Berezovo

by A J Allen

  “Good. I am sorry that I was not there to deliver the boy myself. There’s a lot of sickness about at the moment. I understand from my assistant that the delivery went well. Your wife is a healthy woman, so I wasn’t worried. I see no reason why she should not bear you more sons.”

  “God willing,” responded Pirogov hastily and crossed himself.

  “Did my assistant remember to leave his bill with you?”

  “No, Doctor,” admitted Pirogov, adding quickly, “But, if you can see your way to waiting for another ten days, or at least a week, then I can have the money ready for you.”

  The doctor frowned and looked sideways at him sharply.

  “I see. Well, naturally, you will have to settle your affairs with Dr. Chevanin, but I dare say he’ll wait a day or so. After all, none of us are millionaires, are we?”

  “No sir,” replied Pirogov humbly.

  The two men fell silent as the doctor wrestled with the reins, pulling the ponies’ heads round to the right so that the sleigh turned off the broader street they had been travelling on and began to move down the narrow side street that would lead them to Pirogov’s house.

  “As a matter of fact,” the doctor announced suddenly, “I might be able to do you a service in the meantime. The drama committee needs some chairs for one of the plays we are producing. If the price is right, I might be able to persuade them to commission them from you.”

  “What kind of chairs do they want?”

  “Nothing too heavy, but they must be suitable for a well-appointed sitting room. The trouble is, they also have to be easily breakable.”

  “Breakable?” echoed Pirogov doubtfully.

  “Yes. One of the characters in the play loses his temper, you see, and starts breaking them, one by one. It’s quite funny, actually.”

  “You mean, like trick chairs?”

  “Yes. Exactly so. Do you think you could make such a thing?” enquired Dr. Tortsov, pulling abruptly on the reins.

  They had arrived. Pirogov considered his strange request as he helped the doctor down from his seat and held open the wicket gate through which customers gained entrance to his premises. As they crossed the snow-covered yard, the greasy smell of overcooked stew wafted from the house to meet them and the doctor surreptitiously took a deep breath before ducking his head beneath the weather stained lintel of the workshop doorway.

  “When would you want them by?” asked Pirogov as he pulled the door to behind them, plunging the room into near darkness.

  “We shall need them by next Sunday. That would give us time to rehearse and make any necessary changes.”

  “Well I don’t know,” Pirogov said, rubbing his chin. “How many did you say you wanted?”

  “Three for the play and possibly another one for the rehearsals. Four in all.”

  Dr. Tortsov stood still and listened to the sound of fingers fumbling for matches, and a few seconds later a small blue flame flared in the carpenter’s hands. Pirogov lit a lamp and, quickly extinguishing the match, hung the lamp from a rusty nail that protruded from a beam in the ceiling.

  “Believe me, Doctor,” he said with genuine regret, “at any other time, I would be happy to oblige. But you can see how it is. I am so busy at the moment, I just don’t have the time to make such things.”

  Looking around him, Dr. Tortsov could see exactly how it was. Neatly stacked piles of fresh timber, reaching almost to the ceiling, took up one half of the workshop floor. The rest of the space was filled with an assortment of strangely shaped pieces of carved wood, some of which had already been varnished.

  “What on earth are you making, exactly?” he asked the carpenter.

  “Please don’t ask me!” Pirogov begged him. “I can’t tell you.”

  “But surely you know?”

  “Of course I know! But the Mayor told me not to tell anybody.”

  “The Mayor?” queried Dr. Tortsov as he looked more closely at the finished pieces of wood. One or two of them looked familiar, but for the moment he could not see what they were meant to be.

  “Yes,” the carpenter confided. “‘Pirogov,’ he said, ‘you must do this job for me but on no account are you to tell anyone about it. Not even your wife. It’s a state secret. A matter of the gravest concern.’ Those were his exact words.”

  Bending down, Dr. Tortsov picked up one of the small pieces of fashioned timber and turned it over in his hands.

  “What is it? An ark?” he joked.

  But the carpenter refused to be drawn.

  “But surely you can tell me, Gleb Yakovlevich?” Dr. Tortsov persisted. “After all, I am your doctor. It would be like telling a priest.”

  Pirogov shook his head and shrugged helplessly.

  “Come on Gleb,” the doctor coaxed him. “Surely it’s a matter of trust. After all, I trust you to pay Chevanin’s bill in a week’s time, don’t I? Why can’t you trust me? It’s only fair.”

  Thrusting his hands into his pockets, Pirogov kicked miserably at a pile of wood shavings on the floor.

  “They’re sleighs,” he admitted finally.

  “Sleighs! Of course!” exclaimed the doctor as the curiously shaped pieces of wood fell into place in his mind. “I should have guessed. But why so many of them? There must be enough wood here to make a dozen sleighs.”

  “Ten,” Pirogov corrected him.

  “Now why would the Mayor want you to make ten sleighs, and in secret too?” the doctor wondered aloud. “Is he going into the carrier business? No, that would be impossible, unless he is going to build another livery stables as well. And where would he get the ponies from at this time of year?”

  “He isn’t using ponies,” the carpenter informed him sullenly. “He’s using deer.”

  “Reindeer? In town?” retorted the doctor. “Gleb Yakovlevich, you must be joking. The Mayor might be an idiot, but even he wouldn’t dream of using reindeer to pull town cabs.”

  Pirogov hawked and spat onto the fine carpet of sawdust beneath his boots.

  “It’s not cabs he’s after. What he’s asked for is ten reindeer sleighs, each capable of carrying four or five adults, or enough supplies to support them over a long distance.”

  “And who is paying for all this, do you know?”

  “Ah, well, that’s just it, isn’t it?” the carpenter complained. “That’s just the problem. The Mayor promised me that the town council would pay and I was to go ahead and start work right away. Only he wasn’t able to give me any advancement on them, so I have had to use all my own money just to buy the materials from Kavelin. But,” he added meaningfully, “Kavelin, who is on the council, didn’t know anything about this at all. So one way or another, I’ve been put right in the midden. What’s more, I’m not the only one either.”

  “How do you mean?” asked the doctor.

  “Well,” replied Pirogov confidentially, “they haven’t told me to my face but I know for a fact that Ovseenko and Averbuch have also taken orders for sleighs from the Mayor. So that’s put the price of timber right up.”

  “Yes, I suppose it has,” said Dr. Tortsov

  “Exactly,” continued Pirogov, relieved at last at having got the problem off his chest. “Everything I have is in that timber. All my savings and nothing to guarantee payment, except the Mayor’s word. That’s why I don’t have the money on hand to pay your bill.”

  Doctor Tortsov had been standing in the middle of the workshop looking at the piece of sawn wood in his hand. Now, with a distracted air, he turned to face the carpenter.

  “What? Oh, the bill. Well, we’ll let that ride for the moment. It’s not important. Pay Chevanin when you can.”

  He appeared to have come to some decision for, placing the piece of timber back onto the pile, he walked quickly towards the door.

  “Goodbye, Pirogov.”

  “Wait, Doctor!” called out the carpenter, hurrying after him. “Aren’t you going to look at my wife and the baby?”

  “Your wife? Good God, man, she’s as stron
g as a horse!” the physician told him brusquely as he opened the door. “Why? She hasn’t been bleeding or complaining of any pain, has she?”

  “No, but…”

  “Well then, there’s nothing to worry about. Keep the baby warm and dry and well fed. And don’t forget to collect those blankets from the Roshkovskys.”

  Stepping out into the snow, Dr. Tortsov hurried towards his sleigh. When he reached it, he turned and called back to the carpenter.

  “And remember to tell your wife to air the blankets, like Nina Vassileyevna said. And don’t worry about the money. Goodbye Pirogov!”

  Gleb Pirogov raised his hand in a gesture of farewell, but the doctor was already whipping his pony. Upstairs, the carpenter’s newborn son, woken by the doctor’s raised voice, began to cry.

  At the Kuibyshev’s grand residence in Menshikov Street, Irena Kuibysheva and Tatyana Kavelina were lunching a deux on salmon and strawberries. It was, they agreed, very pleasant to be without their husbands for a spell. Tatyana confided that her Leonid was quite content to stay at home and pore over his order book, he was so tremendously busy. But what, she asked, about M. Kuibyshev? Where was he?

  “Oh, Illya?” said Irena with a laugh as she picked up the small gold hand bell that lay beside her plate. “God knows where he is! Paris? Moscow? Baku? Wherever he is, I am sure that he is enjoying himself.”

  Tatyana sat back contentedly in her seat. “But surely you must worry about him being away all the time,” she enquired as the maid appeared in answer to the bell’s summons and began clearing away their dishes. “You hear of so many bad things happening nowadays on the road. And there seems nowhere that is safe anymore, either in the cities or the countryside.”

  “Illya tells me that things aren’t so bad as they were a couple of years ago but, yes, I do worry sometimes,” Irena admitted. “Although I know that he can look after himself perfectly well. He’s much stronger than he looks.”

  She paused and then added happily, “The funny thing is, he says that all he does when he is away is worry about me!”

  “About you? But why?”

  “Am I feeling bored?” declared Irena, mimicking her husband’s deep tones. “Are the servants behaving themselves and showing me respect? Are people in the town being nice to me? Am I feeling lonely? Do I have enough money to spend?”

  Tatyana felt flattered by her hostess’s decision to share this intimate revelation with her.

  “Illya sounds like the perfect husband,” she exclaimed. “You are so very lucky.”

  “But your Leonid is a good man too,” said Irena earnestly, “and you have the advantage that he is with you at home.”

  “Oh yes, Lyonya is a dear, bless him, but all he thinks about is himself and his wretched stock levels. Do you know what he said to me when I told him that you and I were having lunch together?”

  Leaning forward, Irena shook her head and smiled impishly.

  “No, what did he say?”

  “He said, ‘Now don’t you spend the whole time gossiping about men like you women always like to do. Her husband and I have our reputations to consider’.”

  Irena threw back her head and laughed in delight.

  “Ha! Men, they have no idea, do they?” she crowed. “We are far more likely to be gossiping about our women friends. Which reminds me, you have not seen my new boudoir yet, have you?”

  “Your boodwah?”

  “Yes, Illya promised me a room of my own when he came back from Paris last year. He said that a boudoir was the thing to have.” She paused and added knowingly, “I never asked him who had given him that idea. Would you like to see it?”

  “Yes please,” agreed Tatyana quickly. “That would be lovely.”

  After giving instructions to her maid to bring them a small pot of drinking chocolate, Irena led the way out of the dining room and up the staircase that led to the upper floor.

  She really hasn’t a clue, thought Irena as she climbed the stairs, not the faintest suspicion. I can tell Leonid to stop worrying. We can still go on meeting at the library. What a boring little woman she is. No wonder he is so interested in me.

  Following behind her, Tatyana marvelled at the silk wall hangings that decorated the staircase. She could recall only having been invited to the house once before, on the occasion of a small reception attended by the other councillors and their wives to celebrate her husband’s election to the town council. She could still recall vividly her astonishment at the unexpected opulence of the decorations. That had been before Illya Kuibyshev had scandalised the town by bringing his young bride back with him from one of his trips. From what she had so far been able to see, the décor and furnishings on the ground floor had taken on a more modern style, their French refinements mixing uneasily with the older Central Asian trappings.

  Reaching the landing, Tatyana was momentarily alarmed by the sight of a tiger’s head staring glassily at her, its long flattened skin spread out invitingly at her feet for her to tread on. In the corner, a profusion of peacock feathers stood lolling in a pair of highly decorated Chinese vases supported on ebony stools. Fixed to the wall two curved scimitars, engraved with blessings and threats, clashed silently above a circular Persian shield embossed and damascened in gold and silver and scrolled with tendril ornamentation. Alongside the shield hung a scene, painted in oils and exquisitely framed in wood covered with thin gold leaf, showing a group of roseate youths bathing naked beside a rocky shore line. Disregarding their androgynous beauty, Irena swept past them with Tatyana following wide-eyed in her wake. Reaching a door at the end of the corridor, she opened it and stepped back to allow her luncheon guest to enter.

  The dimensions and the splendour of the new scene that met her eyes were so different from the rest of the house that it made Tatyana gasp in shock. Irena’s boudoir was a suite of rooms occupying a quarter of the upper floor. She saw that they were standing in the sitting room; through a half-open door she could see through into the bedroom beyond. Decorated and furnished in shades of pale and dark pinks with its richly painted cream woodwork picked out with gold motifs, the two rooms reminded her strongly of one of Gvordnyen’s more elaborate wedding cakes; a confection that transformed her feeling for the house from the darker semi-barbaric decor of the lower floor.

  “Irena, it’s lovely,” she exclaimed breathlessly. “What a beautiful room!”

  “Do you genuinely like it?”

  “Yes, it’s really lovely,” Tatyana repeated. “You are so lucky.”

  “Lucky? Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Irena, turning away and sitting down on a chaise longue. “Illya calls it my cage and it feels like that sometimes.”

  “Doesn’t he like it?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t let him in here,” she replied in a firmer tone. “This is my room. That was a pre-condition of our marriage.”

  “Well, I wish I had a cage like this,” Tatyana told her wistfully. “It’s really lovely. Oh, I would have such parties!”

  Irena smiled up at her and patted the cushion of the chaise longue invitingly.

  “That is the difference between us,” she said as Tatyana sat down beside her. “You have so many good friends here whereas I…”

  Irena faltered, as if the truth of her existence was too tragic to contemplate, and then seized Tatyana’s hand impulsively.

  “You know, you are the first person that I have invited to see this room. Nobody else has seen it. Nobody!”

  “Nobody?”

  “No,” Irena admitted, reluctantly letting go of her hand. “They would just be jealous and it would make me more unpopular than I am.”

  Embarrassed by her candour, Tatyana patted her clumsily on her forearm.

  “You are not unpopular,” she lied. “Not really…”

  “Yes I am,” Irena told her with a deep sigh. “Nobody likes me much, nobody important, except you of course. Take Olga Nadnikova for instance. Why doesn’t she like me? Is it just because I am younger and prettier than
she is?”

  Surprised by her question, Tatyana turned her head away.

  She doesn’t know? she thought. Olga had made plans to marry off her daughter Katerina ever since the day Illya Kuibyshev established himself in the town. Making her share cabs to the church and going on picnics with him during the summer months even when she was a child, encouraging her to be alone with him. And Irena doesn’t know? Impossible! How could she not know?

  “I am sure that she would like you if she got to know you better,” she murmured.

  “I do hope so. I really don’t want to create enemies in the town. It would be so difficult for Illya.”

  There was an awkward pause.

  So that is how it is, thought Tatyana. She does know, but she wants to fight her corner nevertheless. She wants me to feel that we are friends so that I will recommend her to Olga and the others. She’s lonely and an outsider and knows that Olga has cause to hate her and that none of the wives trust her now after the business with young Dobrovolsky and Captain Steklov. She believes that I am a pushover and thinks that I will be her key to the town’s women. That explains her invitation to lunch, the showing off of her famous boodwah and her buttering up my Lyonya. If she can’t win me over, she wants at least to get the men to protect her.

  She saw that Irena was looking at her expectantly, awaiting her response. Unsure of what to say Tatyana rose from the chaise longue and crossed the room to the pair of tall windows, noting the way her shoes sank into the deep pile of the carpet. Moving aside the curtains of intricately webbed Belgian lace, she saw that Irena’s boudoir enjoyed an uninterrupted view of the river bank and the distant snow clad hills.

  I shouldn’t feel sorry for her, she reasoned to herself, because I know that it could endanger my standing with my friends, but I do. In her position I would be trying to do very much the same thing. But Olga will never want to be her friend, not in a thousand years, and Lidiya and the others will go along with Olga. And once they get their knives into you, you are done for in this town.

  Recognising that the length of the silence between them had become uncomfortable, she turned back to face her hostess.