Quietly, carefully, Vladimir watched. June passed, then July. And then, in the last part of July, the news came which decided him.
They had shot the Tsar.
Dimitri looked thoughtfully at his Uncle Vladimir and then his father. It was the first time he had seen a tension between them. Still stranger was it to hear his father, standing in the dining room, say in almost cutting tones to the great man: ‘I am surprised you should even ask me to desert my country.’
They had been talking for half an hour and reached only an impasse. Patiently Vladimir had explained his reasoning. The increasing terror from the Cheka, the danger from outside. ‘Only one thing can result when a régime is in this kind of position,’ he argued. ‘Either it falls, or it imposes a tyranny. I’m sure now that the Bolsheviks will hold on to power. And the killing of the Tsar signals their intentions. They’ll stand and fight. And I for one will certainly be destroyed.’
‘The Tsar was killed by the local Siberian Soviet anyway,’ Peter objected.
‘I don’t believe it. And history will prove me right.’
But Professor Peter Suvorin wasn’t very interested in the Tsar.
There was no doubt, Vladimir considered, as he looked at his brother, that Peter could be irritating. He thought sadly of Rosa; then, with a grim smile, of his old grandfather. What, he wondered, had poor old Savva made of Peter? Not much, it seemed. To Vladimir’s deep and wide-ranging mind, accustomed to weigh causes and intentions as well as to appreciate the beautiful, his brother’s intelligence, however fine in its way, was superficial. Carefully he had questioned him about the events of recent months: the Bolshevik seizure of power, the ousting of moderate Socialists like the professor himself. All these things, Peter agreed, had disturbed him greatly. ‘But in the long run, don’t you see, Vladimir, it may have to be this way. We have the revolution. That’s the point, die revolution.’ And he had smiled with that sweet, clear look in his eyes which made Vladimir shake his head and remark grumpily: ‘I may be wrong, but I think you see what you want to.’
Yet why, Dimitri wondered, despite my father’s refusal, should Uncle Vladimir still be putting such pressure upon me to go? For I haven’t the least desire to.
Indeed, the last few months had been thrilling. In the ferment of the revolution, the artists of the avant-garde had been taking to the streets. Posters and proclamations were signed by artists like Mayakovsky. ‘Every artist is a revolutionary and every revolutionary is an artist,’ a young friend of his had declared. Huge murals were appearing. On top of a building near their apartment, a bristling sculpture made of metal girders towered up as if to proclaim the new, scientific age to the blue sky. There was a huge banner by Tolkin draped halfway down a theatre nearby. Each day, he and Karpenko had roamed the streets in wonder. Karpenko was painting busily and he, Dimitri, planned to astonish them all with his new symphony – a hymn to the revolution. How, therefore, could he possibly want to leave?
It was only when Peter was out of the room for a moment that Vladimir confessed to him: ‘I must beg you to come, Dimitri, because I promised your mother that I would.’ He paused. ‘It was really her last request, you know.’
‘But why?’ Dimitri asked. ‘Why should she be so anxious for me to leave?’
Vladimir sighed. ‘She had dreams.’
‘Of what?’
‘That something would happen to you if you stayed.’ He paused. ‘The dreams became very terrible to her, very vivid, just before the end.’
‘Before the accident?’
Vladimir looked at him sadly. ‘Quite.’
But the boy was shaking his head. ‘I couldn’t leave my father – I don’t want to go anyway.’ He looked down. ‘My mother always told me I’d be safe as long as I was a musician, you know.’ Then he looked up again and grinned. ‘As you see, I am.’
And so, reluctantly, Vladimir gave up. Only one person in the professor’s apartment agreed to go. And this was Karpenko who, after hearing the debate, said quietly: ‘I will come with you to Kiev. I want to get home.’
It was the following day that Dimitri asked his father a favour. The Symphony to the Revolution was going well, but in the slow movement he wanted to incorporate some material he had written out, fully orchestrated, when he had been down in the country two years before.
‘And the devil of it is,’ he explained, ‘I must have left it down at Russka, in Uncle Vladimir’s house. As I hear the place was hardly touched, it’s probably still sitting there; but I haven’t really time to go down there.’
And Peter had smiled. ‘I’ll gladly go for you,’ he promised.
Nadezhda had got used to her new life. She liked the simple workers she took round the house. She was even used to having them watch her sweep the floor. For sheer convenience now, she often dressed like a simple peasant woman herself, with a scarf over her head. And above all, she was glad to feel that in this, the great crisis of his life, she was there beside her father. I at least, she thought bitterly of her mother, remain always at his side.
Only one thing made her angry and caused her to fall silent for an hour or more. And this was the presence of Yevgeny Popov.
‘Why does he come here?’ she would moan aloud. ‘Does he come to taunt me? To gloat?’ Two, sometimes three, times a week Popov would come by, curiously inspect the house, look in at their apartment, and then with a brief nod, depart. ‘I’d like to slam the door in his face,’ she once said bitterly to her father, but he only warned her quietly: ‘Never annoy a man like that. He’s dangerous these days.’
Did her father know about Popov and her mother? She had always supposed he did, but never asked. How dare the man come around like this to look at her poor father now?
It was understandable therefore if, as their departure approached, she should dream happily of being rid of the intruder.
Vladimir’s plan of escape was very simple.
He had noticed that the Bemsky railway station was, at certain times, a scene of general chaos. And it was from there that trains left for the Ukrainian frontier. It was still not too difficult to get forged papers. The main thing, in his position, was not to be recognized. The plan was kept secret. Once the date was decided, not even Dimitri or Peter were to be told.
Everything seemed quite normal, therefore, on the afternoon before their departure, when Popov came by the house.
He made his usual round of inspection, then carefully looked in upon the apartment, where he found Nadezhda alone; no doubt he would have gone without delaying if she had not glanced up at him and remarked: ‘Well, have you come to gloat as usual?’ Adding drily: ‘No one’s stolen anything – unless you have, of course.’