Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [441]
‘He’s still a Jew,’ the peasant objected.
‘True.’ The thickset Cossack glanced round at the men. ‘What do you plan to do?’
‘Burn his house and thrash him.’
Karpenko nodded again and glanced a little sadly at Rosa’s father. Then he spoke to him.
‘I’m afraid, my friend, you’re going to have rather a rough time.’
What was he saying? Rosa stared at him in disbelief. What could he mean? Her father’s friend, the man whose children she had played Cossacks and Robbers with – wasn’t he going to help them? In astonishment she saw him take up the reins. He was turning the horse’s head – leaving them.
A mist seemed to form in front of her eyes; she felt suddenly nauseous; and before her a great, cold gulf – something she had never imagined was there – seemed to be opening wide: wide as an ocean.
He was on the side of these men.
‘Father!’ It was young Ivan. Rosa blinked through the haze of her tears and stared up at him. The boy was white, trembling; he was standing up in the cart. How slim, almost frail, he looked, yet so tense, so passionate that he seemed to radiate an extraordinary strength. He was looking down at the heavyset Cossack. ‘Father! We can’t.’
And Taras stopped the cart.
Slowly, rather unwillingly, Karpenko turned to the big peasant with the brown beard. ‘They come with us,’ he said gruffly.
‘There are fifty of us, Cossack,’ cried the little old man. ‘You can do nothing.’
But Taras Karpenko, though he glanced round at the crowd, only shook his head. Then turning to the big peasant again he explained, a little sheepishly: ‘I owe this Jew a personal favour.’ He motioned Rosa and her parents to climb into the cart.
‘Call yourself a Cossack? Jew lover! We’ll come and burn your farm down too,’ shouted the old man. But nobody stopped the Abramovichs from getting into the cart.
‘I’m afraid your house will be burned down,’ Karpenko said in a matter-of-fact way to Rosa’s father. But I’ve saved you a thrashing.’ Then he flicked the reins and the cart started slowly down the street.
As they went out of the village, Rosa stared back. The men were busy smashing the windows of her house. She saw the old man going inside with a lighted torch. They are going to burn my piano, she thought: the piano her father had saved a whole year to buy for her. She looked at him. He was sitting in the cart, shaking. There were tears in his eyes, and her mother’s arms were round him. Rosa had never seen her father cry before and she supposed it was not possible to love anyone more than, at that moment, she loved him.
Then her thoughts turned back to the Karpenkos. Ivan had saved them. As long as she lived, she told herself, she would never forget that.
But she would also remember his father, their friend. He would have left them. And she thought of something else her father had once told her: ‘Remember, Rosa, if you are a Jew, you can never trust. Not completely.’ She would remember.
1891, December
Nicolai Bobrov told himself he should not worry too much.
The message from his father had been disquieting, of course – there was no denying it. He also felt a pang of guilt. But I dare say when I get there, it won’t be so bad, he reasoned. Then he sighed.
It was a long way to be travelling alone. As the covered sled whisked him through the broad streets of St Petersburg towards the station, Nicolai gazed out comfortably. He loved the mighty city. Even on a grey day like this, it seemed to have a dull, almost luminous glow. And, it had to be said, Nicolai was a comfortable fellow.
Like any other gentleman in the western world, he wore a frock coat, somewhat shorter than in earlier decades, with a single vent behind and two small cloth-covered buttons in the small of the back. His trousers were rather narrow, of a very thick cloth, and to a later generation might have seemed rather untidy, for the fashion of giving trousers a crease had scarcely come into use as yet. His shoes were polished and boned so that they twinkled and gleamed. Across his waistcoat