Berezovo

by A J Allen

  At the time the casual insult had stung him, as was its intention, but Kuibyshev had smiled nonetheless, not wishing to cause unpleasantness at the New Year’s Day party. They were both guests of Nélie Jacquemart-André at her house on Boulevard Haussmann and had enjoyed critically appraising their hostess and the new arrivals as she received them beneath the Winterhalter portrait of her late husband, Edouard. The gathering had been both charmant and profitable. So many of the wives were looking for new furs (“My dear Monsieur Kuibyshev, I have had nothing new since the turn of the century! My furs are in absolute shreds.”), as were their husbands on their behalf (or, as in the case of the young diplomat, their mothers) that his attendance had proved both commercially and socially advantageous. Such glittering occasions, he had learned, were very much like catching cats. The trick was never to try to sell his pelts, however bad business was, but instead to wait modestly to be approached. In the meantime, he had had a useful, if ultimately disappointing, conversation with Jules Lavirotte about the new apartments at 23 Avenue de Messine. He had entertained hopes of establishing his Paris agency there in the new building when it opened but Lavirotte had hinted that the Rothschilds now held an interest and it was understood that they would bring in their own people. There was nothing to be done.

  The young Englishman had been paid back for his sly insult that afternoon in Kuibyshev’s rooms – how Illya had enjoyed making him squeal! – but he had nevertheless been correct. The Russian Empire was still as backward as any other part of Asia; at least forty years behind the other imperial nations of Europe if its railway system was an indication, and the blame rested squarely at the feet of the Tsar and his ministers. The Autocracy was riddled with stupefying incompetence and stultifying deference and shored up by endemic corruption and a morbid fear of the future. Men of entrepreneurial vision such as himself were strongly discouraged and often obstructed, and state investments were made only as a last resort and then grudgingly. Which other modern Empire would build only a single track railway system that delayed supplies to its armies in the East, making them wait in sidings while returning trains of injured troops travelled in the opposite direction? It was little wonder that the Japanese had been able to advance so rapidly and be victorious.

  How much quicker would this journey be, he asked himself, if I was travelling by rail instead of by coach? It would take a few days, probably, rather, than weeks. A branch line up from Tiumen through Tobolsk and then up to Berezovo… Why, my furs could be in Berlin within a week, in San Francisco within a month. And how much faster still would it be if there was a northern rail route to Archangel!

  But he knew that such a scheme demanded shrewd investment and entrepreneurial vision: two of the many virtues that the Autocracy lacked. Foreign confidence had slowly begun to return now that the reaction to the revolutionary crisis had shown that the government was firmly intent on restoring order. He regarded this new resettlement as good news but it would be insufficient to bring Russia into the circle of wealthy countries. Hampered by its subservience to its rulers, Russia would always be a semi-backward nation; an uncouth candidate, never an elected member, of the European “club”.

  We have all the natural resources of America, but none of its national spirit, he reflected. We could be just as rich as the Americans but we are oppressed by our size, our history and our distrust of innovation and risk. We cry to be free yet readily yield to the knout. We want to be taken as modern Europeans yet cling to ancient Byzantium. To outsiders the concept of a “Modern Russia” must seem a lie wrapped in a fraud inside a contradiction.

  The comparison with America saddened him. For over a generation the new country had acted like a magnet for dissatisfied youth and it was now tearing from him someone close to his heart.

  If Cesar wants to go to America, he decided, I should let him. Only I will not pay for him, I will not! His dream of playing at the New York conservatoire is just that, a dream. Let some other fool pay for his shirts and his shoes.

  Bereft, Kuibyshev felt his grief turn to irritation. Cesar’s behaviour had become increasingly capricious and impractical. Of course one had to return to Berezovo; matters of business demanded it. The winter furs would soon be coming in and they had to be inspected, bought and catalogued. He had an order book to fill and customers to please. All the same, Moscow would be much duller without Cesar’s company. If the young man carried out his threat to leave, he was determined not to revisit the same salons that they had once attended together. Illya Kuibyshev would be nobody’s “widow”.

  Cesar is not the only fish in the river, he told himself crossly. If I want company I can always ask Domic for someone. Although that “Circassian” cabin boy he gave me last time was nothing like what he promised. Circassian, my arse! He came from some shippon in Saxony, and must have been sixteen or seventeen if he was a day.

  Still, the youngster had been willing enough and quite proficient. He had even thanked Kuibyshev afterwards; always the sign of a young professional. The fur merchant wondered what strange strands of fate had been woven to carry the boy all the way from Germany to Karol Domic’s House of the Sea Scorpion. Had he initially been sold or abducted? He had doubtless passed through several hands before arriving in Tiumen. Would his journey end there or would he have the opportunity to go on to better things, as Irena had done?

  Thoughts of Irena brought him back to his present situation. He had confirmed with Domic that their arrangement had worked out to his satisfaction and he had paid the final instalment that had been due at the end of the first eighteen months of marriage. For the princely sum of fifty thousand roubles Irena had now become his property, to do with as he pleased. What he intended to do with her was one of the two questions that had been preying on his mind during the long journey back to Berezovo.

  He accepted unreservedly that Irena had more than kept her side of the bargain. She provided an essential service as a block to the ambitions of Olga Nadnikova and her coven of mothers determined to make an advantageous marriage for their lumpen daughters. She was a living rebuttal to the suspicions of bullies like Kostya Izorov, the sniggerings of the other Councillors and the disapproval of Father Arkady and his flock. She was an efficient and thrifty housekeeper and also, in her own way, a companionable partner. Having been prostituted since she was a child, she had no illusions about his preferences and did not make any demands upon him unless they were invited. As far as he had need of one, she was his confidante and he had grown to value her opinion on many matters concerning his life in Berezovo. He had even begun to grow fond of her, much in the same way one grew fond of an adopted dog. The presents he was bringing her had been chosen with some care: a chemise of Chinese silk (if truth be told, an inducement he had accepted from Alphonse Kahn and Théophile Boder to celebrate the expansion of their rue Lafayette Galleries); a box of chocolate drops from Demel’s; a shawl of Brussels lace; a necklace of Adelaide opals that he had purchased in Milan, and as always, a bundle of illustrated ladies’ journals for her to leaf through at her leisure. What he was not returning to her with – and what he knew she was awaiting most keenly – was a prospectus of how she would accompany him when he next travelled in the late spring.

  The idea of them travelling together as man and wife appalled him. How could he introduce her to his sharp eyed friends, or to his business contacts? What would happen to his haute bourgeois clientele once it had become common knowledge that he had married a poule? The notion of Irena attending the opera in company or her braving the few salons to which he was invited in his role as an “amusing guest” was simply horrendous. What would they make of her? He valued his reputation far too highly to let it run the risk of her being snubbed. Yet, he was not without sympathy for her condition. Without him Irena was tied to Berezovo and its dull round of visiting the old pussies and enduring their endless gossip. Their townhouse was as much a prison as the cellars of Domic’s House, albeit with silk lined walls. It was little wonder that she was providing foo
d for scandal herself. He had his informants in the town, the chief of whom held a position that afforded an excellent viewpoint from which to monitor the comings and goings of its inhabitants. It was on this informant’s reliable authority that he had discovered that he had been cuckolded, and more than once.

  Dobrovolsky had been the first interloper, within two months of Irena’s arrival in the town. The matter had been easily settled by the gift of a paté of dog liver slipped into his supplies for his trip across the taiga. Dobrovolsky’s presumption had outraged Kuibyshev and he was gratified to learn that the young upstart had taken nearly a fortnight to expire. (By arrangement, the testimony of witnesses had attributed his death to typhus.) Irena’s second lover – the commander of the garrison that everyone called “The German” – had been fortuitously recalled to Tobolsk, although this had been no doing of Kuibyshev. By this time Kuibyshev had come to his senses, and the German’s successor, the undeniably handsome Captain Steklov, had been warned off by a note from his own mother. For her discreet intercession, Mme Steklov’s closest friend, a client of Kuibyshev’s living in distant St. Petersburg, had received the gift of a slender mink stole. He wondered fondly what indiscretion Irena might have chosen to commit during his most recent absence. He could think of nothing she could do that would cause him undue disquiet. He was certain that her promiscuity, much like his own, sprang from a reaction to boredom and a need for diversion and sensation. She was, when all had been said and done, a practised seductress and had, he presumed, a whore’s itch for conquest.

  No, he thought, the real problem I have to face once I reach Berezovo is not how I deal with Irena but what I tell the Town Council about the money from the Cholera Relief Fund. If the Stock Exchange has not…

  “Your Excellency, look!”

  His driver’s warning shout shook him from his deliberations.

  Lowering the carriage window, he stared with astonishment at the sight of a group of horsemen galloping furiously toward him. Each rider appeared to be waving either a fiery torch or an unsheathed sabre.

  This can only mean one thing, he decided: the Revolution has broken out again.

  The next moment the riders were upon him, circling the carriage with wild cries, and he was only partially relieved to note that they were wearing the uniform of the local Sibirsky garrison. On the driving board, his driver swore violently as he wrestled with his startled team, flinging curses at the soldiers as they pressed in on him on either side and forcing him to brake and stop. Startled, Kuibyshev tried to open the carriage door but one of the soldiers, drunker than the rest, slashed menacingly at the coachwork with his sabre and the fur merchant cowered back in his seat. By the light of the torches, he saw the nearest members of the troop of horsemen begin to fall back, making room for their commanding officer.

  Looking flushed from his ride, Captain Steklov saluted him.

  “Captain Steklov! What is the meaning of this outrage?” Kuibyshev cried. “First I’m attacked by a mob of ruffians, now this. What on earth is going on?”

  “I am sorry, Kuibyshev,” apologised Steklov. “We are expecting someone else. My sentry mistook you for a party of exiled terrorists. I have been ordered to escort them into town under guard.”

  Without thinking Kuibyshev opened the carriage door and, jumping out into the roadway, bravely confronted the armed host.

  “Terrorist?” he cried, spreading his arms so that the soldiers could see the luxurious pelts of his travelling coat. “Do I look like a terrorist? Who gave such an order? I demand to know!”

  Captain Steklov cleared his throat.

  “I’m afraid it was Colonel Izorov’s idea. You will have to take it up with him.”

  “I certainly will,” promised Kuibyshev as forcefully as he could. “Terrorist indeed! Good God! For a moment I thought you were going to cut me down. The road is dangerous enough as it is, what with the blizzards and mobs of ruffians, without decent people being trampled down by charging cavalry.”

  “These ruffians you mentioned,” interrupted Captain Steklov, “are they far from here?”

  “About three or four versts to the south,” the fur merchant told him, adding, “they are the ones who need sorting out.”

  Satisfied that he had made his point, Kuibyshev climbed back into the carriage, muttering as he did so, “Terrorist indeed! Has the world gone mad?”

  Turning in his saddle, Captain Steklov peered southwards down the Highway in the direction whence the carriage had come.

  “Are there many of them, would you say?” he enquired.

  “No, only about eight or so,” replied Kuibyshev, busily arranging travelling rugs around his legs. “Drunks, mostly, with a few banners. Complete scum, but a menace all the same.”

  “Did you notice, by any chance, whether they were armed?”

  “Armed?” Kuibyshev exploded again. “Look, what in hell’s name is going on, Captain? I leave town for a few weeks and when I come back, the whole countryside is in an uproar. No, of course they weren’t armed. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here to tell you about it, would I?”

  Rising slightly in his stirrups, Captain Steklov beckoned his sergeant over and gave him his orders.

  “Sergeant Grednyin! Take ten men and clear these people off the road. Use as much force as is necessary to guarantee that the convoy has free passage.”

  As the sergeant led his men away, Captain Steklov turned back to address Kuibyshev.

  “Would you allow my men to accompany you on the remainder of your journey? It would serve as a guarantee against further mishaps.”

  “Oh, very well,” grumbled Kuibyshev. “If you must.”

  The air rattled with the sounds of sabres being sheathed and the remaining troops formed up in two long lines on either side of the merchant’s carriage. With a crack of the whip, the driver Osip urged his ponies forward and the strange procession moved off at a brisk trot towards the distant lights of Berezovo. Kuibyshev shook his head in disbelief. Level with his eyes at either side, he could see the uniform sleeve of a soldier’s greatcoat. Gradually the absurdity of the situation dawned upon him and he began first to chuckle to himself and then to laugh out loud.

  “You are amused, Illya Moiseyevich?”

  The Captain’s voice came from out of the darkness somewhere to his right.

  “I was just thinking, Captain,” he called back, “that the Tsar himself could not ask for a better escort. I would give half my wealth to know what my wife would say if she saw me now.”

  A muttered comment from the rear of the troop drew ribald laughter.

  “I think she is in for a shock, eh, Captain?” continued Kuibyshev blithely.

  “Oh yes, you could be right,” the young officer agreed, appearing beside the window.

  Laughing, Kuibyshev waved a finger up at him in mock warning.

  “You should be more careful, Steklov!” he joked. “The next time, I shall expect a German band!”

  Settling back in his slat, the merchant rearranged his travelling rugs and let himself enjoy what remained of his journey.

  As they entered the outskirts of the town he felt once again the familiar sense of how small and confined everything seemed in comparison even to Tobolsk.

  All the same, he told himself, Berezovo is one of the best trading posts for furs in the Empire. For all their airs and graces, many of the nobles who live in the cities would give their eye teeth for a quarter of the profit I will make this season.

  Before him, he saw the outline of the small schoolhouse, towards which he contributed a not inconsiderable sum for maintenance. Beyond the school, the graveyard in which his beloved parents slept the eternal sleep. Born in poverty and buried in splendour, their grave was marked by the most costly monument ever erected in the town. He crossed himself as the procession wheeled to the left and slowed as it entered Alexander III Boulevard. At every street corner, he began to make out figures in uniform, holding flaming torches. To his surprise, he saw that they were not troops,
but a mixture of Colonel Izorov’s men and guards from the town’s prison.

  Despite what Steklov had told him, he began to feel uneasy. The town was unnaturally silent and empty of people, as if all the townsfolk were indoors, watching the strange procession from behind half-closed shutters as it made its way up the street. Shuffling forward on his seat he poked his head out of the carriage’s window. In the distance, a line of torches could be seen arranged across the front of the Town Hall. He waited for the carriage to turn to the right, down Hospital Street towards his house. When he realised that it was not going to do so, he began pulling at the travelling rugs, trying to free his encumbered legs. The carriage was drawing nearer to the torches at the end of the road; he saw that these were borne aloft by figures dressed in police uniforms and he wondered anxiously whether he was under arrest after all. He had heard rumours in both Moscow and Petersburg of how the Kadets were sending out investigation committees with orders to rake up scandals against corrupt government officials before the Duma was recalled. He had dismissed them as fairy tales, but perhaps they were true after all. Could Kuprin have talked about the land deal? Still trapped by the tangled rugs, he leant further out of the window and called up to his driver.

  “Osip! Stop the carriage immediately!”

  His words fell on deaf ears. His driver was being steered by the escort inexorably towards the line of policemen waiting at the far end of the street. Now genuinely alarmed, Kuibyshev turned to appeal to Steklov but the Captain had gone, spurring his horse on towards the front of the column. By the light of the torches, he could distinguish more men in uniforms watching him from the shadows of the street corners as he passed. A crowd of spectators had gathered in front of the Town Hall. They appeared to be standing on some sort of stage. Drawing nearer to the row of torches, Kuibyshev was able to pick out a few of the faces in the crowd. There was Kuprin and Fyodor Izminsky, and Pavel Nadnikov, and Father Arkady…