Yet – here was the puzzle – there was no word of protest from the priest at Russka.
The first time Misha had asked him about this, the priest had denied it. ‘The congregation at Russka is loyal, Mikhail Alexeevich. I don’t think you need worry about that.’ His red beard was turning grey now. He was fatter than ever. Congregation or not, Misha thought, he certainly looks well fed.
Misha even once, out of curiosity, confronted Savva Suvorin himself. But that worthy, gazing down at him contemptuously from his great height, merely remarked with a shrug: ‘Old Believers? I know nothing of that.’
It was on a Sunday morning, one day in December, that Misha received his little moment of enlightenment. He was standing in the snow-filled market square in Russka, shortly after the church service, which had been rather poorly attended. He would have gone home; but it was at just this time, as it happened, that the sled bringing newspapers from Vladimir often arrived, and he had hung around for a little while in hopes of getting the latest news.
He was still waiting there when he noticed the red-headed priest emerge from the church and begin to walk ponderously towards his house. With him, Misha noticed, was a rather surly-looking fellow, also with reddish hair, whom Misha vaguely recognized as the priest’s son. Paul Popov – this was his name – was a clerk of some kind in Moscow, he had heard: one of that tribe of underpaid petty officials who, in those days, made ends meet by whatever small-time bribery and corruption they could come by. Misha gazed at the priest and his son with vague contempt.
And then he saw the strangest thing. Savva Suvorin entered the square and walked close by them. As he drew near, he gave the priest a curt nod, almost as he might to an employee. But instead of ignoring him, both the priest and Paul Popov suddenly turned and bowed low. Nor was there any mistaking the meaning of their gesture. It was not the polite bow that Misha made to the priest, and the priest to him. It was the bow of servant to master, of employee to paymaster. And they had both given it, father and son, to the former serf.
And then Misha understood.
It was at just this moment that the long awaited sled came in through the gates of Russka and jingled across the square.
Misha ignored it. He could not resist the sudden impulse that had suddenly taken hold of him. He had never cared for the redheaded priest, and this opportunity was too perfect. He strode across the market place and, just as the priest reached the centre, accosted him in a loud voice.
‘Tell me,’ he cried, ‘how much is it? How much do Suvorin and his Old Believers pay you for giving up your congregation to them?’
The priest went scarlet. He had hit!
But Misha never received his answer. For at that moment there was an excited shout from the far side of the square, where the newspapers were being unloaded. And as they all turned, a voice excitedly cried out: ‘It’s official. From the Tsar. The serfs are going to be freed.’
And Misha forgot even the priest, and hastened across the square.
Fathers and Sons
1874
With a slow hiss and clank the train approached the ancient city of Vladimir, and the two unexpected visitors gazed out with curiosity.
It was spring. The snow had mostly departed, but here and there they saw drifts, or long greyish slivers, across the terrain. All the world, from the peeling white walls of the churches to the brown fields by each hamlet had an untidy, blotchy look. There were huge puddles everywhere; rivers had overflowed their banks and the roads, turned into quagmires, were almost impassable.
Yet if, upon earth, all movement had temporarily ceased, the skies were full of traffic. Over the woods where light green buds had appeared, seemingly overnight, on the bare silver birches, the air was full of the raucous cries of birds who came flocking and wheeling over the forest. For this was the Russian spring, and the rooks and starlings were returning.
The journey had been long, but the two travellers were in good spirits. The train conductor – a tall, thin man with round shoulders, large ears, flat feet, and a strange habit of cracking his knuckles – had engaged their attention; and long before they reached Vladimir, young Nicolai Bobrov had refined his imitation of this man until it was a fine art.
Nicolai was twenty; a handsome, slim young man with the Bobrovs’ regular faintly Turkish features, a small, neatly trimmed moustache, a soft, pointed beard, and a mass of dark brown, wavy hair. His blue eyes and pleasant mouth looked manly.
His companion, though only twenty-one, looked a little older. He was a thin, rather sulky-looking fellow about two inches taller than Nicolai, with a shock of bright ginger hair. His face was cleanshaven. His mouth was thin, his teeth small, rather yellowish and uneven. His eyes were green. But the thing one noticed most, after the first glance, was the area around the eyes, which was slightly puffy, as if he had been punched at birth and never quite recovered.
When the train arrived at Vladimir, the two men got out and Nicolai went in search of transport. Horses were not enough, for they had a considerable quantity of heavy luggage, and he was gone over an hour before he eventually returned with a grumpy peasant driving a carriage so battered it was little more than a cart. ‘Sorry,’ he said cheerfully. ‘It was the best I could do.’ And a few minutes later he and his companion set off.
Mud. Everywhere he looked, it seemed to Nicolai Bobrov, there was mud. Brown mud that stretched to the ploughland’s horizon; mud that stretched down the road like an endless penance; mud that took hold of the carriage wheels and dragged them down like some evil spirit trying to drown a stranger in a pool. Mud splattered their clothes, mud caked the carriage, mud said to them, plainly and without fear of contradiction: ‘This is my season. None shall move, because I do not allow it. Neither horse nor man, rich nor poor, strong nor weak, neither armies nor the Tsar himself have any power over me. For in my season I am king.’ It was not the snow that first broke Napoleon on his retreat from Moscow, Nicolai remembered: it was the mud.
Yet despite their slow progress, young Nicolai felt elated. For it seemed to him that perhaps all his life – and certainly the last year or two – had been a preparation for this journey and this spring.
How he had prepared! Like all the other students in the house they shared, he had read, listened, debated week after week, month after month. He had even practised mortifications like a monk. One month, he had slept on a bare board, which he covered with studs. He generally wore a hair shirt. ‘For I am not yet as strong and as disciplined as I should be,’ he would confess to his friends. And now, at last, the hour was approaching at which, he hoped, both he and all the world would be born again.
And what luck, Nicolai considered as he glanced at his companion – what incredible luck that he should be undertaking his mission with this man above all others. He knows so much more than I do, he thought humbly. Nicolai had never met anyone like him.
As they made their way, at a snail’s pace, through the endless mud, only one thought secretly troubled Nicolai. His unsuspecting parents. What would become of them?
Of course, he realized, they would have to suffer: it was inevitable. But at least I’ll be there, he thought. I dare say I can keep them from the worst.
Slowly the little carriage made its way towards Russka.
Timofei Romanov stood by the window of the izba on that damp spring morning and stared at his son Boris in disbelief.
‘I forbid you,’ he cried at last.