‘She is a wonderful needlewoman,’ the Countess explained. ‘She makes a good many of my clothes and all my underwear, and she embroiders exquisitely. She made Natasha’s christening- robe, and she’s the dearest creature, and loves the children like her own. Well, you see how Lolya likes her.’
The room into which Anne ducked was spotlessly clean and very bare, with the floorboards painted a lovely amber-yellow, and an icon of the Holy Mother opposite the door, with a pretty silver lamp before it. There was a narrow bed, covered in a white cotton counterpane embroidered with white flowers, a window-seat under the single window, a cupboard against the wall, and a tall-backed, wooden chair in which the occupant sat. She was an old woman, tiny and shrunken, but her skin and eyes were clear, and her fingers were moving nimbly about the work in her lap. The thing that struck Anne as most immediately peculiar about the room was that there was a basket on the floor by the old woman’s feet in which a small black pig was lying, curled up like a cat.
When the Countess came in, the old woman’s face lit up. She held out her hand, and when the Countess took it, the old woman kissed the Countess’s hand and pressed it to her forehead in a gesture of mingled love and homage. There was a rapid exchange in Russian, and then the Countess said to Anne, ‘Marya Petrovna greets you and apologises that she cannot get up, but she no longer has much use in her legs. She bids you regard this house as your own.’
The old woman watched closely as the translation was made, and when Anne looked at her and smiled, she bowed her head several times rapidly. Then she reached out hands for the children, who allowed their hair to be stroked and their cheeks patted. Yelena spoke to her in Russian, while Natasha sat on the floor to caress the pig, which woke up and grunted in a genial way and stuck up its wet and quivering snout to sniff at Natasha’s face.
‘Does the pig live in here all the time?’ Anne asked in amazement.
‘Oh yes,’ the Countess said. ‘Marya Petrovna always has a pig. She gets them as piglets and keeps them by her, and feeds them from her own plate. She says it’s the only way she can manage, because of her legs. Then, when they get too big, she has them butchered, and lives off the meat for quite a time. She cries dreadfully when they are killed because she gets so fond of them.’
‘But don’t they -1 mean, doesn’t it–’
‘Oh no, they are very clean. She trains them as you or I would train a dog. She says they are more intelligent than dogs–’
The old woman spoke, chuckling.
‘She says they are more intelligent than most people, too,’ the Countess translated with a smile.
‘Does she speak French, then?’ Anne asked.
‘She understands it a little, but doesn’t speak it very much.’
Yelena had now been despatched to the cupboard in the corner, and returning with a wooden box, hung over the old woman’s arm while she opened it. It contained sugar-plums, which the Countess said she prepared herself, and for which she was famous. Natasha and Yelena received one each, and were soon reduced to silence by the sheer size of them. There was some more conversation in Russian between the Countess and her sewing-woman, and though Anne could not understand the words, there was no mistaking the affection and concern which existed between the two. Then the children both kissed the old woman, she kissed the Countess’s hand again, bowed to Anne, and they went out into the sunshine.
‘She’s a remarkable woman,’ the Countess said as they descended the stairs. ‘She does everything for herself, despite her disabilities, and the children love visiting her, not only for the sugar-plums, but because she is so interested in everything. I’m sure Lolya could talk to her for a day at a time.’
‘Mademoiselle, did you know’, Yelena said, turning an urgent face upwards as she preceded them down the steps, ‘that Marya Petrovna has tame hens, too? She lets them out in the morning to scratch about in the yard, and they come up into her house at night to be fed and to sleep. They sit along the window-seat, and lay their eggs for her. When we went there once, one of them had a family in the pig’s basket – six little chickens. You never saw anything so small! And she let me hold them.’
‘I can see the attraction that house must hold for them,’ Anne murmured to the Countess.
‘It’s one of the places they like to go on their morning walk,’ the Countess replied. ‘Poor Fräulein Hoffnung is allergic to animals, but Lolya manages to persuade her to go there at least three times a week. So you are warned, Miss Peters!’ Beyond the square of houses behind the church was another square made by the range of farm buildings. Here there was the dairy, where the cows were milked and several different kinds of cheese made, and the stables where the working horses were kept. The stable block was a handsome building, with decorative door frames, and a carved frieze around the walls just under the roof. The roof projected a long way out beyond the walls, and between the roof buttresses under the eaves, swallows had nested. The air was filled with their shrill sweeting as they dashed busily in and out, feeding their families. The wooden roof shingles were painted bright red, and for that reason this stable was called the red stable, to distinguish it from the stable up at the house where the riding and driving horses were kept. Yelena was obviously quite at home here. She seemed to know all the horses, and even the long-horned white oxen, who shared the stables, by name, and would have spent all day there petting them and talking to them had not the Count come to find them.
‘We had better drive on, or you will see nothing of the estate, Miss Peters. No, no, galubchik,’ he smiled at Yelena’s protest, ‘the stables are close enough to walk to. You can bring mademoiselle another time, and introduce her to all the horses.’
Back in the carriage, they drove on down the road in the Kirishi direction, and after a while turned off on to another track to the left, and drove through the parkland belonging to the house. There were cattle grazing, clumps of well-chosen, ornamental trees, gentle undulations of land, pretty streams, and rustic bridges; just like an English park, except that there was a great deal more of it.
‘The Razumovskys were responsible for landscaping the park,’ the Count told Anne. ‘It was all part of their admiration for the English country houses they visited on their honeymoon tour. They had mature trees brought here, some from thousands of miles away, to get the right effect.’
Further on they turned off on to another track, and drove past the estate granary, which stood beside a stream, and was screened by a stand of larch and pine. Beside it was the Count’s distillery where vodka was made. Much of this was sold to the peasants under licence, issued by the government, at the village kabaks.
‘Not very much like your English village inns, though,’ the Count said to Anne. ‘They are really just drinking-shops, very bare and functional, no food or accommodation provided. The peasants drink vodka when they have the money. When they don’t, they make their own drink called kvass.’
‘And what is that made of?’ Anne asked.
The Count grinned. ‘Much better not to ask! It gets them drunk just the same, and I’m afraid that’s all they care about. There’s no sitting about, sipping and conversing for them. They like to drink a lot very quickly, until they fall into a stupor – they call it zapoi, and it’s the peasant’s idea of heaven on earth.’