Russka (144 page)

Though their lives were more separate now, the two young men often went out together. Sometimes they would go to visit Vladimir Suvorin. The industrialist’s Art Nouveau house was complete now and it was an astonishing work of art. The main hall especially was breathtaking, with a floor of coloured marble and granite in a spiral design, lilac-coloured walls, stained glass windows that might have come from Tiffany, and a staircase of creamy white marble whose banisters, carved in elaborate, swirling shapes, looked as though they might melt at the touch of a hand. Vladimir was collecting a library of contemporary books which he had decided to place in the new house, and was then spending much of his spare time there. Karpenko, who was helping him obtain a fine collection of Futurist publications, seldom went there without bringing some new item which assured him a warm welcome.

And, of course, they went to see Nadezhda.

They were lively visits. Sometimes they would take some friends and then, more often than not, heated discussions would ensue in which Nadezhda, though she was only fifteen, was able to take some part. The subjects, in those heady days, were usually artistic rather than political; but they were invariably argued with extreme passion as only, perhaps, the Russians and the French can.

‘Have you read Ivan Sergeevich’s latest poem? What do you think?’

‘It’s terrible. Appalling. His attitude is sentimental but without real feeling. He is false.’

‘It’s outdated.’

‘He’s let everyone down. He’s completely discredited.’

‘He is dead. There’s nothing more to say about him.’

‘No. You are all wrong.’

The opinions would fly and Nadezhda would listen, gazing at Karpenko with sparkling eyes.

Sometimes Alexander Bobrov would appear on these occasions and then Karpenko if, say, the company had just condemned the poet Ivanov, would casually ask: ‘What do you think of Ivanov,
Alexander Nicolaevich?’ So that when, as he always did, Alexander made some non-committal reply like: ‘Not bad,’ the company would all look at each other or burst into howls of derision while Bobrov gazed at them glumly.

‘Poor old Alexander Nicolaevich,’ Karpenko would say behind his back. ‘He knows everything and understands nothing.’ And to his face he once remarked: ‘You keep studying, Alexander, but you’re always an artistic movement behind.’

Why did Karpenko hate Bobrov so much? ‘He represents every pig-headed Russian who ever lived,’ the Ukrainian claimed. But one day he confessed: ‘I can’t stand the interest he takes in Nadezhda. I try to expose him to her whenever I can.’

Yet what did he want with the girl himself? It was increasingly clear that she was in love with him: how much it was hard to know. And he did nothing to discourage her affection. ‘So you truly care for her?’ Dimitri once asked as they were returning home.

‘I feel protective, I think,’ Karpenko answered frankly. ‘I can’t bear to think of her being wasted on a booby like Bobrov.’

‘But what about you yourself?’

Karpenko gave a short laugh. ‘Don’t be silly. I’m a poor Ukrainian.’

‘Uncle Vladimir likes you.’

‘His wife doesn’t.’

Dimitri had occasionally noticed that, while she never said anything, Karpenko’s charming manner, which usually delighted older women, seemed to meet with a certain hauteur from Mrs Suvorin. ‘I don’t think she means anything,’ he said. And after a short pause: ‘You’re not just letting her love you to spoil things for Bobrov, are you?’

To which, to his great surprise, Karpenko suddenly let out a little moan. ‘You don’t understand anything, do you? She’s like no other girl in the world.’

‘So you do love her?’

‘Yes, damn you, I love her.’

‘Then there’s hope,’ Dimitri said cheerfully.

But Karpenko only shook his head with a despondency Dimitri had never seen before. ‘No,’ he declared quietly, ‘there isn’t any hope for me.’

It was on a December evening in 1913 that the bad feeling that
had long been simmering between Nadezhda Suvorin and her mother suddenly erupted.

The spark which lit the flame was the simple fact that Mrs Suvorin had warned her to be careful of Karpenko.

What was wrong with him? the girl demanded to know. Was he too poor? Did her mother have social ambitions? But Mrs Suvorin denied these charges. ‘Frankly, it’s his character. And to tell you the truth, I think he’s playing with you. He’s not serious. So don’t lose your heart.’ That was all she would say.

And Nadezhda decided she hated her.

She was in love with Karpenko. How could she not be? Was there anyone more brilliant, more handsome? She had admired him as a child, but now, in the flush of her adolescence, she was suffering all the yearnings of first love. She might have forgiven her mother’s attack, however, had it not been for one fact.

A year ago she had discovered about Popov.

It had been late one night that she had happened to wake and, wandering out along the passage, heard a faint sound in the hall. To her surprise she had seen her mother glide across the hall to the door to let a stranger in; and crouching by the balcony, just as she used to do as a child, she had seen them mounting the stairs together. Her mother and the red-head, Popov.

For a while she found it hard to believe. Her mother and the Socialist? And apart from her disgust she had thought: How could she do such a thing to poor Papa? Yet he tolerates her. He is a saint. And ever since, though she said nothing, she thought of her mother as a secret enemy.

And it was unfortunate, therefore, that on the very evening of Mrs Suvorin’s remark about Karpenko, Popov should have chosen to come again.

Had Nadezhda known Popov’s mission that night, however, she would have been still more astonished. Even more, perhaps, than was Mrs Suvorin when she heard it.

‘Would you like,’ he asked simply, ‘to run away?’

How strange. When he was younger the idea would have been unthinkable, but now he was wondering whether to give up.

A few years ago, he had hoped to extract money from the Suvorins for the Bolshevik cause. Knowing all he did, he supposed he might have. Yet he had not.

God knew, the party needed funds. Not long ago a new Bolshevik newspaper had been started with articles by a strange young fellow from Georgia whose writing reminded one of a priest intoning the liturgy. ‘Stalin’ he had called himself, in the revolutionary manner – man of steel. All that year Popov had tried to find funds for
Pravda
, but he had never asked Mrs Suvorin.

She had become a being apart. He supposed he loved her. And now he was thinking, instead, of asking her to finance their personal flight.

For in 1913, Popov was weary. There was no hope of revolution. Lenin’s attempt to reunite the Socialist left had met with little success. There had been more arrests. Even young Stalin had been exiled to Siberia. Truly, it seemed to him, he had done all that reasonably could be done.

‘We could go abroad,’ he suggested.

And, to her own astonishment, Mrs Suvorin, for a long moment, considered it.

He was an extraordinary man. She had learned much from him. He had caused her to think long and hard about her life; and he had even altered her political outlook. ‘I do think we must have democracy,’ she had finally confessed. ‘I just can’t see anything else that’s fair. I still want, personally, to keep the Tsar; but we need a Constituent Assembly.’ It had become a point of secret passion with her.

Yet he also troubled her. Talking to him about the revolution it was as if, sometimes, he had grown a protective covering – a carapace – that shut out all human feelings that might interfere with the business in hand. At such times she would think: He would kill and never care.

And now the revolutionary had surrendered. He was smiling almost sheepishly. And she wanted to take him in her arms.

The door burst open quite suddenly, as Nadezhda stepped into the room. She was wearing a long dressing gown and her hair was loose down her back. She was shaking, yet also smiling.

‘Ah, yes,’ she said calmly. ‘My mother worries about my friends. Perhaps she would prefer it if they were Bolsheviks.’

Popov gazed at her, but said nothing.

‘Would you, Mama?’ she insolently asked. Then with sudden fury: ‘Just so you know I know how you treat poor Papa.’ And
turning to Popov: ‘You ought to be locked up. Perhaps you will be.’

‘Nadezhda, go to your room,’ Mrs Suvorin said promptly. But to Popov she had to murmur: ‘You had better leave.’ And to his look of enquiry she could only shake her head sadly. ‘Impossible.’

Both mother and daughter knew, from then on, that they would never mention the incident again.

Slowly and solemnly, through the dusty summer heat, the procession wound through the streets. Priests in their jewelled robes, and wearing heavy mitres, led the way. Some carried icons, others huge banners. A choir was chanting. And as they passed, like waves unfurling themselves along a shore, a sea of hands rose and made the sign of the cross, while heads and backs bowed low. For this was Holy Russia still; and Russia was at war.

Alexander Bobrov watched with tears of emotion in his eyes. What a summer it had been. There had been a drought, and a total eclipse of the sun. Every peasant in every village had therefore known that some disaster was probably at hand. But now that it had come, here in the streets of Moscow, it was as if some wonderful religious transformation had taken place. Suddenly all differences were forgotten, all Russians became brothers, united in defence of the fatherland.

Behind the icons, someone was carrying a huge portrait of the Tsar. It might have seemed strange, had anyone paused to consider it, that this man with scarcely a drop of Russian blood in his veins, and who resembled his cousin King George V of England as much as anyone, should be the central figure in this almost Asiatic pageantry. His serious, rather unimaginative face with its short brown beard gazed out, not like some icon, nor like the grim rulers of Muscovite times, but in his own persona – a puzzled, well-meaning, and rather reluctant German prince, trapped by destiny in an alien eastern empire. But he was the Tsar, the little father of all the Russians; and now as his portrait passed, the people bowed.

Alexander bowed too. He was in uniform now. And tomorrow he would leave to fight.

How had it begun, this gigantic mobilization that was about to shake the world?

The events down in the Balkans which had sparked the conflict off were simple enough. In 1908, when Austria backed by Germany had annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, she had signalled her intentions to expand, but it had seemed the threat could be contained. The summer of 1914 ended that hope. When Bosnian terrorists assassinated the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo, Austria had insisted it was the doing of next-door Serbia and demanded an apology with humiliating terms. Serbia had at once complied. And Austria had then refused to accept it and prepared to move on her. ‘There’s no question now: Austria and Germany mean to dominate all the Balkan states. That means they’ll control Constantinople and the Black Sea,’ he had declared to his father. But apart from such an obvious strategic consideration, there was another which weighed with Alexander just as much.

‘The Serbs are fellow Slavs, and fellow Orthodox,’ he declared. ‘Holy Russia must be their protector. We must go to their aid.’ It was exactly what Russia had done.

Might it not have remained a regional conflict, though? God knows, there had been intermittent wars down in the Balkans for centuries. For a short time, with England’s Lord Grey engaging in frantic diplomacy, it seemed that it might. But it was not to be: once put in motion, the juggernaut of war rolled on. Russian troops were sent to aid Serbia; Germany declared war on Russia; then France and Britain followed. By August, the civilized world was beginning a general conflict.

At least, thank God, it would be a short war. Everyone was agreed about that. That very morning, Alexander had received a thoughtful letter from his father, still a member of the Duma, in St Petersburg.

The whole point, my dear boy, is this: Germany has taken a huge gamble, that she can avoid a war on two fronts, against France in the west and Russia in the east at the same time.

Her vaunted Schlieffen Plan is that she can race through Belgium into northern France, encircle Paris and win outright
on the western front – in under three months – before Russia has time to mobilize. Then she will turn upon us.

I can tell you, by the way, that certain people with good intelligence on this matter inform me that the Germans have quite detailed plans for us then. The empire is to be broken up into regions – the Baltic provinces, the Ukraine, and so on, leaving us only ancient Muscovy. Think of it – our mighty empire broken up!

But it won’t happen because the Germans have made a blunder. Russia can mobilize much faster than they plan for. And if we attack fast, with our vast resources of manpower, Germany will be faced with the very war on two fronts that she cannot sustain. She’ll have to capitulate.

The general opinion here – both in our government circles and in the embassies – is that the war will be over by Christmas.

Alexander had gone to volunteer at once. As the only son of his family, he was technically exempt, but he was longing to take part. Given his social status, of course, he would be an officer and he was off the next day to begin training. ‘But by the time we’ve got through the existing reserve,’ he was told, ‘it will all be over. So you needn’t expect to fight.’

He was wearing a uniform already. He was proud of that. It added to his mood of exaltation.

And only one thought troubled him. Soon he must go to bid farewell to Nadezhda. And after what had happened, would she even speak to him?

How could he have been so foolish? It had been two days before at the Suvorin house. He had gone there to tell Nadezhda he was going into the army. He had been feeling rather proud of himself: there was, even nowadays, something glamorous about a fellow in an officer’s uniform.

And then he had found Karpenko there.