Russka - Edward Rutherfurd [471]
Peter smiled. ‘The new workers’ committees. They got started last year and they’re very effective. Political cells in every city. They’re the answer.’
‘What do you call them?’ Nicolai asked.
‘We call them Soviets,’ the professor replied.
Nicolai shrugged. It seemed to him that if the Duma did its work well, these Soviets would soon be forgotten.
While they talked, he found himself, from time to time, watching his host and hostess as they moved in their separate paths about the room. There was no doubt about it, they were very good at managing these things. Mrs Suvorin was stately. She had a knack of moving from group to group with a quiet grace that earned the respect of every woman, and left every man surreptitiously gazing after her. She flirts by not flirting, he realized. As for Vladimir, the men liked and respected him, but with the women, one could see, he had a special talent. Why was it that they seemed to flush with pleasure when he talked to them? After observing him a little while, Nicolai thought he saw. He understands the way they think, he decided. He gets inside their minds. It was another facet of his extraordinary intelligence, and Nicolai suddenly wondered: Is he unfaithful to her, perhaps? He had no doubt that many women in the room would gladly have encouraged any interest Suvorin showed.
Nicolai was still musing in this manner when he noticed that Vladimir was talking to Rosa Suvorin. Nicolai also noticed that Vladimir’s usual comfortable smile had disappeared. His face wore a look of tender concern and he was speaking to her earnestly. Whatever was he saying with such urgency? Peter too was now looking at his wife with puzzlement. Rosa, looking suddenly very pale and tired, was shaking her head, apparently resisting him. Then, giving her arm a gentle squeeze, Vladimir moved away, while Rosa suddenly turned away towards a window. To Nicolai Bobrov, and no doubt to Peter, it seemed rather strange. And Nicolai would have thought more about it if, at this moment, something had not happened to deflect everyone’s attention.
For now the door opened and a new figure appeared. It was Yevgeny Popov.
Young Alexander Bobrov had found himself standing beside Vladimir at the moment when Popov entered and, for once, he heard even the perfectly controlled industrialist gasp with surprise.
‘Well I’m damned!’ He glanced down at Alexander. ‘It’s the fellow we saw during the strike.’
It was indeed. The red-headed man they had called Ivanov. ‘Will you throw him out?’ Alexander whispered.
‘No.’ The industrialist smiled. ‘Don’t you remember, my friend, I wanted to talk to him then; and now here he is. Life is wonderful indeed.’ And with outstretched hand he strode across the room to where the revolutionary was standing, and smiled. ‘Welcome.’
But if this action took the youth by surprise, it was nothing to his horror when, a moment later, the red-head walked over to his father, embraced him warmly, and then, when Mrs Suvorin asked in confusion: ‘You two know each other?’ replied calmly, ‘Oh, yes. We go back together a long way.’
His father was a friend of this creature. It seemed to Alexander that there was no limit to Nicolai’s foolishness and disloyalty.
The little group which gathered around Popov eyed him with curiosity. Nicolai in particular, seeing his old acquaintance in this strange new setting, looked on with some amusement, while Mrs Suvorin, gazing at his calm, rather detached expression and comparing him with her Marxist brother-in-law, quickly came to the conclusion: This is a very different sort of man. He recognizes no barriers.
‘You wanted a Bolshevik,’ Peter said to her wryly. ‘Here he is.’
And Mrs Suvorin smiled.
‘You are welcome indeed,’ she said. Which was certainly true. For, excellent though the company always was at her house, Mrs Suvorin knew that recently she had been missing out on something: the true revolutionaries.
In a later age it would be called radical chic, this fashion amongst some of the privileged classes of inviting revolutionaries to their home, and even making contributions