Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [380]
And now, as soon as the couple were inside the house and the first civilities were done with, Sergei drew his mother to one side and explained: ‘The fact is, I’ve come to ask you all a favour.’
His old friend Karpenko, now living in Kiev, had invited him to tour the Ukraine. An arduous journey was planned, some of it on horseback and quite unsuitable for a woman. ‘If I’m going to do any good work,’ he confided, ‘I need a change of scene, the chance to get away.’ He expected to return in two months. In the meantime, he had come to ask: ‘Could I leave my wife with you?’
It would have seemed strange to Tatiana to refuse.
It was a pleasant gathering at dinner. In particular, it made Tatiana happy to see Alexis and Sergei together.
Over the years they had achieved a measure of reconciliation. And they had evolved a cast-iron rule for avoiding quarrels – which was simply never to discuss certain matters like the military or Savva Suvorin. And if she knew they had done all this chiefly for her sake, at least it was something.
If Alexis went out of his way to be agreeable, Ilya was beaming with pleasure. It was hard for this highly educated man to share many of his thoughts with her – still less with Alexis. But ever since Sergei’s appearance, Ilya had been galvanized, and before dinner she had heard him waddling about in his room, pulling out books and papers and muttering: ‘Ah, Seriozha! There are so many things we must discuss.’ If anyone would discover Ilya’s secret it would certainly be Sergei.
The one figure of mystery at the table was Sergei’s young wife. What could one make of her?
Sergei had married Nadia three years before. She was wellborn, a general’s daughter, whose fair hair and pretty appearance upon the dance floor had made her referred to in society, one year, as an ‘ethereal beauty’. It happened, that year, that Sergei too had been briefly in fashion. And it seemed that the girl and the rake had each fallen in love with each other’s reputation in the short-lived season. ‘She’s certainly blonde,’ Ilya had complained after their first meeting. ‘But I can’t see anything ethereal about her.’ Since the marriage, Sergei’s family had seen little of the girl. There had been a baby, lost when it was a week old, and no news of further pregnancies since. And now she sat quietly, looking a little bored but talking mostly to Alexis with whom, it seemed, she felt more at ease than with Ilya. If she was staying there all summer, Tatiana thought, no doubt she would know all about her before long.
At the end of the meal, Tatiana and Nadia both felt tired and decided to retire, while the men moved out on to the verandah to smoke their pipes and talk. The atmosphere between them now was mellow. Even Alexis, after talking to Sergei’s wife, was in a cheerful good humour; and when Sergei had given them the latest gossip from the capital, he turned to Ilya and remarked: ‘Well, brother, now that Seriozha is here, are you going to tell us, at last, what the devil you’ve been up to these last few weeks?’
And it was then that Ilya revealed his secret.
‘The fact is,’ he replied with a placid smile, ‘I’m leaving Russka.’ And as they gazed at him in astonishment he explained: ‘I’m going abroad to write a book. I’m calling it Russia and the West. It will be my life’s work.’
Perhaps it had been a sudden inspiration; perhaps the culmination of years of study. Or perhaps it had been the sight of Alexis’s medals, especially the Nevsky Order resting so ceremoniously upon his brother’s chest, which had suddenly brought it home to Ilya that while Alexis had already retired with proof of a lifetime’s accomplishment, he himself had absolutely nothing to show for his fifty-five years on earth. Whatever the cause, he had now decided to make a supreme effort: Ilya Bobrov, too, would leave some memorial.
He had spent a lifetime in study; he was a European, a progressive: what, then, could be better than to write the book which would lead his beloved Russia forward upon her destiny, so that future generations might look back and