Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [452]
What a treasure she was, this baby Arina. She was fair-skinned with very light brown hair, and though one could not exactly call her pretty, there was a quietness and simplicity in her rather square, peasant’s face that was very attractive. She had a quietness about her, like a nun, that made her a pleasant, peaceful presence in any room she entered. She was very devout. Anna and she would often walk over to the monastery, shawls tied over their heads, so that from a distance one could not have said which was lady and which was peasant. Yet she had also learned from her grandmother a huge fund of folk tales, and when she recited these, her gentle face and blue eyes would seem to glow with pleasure and with quiet amusement. Besides her daily nursing, it was this knowledge in which old Misha rejoiced. ‘Tell me, little Arina, about the Fox and the Cat,’ Nicolai would hear his father’s voice weakly rasping as he passed the room. Or: ‘Pass me that book, little Arina – those Fairy Tales by Pushkin. He has a story like the one you tell.’
‘Your tales remind me of when I was a boy,’ he would tell the girl. ‘Isn’t it funny? We used to call your old grandmother young Arina then. And the tales you know come from another Arina – her aunt, I suppose – who was still alive when I was young.’ And to Nicolai he would say: ‘This young Arina, you know, she is the real Russia, the enduring heartland. Always remember that.’ And sometimes, looking at her affectionately, he would doze off and dream of those sunlit days when Pushkin was still alive, and his Uncle Sergei was putting on theatricals at Bobrovo.
‘If your father gets his health back, it’ll be thanks to that girl,’ Anna told her son. And indeed, Misha did seem to be gradually recovering his strength.
After three weeks Nicolai made a brief visit to St Petersburg to see his wife and children. Then he returned.
But there remained one huge problem: the promised grain supplies never arrived. ‘And I shan’t get well,’ old Misha declared, ‘until they do.’ Messengers were sent to the governor by the zemstvo and by Suvorin. Nicolai offered to return to St Petersburg to try to see certain high officials there. Every few days news came that the arrival of the grain was imminent, and everybody prepared. They still had a month’s supply in hand, then three weeks, then two.
It was in mid-February that the message came through to the local zemstvo. It was quite simple.
It was regretted that, owing to problems of transport and storage, the grain shipments previously notified would not be made.
And that was all.
‘Do they realize what this means?’ old Misha gasped from his bed. ‘It means the people here are going to die. No one’s even caught a fish in the river for two weeks. Two-thirds of the livestock has gone. Our people will be finished. I can’t believe that even those fools in the bureaucracy would do such a thing.’
The news was round the whole area in hours. And when Nicolai went into the village that day, he was hardly shocked when Boris Romanov shouted at him: ‘So, the people in St Petersburg have decided to kill us – is that it? Do they want our carcasses for meat?’ Nor was he surprised that this was greeted by nods of approval from the other villagers.
A week passed. The peasants were sullen. Another week. Many of the grain stores were now empty. A silence descended upon the village.
And then, one morning, grain began to arrive.
It was an extraordinary sight, lines of sleds, arriving from God knew where: a dozen; two dozen; three dozen. It was like a supply train for a small army. The sleds made their way ponderously into Russka where, it seemed, Suvorin’s managers were ready to receive them at one of the warehouses. But a dozen of the sleds peeled off and made their way through the woods towards the village of Bobrovo. When they reached it, they continued up the slope to the house of Misha Bobrov; and as they approached, and