Russka (2 page)

The steppe was quiet that night. So was the forest.

Softly the wind moved over the land.

In the hut – one of six that nestled together in the little hamlet by the river – the sleeping mother lay with her child.

She had no sense of danger.

High in the starlit summer sky, pale clouds passed from time to time, drifting in a leisurely procession, glowing softly in the reflection of a crescent moon that rode to the south.

Like horsemen they came from the east with their billowing white canopies, from who knew what endless steppes – sweeping majestically over the little collection of huts by the river’s edge and continuing their journey behind the hamlet over the dark forest which, very likely, was also without end.

The hamlet lay on the south-eastern bank of the stream. There, the woods of oak and lime, pine and birch, grew thinner, gradually giving way to glades and the broad stretches of open grassland that were the edges of the mighty steppe. Across the small river, on the north-west bank, the forest was thick, dark and unbroken.

The three families who inhabited the place had arrived five summers before, and finding there an ancient, deserted earthwork enclosure overgrown with scrub, had cleared it, put up a wooden palisade on the low earth wall, and built half a dozen huts inside. Nearby, two large fields cut untidy swathes into the trees. Further into the woods, a messy patchwork of smaller clearings appeared.

A few hundred yards downstream, the land on both sides became marshy, and remained so for a couple of miles.

Softly the wind moved over the land. It caressed the tops of the trees, so that the light undersides of the leaves shimmered pale in the starlight. The waters of the winding river and the marsh glimmered in the woods.

There were few sounds except for the gentle stirring of the leaves. Here and there, the sound of small animals, or of the deer
quietly walking, might be heard. At a certain point near the marsh, against the monotonous background of the frogs’ croaking, an attentive ear might have picked up the crackling sounds of a bear making its way along the wood’s edge. But by the hamlet, the only sound was that of the leaves, and the intermittent rustle as the breeze stroked the long field of barley, sending a ripple like a momentary shiver down its length.

The wind moved, yet did not move. For sometimes the field stood still, or swayed in another direction, as though the wind from the east had paused, lazily, before brushing the ripened barley once again.

It was the year AD 180 – and yet it was not. That is to say, although future times would give to this year such a number, as yet the Christian calendar was not in use. Far south, in the Roman province of Judea where Jesus of Nazareth had lived, learned Jewish rabbis had calculated that it was the year 3940 AM. It was also the one hundred and tenth year since the destruction of Jerusalem. Elsewhere in the mighty Roman Empire, it was the twentieth and last year of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, also the first year of the single rule of Commodus. In Persia it was the year 491 of the Seleucid era.

What year was it here then, in the tiny hamlet at the forest’s edge? So far as history is aware, it was not any year. It was five years since the last village elder died. The huge systems of numbering familiar to the civilized world, and kept in written texts, were unknown here. Even if they had been known, they would have been meaningless.

For this was the land that would one day be known as Russia.

Softly the wind moved over the land.

She lay with her little boy. The worrying thoughts of the day before had passed from her mind in sleep like the pale clouds receding over the forest behind the river. She slept at peace.

There were twelve people sleeping in the hut. Five of them, including Lebed and her child, lay on the broad shelf that ran across the room over the big stove. On this warm summer night the stove was unlit. The air was thick with the sweet, earthy smell – not unpleasant – of folk who have worked all day in the field harvesting. To this was added the fresh scent of grasses carried in by the breeze through the square, open frame of the window.

She lay at one end of the wooden shelf – a lowly position – because she was the most junior of her husband’s wives. She was twenty-seven, no longer young. Her face was broad and her body had already developed a stocky roundness at the hips. Her thick fair hair had slid over the edge of the shelf.

Beside her, in the curve of her plump arm, lay a little boy of five. She had had other children before him, but they had died, and so he was all she possessed.

She had been fifteen when she married and she had always known that her husband had only taken her because she was strong: she was there to work. But she had few complaints. He was not unkind. Still a tall, good-looking man at forty, his weather-beaten face had something soft, even wistful, about it and usually when he saw her, his light blue eyes would gleam with a gentle, mocking amusement as he called: ‘Here comes my Mordvinian.’

With him, it was a term of affection. With the others, however, it was not.

For Lebed was not a full member of the tribe. To her husband’s clan she was a half-breed: after all, what was her mother – one of the forest folk? A Mordvinian?

Since time began, the forests and marshes that stretched northwards for hundreds of miles had contained the scattered tribes of Finno-Ugrian peoples to which her mother’s tribe belonged. Broad-faced, Mongoloid folk with yellowish skins, they hunted and fished in those huge, deserted regions, living a primitive existence in their little huts and pit dwellings. At the solstice, they would stand in a circle and sing, in a high, harsh, nasal chant to the pale sun who, as one travelled further north, would scarcely show his face in winter and in summer would deny the earth her nightly rest as he bathed the land in a long, white twilight and made the horizon tremble with pale flashes.

In recent times, her husband’s people – fair-skinned folk, speaking a Slavic tongue – had been sending out little colonies east and north into this forest. Some of these, like her husband’s clan, cultivated fields and kept cattle. When these Slavs and the primitive Finns encountered each other in those vast regions, there was seldom any conflict. There was land and hunting enough for ten thousand times their numbers. Marriages like her mother’s took place. But the settlers of the hamlet looked down upon the forest folk all the same.

It was her husband’s joke to call her by the name not of her mother’s little tribe, but of the great tribe of Mordvinians that lay far to the north. It made her sound more foreign, even though she was half pure Slav. It was gently mocking. And, she reflected sadly, it reminded the rest of the clan to look down on her.

Especially her mother-in-law. For nearly thirteen years her large, powerful figure had loomed over Lebed’s life like a threatening cloudbank in the sky. Sometimes, for days at a time, the other woman’s leonine face with its big, heavy cheeks would seem to be serene, even friendly. But then some small mistake on Lebed’s part – a spindle dropped, sour cream spilt – would call forth a thundering rage. The other women of the house would be silent, either looking down at the floor or watching her furtively. And she knew that they were glad – both that they had escaped and that the anger was falling on her, the outsider. After the burst of rage, her mother-in-law would abruptly tell her to get back to work and then turn to the rest of them with a shrug.

‘What can you expect from a poor Mordvinian?’

It was bearable, but her own family made it harder. Both her parents had died the previous year, leaving only her and a younger brother. And it was he who had made her weep the day before.

He meant no harm. But he was always in trouble with the village elder. His broad, slightly foolish face was always smiling, even when he was drunk, and he seemed to have only two desires in life – to hunt and to please his little nephew.

‘Kiy doesn’t need you,’ she would tell him, ‘and nor do I if you won’t obey the elder.’ But it was useless. He hated the work in the fields, would disappear for days into the forest without permission – while the villagers muttered about him angrily – and then she would suddenly see his strong, square form come striding back, with a dozen pelts hanging from his belt and his habitual, foolish smile on his face. The elder would curse him and her mother-in-law would look at her with renewed disgust, as if it were her fault.

And now, that day, with complete foolishness he had promised the little boy: ‘Next time I go hunting, Little Kiy, I’m going to bring you a baby bear. You can keep him tied up outside.’

‘But, Mal,’ she reminded him, ‘the elder said you’ll have to leave the village if you disobey him again.’ As a punishment because of his absences, the elder had already forbidden him to go hunting any more that year.

But her brother only bowed his big, fair head, still smiling foolishly, and said nothing.

‘Why don’t you take a wife and stop this nonsense?’ she shouted at him, wretched.

‘As you command, Sister Lebed.’ He bowed his head, grinning.

He said it to exasperate her for almost no one in the village was addressed by their full name. The little boy, whose name was Kiy, was usually called by a diminutive, Little Kiy. Her own full name, Lebed, was seldom used. Since childhood she had always been known by an affectionate nickname – Little Swan. Mal had a nickname too, which people used when they were angry with him – they called him Lazy-bones.

‘Lazy-bones!’ she countered angrily. ‘Settle down and work.’

But Mal would never do that. He preferred to live alone in a small hut with two old men who were no use for anything, nowadays, but a little hunting. The three of them would drink mead together, hunt and fish, while the women treated them with a mocking tolerance.

She had gone to him twice more that day in the fields, the second time in tears, trying to make him forget his stupid plan. Though he brought her nothing but trouble, she loved him. It would be lonely if he were sent away.

And each time, though there were tears in her eyes, he had only grinned at her, the sweat trickling down his big, broad face, as he carted the bales of hay to the stack.

Which was why, at the end of the day, it had taken her a long time to get to sleep; and when at last she had slipped into unconsciousness, her mind had still been full of foreboding.

But now, night had washed her mind to a state of blankness. Under her coarse, plain shirt, her breasts rose and fell regularly. Softly the breeze from the window stirred her thick hair and the fair hair of the child.

Nor did anyone awake when the dog by the doorway sat up expectantly as two shadows glided past. No one, that is, except the little boy, whose eyes briefly opened. A sleepy smile appeared on his face, and had his mother been awake she would have felt the suppressed tremble of excitement go through his body. He closed his eyes again, still smiling.

Soon, he knew.

Softly the wind moved over the land.

But where were the hamlet, the river and the forest?

In order to explain the significance of the magical place, a few words are needed.

Geography, by convention, has long divided the huge landmass of Eurasia into two parts: Europe in the west, Asia in the east. But this convention is misleading. There is, in fact, a more natural division, which is between north and south.

For stretching across this vast landmass, from Northern Europe, across Russia and the frozen wastes of Siberia, all the way to the high grounds above China, that reach north almost to touch Alaska, is the world’s greatest plain.

The mighty north Eurasian plain is over seven thousand miles from west to east. From the Atlantic to the Pacific it stretches, a series of huge, interlocking plates, covering a sixth of Earth’s land surface – the size of the USA and Canada combined. To the north, most of the plain is bounded by the icy Arctic Ocean. From there it descends, sometimes two thousand miles, across huge belts of tundra, forest, steppe and desert to its southern border. And it is this border that may truly be said to divide Eurasia into two.

For if northern Eurasia is a vast plain, southern Eurasia consists of the huge regions, from west to east, of the Middle East, ancient Persia, Afghanistan, India, Mongolia and China. And dividing north from south, like a wall, is the mighty crescent of mountain ranges containing some of the highest summits in the world – from the Alps in western Europe to the mighty Asian Himalayas and beyond.

It is hard to see, therefore, why Eurasia was ever divided by geographers into west and east.

About a third of the way across the great plain, roughly above today’s Afghanistan, there is a long, low, north-south line of ancient hills that reach from the tundra to the desert’s edge. These are the Urals. Modern convention has called these ‘mountains’ and used them to designate the border between Europe and Asia.

Yet in truth, with the exception of a few quite modest peaks, these gently rounded hills often rise only hundreds of feet above
the plain. By no stretch of the imagination do they form a continental divide: they form scarcely a ripple on that ocean of land. There is no border between Europe and Asia – the plain is one.