Russka (78 page)

It was spring when he left Kiev. The weather was getting warm, and the rivers were settling down again into their new courses. For each year, in their full spate, the melting rivers carried downstream such a mass of branches, ice floes and debris of all kinds, that their courses were subtly altered. Here a bank would collapse; there silt pile up a new one; fallen trees might turn a stream into new channels; a meadow become a swamp. Each year it was the same river, yet not the same.

So, too, Andrei reflected, he was taking the same journey that he had taken half a century before: the same, but different, and this time with his son.

Though he felt healthy, a little voice within had told him that he should not expect to make any more long journeys after this one. He was strong, but he was seventy-four. And so it was with a certain nostalgia, now, that he prepared to see Moscow for the last time.

How many memories rose up before him as he rode: memories of his youth, of the Ox, of the girl Maryushka.

Faces, he thought, that I shall never see again, on this side of life’s river.

In the year 1703, the Bobrovs had a new Moscow house.

It was stout, squat, on two floors: and it was built of stone. The rooms were low, but large; the floors were made of massive wooden planks, which were polished. The furniture was simple – a stout table, some wooden chairs. And in the main room, after the icon in the corner of course, the place of honour was occupied by a
tall square stove with a chimney, which was covered with Dutch tiles.

Procopy Bobrov had taken six months to persuade his father to import these tiles, but old Nikita, now that he had this stove, was proud of the thing.

‘Dutch,’ he would say, as he conducted his guests to look at them. ‘Yes, they’re Dutch all right.’

So it was to the new stove, in the month of May that year, that Nikita Bobrov delightedly conducted his old friend Andrei and his son Pavlo.

‘What a joy this is,’ he cried. ‘After so many years. And as you see,’ he added, with a wave of the hand at the stove and the house in general, ‘things have changed since you were last here.’

They had indeed.

How strange it was to Andrei to find his old friend both cleanshaven, apart from a moustache, and in a tight-fitting German coat.

‘Why,’ he laughed, ‘my dear Nikita, you look almost like a Cossack!’

‘Ah, yes.’ Nikita looked a little sheepish, yet also rather proud. ‘The Tsar’s orders, you know.’

For within a year of the beard tax, Peter had struck again. This time, all classes above the peasant were to wear Hungarian or German short coats instead of their long kaftans which, though undoubtedly warmer in the Russian winter, Peter had decided were too old-fashioned and impractical. He had even hung dummies, correctly dressed, by the city gates to instruct his subjects what to do.

‘Yes,’ Nikita went on, ‘you’ll find everything’s very western now. Young people allowed to meet each other before they’re married; our women not to be kept in seclusion – he even has them attend court with their husbands. Progress in every way, I dare say.’

Though Andrei also noticed, when Eudokia came in to greet him, that she wore a long Russian dress in the old style and greeted him in the traditional reverent manner.

‘My wife preserves the old ways in the house,’ Nikita remarked, with a trace of embarrassment.

For their part, the two Ukrainians thought it rather graceful.
Andrei was fascinated by all that he saw and learned in the coming days.

Nikita was obviously happy to see him, insisted he stay in his house, and took him everywhere. But it was not just the changing face of the city but the subtle change in attitudes that he noticed.

For where, in their youth, Nikita had been harsh towards foreigners, now there was in his tone something faintly, but unmistakably, apologetic. ‘We have apothecaries in the city now, you know,’ he would say. ‘And a newspaper.’ Or: ‘There’s a new school of navigation here, and another for foreign languages about to start. But, of course, I dare say you’re used to such things in Little Russia.’ On another occasion, he even remarked humbly, ‘The Tsar has authorized Protestants. Do you think that is right?’

Above all, Nikita noticed the change in the power of the Church.

Once again, another department for the Church had been set up, but this time, Andrei gathered, the Tsar was effectively taking some of the Church revenues for the state.

‘He’s also taken a lot of church bells,’ Nikita explained, ‘for the cannon.’

But far more striking, and shocking, was something Peter had simply failed to do.

For three years before, the old Patriarch had died. And since he was nowadays their Patriarch too, the Orthodox in the Ukraine had wondered who the new one would be. So far only a temporary stand-in had been appointed. But when Andrei asked his host who he thought would succeed, Nikita shook his head. ‘You don’t understand. The word is that there isn’t going to be one. Peter doesn’t want one.’

‘What do you mean? The Tsar can’t abolish the Patriarch. He isn’t God.’

But Nikita only shook his head. ‘You don’t know him,’ he said quietly.

Yet if these matters depressed him, the news of the war, at least, was very encouraging. After some false starts, Peter had succeeded in getting his first foothold on the Baltic. He had not yet managed to hold any of the great Baltic ports like Reval or Riga; but the previous year he had got back a fort up by Lake Ladoga, by the entrance to the River Neva where, centuries
before, the legendary Alexander Nevsky had driven back old Russia’s enemies. ‘There’s only one more fort up there – it’s where the Neva runs into the sea,’ Nikita explained. ‘Once he has that, he’s got access to the sea. Not much of one,’ he added with a smile, ‘but enough for him to claim a victory!’

A week later the news came. It was brought by Procopy. ‘He’s got the fort. There’s been a battle on the River Neva with a Swedish flotilla: he won that too. The Tsar’s got his foothold in the north.’

He had indeed. It was a desolate, marshy place: the name Neva, in Finnish, meant ‘marsh’. There was really nothing there but a fort. However, the River Neva led to Lake Ladoga, and from there one could penetrate the huge river system of north Russia. Compared to Reval or Riga further south along the Baltic coast, it was nothing much.

But in 1703, it was what Peter had. And he was delighted. He awarded himself and his favourite Menshikov the Order of St Andrew, which he had recently instituted. He let it be known that he would enter Moscow in triumph in June. And he immediately set to work to build a new and stronger fort at the place, having a stout log house built for himself on the river bank near its foundations.

‘So what are we to call this new fort of the Tsar’s?’ Nikita asked.

‘The Peter and Paul Fortress,’ Procopy replied. ‘When I left,’ he added, ‘he was talking of building a town up there too. You know how he gets these sudden ideas.’

‘A town? Up there in the marshes?’

‘I know. It doesn’t make much sense. Perhaps he’ll change his mind.’

‘And what does he want to call it?’ Nikita demanded.

Procopy grinned.

‘St Petersburg, I believe.’

And it was just while they were digesting this preposterous idea that a messenger arrived with news that drove all thought of Peter’s little victory from Nikita’s mind.

It was his steward from Russka.

And it seemed that the whole place had gone completely mad.

All along, perhaps, Daniel had known that it would come to this.

He had known it in his heart three years before, when old Silas
the priest had died. That had been in the summer, just six months after his own return from Moscow.

It was remarkable, really, that the little community had been able to continue for so long, even up to then. It could not have done so without friends.

In the first place, there was the abbot. Daniel had always strongly suspected, but only in his last few months did old Silas positively tell him, that the abbot was a sympathizer.

‘He knows what we do and says nothing. That is why nobody bothers us,’ Silas explained.

The other danger might have been the Bobrov steward: but he was one of the
Raskolniki
himself and attended their secret services.

The third, and equally important friend, was Eudokia Bobrov.

Her interest in the community had to be secret. Only Silas, Daniel and his family knew, and they all agreed that there could be no other way. The villagers themselves did not know. Had Nikita himself ever guessed, needless to say, he would have clamped down at once. But if ever an icon, a prayer book, some candles were needed, mysteriously Silas or Daniel had always found the money and the needed articles had appeared.

‘We remember you in our prayers, good lady,’ Daniel had told her.

The monastery was lax but conformed. If once the Bobrovs had been suspected under the old regime, under Peter they were trusted. Russka was rather a backwater anyway. So for nearly two decades, while many
Raskolniki
left the centre of Russia for the frontier lands, and while there might be trouble at Nizhni Novgorod or on die Don, the authorities had just assumed that Russka was quiet. As for Dirty Place – who had even heard of it?

In the early spring of 1703, Silas had told Daniel he was dying.

‘I shall go this summer. You must take over.’

‘I too am old,’ Daniel protested.

‘You are the only one who can lead them,’ Silas replied.

‘Yet how shall I be ordained a priest?’ Daniel asked.

For this was now, and would always remain, the central problem of the
Raskolniki
.

They were the true Church yet outside the Church. No bishops had joined them and so there was, technically, no one to ordain priests. As the last of the original priests in the movement – men
like Silas, who had been ordained before the Schism – died out, how were they to be replaced?

Some
Raskolniki
were prepared, if they could find one, to take on a disaffected priest from the new Church, as long as he underwent a ritual purification. Others used the old method, which the Church now frowned on, of electing their own parish priest. In the old days, such a man was submitted to the bishop for ordination. Now, without bishops, he remained an elder, recognized by his congregation alone.

Officially, therefore, when Silas died, it was decided that the congregation at Dirty Place should go to the church at Russka – though a priest from the monastery would go to the little church in the hamlet from time to time to hold a service in the proper manner.

Unoffically, however, having carefully washed and purified the little church whenever the priest from the monastery had come there, the
Raskolniki
of Dirty Place, led now by Daniel, continued their own services in secret.

At the end of the year there came another crisis. The steward died.

What if Bobrov should send a new man who was not of their persuasion?

Immediately Daniel wrote a letter and Nikita was rather puzzled, a few days later, when Eudokia said to him: ‘Let me choose a new steward for Dirty Place. I know the estate far better than you.’

Since he had many other things on his mind, Nikita had agreed and rather forgotten about the matter; while at Christmas Daniel had been delighted to welcome the new young steward in the little church at Dirty Place.

But the greatest threat to their safety still remained.

It is sometimes thought that Peter was liberal over matters of religion. And up to a point this is true. A year before, in 1702, he had not only authorized Protestants to worship freely but his laws had proclaimed the principle of religious toleration – certainly something no Tsar before would ever have dreamed of.

That same year, encountering a whole area full of
Raskolniki
up in the north, he had told them they might worship as they pleased so long as they produced a certain quantity of iron for his
war effort. As time went on, though, Peter often fulminated against them and their old-fashioned ways; he also, rather contemptuously, issued laws which allowed
Raskolniki
to practise – but made them pay double taxes and wear a distinguishing yellow badge on their coats.

It was freedom – though of a rather poor kind; but some found they could live by it.

Yet for many
Raskolniki
, Peter had done nothing at all. For the one thing that he still absolutely demanded of all men, was the one thing they could not give: total loyalty and obedience to the Tsar and his new, secularized state. How could they obey him when they were coming to see him as the Antichrist himself?

Above all there was one unchanging requirement to which they could not yield.

‘We cannot, in conscience, pray for the health of the Tsar,’ Daniel declared. ‘That is impossible. If we do that, then we deny all that we believe in.’

Maryushka was with some other Russka children, fishing in the river on the monastery side, the morning that the abbot died.

They knew that something must have happened when they saw the monks hurrying about at the gate, calling the lay brothers in from the fields. A few moments later, the church bell started to ring.

That the abbot would die one day was to be expected. He was very old. But in fact he had dropped quite suddenly, in the monastery library, hence the confusion. Curious as always, the children had run to the monastery gates. At first the monks ignored them. But a lay brother soon told them; and immediately Maryushka ran off to tell her father.

And when she saw the look that Daniel gave Arina, she understood that this death meant something very serious indeed.

Yet at first, Maryushka thought she liked the new abbot. He was a pleasant-looking man in his fifties, with a round face and very pale blue eyes, who would stop to talk to children in Russka.

But he was an outsider. The death of the old abbot had caused a visitation from the authorities. They had not been impressed with what they saw; the election of a new abbot was stopped and the monks, to their great annoyance, had had this new man imposed upon them from Vladimir.

He had arrived in early May. Two weeks later, he had become suspicious of what was going on at Dirty Place. A week after that, two strangers arrived at the monastery, and were closeted with him for some time.