Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [224]
‘What’s this?’ he asked a bystander.
‘Those are zealots,’ the fellow grinned. ‘And they’ve found what they’re looking for.’
To his amazement Andrei now saw the mob pull down from the wagon a lute, a balalaika, and several other musical instruments.
‘A fire!’ he heard one of the priests cry. ‘Burn these iniquities.’
And sure enough, moments later, the wagon itself was set on fire. Not only that, but the gathering crowd of onlookers was roaring its approval. He had been curtly told by a priest the day before not to smoke his Cossack pipe, and he had also seen a drunkard dragged away to be flogged. But what kind of land was this, where priests burned musical instruments? Scarcely thinking what he was doing, he opened his mouth and began to utter a curse of disapproval, when unexpectedly he felt a hand held across his lips.
It was a female hand, and before he could even look down, he heard a familiar voice speaking softly at his shoulder.
‘Take care, Cossack.’
Her hand was a little longer than he had realized; as she took it away, Maryushka gently squeezed his cheeks and then ran the tips of her fingers across his lips.
‘Don’t you realize, Mr Cossack,’ she whispered, ‘there are probably people in the crowd who are listening – they’ll tell the priests if they hear you swearing.’
‘What then?’
She shrugged.
‘Who knows? The knout perhaps.’
The Russian leather-thonged whip was a fearsome instrument.
‘Are these zealots so strict then that they burn musical instruments and give the knout for swearing?’
‘Oh, yes. The Patriarch is for it, and some of the zealots in the Church are even stricter. They are determined to cure us Russians of our whoring and drinking. All sorts of pleasures are forbidden.’ She laughed. ‘You know, the landlord’s even afraid to go home because the priest at Dirty Place preaches such sermons. And Bobrov has a lute from Germany hidden in his house, I know.’
Andrei frowned. Was this dour zealotry the Orthodoxy he was fighting for? Was everything in the Muscovite state so dark, so claustrophobic? The sense of unease he had felt on his journey northwards from the Ukraine seemed to come back to him now with more force.
But Maryushka had reached up and gently touched his lips again.
‘Is there anyone in your lodgings now?’ she asked.
He knew there was not.
He looked at her.
‘What if we’re caught? The knout?’
She smiled.
‘No one will catch us.’
A blue sky appeared the next day, and the spring sun. By noon the thaw had set in. And though, in the succeeding days, the sky was often overcast, it was clear that winter was ending at last.
The streets became sodden, grey and brown. A rich, damp smell began to emanate from the millions of logs of the wooden houses, like a sharp, resinous incense. The wet wooden walls were almost charcoal; icicles, thinning to mere needles, hung from the glistening eaves; and here and there the white walls of a church or the slender shape of a silver birch glimmered above the dull slush and endless puddles of the street. The smoke from the fire in every house rose to be carried, like the modest sound of the church bells, over the still sombre morass of the city whose high, golden domes alone gave promise of the light and warmth to come.
In this melting season, Andrei made love to the girl Maryushka.
She had a slim, strong body; the light freckles on her legs and breasts petered out to a surprisingly pale whiteness. Her breasts were rather small.
She would visit his lodgings in the afternoon, and they would lie on his bed in the shadowy room that was almost overheated by the big stove at one end. She liked to undress herself and stretch out, luxuriously, to await him. Sometimes, having arched her back with a catlike movement, she