Misha Bobrov always counted himself a lucky man that he got on so well with his son. He still remembered the brooding atmosphere that surrounded his stern old father Alexis and had always resolved never to allow such bad feeling at Bobrovo again – which came naturally to him anyway, for he was a kindly, easy-going man.
Above all, he was always delighted to let the boy argue with him. ‘Just like dear Sergei and old Uncle Ilya,’ he’d say. Indeed, he was rather proud of his own skills in debate; and even if – as one expected with young people – Nicolai sometimes became heated, Misha never minded. ‘The boy’s basically sound,’ he’d tell his wife afterwards. And when she thought he’d let Nicolai go too far he would reply: ‘No, we must listen to the young people, Anna, and try to understand them. For they are the future.’ He congratulated himself that this strategy had clearly proved correct.
The two travellers were tired after their journey, and after eating they both expressed a desire to retire early. ‘But I can see we shall have some splendid discussions with these young men,’ Misha remarked to Anna, as they sat in the salon afterwards. ‘One may not always like what goes on at universities, but our young people always come back full of ideas.’ He smiled contentedly. ‘I shall have to be on my mettle.’
Only one thing puzzled him. It was absurd, really, but he had a curious sense, the moment he had set eyes on him, that there was something vaguely familiar about Nicolai’s friend. Yet what the devil was it?
Yevgeny Pavlovich Popov. That was how the ginger-haired fellow had been introduced: it was a common enough name. ‘Have I seen you before?’ Misha had asked.
‘No.’
He had not pursued the subject. Yet – he was sure of it – there was something about the fellow … And that night, as he lay for many hours, too excited to sleep, this little conundrum was one of many matters the landowner turned over in his mind.
The arrival of his son always made Misha Bobrov think about the future. What sort of estate would he be able to hand on to the boy? What sort of life would Nicolai have? Above all, what did the boy think about things. I must ask him about such-and-such, he’d think. Or, remembering some pet project of his own: I wonder if he’d approve of that? So it was that, in the darkness, a host of subjects crowded into his head.
And it was typical of Misha Bobrov that, although for him personally things had gone rather badly, he remained convinced that, in general, they were going well. ‘I am optimistic about the future,’ he would declare. It was one of the few matters upon which his wife could not agree with him.
In fact, on the Bobrov estate, things were going extremely badly. For if the Emancipation had disappointed the peasants, it had hardly been any better for the landowners either.
The first problem was old and familiar. By 1861 Misha Bobrov, like nearly every landowner he knew, had already pledged seventy per cent of his serfs against mortgages at the State bank. In the decade after Emancipation, half the money he received as compensation went straight to the bank to pay off these debts. Furthermore, the State bonds that he was given in part payment – the bonds which the peasants were struggling so hard to pay off – were slowly losing their value as Russia suffered a mild inflation. ‘Those damned bonds are already worth two-thirds of what they were,’ he had remarked to Anna just the week before.
Because he was in debt and short of cash, Bobrov found it hard to pay for labour from his former serfs to cultivate the land he had left. Some had been rented out to peasants; some leased to merchants; and some, he feared, would soon have to be sold. Most of his friends were selling land. Each year, therefore, he grew a little poorer.
Why then should he be optimistic?
There were several reasons. The Russian Empire was certainly more settled and stronger than when he was a young man. After centuries of conflict, the vast empire seemed to be reaching out, at last, to its natural frontiers. True, the huge territory of Alaska, in 1867, had been sold to the United States. ‘But it was too far away,’ Bobrov would say. And meanwhile, Russia was consolidating her hold on the distant Pacific rim of the Eurasian plain where the new port of Vladivostok, opposite Japan, gave promise of a vigorous Far Eastern trade. Down in the south, after the débâcle of the Crimea, Russia had once again secured the right to sail her fleet in the warm Black Sea; and to the south-east, she was gradually absorbing the desert peoples beyond the Caspian Sea, with their fierce ruling princes and rich caravans. In the west, the last uprising of the Poles had been crushed and Russia – closely allied now with Prussia – was at peace with her western neighbours. And if, some said, the Prussian kingdom and its brilliant Chancellor Bismarck seemed a little too hungry for power, what was that to the empire of the Tsar, which covered a sixth of the land surface of the globe?
But the real reason why Bobrov was optimistic was because of what he saw inside Russia itself.
‘We’ve seen more reform in the last fifteen years,’ he would point out, ‘than at any time since Peter the Great.’
It might be that, in private, Tsar Alexander II only wanted to maintain order in Russia; but having decided that reforms were needed to do so, he had made amazing progress. The creaking, ancient legal system had been totally reformed. Now, for the first time in eight hundred years of Russian history, there were independent courts, with independent judges, professional lawyers, open to all men and conducted, not in secret, but in the open. There was even trial by jury. The military had been reformed: all men, noble and peasant, were liable to be chosen by lots for service – but six years only, not twenty-five. And in all but the elite regiments, a man of humble birth could even become an officer. ‘God knows, we can only do better than we did in the Crimea,’ Misha liked to say to fellow gentlemen who complained of this mixing of classes.
But the reforms which pleased Misha Bobrov the most were the new local assemblies.
For these were the bodies known to history as the zemstvos – zemstvo meaning: ‘of the land, the community’ – in the country; and the dumas – the duma being the ancient Tsar’s council – in the towns. And Russia had seen nothing like them before. In every district, town and province, these assemblies for local government were elected by all taxpayers, whether gentry, merchant or peasant. ‘So now,’ Misha cheerfully claimed, ‘Russia has entered the modern world of democracy too.’
True, the zemstvos and dumas had only modest powers; and key posts like that of governor and the police chiefs were all appointed by the Tsar’s government.
True, there were also some special features in the election. In the towns, for instance, the votes were weighted by how much in taxes was paid: the great majority of the people therefore, who only contributed a third of the taxes, could only elect a third of the council members. In the country, similar weighting, and a series of indirect election, ensured that in the provincial zemstvos, over seventy per cent of the members belonged to the gentry. ‘But it’s the principle of the thing that matters,’ Misha declared. ‘And all the classes have a say.’
Besides – and this was, perhaps, the thing Bobrov liked best of all – these zemstvos gave men like him a role in society. As a service class, the nobles might have been passed by; their serfs might have been taken from them; but in these local zemstvos, however modest their power, a noble like himself might still preserve the illusion that he was important and useful to his country. ‘We have always served Russia,’ he could still say, with a trace of satisfaction.
It was just before he fell asleep that a possible solution to the puzzle concerning his familiar guest occurred to Misha Bobrov.
Devil take it, he thought. Didn’t the young fellow say his patronymic was Pavlovich? And didn’t that horrid old priest at Russka, with the red hair, have a son called Paul Popov – a petty official of some kind in Moscow. Could this ginger-haired fellow be the priest’s grandson, then?
It was an amusing thought. He decided to ask him in the morning.
Yet when morning came, and Misha descended to the dining room where he ex
pected to find the two young men at breakfast, he was greeted by his manservant with a most curious bit of news.
‘Mister Nicolai went out with his friend just before dawn, sir,’ the fellow said.
‘Before dawn? Where to?’
‘Down to the village, Mikhail Alexeevich.’ And then, with obvious disapproval: ‘They were dressed as peasants, sir.’
Misha looked at the man. He was not usually given to inventing stories.
‘Why the devil should they be doing that?’ he demanded.
‘I can’t understand it, sir,’ he replied. ‘They said,’ he hesitated for an instant, ‘they said, sir, that they were going to look for work.’
And Misha Bobrov could only wonder what on earth this could mean.
Grigory was nineteen, with a pinched face and long, oily black hair which was parted, rather sadly, down the middle. He was not strong physically, and God had cursed him with teeth which gave him pain almost every day. But he was determined, in his quiet way. Determined to survive.
He was also frightened of Natalia Romanov, who loved him.
He had been one of a family of eight. His father had been a household serf who had drifted into casual labour in Vladimir and who, as soon as they were ten, had sent his children out to work. About once a month he had tied Grigory to a wooden bench and flogged him with birch twigs which he had thoughtfully wetted first. Yet, despite this, Grigory had been fond of him.
His father had not minded when, at the age of thirteen, Grigory had said he wanted to leave home. Indeed, Grigory had the impression that his parents were rather glad to get rid of him. But before he left, his father had given him one piece of advice to take with him on his road through life.
‘Take what you can from women, Grigory. But watch out. Sometimes they seem kind, but deep down, they want to hurt you. Remember that.’
He always had.
And now this girl. What did she see in him? She was pretty, lively; her father had his own holding: by Grigory’s standards, the Romanovs were rich. He could make her laugh: but then, with his sharp, rather cruel humour, he could make almost anyone laugh. He could make people laugh who hated him, and whom he hated.
So what could she want with him?
And why, in the name of the Lord, had she, that last night, asked him to marry her? He had looked at her with suspicious astonishment before gruffly replying: ‘I’ll have to think about that.’
When the two young men dressed as peasants appeared in the village that morning, nobody at first knew who they were – until Arina, coming out of the house took one look and called out: ‘Holy Master Nicolai, how you’ve grown!’ And a moment later, at the old woman’s insistence, they were inside the Romanov izba sitting by the big warm stove and eating sweetmeats.
When the family heard that Nicolai and his friend wanted to work in the village, they were mystified. Who could fathom the mind of a noble? But when Timofei cautiously enquired if they wanted to be paid, and was told they did not, his eyes opened wide at this stroke of good luck. ‘Go no further, Nicolai Mikhailovich,’ he said. ‘I can give you just what you want.’
And so it was, two hours later, that a puzzled Misha Bobrov encountered his son and young Popov quietly helping the peasant at the edge of a large field and, wise enough not to interfere, shook his head in amusement at the strange eccentricities of young people and returned to his house. ‘They’ll be hungry tonight,’ he remarked to his wife, and went to read a book.
Natalia watched the two visitors with curiosity too. She had been a little girl when Nicolai Bobrov went away to school and the landlord’s son was hardly more than a name to her. He was handsome, she thought, with his neatly trimmed moustache and beard and his bright blue eyes. Very handsome. But his friend with the ginger hair was different: she did not know what to make of him. He didn’t say much to Natalia and her family, leaving Nicolai to do the talking, and Natalia decided he must belong to some class of person that she had never seen before. Still, she considered, he’s nothing to do with me. She had other things to think about.
Especially Grigory.
Natalia loved her family. She did not want to hurt them. But when Boris said he was moving out, something had snapped inside her. She felt suddenly very lonely. She knew her father and mother needed her; yet when the previous evening Timofei had told her, as she feared, that she might have to go to the factory, she couldn’t help feeling resentful. If I do that for them, she decided, then I want something to make me happy too. Strangely, that meant Grigory.
Why him? The fact was, her prospects in the village were not good. The Romanovs were poor: with this new baby, her father certainly had nothing to give her as a dowry. And as she wasn’t a particular beauty, she would be lucky to get one of the better village boys. But in any case, it was the little fellow in the factory, with his sly wit, who had captivated her. There was something about him, an inner drive, that fascinated her. None of the village boys had that. When they had first struck up an acquaintance, she had started to teach him to read, and been astonished by his quickness. He did not seem to study things like other people: he attacked each subject, devouring it ferociously until he had mastered it. He’s like a tiger, she thought wonderingly. And yet, he was also vulnerable: he needed looking after. It was a combination she found attractive, compelling; and by the spring she had concluded: He may not be perfect, but there is no other man on earth like this.
Her plan was simple enough: Either he can come and live with us in the village, and then there’ll be two wages to bring home. Or if they won’t take him in, then I’ll go and live with him in Russka and they’ll get nothing. It was a way of asserting her independence, at least.
And so, all day, while Nicolai and Popov worked with her father, she thought about him.
She was quite surprised when, at dusk, Nicolai announced that he and his friend would be back again the following morning.
Nicolai was pleased. The first day had gone well. Yevgeny seemed to be satisfied too. We’ll get their confidence,’ he said. ‘But remember,’ he added sternly, ‘we mustn’t say anything for the time being. That’s the plan.’
‘Of course.’ The plan was everything.
How lucky he was, Nicolai thought, to be with Popov. Admittedly, he could sometimes be rather mysterious, so that you felt he was withholding information; but he seemed so certain about things, so definite. And now they were partners in this all-important business. He supposed that, one day, their names might even be listed with the others in the history books.
Meanwhile, he was looking forward to this evening. He had seen Yevgeny in action many times, and he wondered with amusement what his friend would do to his parents.
As Misha Bobrov waited in the salon for the two young men to come down for supper, he tried to conceal his excitement.
Not only did he long to find out what they were up to, but, as he told his wife: ‘You can be sure we have a great many things to discuss.’ He believed that he would give a good account of himself. Indeed, he thought that the students might be rather impressed.
The salon was a long, pleasant room, simply furnished with chairs and sofas of French design, and was graced with heavy blue curtains, parted at the centre and tied at the sides with large tassels. A fine mahogany glass-fronted bookcase, its decorative panels carved in the shape of classical lyres, stood handsomely at the far end of the room; on the mantel over the fire, a black marble clock, shaped like a rather stolid little Greek temple front, stared out into the room with confident self-satisfaction. In one corner, a round table was covered with a bright Turkey rug. And everywhere a mass of family pictures, from large oils to tiny cameos, were hung around the walls in no particular order.
As well as these conventional furnishings, however, there were several indications that Misha Bobrov was a gentleman somewhat out of the ordinary.
On each side of the bookcase was a picture – not the classical scenes his grandfather would have favoured, but bright, informal studies, one o
f a country landscape at sunset, the other of a wrinkled peasant’s face. These paintings by the new school, known as The Wanderers, gave him huge pleasure. ‘They are the first truly Russian painters since the makers of icons,’ he would say. ‘These young fellows paint Russian life as it really is.’ Indeed, in his study, he even had a little sketch by the best of these, the brilliant Ilya Repin, which showed a humble barge-hauler on the Volga, straining on his harness as if he were trying to be free. And when young Nicolai had shown some talent for drawing at school, Misha had urged him: ‘You try to draw like these young men, Nicolai – just as you really see things.’
Further evidence of the landlord’s character lay on the round table, in the form of several thick periodicals. These were the so-called ‘fat journals’ which had become such a feature of Russian intellectual life at that period. In these might be found, in serial form, the latest works of the great novelists of the day: Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Turgenev. But they also carried political commentaries and essays of the most radical kind, so that their presence in the salon was a declaration by Misha Bobrov that said: ‘You see, I keep abreast of all that is going on.’
It was by this table that the landowner, with a great show of cheerfulness, greeted the two young men when they came down. It was clear to them both that he was holding himself in. As if nothing unusual had happened he conversed idly about the capital, the weather, the fact that his wife would be down shortly. And only after several minutes, with a show of nonchalance that almost made Nicolai burst out laughing, did he remark: ‘I hope you enjoyed your time in the fields today; but might one inquire what exactly you were doing?’
To which the young men answered just as they had agreed they would.
It seemed to Misha that the meal was going well. The red wine was excellent. In the warm light of the candles, under the gaze of his ancestors on the walls, he sat at the head of the table, happy and flushed, and doing most of the talking. His wife Anna – tall and dark, not clever but with decided opinions – graced the other end.