Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [395]
It was perfectly true. The peasants paid the poll tax, from which the nobles were exempt. They also paid a host of indirect taxes on food and spirits, which were a greater burden on the poor. The net result of this was that, after becoming free, Timofei the peasant was actually paying ten times as much to the State for each desiatin of land he held as Bobrov the gentleman did for his. No wonder then if, like most peasants, Timofei often muttered: ‘One day we’ll kick those nobles out and get the rest of the land for ourselves.’
He did not hate the landowner – not personally. Hadn’t he and Misha Bobrov played together when they were children? But he knew that the nobleman was a parasite. ‘They say the Tsars gave the Bobrovs their land,’ he had explained to his children, ‘in return for their services. But the Tsar doesn’t need them any more. So he’ll take their land away soon, and give it to us.’ It was a simple belief which was shared by peasants all over Russia: ‘Be patient. The Tsar will give.’ And so he had waited for better times.
Young Boris Romanov was a pleasant-looking boy – square and stocky like his father, but with hair that was lighter brown and already rather thin at the front. His blue eyes, though defiant, were gentle.
He did not want to hurt his family; but in the last few months since his marriage, life had become impossible. The arrival of his wife – a lively, golden-haired young girl – in the household had produced a new pecking order. While Arina and Varya had previously expected obedience from his sister Natalia, they rather ignored her now and concentrated their attention on Boris’s wife. ‘They think they own me,’ she would furiously complain.
But it was his mother’s unexpected pregnancy which really brought about the crisis. ‘We shall be starting a family also,’ the girl protested to Boris. ‘And where will that leave us, when it’s her new child who’ll be the important one?’ His father Timofei, too, always moody and feeling the strain of the new situation, had taken to shouting at him on the slightest pretext. ‘Call that a way to stack wood, you Mordvinian?’ he would bellow; and to Boris’s wife he had promised: ‘I may have failed with my son, but I’ll thrash some sense into my grandchild when you give me one – you can be sure of that!’ By the time the spring thaw came, Boris had decided it could go on no longer.
And this was why, that very morning, he had made the fateful announcement that he was moving out.
He had several friends who had done the same thing in recent years. ‘It’s hard when you start with your own izba,’ they had warned him. ‘But then it gets easier. And it’s better really once you’ve done it, because you don’t quarrel with your family so much.’ He was sure it was a good idea.
Indeed, he would have made the break sooner but for one consideration: his sister Natalia. For what would become of her? What would the family do to the fifteen-year-old girl with the pouting mouth and the air of secret defiance? ‘They’ll break her,’ he told his wife ruefully. ‘They’ll work her into the ground to make up for us.’ He had suggested taking Natalia into their house, but his wife had refused. Natalia, too, had been adamant. ‘Go, Boris,’ she told him. ‘Don’t worry about me.’ And when he asked her how she would manage: ‘I’ll be all right, you’ll see.’ She grinned: ‘I have a plan.’ He wondered what it was.
It was an hour later that Timofei