked haggard, suggesting she had not slept the night before.

The days that followed might have been sad for Dimitri. Not only did his mother depart, but Nadezhda was summoned back to Moscow by Mrs Suvorin; and since the doctor said he must not be moved, he was left at Russka almost alone. It was Vladimir who now, quietly but firmly, took over his life.

Just two days after Rosa left, his uncle appeared with several books and scores and dumped them on the table beside his bed. ‘You play well, my friend, and you’ve made some pretty compositions in the evenings,’ he announced firmly. ‘Now that you’re confined to bed though, you should make the most of your seclusion. It’s time you began to understand what you’re doing. These are books of musical theory and composition. Study them.’

It was hard work at first, even boring. But each evening his uncle made him go through the exercises: harmonies, counterpoint, the complex business of musical discipline. Though only an amateur, Vladimir’s understanding was considerable and he was a stern taskmaster. ‘Now I know why your factories make a good profit,’ Dimitri once laughed. But the results, he had to confess, were excellent. In just six weeks, with nothing else in the world to do, the thirteen year old made astonishing progress. And he found something else, too: that as his technical understanding increased, he began to have a burning desire, an absolute compulsion, to use this new knowledge he was mastering, and to compose. So that in September, when the doctor finally agreed that he might travel
back to Moscow, he remarked to Vladimir: ‘Do you know, I think perhaps I’m really going to be a composer.’

To which his uncle, to the boy’s surprise, simply smiled and replied: ‘Of course you are.’

And it was because of this period of study that Dimitri Suvorin, long after he had become famous, always remarked: ‘It was a fall from a horse that made me.’

The fall from the horse had one other effect. Whether it was the carelessness of the stable boys who carried him back to the house, or the fact that the fracture was multiple, or the poor technique of the factory doctor who set his leg, Dimitri Suvorin’s right leg was twisted out of shape for the rest of his life and he walked with a stick.

As well as visiting whenever he could think of an excuse, Alexander Bobrov often walked past the outside of Vladimir Suvorin’s great house in the hope of catching sight of Nadezhda. Despite the embarrassing incident at Easter he had never, for a moment, given up his idea. ‘I shall marry her,’ he told his father bluntly.

Once already, that month, he had found an excuse for going in and had found Mrs Suvorin and her daughter there, and learned that Vladimir would not be back in Moscow until late that month.

This evening, however, it was already late. The curtains and blinds were all closed, and only habit had made him walk by the Suvorin house at all. A light mist had fallen; the street lamps were so many yellowish blurs; few people were about. He would probably not even have glanced at the house if he had not heard a light footfall in that direction, a sound which seemed to end by the front door.

He peered across the street. For a moment he could not see anyone; then, standing by the portico, he made out a muffled figure in a broad-brimmed felt hat. He paused to watch and to his surprise, a moment later, saw the front door open a little and the figure swiftly step inside. But it was just as the door was closing that he caught his breath. For as the figure took off his hat, Alexander saw, without a shadow of a doubt, the reddish hair of Yevgeny Popov.

What the devil does she want with me? It was a question Popov had asked himself many times. She had everything: a brilliant husband, a huge fortune – all that the bourgeois world had to offer. Of course, the upper bourgeoisie, having no useful purpose, sometimes got bored. In a celebrated case, one of the heirs of a great Russian merchant fortune had recently blown his brains out in his brother’s house – not for any reason, but purely on a whim because he happened to see a revolver on a table. ‘Ennui’, they called it. Bourgeois decadence, of course, was what it really was.