Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [334]
Savva very seldom smiled: he could not see the point. Though he was only twenty, something in his square young face suggested that on this matter, as upon most, his opinion had long ago been formed. With his black hair, huge nose and black, watchful eyes, he was already as formidable as his father. His mouth was usually pursed into a thin line of silent defiance, and his firm, determined walk somehow suggested that, wherever he was going, it was because he didn’t much care for the place he was coming from.
It was in silence, therefore, that they completed their walk up the slope to the house.
Alexander Bobrov could scarcely believe it had happened. Fate, for once, must have decided to smile upon him. As he gazed at the two Suvorins who now stood before him in his study, he had to fight to suppress a grin.
For this could only mean one thing: money. The question was, how much?
Bobrov was not a greedy man. Though he had once dreamed of riches, he had always rather despised money grubbing as such. But time, failure, and children to provide for had left their mark, so that it might be said that, nowadays, he was sporadically greedy.
‘So, Suvorin, your son doesn’t want to be a soldier?’ he remarked pleasantly. He turned to Savva. ‘You would get your freedom, you know,’ he added.
Since the time of Peter the Great, when a fixed proportion of all the souls in Russia became liable for military service, it was the rule that the serfs chosen – usually, as at Bobrovo, by lot – were granted their freedom upon discharge. But what was that worth when the twenty-five-year service was usually a sentence of death? Men had been known to mutilate themselves to avoid this fate. And now young Savva had drawn the unlucky lot, and Alexander Bobrov could hardly believe his luck.
For though the Suvorins were owned by Bobrov, they had money. Their achievements in the last ten years had been considerable. Not only did they turn out large quantities of silk ribbons, but they now ran a whole network of other serfs, taking their cloth to Vladimir market in return for a cut of the profits. Suvorin had a dozen looms working for him these days, and was adding more all the time.
All of which suited the landowner very well. For whatever he does, he told himself, Suvorin still belongs to me.
The rich serf was profitable to Alexander for a very simple reason. For while the serfs down on the Riazan estate still paid their dues with three days’ barshchina labour, he nowadays made all the Bobrovo serfs give him a cash obrok: and the amount of the obrok to be paid was set, at any figure he pleased, by the landowner! Twice in the last three years he had raised Suvorin’s obrok; both times the fellow had grumbled but paid. ‘God knows what he’s still hiding from me,’ Alexander had complained. Now was the chance to find out.
For there could be only one reason for this visit. Bobrov knew it very well, and intended to enjoy every moment of it. He leaned back in his chair, half-closed his eyes, mildly enquired: ‘So, what can I do for you?’ and waited. And just as Bobrov had known he would, Suvorin bowed low, and announced: ‘I have come, Alexander Prokofievich, to buy a serf.’
Then Alexander Bobrov smiled. For he had serfs to sell.
It had taken many centuries, but by the turn of the nineteenth century the legal position of the Russian peasant had finally reached its lowest point. Peasants now – whether serfs owned by a landlord or state peasants bound to crown land; whether well-off like the Suvorins or semi-starving – were all virtually slaves. A serf had almost no rights at all. Bobrov knew one landowner who insisted on a first night with every serf girl when she was married. He had heard of an old lady who had sent two serfs to Siberia because they forgot to bow to her carriage as it passed. The landlord was employer, judge and executioner. Indeed, even the one right he did not have – that of sentencing a serf to death – was easily circumvented by whipping the