Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [151]
It was that he felt excluded.
On the simplest level, Elena insisted on sleeping beside her sister, while her mother occupied the other upstairs room and Boris slept downstairs on the big stove. The two sisters seemed to find this a great joke, and he could hear them chattering half the night. He could, he supposed, have forbidden this, but it seemed pointless. If she prefers her sister’s company to mine, he thought gloomily, let them chatter away all night.
But it was the daytime that was worse. The three women were always together, talking in whispers upstairs. He supposed they were talking about him.
Boris’s ideas about women were similar to those of many men at that time. There were many essays by Byzantine and Russian authors in circulation amongst those who could read, which testified to woman’s inferior nature. All Boris knew came from people under these influences, and from his father during his long widowhood.
He knew that women were unclean. Indeed, the Church only allowed older widows to bake the Communion bread, not wishing younger, profane female hands to contaminate the loaves. Boris always washed himself carefully after making love to his wife and even avoided her presence as much as possible when her time came each month.
But above all, women were strangers to him. He might have his little adventures from time to time, like the girl at Nizhni Novgorod, but when he came upon women as a group, he felt a certain awkwardness.
What were these women doing here in Russka? Why had they come? When he had politely asked them, Elena’s sister had answered gaily that they had come to look at the bride and at her husband’s estate and that they would be gone ‘in the twinkling of an eye’.
‘Did you ask them to come?’ he asked Elena, on one of the few occasions he could catch her alone.
‘No,’ she answered. ‘I did not.’ It was, after all, the truth. But he noticed a slight awkwardness about her when she said it. She is not mine, he thought. She is theirs.
At last they left. As they were leaving Elena’s mother, thanking him kindly for his hospitality, said pointedly: ‘We look forward to seeing you soon in Moscow, Boris Davidov. My husband and also his mother await you anxiously.’
It was a clear enough message – a promise of possible help from Dimitri together with a suggestion that the old lady would consider it disrespectful if he did not present himself before her soon. He smiled wanly. Their visit had cost him almost an entire rouble. If this was any hint of what married life in Moscow might cost, he would take his time before returning.
But what had these untrustworthy women been up to while they were eating him out of house and home? What had they done to his wife?
At first, all seemed to be well. Once again, he joined her at nights, and their lovemaking was passionate. His hopes rose.
It was two weeks later that he happened to suffer a change of mood. There was good reason for it. He had discovered certain deficiencies in the farm equipment and in the grain stores that had apparently escaped the steward. At the same time, one of the Tatar slaves had sickened and suddenly died. What little hired labour there was in the area was all contracted to the monastery. So he would either have to buy another slave or farm less land that year. He could see that a second loan from Lev the merchant was going to be needed. Whichever way he turned, it seemed that all his efforts were being thwarted.
‘You’ll work something out,’ Elena told him.
‘Perhaps,’ he had replied gloomily. And he had gone to the window to be alone with his thoughts.
It was a few hours later that she had come to talk to him.
‘You worry too much, Boris,’ she had begun. ‘It’s not so serious.’
‘That’s for me to judge,’ he told her quietly.
‘But look at your gloomy face,’ she went on. There was something in the way she said this, something faintly mocking as though she were trying to laugh him out of his mood. Where did she get this new