Russka (88 page)

As for the girl …

‘You know of course that he has a mistress?’ she had remarked with cold casualness to Tatiana, as soon as they had finished the letter, watching curiously to see how she took it.

Tatiana blushed. She did know. Her mother had found that out. But one expected such a thing in an older man; it even made him more mysterious and exciting.

‘I dare say with a young girl like Tatiana he’ll have no need to think of a mistress now,’ her mother had remarked hopefully.

‘Not at all,’ the old woman had contradicted her. ‘The more a man gets, up to a certain age, the more he wants.’ She turned to Tatiana. ‘You mustn’t give him time or opportunity if you want a faithful husband. That’s all there is to it.’

Armed with this information, and the stern letter, the lovelorn girl had returned home and waited.

Grief and pain had strengthened Tatiana. If she was distraught while she waited for Bobrov’s response, now in her moment of triumph she had steeled herself to be cool; however much she wanted him, she must not give him another chance to humiliate her. From now on she would make him see that it was he who was lucky, not she. And I’ll take him from that Frenchwoman, she thought. Indeed, it was this last determination that helped her, at this moment of crisis, to astonish him by her calm detachment.

So it was that Alexander Bobrov came to claim his bride.

A light snow was falling that evening as Alexander made his way across the city. The little fires by the watchmen’s huts at the street corners looked orange; the houses loomed as though in a mist. All of which pleased Alexander. For he did not wish to be seen. At the Fontanka Canal, he got out of his sled and, telling the coachman to wait for him, walked across the little bridge alone. In moments, he had disappeared.

He walked briskly but carefully, occasionally turning round, almost furtively, to make sure that he was not being followed. The quarter was respectable enough: about half the houses were wooden, half brick and stone. He passed a church and turned into a quiet street.

Only one thing puzzled him. What the devil had become of that letter? When the stranger had brought it to him the night before, he had intended to burn it as soon as he returned home. But then he had forgotten. Only after leaving Tatiana in the early afternoon had he remembered it, felt in his coat pocket, and discovered that it was gone. He shrugged. It didn’t really matter. It would be completely meaningless to anyone who found it.

Now Alexander turned through a covered archway into the shadowy courtyard of a large building. Its walls were covered with peeling pink stucco, and like many such buildings, it contained a series of sprawling apartments, two per floor, most of which were occupied by merchants of the middling sort. With a last, backward glance, he ascended the ill-lit stone staircase to the second floor. The stairs were deserted with the sole exception of a very large, black cat which sat by a window, and which Bobrov ignored.

When he reached the apartment he knocked carefully, three times, before the door opened a fraction and a voice from the gloom of the hall said quietly: ‘What do you seek?’

‘The Rosy Cross.’

The door opened wide. For Alexander Bobrov the gambler, unknown even to his mistress, was a member of the innermost circle of that great, secret Brotherhood – the Freemasons. And they had important business that night.

Perhaps she should have expected it. But she was very young. That was the conclusion Tatiana herself came to, in the years that followed.

She loved him. When she saw his carriage approaching or watched the lackey at the door help him off with his coat, a thrill of excitement would go through her. He had known how to make her love him. Even in the early days of their marriage he had seemed to control everything. In their lovemaking, when he was done himself, he would still arouse her in other ways, again and again, leaving her glowing, yet always wanting more of him. She loved the way he looked, the way he dressed, his knowledge of things beyond her. Even the slight thickening around his waist, which had begun in their first year together, seemed to her to suit him very well: he looked neat, yet powerful.

And surely he, too, was excited by their love. She knew he was: she could tell. She was learning too. She was eager to learn, both to experience new delights and to please him. She was happy; she was enthusiastic; she would – and did – astonish him!

Tatiana had great gifts. She was warm-hearted and practical. She liked to supervise the women in the kitchen; and would proudly make dainty pastries with her own hands, sitting opposite him afterwards, her face flushed with excitement, to watch his reaction to them. How delighted he seemed, how charmed.

It was therefore a shock to her when, six months after they had been married, he failed to come home one night and she began to suspect that he was still in love with Adelaide de Ronville.

She was right. And as Alexander often reminded himself, it was his fault. Indeed, he reflected, I cannot blame Tatiana at all.

It was not her fault that she was so young. It was not her fault if, like most girls of her kind, she had little education. She could not share a joke in French like Madame de Ronville, or even the old countess. It was not her fault if, on the occasions when he took her to salons like that of Countess Turova, she sat rather meekly to one side; nor that the countess, having cursorily asked
after her health, would promptly ignore her for the rest of the evening.

It was not her fault if, after a few months, the subject of her pastries bored him; or that, without either of them saying anything, he usually went alone to the countess’s.

Nor was it her fault, Alexander knew, if their lovemaking left him only half-contented. That had seemed delightful at first, too; he had been aroused by her slightly plump young body. Yes, he had thought, this is how nature meant things to be. A young girl, full of energy, swept away by the first excitement of love. It was not her fault if she craved passion with either a submissiveness or a violence that were far from the varied subtlety of Madame de Ronville.

In short, he found his young wife was cloying, and that married life destroyed the delicate balance, the sense of silence within, which is the mark of the confirmed bachelor.

He felt guilty. He had known how to make his young wife love him and want him; yet he found he could not give Adelaide up. He did not wish to hurt his wife but what could he do? Only with the older Frenchwoman did he find peace. ‘Only with you,’ he would tell her, ‘can I sit,
très chère amie
, and listen to the ticking of the clock.’ Indeed, his passion did not diminish but increased. The little wrinkles on her face, so finely drawn, so expressive of her character, represented for him, as he gazed fondly down at her, no diminution of her sexuality but rather a distillation. Her body, still young in many ways, filled him now with an extra tenderness. It was strange, but his wife’s very youth made him love the older woman more. So it was that, discreetly but often, he had gone to call upon Adelaide.

It was a week after this first failure to return at night that Alexander was due to go to the Countess Turova’s salon. Tatiana said nothing, but made discreet arrangements; and shortly after he left, followed him in a hired carriage. She saw him go in, and waited quietly outside. Sure enough, at about eleven o’clock the guests departed and the lights in the big rooms went out. She waited another twenty minutes. The lights in the main body of the house were all out now. In the east wing, however, where Madame de Ronville’s apartment was, she could see a faint flickering of candles. Then they went out. A little later she went home.

Tatiana supposed she must expect such treatment. But the pain was very great. Wisely, however, she said nothing. What was there to be gained? He would deny it and then, more hurtful still, there would be a lie between them which would be even more humiliating.

So the weeks passed. She tried to shut the Frenchwoman out of her mind, yet thought of little else. And Alexander, for his part, tried to be kind to her. For it was not her fault if she did not make him happy: she was a good wife and, despite the pain he guessed he caused her, never complained. No, he had nothing to reproach her with. And because he knew all this in his head, it did not even occur to him that secretly, in his heart, he blamed her for everything.

It was in the autumn of 1787 that two new circumstances arose in Tatiana’s life. The first was her discovery that she was pregnant. This brought her only joy. Surely it will bring Alexander closer to me, she thought.

The second, however, was a puzzle. For she began to sense there was something else going on in Alexander’s life – something secret – about which she knew nothing. The most obvious sign was his unexplained absences.

Several times during the previous months he had gone off in the evenings on unexplained business. Once he had done so late at night – but at a time when she knew for certain that Adelaide de Ronville was out of the city. Could it possibly be that Alexander had another – a second – mistress?

Then in September, just after she told him she was pregnant, he abruptly went to Moscow for two weeks, giving her an explanation which was strangely vague. And Adelaide was in St Petersburg.

So it must be another woman then – but who?

It would have surprised Tatiana very much if she had known the real truth: and still more had she understood that the person Alexander was going to see was both her greatest friend – and also her enemy.

The history of the Freemasons in Russia is, by its nature, shrouded in darkness. Its records were nearly all hidden or destroyed. Yet, about its general shape, a good deal is known.

There were many Masons in St Petersburg. The English
lodges were especially popular. After all, the English were fashionable: every rich man wanted an English thoroughbred; every lady an English dog; and the smart place for a fellow like Bobrov to be seen was the English Club. Besides, English Freemasonry reflected the character of that easy-going country. It gave no trouble. Non-political, not too mystical, concerned with philanthrophy, the English lodges were patronized by foreigners and Russians alike.

When, therefore, back in 1782 some of Bobrov’s English friends had invited him to join, he had accepted gladly.

And he would probably never have given it another thought, but for a chance encounter in Moscow, a year later. An old acquaintance from his student days, discovering that he was in Moscow, had assured him: ‘But, my dear fellow, you must meet some of the Masonic circle here – they’re the best people in society.’ And so it was, upon his next visit to the old capital, that Alexander Bobrov encountered two highly significant people: the prince and the professor.

The first was a rich aristocrat and patron of the arts; the other a middle-aged, balding, rather abstracted figure who was head of the Moscow University Press. Indeed, one would almost have called Novikov nondescript had it not been for a certain strange, though kindly light in his pale blue eyes. This was the man Alexander liked to call the professor.

It was the professor with whom he had had his secret rendezvous, that snowy December night, in the pink house beyond the Fontanka Canal; it was the professor who had become his mentor and led him into the very different and secret world of higher Masonry; and it was the professor whom, ever since they met, Alexander always thought of in the same way: as the voice of his conscience.

There were several reasons why Alexander should have become fascinated by his new friends in Moscow. They were enlightened and educated – the centre of the University circle. The prince and his friends were the cream of the capital’s aristocratic society: that appealed to Alexander’s vanity. And also, though he scarcely realized it himself, the secret hierarchy of higher Masonry reminded him of the bureaucratic ladder – and Bobrov was one of those men who have only to see a ladder to want to climb it.

For three years, making numerous visits to the professor in Moscow, and corresponding by letter, Alexander had studied as his mentor led him through the first of the higher degrees of Masonry – first to the rank of Scottish Knight, then to Theoretical Brother. ‘Our mystical secrets go back to the very dawn of Christianity,’ the professor explained. ‘To ordinary Masons, the secret signs we use – the hieroglyphs – are mere playthings. These men do good works, which are admirable, but they understand little. The true meaning is revealed only to those who are worthy.’

There was something very pure about the quiet scholar that Alexander found impressive. Indeed, at first he had hesitated to engage in higher Masonry because he had heard rumours that these inner orders practised alchemy and magical arts. But there was nothing like that with the professor. ‘The way I shall lead you,’ he promised, ‘lies along a pure and Christian path. Our only motive is a burning desire to serve God and our blessed Russia.’

The professor worked tirelessly. Besides his official duties at the University Press, it was he who ran the private Freemason’s Press which turned out books and pamphlets for the membership. Dozens of bookshops distributed these in the main cities. ‘We spread our gospel,’ the professor would say happily.

And in many ways, Alexander realized, the Masonic Brotherhood was like a secret Church. For ever since Peter the Great had made Russia a secular state, the ancient prestige of the Orthodox Church had declined. Peter had abolished the Patriarch; Catherine had taken all the Church lands and put them under state control. Though the peasants still followed the Church, and were often
Raskolniki
– for the enlightened Catherine tolerated these old Schismatics with polite amusement – for men of Bobrov’s class it was different. Few of his friends took the Church seriously, yet they often felt something was missing from their lives, so it was not surprising that they were sometimes attracted to the religious and mystical atmosphere of the Masonic Brotherhood. It salved their consciences, and convinced them that they were truly doing good.

And he himself, he had to admit, was drawn to the professor’s Christian piety. Though they only met from time to time, he often felt the older man’s influence upon him. It was not strong enough to divert him from his worldly plans; yet, there was no denying it, he felt it like a reproach. Perhaps, he acknowledged, in this matter
too I am gambling: that if I fail to win the world, I shall still, through the professor, save my soul.