‘But I’m quite unsuited to this kind of work,’ he protested.
‘We think it’s best,’ she calmly replied.
‘But what about my studies?’
‘That’s all over now,’ she said placidly. And then, not unkindly: ‘You surely can’t expect your eighty-year-old grandfather to do all your work for you, can you?’
And now, on this cold, damp spring morning, as the starlings wheeled over the rooftops, it seemed to Peter that he could bear it no more.
He had tried to take an interest and find something to excite his imagination. When Savva told him, ‘The American Civil War hit our cotton supplies for a while’ or: ‘We can get cotton from Asia now’, Peter conjured up images of distant ships from the New World, or caravans across the desert, and told himself that the Suvorin enterprises were part of some larger, exciting adventure. But each day as he was faced with the same grim chimneys, the endless lines of spinning machines, and the monotonous, grinding work of the factories, he knew in his heart: Russka was a prison.
That morning they were doing what he hated most of alclass="underline" they were inspecting the workers’ living quarters.
Life was not so bad out in the villages, where the flax for the linen was grown and every peasant izba produced its own handicrafts. But the living quarters in Russka were completely different. There were three long rows of wooden houses for worker families, which might not have been so bad except that three to five families were crammed into each house. ‘We are all one family,’ Savva would remind these people as he moved amongst them like a grim Old Testament patriarch. ‘We live together.’
And then there were the dormitories. Why was it that, as the two men entered one of these, Peter’s heart sank?
It was not that the place was squalid. It was spotlessly clean, light, airy and well heated. The long room was painted white, with a line of wooden pillars running down its centre and beds on each side. The beds consisted of a wide, shallow wooden tray divided in two so that in each half there was room for a narrow mattress and a few other possessions. Two people therefore, separated by a low partition, slept on each bed, and there were thirty people on each side of the dormitory. Under the bed was a wooden box that could be locked; and above, hanging from the wooden ceiling, was a rack over which the rest of the worker’s clothes could be hung. Men slept in one dormitory, women in another. It was all very orderly.
And yet depressing: and Peter knew exactly why. It was the people.
There was, as yet, no urban working class outside Moscow and St Petersburg – and scarcely there. The people who lived in the dormitories mainly belonged to two types. There were the children of peasant families from distant villages, who returned periodically to their families to give them their modest wages; and there were the former household serfs who had been given their freedom at the Emancipation but who, having no land to claim in any village, were cast loose and were entirely homeless. These were the wretched creatures who now cringed as he and his grandfather passed. They are just peasants, he thought, who are lost. And the very tidiness of the place made it seem even more inhumane.
And I am supposed to live here, he considered, and continue this terrible system. These people and these hideous factories, will feed my family. It was all so terrible. He did not know quite what he wanted out of life, but with a kind of desperate urgency he muttered under his breath: ‘Anything, anything – I’d even haul barges up the Volga, but not this.’
It was just as they were leaving the dormitory that Peter Suvorin chanced to glance back, and caught sight of something he was not meant to see.
At the far end of the dormitory, with his back to Peter, a youth of about his own age was doing an imitation of Savva Suvorin for his friends. Considering that he was small and pinched in appearance, it wasn’t bad. Seeing Peter watching, however, the others made warning signs, and the young fellow stopped and turned.
It was a shock to Peter. He had seen most kinds of expression on men’s faces, but he had never seen naked hate before. The youth either did not know it showed, or didn’t bother to conceal it: either way, it was unnerving.
My God, he thought, this fellow thinks I’m like Grandfather. If only he knew the truth! And then, even worse, he realized: But why would he even care that I sympathize with him, when I’m a Suvorin? And he fled.
He knew the young man slightly. He seemed harmless enough. His name was Grigory.
Natalia walked briskly along the path towards Russka. As soon as she had seen her father returning glumly from his interview with the village elder, she had slipped away. No doubt he would be looking for her by now.
She knew exactly what was in store for her. She would be sent to the Suvorin factory, and expected to stay there as long as the family needed her wages to make ends meet. She dreaded it. I’ll be a spinster and a slave all my life, she calculated.
She was determined to do better than that. When she was a little girl, because Misha Bobrov had always been friendly towards her father, both she and Boris had been sent to the little school in Russka for three years, where they had learned to read. Poor though she was, this unusual accomplishment had given her a secret pride, a belief that somehow – she had no idea how – she would amount to something.
But although she had guessed what it would mean for her, she had encouraged Boris to go. She loved him. She knew it had to be. At least he may be happy, she thought. And her plan – the plan of which she had spoken to Boris?
There was no plan. She had no idea what to do.
She pushed her scarf more tightly round her head as the damp air made her face smart. She could only think of one possible way out.
She was going to see Grigory.
Misha Bobrov and his wife Anna were beaming with pleasure.
It was just as dusk was falling that day that the little carriage arrived at the Bobrovo estate; and to their amazement, Nicolai jumped out, ran to embrace them, and announced: ‘I got leave from the university to come home early – so here I am.’ And when he added that he had brought a friend, Misha happily replied: ‘The more the merrier, my dear boy.’ And, taking his son by the arm with that gentle Bobrov gesture, he led the way inside.
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.’