Russka (70 page)

Except at Dirty Place.

Not that anyone knew. The abbot, if he guessed, said nothing. Nikita Bobrov who owned the village had no idea. The local peasants knew, but then, who ever talked to them?

For the little community at Dirty Place was led by Silas the priest.

He was a quiet fellow. His grandfather had been the son of the priest Stephen, who had been killed by Ivan the Terrible; but since that time, Silas was the first of the family to take up the priesthood again. His own father had been a modest trader in Russka.

His thoughtful face and serious blue eyes resembled his ancestor’s but he was only of medium height, and an accident as a boy had given him a slight limp. Though he lacked any great
physical presence, there was a quiet, rather passionate determination about him that gave Silas authority amongst the peasants.

It was when he went to Nizhni Novgorod to study for the priesthood that he had come in contact with the priests who were to protest against the reforms. This was not surprising. Besides being a great trading centre, the old city at the meeting of the Volga and the Oka was still something of a frontier. Once past Nizhni Novgorod, one was in the vast wild emptiness of the north-eastern forests. Here were all manner of remote communities and hermits; here were the true, simple Russians, who made their houses in the forest with their axes and who struck every blow for the Lord.

Near Nizhni Novgorod, also, had come the family of the great opponent of reform, the priest Avvakum; and it happened that, while serving as a deacon there, Silas had met a kinswoman of the fiery priest and married her.

He was not a learned man. At Nizhni Novgorod they had taught him to read, but his objections to the reforms were not sophisticated, like those of the abbot. Indeed, apart from his wife’s connection with Avvakum, he would scarcely have been able to say who was right about many of the issues in the dispute between the priest and the Patriarch.

Silas’s feeling of disquiet had deeper roots. It was instinctive. And it concerned the very core of the Russian Church, indeed of Russia itself. It was a feeling that Russia’s heart had been invaded, her soul perverted: and that this was the work of outsiders. ‘Why does the Tsar need so many foreigners?’ he would ask. ‘Why are our troops led by Germans? Why does the Tsar import craftsmen and let the boyars keep musical instruments in their houses?’

And if at first he had been confused by the technical details of the Church dispute, by the time of the great Church council of 1666, Silas no longer had any doubt about what was wrong. ‘First they let Poles and Greeks tamper with the liturgy; now the foreigners have taken over,’ he exclaimed to his wife. And then, dropping his voice at the horror of the thing: ‘I’ve even heard that some of the new translations were done by Jews.’

And to his little congregation at Dirty Place the priest would declare: ‘To us Russians, to simple Christians, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, only one thing is of importance. It is not worldly knowledge: for where shall worldly knowledge and foreign
cunning lead us if not into greater sin? It is not subtle argument: for what can we humble people know, compared to the wisdom of God? It is love; it is devotion. It is the blessed quality, the sacred and burning ardour in each one of us to serve God faithfully, reverently, in the way shown us by Our Lord and by the Saints. That is all that matters.’ And here he used a word that was, and would long remain, close to the heart of every Russian: ‘We must live our lives with
blagochestie
.’

Blagochestie
: it meant piety, ardent devotion, loyalty, faithfulness. It was attached, always, to the Tsar in old Muscovy – the pious Tsar. And above all, for men like Silas, it meant faithfulness to the old ways, to sacred tradition. It meant the humble love and religious awe of the Russian peasant, against the proud, rational, legalistic western world towards which they sensed the authorities were trying to drag them. It meant the world of the icon, and the axe.

In Dirty Place, therefore, Silas continued to use the old forms of the service: he said two Hallelujahs, and he made the sign of the cross with two fingers.

It was dangerous. The authorities in Moscow were determined to be obeyed. Far in the north, when the abbot of the great Solovetsky Monastery by the White Sea had ordered his monks not to use the new liturgy and even told them not to pray for the Tsar, troops had besieged the obstinate rebels, and finally massacred them.

No one knew how many other communities were secretly doing the same thing, but it seemed that the underground movement was growing. Some protesters were like Silas, purely religious; others complained at the Tsar’s high taxes and at their harsh living conditions. Whatever their reasons, the sense of sullen protest was growing and Moscow knew it. There was going to be trouble.

So far, the little community at Dirty Place had received no official attention, but what if it did? What would Silas and his congregation do then? No one seemed to know but Arina had good reason to be worried.

It was in the spring of that year, on a cool, damp day, that the stranger appeared at Russka.

Like any traveller, he went to the monastery where the monks gave him food and shelter. Though he said that his name was
Daniel, he seemed unwilling to explain anything more about himself, and when the monks asked him where he came from he answered only: ‘From Yaroslavl.’

Which, when they reported it to the abbot, made him smile and remark: ‘He looks it. They have real Russians up there.’

Yaroslavl was ancient. Like other north-eastern cities – Vladimir, Rostov, Suzdal – it dated back to Kievan times. It lay to the north, on the loop of the great River Volga, and beyond it was the vast
taiga
forest that stretched to the Arctic tundra. The symbol that the city bore on its shield was, appropriately, a bear carrying an axe.

They were mighty men up in those parts: the same simple, determined men who had come down with their scythes and axes to drive the Poles out of Muscovy in the Time of Troubles.

The stranger was such a fellow. He was huge, with a shaggy head, a massive, grizzled beard and a large nose which, with the passing of the years, had spread outwards so that it took up the middle of his bearded face like a large smudge. Often he sat, very still, staring before him, or holding out one of his huge hands to feed a bird. Gentle in all his gestures, it was also obvious that he was enormously strong.

But what was he doing there? No one had any idea. He possessed a little money. He did not seem to be a runaway peasant. He carried with him a tiny icon, black with age, and a little book of psalms, from which it appeared he could read. Yet he said he was not a priest.

On the third day of his stay in the monastery he became ill. A fever seized him and for a short time the monks thought he would die. But he recovered and soon he was to be seen wandering about the countryside nearby.

A week after his first walk, he had a private conversation with the abbot. After this, the monks learned two things. The first was that, during his fever, a voice had commanded him to stay at Russka. The second was that he could paint icons, and had asked the abbot if he might take lodgings in the town and join the other painters there. To this the abbot had agreed.

So it was that Daniel came to live at Russka.

He was a good craftsman, but though he would paint parts of icons, under the directions of others, he would never paint the figures themselves, claiming that his skill was not sufficient. The
icons in question, being run-of-the-mill copies for sale by the monastery, were by no means great works of art; but his modesty pleased the other painters.

He kept himself to himself. Not only could he paint, but he was an excellent carpenter. He observed every fast strictly, and spent several hours each day praying and genuflecting. Following the Old Testament to the letter, he would not eat any of the forbidden meats, including veal, rabbit and hare.

It was noticed also that on Sundays Daniel went to the little church at Dirty Place where Silas conducted the service. But since he went to the monastery too, no one thought much about it.

In Dirty Place, the villagers soon got used to the strange, quiet fellow who used to appear amongst them. The men had nothing against him; the women decided they liked him because he was reputed to be hardworking, and they sensed something gentle, almost reverential, in his bearing towards them. He was a holy man of some kind, they decided. And one old woman remarked: ‘He’s a wanderer. One of these days you’ll turn round, and he’ll be gone.’ For it was surely true that there was something about him that was apart.

Above all, they took their tone from Silas, who on several occasions had been seen talking quietly to the big fellow and who pronounced firmly: ‘He is a godly man. He has the true
blagochestie
.’

For two years the strange fellow came each week to Dirty Place, keeping himself to himself and scarcely speaking to a soul. And still no one was any the wiser about him. All they knew, with satisfaction, was that when he made the sign of the cross, he did so with two fingers.

For Nikita, the whole business had been a disaster.

It might have been all right, despite everything, if he hadn’t quarrelled with that damned Tolstoy. That was the trouble. ‘And now we’re completely out of favour,’ he lamented to his wife.

The question was – what could they do about it? Which was when she had made her curious suggestion.

It was doubly galling because the family had been doing well
ever since the Romanovs came to the throne. The first Romanov had rewarded Nikita’s grandfather in two ways. He had allowed him to convert the old estate – held on
pomestie
service tenure under Ivan the Terrible – back into the hereditary
votchina
that could not be taken away. And he had given him some more
votchina
, from the good land beside the monastery, as well. Nikita’s marriage had brought him fresh estates. He kept them all in good order. His peasants worked three days
barshchina
and paid him modest rents in cash and kind. They were, he supposed, no better and no worse off than most peasants. In addition, he had bought several small parcels of land south of the River Oka in Riazan province, on the edge of the steppe where the soil was rich and where his stewards used slave labour – a combination of men who could not pay their debts and of captured Tatar raiders. The returns there were excellent.

Nikita had done well. Indeed the family’s status had never been higher. For though the Tsar had finally abolished the old
mestnichestvo
records of precedence – which, though terribly inconvenient, had guaranteed the Bobrovs a certain status – Nikita had managed to get himself raised into the coveted ranks of the Muscovite nobility. This meant that he lived in Moscow, close to the Tsar, and even dreamed of being a candidate for the provincial governorship. If only he had been able to take that one, further step into the Tsar’s favour, he might have become a rich man.

And though his wife and he had known the sadness – all too common in Russia – of losing children, in 1668, Praise the Lord, a robust little boy had been born who showed every sign of surviving. They had named him Procopy.

As he approached his fifties, therefore, Nikita had been sanguine. He enjoyed good health and high rank. Though growing stout, he was elegant. All he had to do was attract the favourable notice of the Tsar.

Things had certainly been changing in the capital. The court of Alexis had been growing more cosmopolitan, more western. Great men like the Tsar’s friend Matveev encouraged western manners; a few of the inner court circle even shaved their beards.

As an ambitious man with some education himself, Nikita was drawn towards these court circles. The great Matveev liked him and became his mentor. Though he still had a healthy suspicion of
all foreigners, Nikita occasionally changed his kaftan for a Polish coat. He had heard German musicians play at Matveev’s house. He occasionally attended a church with a choir that performed part-singing in harmony, in the western manner. And in 1673 he had even obliged his wife to attend one of the new entertainments arranged by the Tsar – a play.

She had not approved.

Her name was Eudokia, or in full: Eudokia Petrovna Bobrova. She was Bobrova because, like all Russian married women, she took the feminine form of her husband’s name, Bobrov. Her patronymic came from her father Peter, whose memory she still revered. And people usually addressed her, respectfully, as Eudokia Petrovna.

She was a powerful woman: black-haired, thickset, with a round face whose placid gentleness completely belied her character. A strict conservative, she was fully conscious of her wealth and her late father’s high position as a military commander. When guests came to their house, she remained out of sight until she was summoned to serve the men brandy after their meal; then, having saluted the guests, she would discreetly depart again. But in private, with other women, or alone with her husband, she had no hesitation in expressing her views. On no subject were they stronger than the changes favoured by the court. A foreigner without a beard, she told him, looked like a chicken that had just been plucked. The western music and plays were sacrilegious: ‘I go to church to hear the Word of God, not some Polish whining,’ she would say.

Above all, honouring her father’s memory, she was contemptuous of the Tsar’s army with its foreign officers. ‘These Germans: what do they know? They know how to give orders. Good.’ She would stand up and mimic an unfortunate peasant standing in utter confusion with his musket. ‘I’ve seen them,’ she would cry. ‘The officer calls out. Nobody understands. He tries again – ah, now they understand. So this one turns left. This one goes right. This one fires his musket. One advances, one retreats. They don’t know what they’re doing. And why? Because the officer who drilled them the week before had a different method altogether. Imbeciles!’

And Nikita would roar with laughter because it was perfectly true, the officers from different countries often brought their own
drill books with them, which did not agree with each other, and which they utterly refused to change.