Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [376]
While she smiled sadly at all this, it also offended Tatiana’s practical nature. And it was this hopeful waiting for Tsar Alexander, as much as anything, that gave her a new idea. She summoned Savva Suvorin. ‘What we need here in future,’ she told that practical man, ‘is not a Tsar, but an alternative crop. I want you to make enquiries and see what you can find.’
It was not until three months later that Suvorin reported to her, but when he did, it was, for once, with a faint grin. In his hand he held a small sack, from which he now drew out a dirty grey-brown object. ‘This is your answer,’ he said. ‘The German colonists have been growing these down in the south for a long time, but we haven’t any up here.’
‘What is it?’ she asked.
‘A potato, my lady,’ he replied.
And so it was, some time before it became usual on the private estates in the province, that one of modern Russia’s most important crops was first planted at Russka.
But for Savva Suvorin, though he regretted the suffering, it was hard not to take a grim pleasure in the failures of 1839 and ’40. For they gave him his chance.
‘That’s two years of income he has lost,’ he said to his wife and son. ‘That damned Alexis Bobrov can’t hold out much longer.’ He nodded thoughtfully. ‘It’s time to make them an offer they cannot refuse.’ And in the spring of the following year, he requested a passport from Tatiana, to visit Moscow.
And now, in May 1844, Savva Suvorin stood before Alexis Bobrov and made his astonishing offer.
‘Fifty thousand roubles.’
Even Alexis was struck dumb. It was a fortune. How the devil had Savva found it?
‘I will return tomorrow, lord, in order that you may consider the matter.’ And he discreetly withdrew, while Alexis could only stare after him. This time, the serf thought, I have him.
The plan of Savva Suvorin was hugely ambitious. It centred on the gigantic loan he had negotiated, free of interest for five years, from the Theodosians. This loan would allow him to buy his freedom and also to make a single, enormous investment which would transfer the Suvorin enterprises into his own hands for ever.
There was at this time no more booming business in Russia than the manufacture of cotton from the imported raw material – so much so that the area above Vladimir was becoming known as ‘Calico country’. Savva’s plan was not only to convert his wooden plant over to cotton, but also to speed production hugely by the purchase of a large, steam-driven jenny from England. One or two of the more powerful Russian entrepreneurs had already done this a few years before and the results, he knew, had been spectacular. ‘But I won’t do it unless I’m free,’ he told his family. ‘I’m not setting up a big enterprise like that just to have those accursed Bobrovs steal it all on some pretext like they did before.’
Fifty thousand roubles. It was an extraordinary offer that the landlord had to consider.
Alexis Bobrov, at the age of fifty-one, was an impressive figure who looked rather older. His body was heavyset. His grey hair was cut short; his cheeks had filled out with age so that his long, hawkish face had become squarer, more massive. His nose had thickened at the bottom and curved down over his mouth so that, with his long, drooping grey moustache, he put one in mind of some Turkish pasha of unshakable authority. Upon his uniform were numerous medals and orders including that of Alexander Nevsky.
Having been widowed a second time, and suffering from an old wound acquired in the Polish rising, which gave him a slight limp, he had taken an honourable retirement that year and had come to live permanently on the Bobrovo estate.
When he told his mother and brother Ilya about the offer, they were both adamant: he should take it. In Tatiana’s case, the argument was simple. As well as her private sympathy for Savva, it was clear to her that the money was needed. ‘With that,’ she reasoned, ‘you could clear