Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [347]
By the time the evening finally ended, he had treated everyone in the inn to half a dozen drinks, had danced, ponderously, with the fifteen-year-old girl, and was quite in love – not exactly with her, but with life itself.
And it was well past midnight when, having cleared away some of the debris, the landlord made up a bed for him on one of the benches and Ilya lay down to sleep. ‘For the fact is, dear old Suvorin,’ he muttered, ‘I think I may be rather drunk.’
‘Yes, sir.’ The serf quietly arranged himself on another bench and closed his eyes.
It was five minutes later that, still lying with his eyes open, Ilya was suddenly struck by a thought. The portmanteau on the floor beside him was not locked. It was his own fault. Somehow he had mislaid the key while they were in Riazan; and it would scarcely have mattered except for one thing: all the money was in there.
And now, through the haze of his drunkenness, this idea seemed to grow in importance. It was urgent. The dim awareness that he had probably made a fool of himself with the gypsies became translated into the idea: They wanted to make a fool out of me. One of those devils, probably the girl, would sneak in there and rob them – with the landlord’s help, no doubt. He sat bolt upright.
‘Suvorin, wake up,’ he hissed. The old man stirred. ‘Come over here and open the portmanteau.’ Suvorin came. ‘Take the money out. The bag and the packet. That’s it.’
The bag contained silver roubles; the packet the banknotes, in use since Catherine’s time, which the Russians called assignats.
‘You keep them, Suvorin. They’ll never be able to rob you, I’m sure.’ The old man shrugged, but complied. Then they both lay down again. ‘You’re a capital fellow,’ Ilya said. Then he fell asleep.
It was an hour later that something woke him. Was it a sound or the moonlight outside the window? Scarcely awake, he was vaguely aware that there was something important he had not done. What the devil was it? Ah, yes, the money. Somehow, in the deep recesses of his sleep, the thought had formulated – what if all the gypsies crept up on poor old Suvorin and took the money? They’d get it all. But he’d outwit them.
Slowly, with difficulty, he managed to rise and lurch across the room and shake Suvorin awake. ‘The packet. Give me the packet.’ Unquestioningly, the serf fumbled in his clothing and produced it. Then Ilya lurched back and sat down heavily. Where could he conceal it? He opened the portmanteau and peered inside at the jumble of his possessions. His head fell forward: God he was sleepy. Ah, yes, that would do.
In the bottom of the portmanteau lay a book of Derzhavin’s verses. Unfortunately, the spine had broken and he had tied the book together with a cord. Fighting off sleep, Ilya undid the cord, slipped the packet in the book and tied it up again. I don’t suppose a gypsy would think of looking in a book, he thought as he closed the portmanteau. Suvorin was snoring. ‘I must keep watch,’ he muttered, and instantly fell back into a deep sleep from which he did not awake until well into the morning.
One of Ilya’s first acts, when he was back in his room at home, was to put the volume of Derzhavin’s verse back in his bookshelf. He had no memory whatever of waking up and putting the money there; and so he never gave the book a thought.
He was therefore completely mystified when, after he and old Suvorin had showed the accounts to his father, half the money was missing.
‘But you’ve got it, Suvorin,’ he said plaintively to the old serf.
‘You took back the notes, sir,’ the other replied with the faintest hint of impatience.
‘Do you swear to that?’ Alexander Bobrov demanded sharply.
‘I do, sir.’
And poor Ilya could only look baffled.
‘I just remember giving it all to you,’ he said.
It was not however until Tatiana herself had gone through his clothes and the portmanteau,