Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [400]
Misha Bobrov always counted himself a lucky man that he got on so well with his son. He still remembered the brooding atmosphere that surrounded his stern old father Alexis and had always resolved never to allow such bad feeling at Bobrovo again – which came naturally to him anyway, for he was a kindly, easy-going man.
Above all, he was always delighted to let the boy argue with him. ‘Just like dear Sergei and old Uncle Ilya,’ he’d say. Indeed, he was rather proud of his own skills in debate; and even if – as one expected with young people – Nicolai sometimes became heated, Misha never minded. ‘The boy’s basically sound,’ he’d tell his wife afterwards. And when she thought he’d let Nicolai go too far he would reply: ‘No, we must listen to the young people, Anna, and try to understand them. For they are the future.’ He congratulated himself that this strategy had clearly proved correct.
The two travellers were tired after their journey, and after eating they both expressed a desire to retire early. ‘But I can see we shall have some splendid discussions with these young men,’ Misha remarked to Anna, as they sat in the salon afterwards. ‘One may not always like what goes on at universities, but our young people always come back full of ideas.’ He smiled contentedly. ‘I shall have to be on my mettle.’
Only one thing puzzled him. It was absurd, really, but he had a curious sense, the moment he had set eyes on him, that there was something vaguely familiar about Nicolai’s friend. Yet what the devil was it?
Yevgeny Pavlovich Popov. That was how the ginger-haired fellow had been introduced: it was a common enough name. ‘Have I seen you before?’ Misha had asked.
‘No.’
He had not pursued the subject. Yet – he was sure of it – there was something about the fellow … And that night, as he lay for many hours, too excited to sleep, this little conundrum was one of many matters the landowner turned over in his mind.
The arrival of his son always made Misha Bobrov think about the future. What sort of estate would he be able to hand on to the boy? What sort of life would Nicolai have? Above all, what did the boy think about things. I must ask him about such-and-such, he’d think. Or, remembering some pet project of his own: I wonder if he’d approve of that? So it was that, in the darkness, a host of subjects crowded into his head.
And it was typical of Misha Bobrov that, although for him personally things had gone rather badly, he remained convinced that, in general, they were going well. ‘I am optimistic about the future,’ he would declare. It was one of the few matters upon which his wife could not agree with him.
In fact, on the Bobrov estate, things were going extremely badly. For if the Emancipation had disappointed the peasants, it had hardly been any better for the landowners either.
The first problem was old and familiar. By 1861 Misha Bobrov, like nearly every landowner he knew, had already pledged seventy per cent of his serfs against mortgages at the State bank. In the decade after Emancipation, half the money he received as compensation went straight to the bank to pay off these debts. Furthermore, the State bonds that he was given in part payment – the bonds which the peasants were struggling so hard to pay off – were slowly losing their value as Russia suffered a mild inflation. ‘Those damned bonds are already worth two-thirds of what they were,’ he had remarked to Anna just the week before.
Because he was in debt and short of cash, Bobrov found it hard to pay for labour from his former serfs to cultivate the land he had left. Some had been rented out to peasants; some leased to merchants; and some, he feared, would soon have to be sold. Most of his friends