It was towards the end of the evening, when the others were outside, that Olga found herself dancing alone with Pinegin. As usual he was wearing his white uniform, but now it seemed to her rather becoming. She also noticed that he really danced very well – nothing flashy, his movements firm but controlled, and easy to follow. It was a pleasant sensation.
Then, suddenly, everyone was back. Sergei cried: ‘A mazurka!’ to the musicians. And scarcely waiting to ask Pinegin, he swept her away in a wild dance, whirling her round the room, stamping his feet, while Pinegin stood by the side of the room, silently. ‘I was lucky,’ Sergei explained to her. ‘I got lessons from the great dancing master Didelot himself.’
But Olga found, rather to her surprise, that she would have preferred it if he had not interrupted her dance with Pinegin.
The opening thunderclap of the great storm that was about to engulf them took everyone, including Olga, completely by surprise. It came the very next morning, when Sergei was in the bath house.
No one in Russia, from the imperial family to the most miserable serf, could imagine life without the traditional Russian bath. Similar in kind to a Scandinavian sauna, the bath house contained a stove which heated a deep shelf of large stones, upon which the bather tipped water to fill the room with steam. To stimulate the blood he might also swat himself with birch twigs. In a city, the communal bath house would take scores of people at a time; the little bath house on the Bobrov estate took only three or four.
Sergei loved to take a bath: in summer he would run down afterwards and throw himself into the river; in winter he would roll in the snow. And it was just as, tousle-haired and gasping, he emerged from the water that morning that little Misha came running down the slope towards him, crying out: ‘Uncle Sergei! You’ll never guess what’s happened. They’ve come to arrest the priest at Russka.’
It was true. Two hours earlier the big, red-headed priest had been astonished by the arrival of three blue-coated gendarmes of the Third Department who methodically proceeded to ransack his house. Within an hour the town, the monastery, and even the village of Bobrovo were buzzing with the news. What could it mean?
Olga guessed at once. She guessed – and her heart sank.
‘Oh, Seriozha,’ she whispered. ‘What have you done?’
‘Nothing much,’ he confessed with a sly grin. He had sent an anonymous letter to the Department saying the priest was operating an illegal Masonic press and distributing pamphlets. And to her protest that this accusation was unlikely, he replied: ‘It’s unbelievable. But the gendarmes don’t seem to think so, do they?’
‘Oh, Seriozha.’ She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was well known that Benckendorff’s department was being snowed under with false accusations from all quarters, and that some of their investigations had been strange, to say the least. ‘God help you when Alexis finds out,’ she said.
It was noon, just as the gendarmes, having found nothing, were leaving when Alexis, returning from a morning ride, passed through Russka and the shaken priest told him his story. Like Olga, Alexis guessed the cause at once.
And so it was that, seeing Sergei that afternoon, sitting with the family, he gave him a look of chilling scorn, and without the need of any further explanation said quietly: ‘You will regret this very much, I promise you.’
Alexis was surprised, early that evening, when Sergei’s manservant requested a discreet interview with him.
To the Bobrov serfs, Sergei’s position had always been a little puzzling. When his father died, they saw that the estates went to his brothers; but though Sergei’s different looks had caused some ribald speculation, it was more generally assumed that his youth and wild ways were the reason for this exclusion. One thing was certain however: if there was any choice to be made between their master Alexis and young Sergei, there was no doubt about whose side to be on.
Nothing is ever hidden from household servants. The growing rift between Alexis and Sergei had been noticed at once. Within minutes of their angry encounter that day, everyone knew. And it had caused the young serf to consider his position very carefully before, that evening, giving the older brother a careful account of a certain matter. When he had told his story, the landlord seemed pleased.
‘You were quite right to tell me this,’ Alexis said. ‘You will speak of it to no one,’ he added, ‘but if it ends well, then I’ll let your family off a year’s obrok.’ The manservant was delighted.
And that very day, Alexis put certain enquiries in motion.
Afterwards, Olga blamed herself. Yet she had meant so well.
The tension in the house, all the next day, was terrible. Alexis looked like thunder. They dined in near-silence. In the evening, she tried to persuade Sergei to come out for a stroll with her, but he obstinately refused and sat at one end of the salon while Alexis, at the other end, ignored him entirely. Everyone spoke in low tones, but Olga, looking at the two brothers, was terrified that at any moment, some careless word might start a quarrel. Sergei, in particular, looked as if he was ready to provoke his older brother. What could she do to keep the peace?
It was then that, looking at Karpenko, she suddenly thought she had had an inspiration.
‘Why don’t you tell us,’ she suggested, ‘a Cossack story?’
He blushed with pleasure. He understood very well what she wanted. How glad he was to be useful to Olga and Sergei, these two people he loved. And so, in a quiet voice, he began.
He was intensely proud of his Cossack ancestry. In no time they were all spellbound as he told them tales of the ancient days, of the wild Cossacks riding over the open steppe, and of the great river raids from the Zaporozhian camp down the mighty Dniepr. Tatiana sat with mouth open in wonder; Ilya put down his book; Pinegin nodded with approval and murmured: ‘Ah, yes. That is good.’ And even Alexis did not notice when Sergei moved his chair closer, in order to hear better.
What a gay, thrilling world the little Cossack opened before them. What mad feats of bravery, what good fellowship, what wild freedom! Olga congratulated herself on her choice: and if the young fellow was a little carried away, surely there could be no harm in that.
For there was something else about the tales, too: a haunting beauty, an air of nostalgia and even melancholy that she discerned in his tone – as there always is when one speaks of a world that has entered its twilight. ‘The old Zaporozhian sich is gone,’ he said quietly at one point. ‘Catherine the Great destroyed that.’ And later, rather sadly: ‘The Cossacks are all good Russians now.’ If he felt a tinge of regret for the past, Olga didn’t blame him. The disciplined Tsarist regiments of today’s Cossacks were fine in their way, but a far cry from the freedom of older times.
Ilya in particular was captivated. ‘My God,’ he exclaimed, ‘you tell your stories so well that if you want to make a literary reputation, you should write them down. Have you considered it?’
And it was then that the trouble began. For having blushed with pleasure and admitted that he had, Karpenko then added a curious and unexpected statement. ‘Actually,’ he confessed, ‘what I really want is to write them in the Ukrainian language. They sound even better that way.’
It was a perfectly innocent remark, though undoubtedly surprising. ‘Ukrainian?’ Ilya queried. ‘Are you sure?’ Olga, too, found herself puzzled. For the Ukrainian dialect, though close to Russian, had no literature of its own except one comic verse. Even Sergei, always willing to support his friend, couldn’t think of anything to say in favour of this odd idea.