Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [394]
Mud. Everywhere he looked, it seemed to Nicolai Bobrov, there was mud. Brown mud that stretched to the ploughland’s horizon; mud that stretched down the road like an endless penance; mud that took hold of the carriage wheels and dragged them down like some evil spirit trying to drown a stranger in a pool. Mud splattered their clothes, mud caked the carriage, mud said to them, plainly and without fear of contradiction: ‘This is my season. None shall move, because I do not allow it. Neither horse nor man, rich nor poor, strong nor weak, neither armies nor the Tsar himself have any power over me. For in my season I am king.’ It was not the snow that first broke Napoleon on his retreat from Moscow, Nicolai remembered: it was the mud.
Yet despite their slow progress, young Nicolai felt elated. For it seemed to him that perhaps all his life – and certainly the last year or two – had been a preparation for this journey and this spring.
How he had prepared! Like all the other students in the house they shared, he had read, listened, debated week after week, month after month. He had even practised mortifications like a monk. One month, he had slept on a bare board, which he covered with studs. He generally wore a hair shirt. ‘For I am not yet as strong and as disciplined as I should be,’ he would confess to his friends. And now, at last, the hour was approaching at which, he hoped, both he and all the world would be born again.
And what luck, Nicolai considered as he glanced at his companion – what incredible luck that he should be undertaking his mission with this man above all others. He knows so much more than I do, he thought humbly. Nicolai had never met anyone like him.
As they made their way, at a snail’s pace, through the endless mud, only one thought secretly troubled Nicolai. His unsuspecting parents. What would become of them?
Of course, he realized, they would have to suffer: it was inevitable. But at least I’ll be there, he thought. I dare say I can keep them from the worst.
Slowly the little carriage made its way towards Russka.
Timofei Romanov stood by the window of the izba on that damp spring morning and stared at his son Boris in disbelief.
‘I forbid you,’ he cried at last.
‘I’m twenty and I’m married. You can’t stop me.’ Young Boris Romanov looked round his family. His parents’ faces were ashen; his grandmother Arina was stony faced; and his fifteen-year-old sister Natalia was looking rebellious, as usual.
‘Wolf!’ Timofei roared. And then, almost pleadingly: ‘At least think of your poor mother.’
But Boris said nothing and Timofei could only look outside at the clamorous birds wheeling over the trees and wonder why God had sent the family all these troubles at once.
The Romanov family was small. Over the years, Timofei and Varya had lost four children to disease and malnutrition; but such tragedies were only to be expected. Thank God at least Natalia and Boris were healthy. Arina too, though she had never quite recovered her health from the terrible famine of ’39, was a source of strength: small, somewhat shrivelled, sometimes bitter, but indomitable. Together with Boris’s new wife, they all lived together in a stout, two-storey izba in the centre of the village. And Timofei, now fifty-two, had been looking forward to taking things more easily.
Until a month ago when, to his astonishment, Varya had told him that she was pregnant again. ‘I couldn’t believe it at first,’ she said, ‘but now I’m sure.’ And in reply to her uncertain look he had smiled bravely and remarked: ‘It’s a gift from God.’
Or a curse, he thought now.
For Boris had just announced that he was going to ruin them.
The Emancipation of the Serfs had changed the lives of Timofei and his family, but not much for the better. There were several reasons for this.
While the peasants on land owned by the State had received a moderately good deal, the serfs of private landlords had not. For a start, only