Russka (109 page)

And he wondered when that might be.

It was at this time that Ilya began to behave strangely. No one quite knew what had got into him. Usually, as the warm weather approached, he would be found sitting by the window in the salon, or about on the verandah, reading. Seldom before high summer would he spend much time out in the open.

Now, however, his pattern of life had completely changed. He spent hours up in his room, from which he would emerge with a furrowed brow, frequently muttering, and generally locking the door, so that the servants could not clean it. He would pace up and down in the alley above the house for an hour at a time. And if Alexis or Tatiana asked him what he was up to, he would give them some meaningless reply – such as ‘Aha!’ or ‘Why, nothing at all!’ – so that they could only wonder what his secret was.

It was on one of these days, when Ilya had been pacing excitedly in the alley, that Tatiana experienced the first sign. It was nothing much: a sudden dizziness. But a few hours later, as she was sitting in the salon, she blacked out for about half a minute.

She said nothing to anyone. What was there to say? She went about her daily business. But from that moment the thought entered her mind and remained there quietly but insistently: the days to come were numbered, and the number might not be large. A week later, she had another blackout.

If these signs were not unexpected, Tatiana still felt rather lonely and afraid. She found she liked to go to church each day; but the red-headed priest at Russka was not much comfort. She visited the monastery and conversed with the monks, which was a little better. But it was after a Sunday service, when the bread that had been blessed was distributed, that a peasant woman she scarcely knew came up to her with a kindly smile and said: ‘You should go and see the old hermit beyond the
skit
.’

She had heard of this man. He was one of the monks at the little
skit
beyond the springs who, two years before, had been allowed to move further into the woods to a hermitage of his own. Stories had come back that he was a man of great holiness, but nothing more definite than that. There was no talk of miracles; he kept to himself and few knew much about him. His name was Father Basil.

For a week Tatiana put the idea at the back of her mind. It was far away, and she felt rather shy. But then she had another blackout and a pain in the chest which frightened her. And so it
was, two days later, that she had the coachman harness up a little single-seated cart and, without saying where she was going, she set off.

It took them all morning. She had to leave the coachman and walk the last part on foot. But the place, when she got there, was not what she expected.

The clearing was quite large. In the middle stood a simple but well-built hut. Before the hut was a little vegetable garden. To one side, near the trees, two beehives made of hollow logs. Just in front of the door was a table with some books and papers upon it, and sitting at the table was a monk. She could see from a hoe beside the vegetable garden that he had been working that recently, but now he was engaged in writing. Seeing her, he looked up pleasantly. She had heard that he was an ascetic and that he was seventy-five, so she was surprised to see before her a refined but vigorous-looking man whose beard was still mostly black and a face that might have belonged to a man of fifty. His brown eyes were clear and looked at her with great straightforwardness. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said, ‘I thought I felt somebody coming.’

He nodded politely when she introduced herself, and produced a stool for her to sit on. Then, as if he were waiting for something, he said, ‘Perhaps you would sit here for a little while, until I return,’ and disappeared into the hut, she supposed to pray.

It was warm and pleasant. The light breeze that rustled the leaves could hardly be felt in the glade below. While she waited she tried to work out what it was, exactly, she wanted to ask this holy man, how she should say it. And in this way some twenty minutes passed.

When she saw the bear she very nearly screamed. It seemed to come from nowhere and lumbered across the clearing straight towards her. She had just risen to rush into the hut when the hermit appeared.

‘Ah, Misha,’ he said gently. ‘Back so soon?’ He smiled at Tatiana. ‘He comes to beg for honey because he knows he’s not allowed to touch the beehives.’ And he stroked the bear’s head affectionately. ‘Off you go, you naughty fellow,’ he said kindly, and the bear lumbered away.

When the bear was gone Father Basil resumed his seat and indicated that she should do the same. Then, without asking her any questions, he began to speak quietly, in a deep, firm voice.

‘On the subject of our life after death, the Orthodox faith is very clear and quite explicit. You must not think that, at the moment of death, you suffer any loss of consciousness, for this is not the case. Indeed, quite the opposite. Not for an instant do we cease our existence. You will see the familiar world around you, but be unable to communicate with it. At the same time, you will encounter the spirits of those who have departed, probably those you have known and loved. Your soul, released from the clinging dross of the body, will be more lively than before; but you will by no means be free of temptations: you will encounter spirits both good and evil and be drawn to them according to your disposition.

‘For two days – I speak in terms familiar to us here on earth – you will be free to roam the world. But on the third day you will face a great and terrible trial. For, as we know from the story of the dormition of the Virgin, the Mother of God herself trembled at the thought of that day when, as she put it, the soul passes through the toll houses. This day you must fear. You will encounter first one and then another evil spirit; and the extent of your struggle with those evils in life will give you strength, or not, to pass through. Those who do not, go straight to Gehenna. On this day, the prayers of those on earth are of great assistance.’

Tatiana looked at the hermit thoughtfully. If she had hoped for comfort, she had not found it. Who would pray for her upon that day? Her family perhaps? Stern Alexis?

The hermit gave her a quiet smile. ‘I will pray for you then, if you like,’ he said.

Tatiana bowed her head. ‘But perhaps you will not know of my death,’ she suggested. The hermitage was so cut off.

‘I shall know,’ he replied. Then he continued. ‘For thirty-seven more days, after the third, you will visit the regions of heaven and hell, but without knowing your own destiny. Then you will be allotted your place to await the Last Day of Judgement and the Second Coming.’

He turned to her kindly. ‘I remind you of this so that you may know that your soul suffers no loss at death, but rather passes instantly into another state. Your life is only a preparing of the spirit for its ultimate journey. Prepare yourself, therefore, without fear. Repent your sins, which stand against you. Beg for forgiveness. Make sure that your spirit, on the threshold of its journey, is humble.’ He got up.

Tatiana also rose. ‘Will it be soon?’ she asked.

‘The hour is always late,’ he replied quietly. ‘You must prepare. That is all.’

He gave her his blessing, and a little wooden cross. And then, just as she was leaving, he motioned her to stop.

‘I see,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘that before you pass over, you are to undergo a trial.’ He paused, gazing past her; then, turning his eyes back to her, he remarked: ‘Pray earnestly, therefore, as you prepare to receive a visitor.’

As she walked slowly back to the cart, she wondered what he meant.

It was a week later that a modest carriage, driven by an ill-dressed and rather grumpy-looking coachman, drew up to the house. In it sat Sergei. And with him was his wife.

At the age of forty-two, Sergei Bobrov looked what he was – a man whose talents had brought him minor standing, and who hoped for more. The two literary geniuses of his generation – his old friend Pushkin and, more recently, young Lermontov – had both appeared like meteors in the sky only to lose their lives in their prime. People looked to Sergei as a man who might, in his middle age, continue what they had begun when young. And perhaps part of the reason for the deepening of the lines upon his face was that, so far, he had not quite managed to justify this hope. His dark hair, worn long, had thinned at the front. He had thick side whiskers now, which were greying. His eyes looked somewhat strained. He had a slight paunch, which somehow suggested a kind of irritability. He came only seldom to Russka, and Tatiana knew he had constant problems with money; but he never complained.

And now, as soon as the couple were inside the house and the first civilities were done with, Sergei drew his mother to one side and explained: ‘The fact is, I’ve come to ask you all a favour.’

His old friend Karpenko, now living in Kiev, had invited him to tour the Ukraine. An arduous journey was planned, some of it on horseback and quite unsuitable for a woman. ‘If I’m going to do any good work,’ he confided, ‘I need a change of scene, the chance to get away.’ He expected to return in two months. In the meantime, he had come to ask: ‘Could I leave my wife with you?’

It would have seemed strange to Tatiana to refuse.

It was a pleasant gathering at dinner. In particular, it made Tatiana happy to see Alexis and Sergei together.

Over the years they had achieved a measure of reconciliation. And they had evolved a cast-iron rule for avoiding quarrels – which was simply never to discuss certain matters like the military or Savva Suvorin. And if she knew they had done all this chiefly for her sake, at least it was something.

If Alexis went out of his way to be agreeable, Ilya was beaming with pleasure. It was hard for this highly educated man to share many of his thoughts with her – still less with Alexis. But ever since Sergei’s appearance, Ilya had been galvanized, and before dinner she had heard him waddling about in his room, pulling out books and papers and muttering: ‘Ah, Seriozha! There are so many things we must discuss.’ If anyone would discover Ilya’s secret it would certainly be Sergei.

The one figure of mystery at the table was Sergei’s young wife. What could one make of her?

Sergei had married Nadia three years before. She was wellborn, a general’s daughter, whose fair hair and pretty appearance upon the dance floor had made her referred to in society, one year, as an ‘ethereal beauty’. It happened, that year, that Sergei too had been briefly in fashion. And it seemed that the girl and the rake had each fallen in love with each other’s reputation in the short-lived season. ‘She’s certainly blonde,’ Ilya had complained after their first meeting. ‘But I can’t see anything ethereal about her.’ Since the marriage, Sergei’s family had seen little of the girl. There had been a baby, lost when it was a week old, and no news of further pregnancies since. And now she sat quietly, looking a little bored but talking mostly to Alexis with whom, it seemed, she felt more at ease than with Ilya. If she was staying there all summer, Tatiana thought, no doubt she would know all about her before long.

At the end of the meal, Tatiana and Nadia both felt tired and decided to retire, while the men moved out on to the verandah to smoke their pipes and talk. The atmosphere between them now was mellow. Even Alexis, after talking to Sergei’s wife, was in a cheerful good humour; and when Sergei had given them the latest gossip from the capital, he turned to Ilya and remarked: ‘Well, brother, now that Seriozha is here, are you going to tell us, at last, what the devil you’ve been up to these last few weeks?’

And it was then that Ilya revealed his secret.

‘The fact is,’ he replied with a placid smile, ‘I’m leaving Russka.’ And as they gazed at him in astonishment he explained: ‘I’m going abroad to write a book. I’m calling it
Russia and the West
. It will be my life’s work.’

Perhaps it had been a sudden inspiration; perhaps the culmination of years of study. Or perhaps it had been the sight of Alexis’s medals, especially the Nevsky Order resting so ceremoniously upon his brother’s chest, which had suddenly brought it home to Ilya that while Alexis had already retired with proof of a lifetime’s accomplishment, he himself had absolutely nothing to show for his fifty-five years on earth. Whatever the cause, he had now decided to make a supreme effort: Ilya Bobrov, too, would leave some memorial.

He had spent a lifetime in study; he was a European, a progressive: what, then, could be better than to write the book which would lead his beloved Russia forward upon her destiny, so that future generations might look back and say: ‘Ilya Bobrov showed us the way’?

And now, with obvious pride, he outlined his plan. ‘My thesis,’ he explained, ‘is very simple. Russia has never, in all her history, been capable of governing herself. It has always been outsiders who brought order and culture to our land. In the days of golden Kiev it was norsemen who ruled us and the Greeks who gave us our religion. For centuries we lived in darkness under the Tartar yoke; but when we emerged, who led us forward into the modern world? Why the English, Dutch and German scientists and technicians imported by Peter the Great. Who gave us our present culture? Catherine the Great who brought us the Enlightenment from France. What philosophers inspire you and me, Sergei? Why, today’s great thinkers from Germany.

‘It must be so, for Russia has so little to offer of its own, and what we have belongs to the Dark Ages. Look at our laws!’ He turned from one to the other. ‘Just a few years ago our noble Speransky at last completed the great codification of Russian laws, and what do they reveal? A concept of justice that would have looked barbaric in the west a thousand years ago. The individual has no rights; there are no independent judges; no trial by jury. Everything may be done – even to landowners like us – at the whim of the Tsar. And to this we Russians cheerfully submit like oriental slaves. No wonder progress is impossible.

‘My plan is simple. I shall go to England, France and Germany to gather material for an outline for a new Russia. A Russia modelled on the west. A complete re-structuring of our society.’ And he gazed at them in triumph.