Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [333]
Alexander and Tatiana were sitting in armchairs. He wore an old blue English coat, cravat and silk stockings; she wore a long, high-waisted pink dress, with a bright shawl draped over her shoulders. In her hands was a piece of embroidery. Near the fire sat their eldest surviving son, twenty-two-year-old Ilya. He had his mother’s round face and fair hair. He was reading a book. In Alexander’s opinion, the young man should have been away fighting, like his brother. But perhaps because, back in ’89, she had so nearly lost him at birth, Tatiana had always kept him at home, insisting he was delicate. ‘He doesn’t look delicate to me,’ Alexander would grumble. ‘He just looks fat and lazy.’ It was a pity he had let Tatiana spoil the boy, because Ilya was intelligent. But Alexander could not be bothered to do anything about it now.
And then there was little Sergei. It would have surprised Alexander to know that his face lightened into a smile whenever he looked at this ten-year-old. Yet what a bright little fellow he was, with his black hair, his laughing brown eyes – the other Bobrov children’s eyes were blue – and his merry ways. He was sitting by the window now, with his sister Olga, inseparable as usual, drawing funny pictures to make her laugh.
Lastly, close by the children, sat a plump peasant woman in her early forties. This was the children’s nanny, Arina. A few minutes before, she had been telling the children one of her inexhaustible fund of fairy stories and Alexander, too, had half-listened, marvelling as he always did at the richness of the Slav folk tradition.
On the nanny’s lap sat a baby girl of one, an orphaned niece that the Bobrovs had allowed her to bring to live in the house, and to whom she had given her own name: Arina.
It was a pleasant scene. On a table in the centre of the room, in woven baskets, were rice and egg pirozhki and other pastries; on a plate, some cinnamon crescents; on another, an apple pie. In a little bowl was some raspberry syrup, with which Tatiana liked to flavour her tea, and slices of lemon for everyone else. For Alexander there was also a little flask of rum. And on a side table stood the most important item of all: the samovar.
It was a splendid one. Alexander had bought the samovar in Moscow and was very proud of it. It stood some two feet high, was silver, and shaped rather like a grecian urn. Heated by charcoal, the water in the samovar was always boiling hot, and from time to time Tatiana herself would go to fill the teapot with a fresh supply from the samovar’s tap.
So, on that cold, snowy day, the family quietly awaited news from the outside world.
It was little Sergei who, glancing out of the window, suddenly stood up and said: ‘Look, Papa. Visitors.’
Several things were striking about Ivan and Savva Suvorin. The first was that, at twenty, Savva was as tall as his father, so there were now two giants in the village. The second was that, unlike most Russian peasants who wore felt or bast shoes, the Suvorins both wore stout leather boots, which proclaimed their wealth. The third was that each wore a huge hat: the father’s shaped like a bulbous dome, the son’s high and rounded, with a large brim – almost like an old English Puritan’s hat – so that as they walked along they resembled nothing so much as a tall wooden church and belltower.
Both wore heavy black coats. From the older man’s belt hung a bag of coins. He made no secret of the fact that he had money. What was concealed, however, was the equal quantity of coins that was sewn into the inside of the other’s clothing. ‘God knows if we shall need it,’ Ivan remarked. ‘You can never tell with that greedy wolf.’
For the rich serf was going to see his master Bobrov; and the money was to save his son’s life.
‘Cheer up, Savva,’ he added, ‘you drew the lot – it was fate – but I can