Russka (83 page)

And what drove him forward? Ambition: he owed all his success to ambition, but it was a cruel master. It drove you forward, but if you faltered, if you met an obstacle that stopped you, it leapt like a huge fiend on to your back, first screaming abuse, and then weighing down on you like a mountain, crushing the life out of you. Yet strangely, it also gave Alexander Bobrov a kind of purity. Whatever he did, however deviously he played his cards, it was all in the service of this single, secret idea that drove him on.

Yet what exactly was it that he wanted? Like most ambitious men, Bobrov did not really know. It had no name. The whole world, perhaps; or heaven; or both, more likely. He even wanted to be a benefactor of mankind, one day.

But that December evening, there was a more urgent question on his mind as he looked again at the sheet of paper covered with figures and shook his head. He had known he was in trouble for a long time, but he had tried to put off the reckoning. Now it had come.

For Alexander Bobrov was completely ruined.

He had been luckier than many, he was the first to admit it. Despite subdivisions over the generations, his father had still left him three estates: the one near Tula; another on the rich land south of the Oka, in the province of Riazan; and one at Russka, south of Vladimir. There were also part shares in two others. In all, Alexander owned five hundred souls – as the adult male serfs
were termed. Not a great fortune nowadays, for the population had been growing that century, but still a good inheritance. It was not enough, though.

‘Half the men I know are in debt,’ he used to say cheerfully. It was quite true – rich and poor noble alike. The authorities were very understanding: they had even set up a special bank to lend – to the gentry only, of course – on easy terms. And since a noble’s wealth was reckoned by the number of serfs he owned, the collateral for these loans was expressed not in terms of roubles, but in souls. Thank God, that very year, the credit limit had been raised from twenty to forty roubles per soul. That had kept him afloat for the last few months. But the fact was, the Tula estate where he grew up had had to be sold, all his remaining three hundred souls were mortgaged, and God knew what he owed to merchants.

The final blow had come that morning, when his major domo had asked for money to buy provisions in the market and Bobrov had discovered he had none. He had told the fellow to use his own, then paid a visit to his bank. To his astonishment, they had refused to advance him any more cash. It was iniquitous! On reaching his office he had forced himself to do his accounts and discovered to his horror that the interest he owed was far greater than his income! There was no question: he was bankrupt. The game was up. ‘It’s no good,’ he sighed, ‘I can’t play this hand any more.’

And now he turned again to the letter. The way to safety: marriage to the German girl. How the devil could he get out of it?

He had been married once before, long ago. His bride had died in childbirth after only a year and he had been heartbroken. But that was far in the past and he had not married again. Instead, he had a charming mistress. In fact, the German girl had been only one of several desultory courtships he had begun in recent years, as a kind of insurance policy. Her family belonged to the Baltic nobility – descendants of the ancient Teutonic Knights – some of whom had taken service in Russia after Peter the Great had annexed their hereditary Baltic lands. She was fifteen; and the trouble was, she had fallen desperately in love with him – for which he should have been grateful since she was an heiress. Her name was Tatiana.

All that year, the innocent girl had been putting pressure on her father to conclude the matter. As weeks and months had passed,
and Bobrov himself had become increasingly uncertain of his finances, he had been forced to become further and further committed. For if things don’t go as I plan, he calculated, I can’t afford to lose the girl. Indeed, he had been getting increasingly afraid that her father would find out the truth about his debts and call the whole thing off. Then I’ll have nothing, he sighed. Day by day he had played for time: and now, on this day of all days, had come her extraordinary letter.

It was straightforward enough. He had avoided her for three weeks, Tatiana pointed out. Her father had other candidates in mind. And it ended firmly:

I shall ask my father tomorrow night
whether he has heard from you. If
not, then I shall not wish to hear
from you again.

By the standards of the day, the letter was utterly astounding. For a young girl to write like that, in person, to a man: it was a breach of every rule of etiquette. He could scarcely believe that she had done such a thing. He hardly knew whether he was shocked or secretly impressed by this daring. But of one thing he felt certain: she meant what she said.

He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. What if he gave up? Would it be so terrible? With Tatiana’s money he could keep his fine house in St Petersburg and the estates. He’d be rich, secure, respected. People would say he’d done very well. ‘It’s time to leave the gaming table while I’m still ahead,’ he muttered.

Why then should he hesitate? Why not seize the life-line fate had thrown him? He opened his eyes and stared at the window, and at the winter darkness outside. There was just that one, last chance: a final, dangerous, throw of the dice. The old woman.

He sighed. It was horribly risky. Even if he got what he wanted, she could still change her mind. Then he would probably lose everything – money, reputation, even the chance of recovery. I’d be a beggar, he realized. And yet …

For several minutes more, Alexander Bobrov the gambler sat at the big desk pondering the chances. Then at last he sat upright, with a faint, grim smile on his face. He had decided on his play.

I’ll go and ask the old woman tonight, he decided.

For Bobrov the gambler was playing a secret game, with higher stakes than even young Tatiana’s fortune.

He was playing for St Petersburg itself.

St Petersburg: truly it was a miracle. At a latitude parallel with Greenland or Alaska, twelve hundred miles further north than the city of Boston, and nearer the Arctic Circle than to London or Berlin, the Russian capital was a second Venice. How lovely, how simple it was: built around the broad basin where the Neva, nearing its estuary, was divided into two forks by the big triangle of Vasilevsky Island whose apex gently pointed inland and whose broad base out in the estuary protected the city from the sullen rages of the sea.

Bobrov knew no greater joy than to approach by ship from the west, along that long, wide inlet of the Baltic known as the Gulf of Finland, to come through the markers, up the narrow channel round the island, and out into the basin of the river which lay before him like a huge, placid lagoon.

Was there any more beautiful sight in northern Europe? Nearby, in midstream, the tip of the island, the
Strelka
, with its houses and warehouses like so many little classical temples. Away to the left, in the middle of the north shore, and forming a little island itself, the old Peter and Paul Fortress. It contained a fine cathedral now, built by Trezzini, embellished by Rastrelli, whose needle-like golden spire, softly gleaming, soared a thin four hundred feet and linked the low lines of the city by the water with the huge open sky above.

Off to the right, on the southern shore, lay Peter’s Admiralty buildings, and the baroque and classical façades of the Winter Palace and the Hermitage. How calm and serene it was: the distant stucco façades mostly painted yellow, pink or brown in those days, blended so softly with the wide, grey waters.

‘Perfect city,’ Bobrov would sigh, ‘that can be both masculine and feminine.’

City of Peter: he had laid it out. As if to remind the place perpetually of its military and naval origin, the three huge avenues – of which the famous Nevsky Prospekt was the greatest – which radiated from the centre of the south bank, converged not on the palace but upon the Admiralty. Yet the city’s topography and its soft lines were so suggestively feminine. And, strange to say, ever
since Peter’s death, his city had been ruled almost entirely by women.

First Peter’s widow; then his German niece, the Empress Anna; then for twenty years Peter’s daughter Elizabeth. Each of the possible male heirs had either died or been deposed in months.

It had still been the reign of Empress Elizabeth when Bobrov was born. He remembered it with a smile: those were voluptuous, extravagant years. It was said the old Empress had fifteen thousand dresses and that even her French milliner had finally refused her credit! Yet she had talent: she had built the Winter Palace; her many lovers included some remarkable men like Shuvalov who had founded Moscow University, or Razumovsky the lover of music – men whose names would not only usher in Russia’s greatest age, but would grace European culture too. St Petersburg had become cosmopolitan, looking to the dazzling court of France for inspiration.

And then had come the present golden age.

St Petersburg: city of Catherine. Who would ever have guessed that this insignificant young princess from a minor German court would become sole ruler of Russia? She had come there as a nice, harmless little wife for the heir to the throne, Elizabeth’s nephew Peter; and so she would have remained, if her husband had not become unbalanced. For though he descended from Peter the Great through his mother, the young man was German – and obsessively so. Frederick the Great of Prussia was his hero. He loved drilling soldiers. He hated Russia and said so. And in his poor, long-suffering young wife, he had no interest at all.

What a strange contrast they had made: a blustering youth and a quiet, thoughtful girl; an heir who hated his inheritance, and this foreign princess who converted to Orthodoxy and diligently learned Russian. Though they did produce an heir, Peter soon turned his back on her, took a mistress, and virtually goaded her, out of desperation, into taking lovers of her own. Did he mean, subconsciously, to destroy himself? Bobrov thought so. In any case, when this dark and hated young man succeeded to the Russian throne, and the palace guards led by Catherine’s lover deposed and killed him, Alexander Bobrov was one of many who heaved a sigh of relief.

And who should replace this young monster? Why, who better
than his popular young wife, mother of the next male heir, and such a lover of things Russian. Thus, by a strange fluke of fate, had begun the glorious reign of Catherine II.

Catherine the Great. Worthy successor to Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, whose work she would complete. Russia was throwing off the last of its chains. In the west, she had already taken back the rest of White Russia from a weakened Poland. In the south, the Turkish fleet had been smashed; and the ancient menace of the Tatar steppe had finally been crushed when Catherine deposed the Crimean Khan and annexed all his lands. To the east, Russia now claimed the entire north Eurasian plain to the Pacific. Across the Caspian Sea, Russian troops had struck into the Asian deserts to the borders of ancient Persia. And only last year, Bobrov had heard, a Russian colony had been set up beyond the Bering Straits, by the coast of Alaska. Perhaps, soon, the western American lands would be hers too!

More daring yet, Catherine even hoped to take Constantinople itself, seat of the Turkish Empire – the ancient Roman capital and home of Orthodoxy! She wanted to set up a sister empire there; and had already named her second grandson Constantine in preparation for the Black Sea empire she planned that he should rule.

Catherine the reformer. Like Peter before her, she wanted Russia to become a modern, secular empire. Slavs, Turks, Tatars, Finns, tribes without number: they were all Russians now. To help colonize the vast steppe-lands she had even imported German settlers. In imperial St Petersburg, eight religions were freely worshipped, in fourteen different languages. In the lands taken from Poland, there were even Jews. Already, the Church’s lands had all been taken away and put under state control. The laxer monasteries had been closed. New cities – at least on paper – had been created by the score. She had even tried to reform Russia’s outdated laws and organize the gentry and the merchants into representative bodies.

Catherine the enlightened. This was the Age of Enlightenment. All across Europe in the eighteenth century, rational philosophy and liberal political ideas had been making progress. In America, just freed by its War of Independence from the English King, the new age of liberty had begun. And now, to the astonishment of the whole world, this extraordinary, enlightened woman was ruling the vast and primitive land of forest and steppe.

Catherine the giver of laws. Catherine the educator. Catherine the champion of free speech, the patron of the philosophers who sang her praises. Voltaire himself, the most free-thinking man in France, used to write her endless letters. Catherine the sage, Catherine of the many lovers. St Petersburg and its voluptuous palaces were hers, and how serene, how calm it seemed.

Nobody took any notice of the quiet figure in the heavy coat who waited in the shadows near the entrance to the College. It was a talent he had, not being noticed.

He could have gone in. They would have welcomed him respectfully, without a doubt. This however he did not wish to do. Alternatively, of course, he could have given his message to a servant to carry. But he preferred not, and for this too he had his reasons.

And now at last, here was his man: State Councillor Bobrov was at the entrance, under the lamp, dressed in a thick fur coat and ready to go home. He looked rather pale. For some reason his sled was not ready and the lackey at the door had gone along the street to summon it.

The quiet figure left the shadows, walking quickly. As he drew close, Bobrov glanced at him, and seemed to start in surprise. The stranger made a little signal, reached him, and with an almost imperceptible gesture handed him the message. Then, without a word being spoken, he withdrew, and in a few moments had turned round the corner and was out of sight.

Bobrov stood quite still. The place was still deserted: no one had seen. He broke the seal and, in the lamplight, quickly read it. The message was very short: