‘The men will still be out in the fields,’ the Count said, flicking a horsefly from Limonchik’s flank with his whip-stock. ‘They work very long hours at this time of year. The growing season is so short, you see: they have to take two crops off the land between the thaw in May and the frost in October, five or six months at the most. In August, when they have to harvest the oats and plant out the rye, and till their own strips and their landlord’s all at the same time, they sometimes work twenty hours a day.’
‘I’ve noticed all the fields are unenclosed,’ Anne said. ‘We hardly ever see that at home now.’
‘We still work the old three-field system – spring seeds, winter seeds and fallow – which I know you’ve long abandoned in England,’ the Count said ruefully. ‘When I visited England on my Grand Tour, I made a particular study of farming methods, and came back full of youthful enthusiasm to make improvements. I came into my father’s estates when I was a young man, you see, and was eager to make my mark and bring my part of Russia, at least, into the eighteenth century.’
‘And didn’t you?’
‘No. I might have all the enthusiasm in the world, but the peasants can’t bear any interference. They have their routines and traditions, and if anyone tries to change them, they mutter and grumble, and sometimes even take revenge by firing a rick or breaking windows.’
‘Even if the changes are for their own good?’ Anne said.
‘Oh yes. They just don’t like to be meddled with. Ask them to plough the soil an inch more deeply, or offer to drain a marshy field for them, and they start to mutter, “He is not a good master to us. He torments us. He meddles and oppresses us.” ’
‘How silly – and infuriating for you, too,’ Anne said.
‘I suppose there’s some excuse for them, in the precariousness of their living. One false step, one spell of inclement weather, and they face short commons, perhaps even starvation next winter. It’s hardly surprising they aren’t tempted to experiment. The margin is too small.’
‘But if you explained it to them–’
‘They aren’t logical thinkers, like us. They are a strange people, you know, stubborn and ignorant and childlike – full of fantasies and visions and magic, and strange beliefs.’
‘Strange beliefs?’
‘Well, for instance, they believe that all the land in Russia really belongs to them. It seems to date from the time Emperor Peter gave us – the dvoriane – our liberties in the charter of 1762, freeing us from compulsory state service. For some reason the peasants believed that the Emperor made another charter at the same time, turning over all the land to them, but that we repressed it and threw him into jail. For years after his death, they went on believing that he was alive and in hiding – some of them believe it still – and that one day he, or his successor on the imperial throne, will get on with dividing up the land amongst them.’ He looked at her and smiled. ‘They insist on believing that the land belongs to them, and that they belong to us, whereas it is just the other way about: they belong to the land, and the land is ours.’
Anne tried this sentence over once or twice before she could grasp the sense of it, while the Count shook the reins and sent Limonchik on down the slope, turning to the right at the foot of it on to another track. It ran away from the village with oat fields to the left and the pine woods to the right, and, judging by the increased eagerness of the pony’s steps, led towards home.
‘Would you like to take the reins?’ the Count asked. ‘Driving is only a matter of practice, you know. There is no mystery to it.’
Anne took over the reins, and the Count took a little trouble with her, correcting the tension and the way she held the whip, and then they went on in silence for a while, with no sound but the muted, rhythmic thud-thud of Limonchik’s hooves on the dry track, and the jingling of his harness, and the long, slow whisper of the wind through the ripening oats. Where the woods came to an end, the track joined up with the main road again, and Limonchik turned without help from Anne to the right, trotting on with his ears sharply towards the north, where the blueness of the sky had taken on the mysterious, caressing tone of evening, and one white star shone low and steady above his brow-band.
‘It wasn’t only to see the village that I wanted you to come with me in the calèche,’ the Count said suddenly. Anne said nothing, but waited, half terrified, for what he might be going to say, acutely aware of his physical closeness to her, the small movement of his body as he breathed. She kept her eyes fixed on her hands, and the flat leather ribbons of the reins flowing tautly away from them, and the jogging yellow rump in front of her; but she could see his face as clearly as if she were looking at it, the long nose and jaw, the curving, cat-smile of the mouth, and the shining hazel eyes.
His hands came into her vision, closed over hers, and took the tension of the reins, drawing back on the eager pony’s mouth until the strong thud-thud faltered and broke down into the uneven thud-ub-thud-ub of a walk. The round golden rump ceased to blur, and Anne turned her head slowly, as if it hurt, to look at him.
‘When I spoke of the peasants a while ago, and their fantasies and visions and magic… it isn’t just the peasants, you see. It’s in all of us. We all see visions. There’s a magic in Russia that we breathe in. We live our lives half drunk with it, with the beauty, the prostor, drunk with air and sky, drunk with the incense and candlelight of the mass, with the ecstasy of snow in the winter – oh, more different colours and textures of white and blue than you can possibly imagine! And the air so cold and clean it’s like vodka, burning and intoxicating! And in the summer, here in the north, there are what we call the White Nights, when the twilight goes on and on until it meets the dawn, and it never gets dark, and the air is so blue and shining you could drink it! That’s what I wanted you to see, Anna Petrovna – the twilight, the long northern twilight.’
She looked at him, and felt things in her moved and altered, that could never be put back in place.
‘You have been in Russia only a little while, but today I watched you, and I felt sure that you were beginning to feel the magic, and I wanted to make sure of it. I do so want you to love Russia.’
‘Yes,’ she said, and the Count seemed to accept this as sufficient answer to all he had said. His hands, still over hers on the reins, closed a little, in a pressure affectionate, glad, a little triumphant, and his smile intensified in his eyes and on his lips. How then could she feel so sad? she wondered distantly. The feeling that he had for her was something any woman ought to be glad of, a warm affection based on knowledge, sympathy and respect; it was, moreover, the only kind of feeling she could have allowed herself to receive from him, a married man, and her employer. She ought to delight in his good opinion and personal liking. She did delight in it. It was just that it made something inside her want to lie down and howl.
She must speak. ‘I do love Russia,’ she said. ‘And I am so grateful to you for bringing me here, and for taking such care of me. I know I shall be happy in Russia, and with your children, and with–’ Her throat closed up. She tried again. ‘I like my Russian name, too,’ she said unevenly.
He released her hands. ‘I think it is much prettier than Miss Peters. In Russian it is very polite to call someone by name and patronymic like that,’ he added ‘Polite, but friendly too. Shall I call you Anna Petrovna all the time?’