Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [268]
In the year 1703, the Bobrovs had a new Moscow house.
It was stout, squat, on two floors: and it was built of stone. The rooms were low, but large; the floors were made of massive wooden planks, which were polished. The furniture was simple – a stout table, some wooden chairs. And in the main room, after the icon in the corner of course, the place of honour was occupied by a tall square stove with a chimney, which was covered with Dutch tiles.
Procopy Bobrov had taken six months to persuade his father to import these tiles, but old Nikita, now that he had this stove, was proud of the thing.
‘Dutch,’ he would say, as he conducted his guests to look at them. ‘Yes, they’re Dutch all right.’
So it was to the new stove, in the month of May that year, that Nikita Bobrov delightedly conducted his old friend Andrei and his son Pavlo.
‘What a joy this is,’ he cried. ‘After so many years. And as you see,’ he added, with a wave of the hand at the stove and the house in general, ‘things have changed since you were last here.’
They had indeed.
How strange it was to Andrei to find his old friend both cleanshaven, apart from a moustache, and in a tight-fitting German coat.
‘Why,’ he laughed, ‘my dear Nikita, you look almost like a Cossack!’
‘Ah, yes.’ Nikita looked a little sheepish, yet also rather proud. ‘The Tsar’s orders, you know.’
For within a year of the beard tax, Peter had struck again. This time, all classes above the peasant were to wear Hungarian or German short coats instead of their long kaftans which, though undoubtedly warmer in the Russian winter, Peter had decided were too old-fashioned and impractical. He had even hung dummies, correctly dressed, by the city gates to instruct his subjects what to do.
‘Yes,’ Nikita went on, ‘you’ll find everything’s very western now. Young people allowed to meet each other before they’re married; our women not to be kept in seclusion – he even has them attend court with their husbands. Progress in every way, I dare say.’
Though Andrei also noticed, when Eudokia came in to greet him, that she wore a long Russian dress in the old style and greeted him in the traditional reverent manner.
‘My wife preserves the old ways in the house,’ Nikita remarked, with a trace of embarrassment.
For their part, the two Ukrainians thought it rather graceful. Andrei was fascinated by all that he saw and learned in the coming days.
Nikita was obviously happy to see him, insisted he stay in his house, and took him everywhere. But it was not just the changing face of the city but the subtle change in attitudes that he noticed.
For where, in their youth, Nikita had been harsh towards foreigners, now there was in his tone something faintly, but unmistakably, apologetic. ‘We have apothecaries in the city now, you know,’ he would say. ‘And a newspaper.’ Or: ‘There’s a new school of navigation here, and another for foreign languages about to start. But, of course, I dare say you’re used to such things in Little Russia.’ On another occasion, he even remarked humbly, ‘The Tsar has authorized Protestants. Do you think that is right?’
Above all, Nikita noticed the change in the power of the Church.
Once again, another department for the Church had been set up, but this time, Andrei gathered, the Tsar was effectively taking some of the Church revenues for the state.
‘He’s also taken a lot of church bells,’ Nikita explained, ‘for the cannon.’
But far more striking, and shocking, was something Peter had simply failed to do.
For three years before, the old Patriarch had died. And since he was nowadays their Patriarch too, the Orthodox in the Ukraine had wondered who the new one would be. So far only a temporary stand-in had been appointed. But when Andrei asked his host who he thought would succeed, Nikita shook his head. ‘You don’t understand. The word is that there isn’t going to be one. Peter doesn’t want one.’
‘What do you mean? The Tsar can’t abolish the Patriarch. He isn’t God.’
But Nikita only shook his head. ‘You don’t know him,