If he could just remove Popov from the scene somehow… He was fairly certain that the police would arrest Popov if they could find him; but he couldn’t very well direct the police to him when he was anywhere near the Suvorins. Twice he waited until the early hours and tried to follow the Bolshevik; each time, though, Popov somehow managed to disappear within a few blocks.
The solution he finally hit upon was straightforward enough. He sent an anonymous letter to Vladimir. It was rather a successful production, made with cuttings from newspapers, and rather illiterate: he was proud of it. He did not refer to Popov by name, but rather as ‘a certain red-head revolutionary’. He continued after this to walk past the Suvorin mansion whenever he could late at night, and for a month or two, catching no sight of Popov, he assumed his letter had worked. But then, some months later, he saw him lurking there again.
From time to time, then and in succeeding years, he would casually ask Vladimir questions such as: ‘What happened to that damned Popov, the Bolshevik, who came here once?’ or ‘Did they ever arrest that cursed red-head we once saw at your factory? I wonder what became of him.’ But Vladimir never gave any sign that he knew or cared about the fellow and, it seemed to Alexander, he had done all his duty bid him do. ‘I’ll get even with that criminal one day, though,’ he secretly vowed. ‘I’ll put him away.’
Apart from these secret nocturnal watches, he was quite often at the Suvorin house; and it was partly as an excuse for visiting Vladimir, and partly to give himself something in common with Nadezhda, that he began during these years to take an interest in painting that was almost professional.
His university studies were not too taxing. In his spare time he worked hard. He made a thorough study of the main movements of Western painting; he also – which he came to enjoy rather more – started to study the ancient art of icon painting in depth. As was his way, he was methodical and serious; but with time he also began to develop a real feel for the subject. More ambitiously, perhaps, he started to venture into contemporary art. Vladimir’s son, who still spent more time in Europe than in Russia, had recently sent back astonishing works by Chagall, Matisse, and a curious new figure on the scene who seemed to be starting a whole new school of painting, full of geometric shapes and unlike anything seen before: Pablo Picasso. And whether he liked them or not, whether they were interesting or quite meaningless to him, Alexander Bobrov studied each new item as thoroughly as if it were a riddle to be solved, asking questions, relating them to other work, until he knew more than anyone else. He also began to have a shrewd idea about values so that Vladimir one day remarked to him with amusement: ‘Funnily enough, my friend, though you’re a Russian noble you actually have the makings of a dealer.’
Thanks to this knowledge and Vladimir’s good opinion of him, Alexander found that Nadezhda treated him with a respect that was pleasing to him. She would be content to leave the high-spirited Dimitri and Karpenko extemporizing at the piano, and walk through her father’s galleries with him for a few quiet minutes while he outlined some new and interesting discovery he had made. ‘You do know a lot,’ she would say, and look at him with large, serious eyes.
She was fifteen now and, he often noted with approval, filling out nicely. Soon she would be a young woman. Alexander was very careful, therefore, in his relationship with her, keeping a friendly distance, quietly impressing her with his store of knowledge, and waiting for her to come to him.
There was only one problem to overcome at present. He hoped it would pass before too long.
Nadezhda was in love with Karpenko.
To Dimitri Suvorin, the year 1913 was not just a time of promise, but of wild excitement.
For never before had Russian culture risen to such dizzy heights. It was as if all the extraordinary developments of the last century had suddenly come together and burst forth upon the world.
‘This isn’t a flowering,’ Karpenko liked to say, ‘it’s an explosion.’
Europe had already thrilled to Russian music, to her opera and the bass voice of the legendary Chaliapin. Now Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe had taken London, Paris and Monte Carlo by storm. Two years ago the astounding Nijinsky had danced Stravinsky’s Petrouchka; last year, he had danced the extraordinary, pagan and erotic L’Après-midi d’un Faune; and in May 1913, in Paris, he had choreographed the event which was to change the history of music: Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Vladimir Suvorin, by good luck, had happened to be visiting Paris at the time.
‘It was amazing,’ he told Dimitri. ‘And frightening. The audience were scandalized and went berserk. I saw poor Diaghilev afterwards. He doesn’t know what to do with Nijinsky: he’s terrified he’s gone too far. Yet it was brilliant, I tell you. The most exciting thing I ever saw in my life.’
He had also brought Dimitri a copy of Stravinsky’s score and the young man went over it for days, fascinated by its titanic, primitive energy, its dissonances – never heard before – and its jarring rhythms, finally declaring: ‘It’s like seeing a new galaxy being created by God’s hand. It’s a new music with new rules.’
‘Russia is no longer behind Europe,’ Karpenko had declared on this occasion. ‘We’re ahead.’ And few could have denied that in this thrilling ferment of all the arts, Russia had become the avant-garde.
If Dimitri was excited by his musical discoveries, the life of his friend Karpenko was now a perpetual whirl. Since Rosa’s death, they had rearranged the apartment so that Peter, Dimitri and Karpenko each had a separate room, and these shared bachelor quarters suited them all very well. Thanks to Vladimir’s kindness, Karpenko had enough money to continue his studies and rent a small studio besides; and since he was now in the thick of the avant-garde, one never knew when he would show up at home.
The avant-garde – remarkable in Russia for being led by both men and women – was seething with ideas, and whenever he appeared Karpenko would inform Dimitri and his father about some latest wonder: a riotous abstract canvas by Kandinsky; a brilliant stage-set by Benois or Chagall; and invariably some new -ism, so that Peter would quietly enquire: ‘Well, Karpenko, what’s the -ism today?’
In 1913, it was Futurism.
It was certainly a remarkable movement. Led by such brilliant young figures as Malevich, Tatlin and Mayakovsky, the Russian Futurists liked to combine painting and poetry, producing illustrated books and pamphlets whose daring effect has never been equalled. ‘Picasso’s Cubism was a revolution,’ Karpenko explained, ‘but Futurism goes much further.’ In their paintings the Futurists took the broken, geometric forms of Cubism and set them into explosive forward motion. In their poetry, language was broken down, even to mere sounds; grammar changed, creating something new and striking. To Dimitri, the Futurist productions reminded him of some huge, elective dynamo. ‘This is the art of the new age – the age of the machine,’ Karpenko declared gleefully. ‘Art will transform the world, Professor,’ he told Peter, ‘along with electricity.’ He had even put aside his own experiments in painting to write some poems for the new Futurist publications.
At the age of twenty, Karpenko had grown into a strikingly handsome young fellow. He was clean-shaven, and his slim, dark good looks were so noticeable that Dimitri would often, with amusement, watch respectable ladies in the street forget themselves and stare after him as he passed. Dimitri used to see him in the company of artistic young women who were obviously very taken with him: but Karpenko preferred to keep his love life to himself and which, if any, of these young women had success with him Dimitri could only guess.