• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 3563 0

Popov had never taken much interest in the arts. When he was with Mrs Suvorin, he was sometimes reminded, with a wry smile, of a conversation he had had in Switzerland last year with his friend Lenin. They had been speaking of the countess in St Petersburg when Lenin burst out: ‘Do you know, she showed me a strange thing once. A postcard of a painting called the Mona Lisa.’ He had shaken his bald head. ‘Have you ever heard of it, Popov? I hadn’t. What on earth is it about? I couldn’t make head nor tail of it.’ And though Popov was not quite so prosaic as the great revolutionary, he had often to confess a sense of ignorance in Mrs Suvorin’s presence; and he would let her lead him to one of the rooms where her husband’s modern paintings hung and stare at them, fascinated, while she explained them.

But now she was looking at him thoughtfully. ‘Tell me,’ she suddenly said, ‘if you knew, for a certainty, that all this was going to continue, that there would be no revolution for at least a hundred years, what would you do?’

It was a fair question. ‘Actually,’ he confessed, ‘I think Stolypin may succeed. So does Lenin. The revolution may not even come in my lifetime.’ He shrugged, then smiled. ‘I suppose the truth is,’ he admitted frankly, ‘I’ve spent all my life being a revolutionary and I wouldn’t know how to be anything else. It’s a vocation, you know, like any other.’

‘But in the long run, you think all this,’ she gestured round the beautifully furnished room, ‘has to go.’

‘Certainly. There isn’t room for such privilege. All men will be equal.’

‘And when the revolution comes, you will destroy the capitalists and their supporters ruthlessly.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then tell me this,’ she continued pleasantly. ‘If the revolution actually comes soon, and I choose to resist it,’ she smiled quizzically, ‘would you kill me too?’

At which, instead of answering, he frowned and paused to think.

That, she decided, was what she liked. However devious he might be in his dealings, there was still a strange if cruel honesty about him. Something almost pure. He was undoubtedly dangerous: perhaps her fascination with him was, in part, the excitement of a forbidden love. And now, rather than lie, he was calmly considering whether he would kill her or not.

‘Well?’

‘I don’t think it would be necessary. Actually,’ he added, ‘I think you could be saved.’

He did, too. She was like a bird in a cage, he often thought: trapped in this huge mansion and her bourgeois world, certainly; yet still a free spirit, capable of leaving all this behind if called to a higher purpose.

‘I suppose that’s a compliment,’ she smiled.

‘Yes. It is.’

For several more minutes they sat in silence, each conscious of the other, yet following their own thoughts.

And then the fire in the grate hissed, and spat.

The fire was low, just some brightly glowing embers amidst the ash, and the little piece of sparking cinder it threw out might easily have lain on the floor and slowly extinguished itself. But by chance it came to rest upon the edge of Mrs Suvorin’s peignoir and immediately flared up with a sharp flame. She gave a little cry and, intending to whisk her peignoir away, stupidly flicked the lighted cinder on to her lap instead.

It was nothing really. An instant more and she could have risen and stamped out the tiny fire. But seeing the fear on her face, Popov suddenly thought that she was catching fire and, without thinking more, threw himself forward, plucking the burning cinder from her in his bare hands and tossing it back into the grate. Then, grabbing a cushion, he smothered the little fire.

And now, finding him almost in her arms, Mrs Suvorin looked into his face and saw, to her surprise, a look of tenderness.

‘Don’t move,’ she said.

It was another two hours before, in the damp cold outside, young Alexander Bobrov gave up his lonely vigil. He could not understand it. The devil Popov was with her; there could be only one reason why.

And what on earth, he wondered, should be done?

1910

At first sight, in the years 1909 and 1910, it might have seemed that the