Russka (111 page)

And still Pinegin puffed on his pipe and said nothing.

He had not counted on this young man. The deed was the key. He had even left to fate the question of whether or not Sergei discovered his revenge. If he did, so much the better: Pinegin had no fear of the consequences. But young Misha was a bystander whom, for some reason, the gods had added to the scene, and there it was. The young man’s speech, of course, was absolutely correct. He found no fault with it at all. And he wondered what to do.

Slowly he turned and began to stroll down the alley again, Misha at his side.

‘I certainly have no quarrel with you, Mikhail Alexeevich,’ he remarked at last. ‘And you have spoken wisely. I will not say whether or not there has been a misunderstanding: but I believe that you should no longer feel any concern about the matter. Please put your mind at rest.’

And taking this for an assurance, Misha was satisfied.

It was therefore with stupefaction, on rising early the following morning, that he saw Pinegin quietly come out of Nadia’s room.

An hour later, he challenged him.

‘I’m afraid I cannot accept your challenge.’

Misha stared at him.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I refuse to fight you,’ Pinegin told him calmly.

‘Do you deny sleeping with my Uncle’s wife, in this very house?’

‘No.’

‘May I ask why you refuse my challenge?’

‘I do not wish to fight you.’

Misha was completely at a loss.

‘Then I must call you a coward.’

Pinegin bowed.

‘For that, Mikhail Alexeevich, I will fight you.’ He paused. ‘Are you content to fight at a time of my choosing?’

‘As you wish. The sooner the better.’

‘I will let you know when I am ready. Next year perhaps. But I promise you, we shall fight.’ And with that he walked away, leaving Misha completely mystified.

Now, he thought, what the devil do I do?

At ten o’clock that morning, a small event took place at Bobrovo that went almost unnoticed.

Ilya Bobrov came slowly downstairs, crammed a large, wide-brimmed hat on his head, took a stout walking stick and left the house without a word to anyone. A short time later, the villagers were surprised to see his cumbersome figure wheezing along, his face red with the unwonted exertion but set into a look of the grimmest determination. Nobody had ever seen him go walking like this before. Once through the village, he took the lane that led through the woods towards the monastery. Several times, as he went along, he muttered nervously.

No one had taken much notice of Ilya recently. If he had seemed to be more abstracted than usual, if there had sometimes been a hint of desperation in his manner, Tatiana had put it down to hard work and thought nothing of it. She was quite unaware, therefore, that after all his months of labour at this great project, Ilya had reached a point of absolute crisis and near breakdown. He had been up all the previous night; and had anyone met him as he walked through the woods, they would have noticed that his eyes, which usually gazed out so placidly upon the world, were fixed ahead, staring wildly as though the sight of only one object in the universe could satisfy them. He looked like a haggard pilgrim in search of the grail.

Which in a way he was.

It was at noon that day, when Tatiana had gone over to Russka, taking Pinegin with her, that Misha, alone with his thoughts in the quiet house, was suddenly disturbed by a clatter at the door and the sound of laughing voices.

It was Sergei, back from the Ukraine. And he had brought his friend Karpenko with him.

He bounced into the hall, looking sunburned, rested, full of life and good humour. Encountering Misha in the hall, he gave a cry of joy and embraced him. ‘Look at this,’ he called to Karpenko. ‘See what has become of little Misha the bear!’

In front of Misha now stood a very different man from the nervous youth who had once gazed adoringly at Olga. Karpenko was a charming man at the end of his thirties with a gleaming black beard, wonderful, sensitive eyes, and a reputation of huge success with women – ‘Who always seem to stay his friends, whenever he dumps them,’ Sergei would say with puzzled admiration. Karpenko had reason to be contented. Most of his hopes had been realized. For himself he had three plays to his credit and edited a successful journal in Kiev. Even better, in a way, he had witnessed his beloved Ukraine achieve literary honour. His fellow Ukrainian, the satirist Gogol, had already made an important name for himself in Russia. And best of all – confounding all those who would dismiss it as a peasant’s language – his country had at last found a writer of true greatness, the national poet Shevchenko, who wrote his exquisite lines in the Ukrainian tongue; so that Karpenko could truly say, ‘See, the ambitious hopes of my youth have not been dimmed: they have been vindicated.’

And Misha stared at this happy pair and wondered what to say.

‘We shall go to Moscow tomorrow,’ Sergei gaily announced. ‘Then to St Petersburg. Karpenko and I are full of ideas. We shall take the capital by storm!’ He looked about him. ‘Where the devil’s Ilya? We’re both longing to see him.’ And servants were sent to look for him.

It was only after running upstairs to see his wife that Sergei returned looking puzzled. ‘That’s the strangest thing,’ he remarked to Misha. ‘I thought she hated the country. Now she says she wants to stay down here another week or two while we go
on to Moscow. What do you make of that?’ And then, staring in perplexity at his nephew’s troubled face: ‘Now what’s the matter with you, my Misha?’

And now, it seemed to Misha, he had to tell him.

The arrangements were discreetly made that afternoon.

The place chosen was the little clearing by the burial mounds off the lane that led to the monastery. No one was likely to come by there at dawn. Pinegin having no person to be his second, Karpenko had unwillingly done as Sergei asked, and assumed that responsibility.

Dinner that afternoon passed quietly. Sergei, Pinegin and Karpenko made polite conversation, in which Misha attempted to follow them. By agreement, neither Tatiana nor Nadia was given any inkling of what was passing.

Indeed, the only mystery that day lay in the whereabouts of Ilya who still, by afternoon, had not returned. Since he had been seen going along the lane towards Russka, however, it was hard to believe that much harm could have come to him. After dinner, Karpenko undertook to amuse the ladies while Sergei retired to his room to make his preparations.

There were a number of letters to write. One was to Olga; another to his mother; another to his wife. He wrote them very calmly and carefully. The one to his wife contained no reproaches. The letter on which he spent the most trouble, strangely, was the one to Alexis.

It was in the late afternoon, as the sun was starting to sink towards the tall watchtower at Russka, that another, even more curious sight was seen by the villagers at Bobrovo.

It was the return of Ilya.

He came, as before, on foot. He was very tired now and his feet were dragging, but he did not seem to mind. And upon his face was a look which, insofar as was possible in a man so overweight, could only be described as religious ecstasy.

For Ilya had found that which he sought.

And it was this wonderful discovery that he shared with Sergei, in the latter’s room that night, long after the sun had gone down.

It was a strange little scene: the one brother tired, shaken,
longing only to be left alone with his thoughts until the dawn; the other, entirely unaware of what was going on, his face flushed with excitement, intent upon telling his companion the things that were passing through his mind and which seemed to him so important. ‘Indeed, Seriozha,’ he said, ‘you couldn’t have come at a better time.’

The great crisis Ilya had suffered was easy enough to understand. All summer he had laboured at the plan of his great book. Every waking moment, all his mind, had gone into it. And by August he had produced a blue-print for a new Russia, a modern Russia, with western laws and institutions, and a vigorous economy – ‘maybe like that of the merchants and free farmers of America,’ There was really nothing wrong with Ilya’s plan. It was intelligent, practical, logical: he could see just how Russia could become a free and prosperous like any other nation.

And then the crisis, for Ilya, had begun.

In a way, as Sergei listened to his brother’s urgent explanation, the business was almost comic. He could just see poor Ilya waddling about in his room with furrowed brow, shaking his head at the problems of Russia and the universe. And yet at the same time, he understood and respected Ilya’s problem, which was not really comic at all, but represented the tragedy of his country. And this tragedy was expressed in a single statement.

‘For this was the trouble, Seriozha. The more my plan made sense, the more every instinct inside me said: “This is nonsense. This will never work.” ’ He shook his large head sadly. ‘To lose faith in your own country, the country you love, Seriozha: to feel that because your plan makes sense, that is exactly why it is doomed – that is a terrible thing, my friend.’

It was not uncommon; Sergei had known many thoughtful men, some in the administration, who suffered from exactly this agony of mind. Like many before, no doubt like many after, Ilya the civilized westernizer was being undermined, and mocked, by his own instinctive understanding of his native Russia.

Yet still, all summer, he had pressed on. ‘This was to be my life’s work, Seriozha. I couldn’t just toss it aside. I couldn’t just accept it was an exercise in futility, don’t you see? It was all I had.’ Week after week he had ploughed on, refining, improving and yet no less troubled. Until finally, after a sleepless night, the crisis had come that morning. He could go on no longer.

It was then, in a state of extreme nervous excitement, that Ilya had walked out of the house and gone – as he had not done in years – to the monastery. He himself hardly knew what had led him there. Perhaps a childhood memory. Perhaps an instinctive turning to religion when – as it had for him personally – all else had failed.

He had wandered about at the monastery for several hours without receiving any enlightenment. Then it had occurred to him to go and look at the little icon, the Rublev, which his family had given to the place all those centuries ago. ‘At first,’ he said, ‘I felt nothing. It was just a darkened object.’ But then, slowly, it seemed to Ilya that the little icon had begun to work upon him. He had stayed before it for an hour. Then a second.

‘And then, at last, Seriozha, I knew.’ He took Sergei’s arm excitedly. ‘I knew what was wrong with all my plans. It was exactly what you – you, my dear Seriozha – had told me. I was trying to solve Russia’s problems by using my head, by logic. I should have used my heart.’ He smiled. ‘You have converted me. I am a Slavophile!’

‘And your book?’ Sergei asked.

Ilya smiled. ‘I have no need to travel abroad now,’ he said. ‘The answer to Russia’s problems lies here, in Russia.’ And in a few brief words, he sketched out his new vision. ‘The Church is the key,’ he explained. ‘If Russia’s guiding force is not religion, then her people will be listless. We can have western laws, independent judges, perhaps even parliaments. But only if they grow gradually out of a spiritual renewal. That has to come first.’

‘And Adam Smith?’

‘The laws of economics still operate, but we must organize our farms and our workshops on a communal basis – for the good of the community, not the individual.’

‘It won’t be like the west then, after all.’

‘No. Russia will never be like the west.’

Sergei smiled. He did not know whether his brother was right or wrong, but he was glad to see that, for him at least, the agony seemed to be over. The debate between those who looked to the west and those who saw Russia as different would no doubt go on. Perhaps it would never be resolved.

‘It’s very late,’ he pleaded. ‘Please may I get some rest?’ And he finally persuaded a reluctant Ilya to depart.

There were still a few hours to go before the dawn. For some reason he found himself thinking almost continuously of Olga.

The little glade was very quiet. There was a faint sheen of dew upon the little mounds nearby that caught the early rays of the sun. In the middle distance they could see the little monastery, whose bell had just stopped ringing.

The two men had stripped to their shirts. There was a faint chill in the air which caused Sergei involuntarily to shiver.

Karpenko and Misha, both very pale, had loaded the pistols. Now they handed them to the two men.

And all the time, Misha kept thinking: I know this must be done. It is the only honourable way. And yet it’s insane. It is not real.

There was no sound, for some reason, not even a bird, as the two men paced slowly away from each other. All that could be heard was the faint sound of their feet brushing the short, damp grass.

They turned. Two shots rang out.

And both seconds ran, with a cry, to Sergei.

It was not surprising that the bullet had struck him precisely in the heart. Ever since he was a young man, Pinegin had never been known to miss. Down in the frontier forts, he had an enviable reputation for it: which was why, years ago, Alexis had remarked that Pinegin was a dangerous man.

When Alexis returned to Russka that afternoon and heard the news, he broke down and wept. At his request, Pinegin left at once.

But the most unexpected event took place that evening.

Sergei’s letter to Alexis was a very simple, but moving document. It asked his forgiveness, first, for any hurt he had brought the family. He told Alexis, frankly, how hard it had been for him to forgive the exile in the Urals that his brother had engineered; but thanked him for his restraint in the years since. And it ended with a single request.

For there is one great wrong I have
done in my life – you may not agree
because you follow the legal rules
applying to serfdom – but to me, when
I foolishly gave the game away and
caused Savva Suvorin to be caught
again, I did him a terrible wrong.
You have a clear conscience about it,
I know. But I have not, and there’s
nothing I can do about it.