Berezovo

by A J Allen

  That being said, Kuibyshev did have numerous failings in the eyes of the world, the most weighty of which was his carnal predilection for members of his own sex. Wealth and distance bought the discretion of others and the protection from prosecution. Without this protection of his wealth his fellow citizens of Berezovo, the capital of what he liked to think of his “Empire of Fur”, would long ago have fallen on him and burned his house to the ground. Their incendiary temper would have been directed against not just his sexual orientation but also his enjoyment of beauty and fine culture, which they could not share, and his ability to distinguish between principles and scruples, which they could not comprehend. It was this last talent, not his pleasures, that truly lay at the source of his fortune and stood him apart from the morose, backward and blinkered population of the town.

  Of scruples he owned that he had but few, particularly in business, but he did hold a firm adherence to a set of principles whose worth had been proven by experience. One of these principles was that while speed was often the essence of good decision-making in commerce, decisions born out of anger were nearly always harmful to one’s interests, and doubly so when they involved one’s personal affairs. Anger was a sin just as much as lust, greed or pride; indulgence in which could lead to one ‘s destruction. It had, therefore, long been a guiding rule of his always to wait at least twenty-four hours before moving to address any issue that had provoked his ire; a day and a night being sufficient time for more information to be gathered and cooler reflection to prevail. It was for this reason that he had not so far raised with his purchased wife the matter of her adultery with the timber merchant Leonid Kavelin.

  If the truth be told, this matter was not the most pressing on his mind as he took his place at the supper table opposite Irena. The problem of how he would report the disappointing performance of the monies he had invested on the stock market on the Town Council’s behalf, and the mystery of the Mayor’s unexplained move to appoint Modest Tolkach to the aforesaid Council, were of deeper concern to him. However, the fact of Irena’s tryst with Kavelin and the damage it might have inflicted on his own standing in the town could not be discounted. There was one bright star on the horizon: in all likelihood the exposure of her indiscreet behaviour would reduce his wife’s incessant demands to be allowed to accompany him on his travels. This was an inconvenience to be avoided at all costs.

  The two Kuibyshevs regarded each other coolly across the round table they shared when only the two of them were dining at home. They waited in silence while the maid brought in their supper and Irena was pleased to notice Illya’s nod of approval as the maid uncovered the serving dish to reveal a whole sturgeon baked in cheese. She knew it to be one of Illya’s favourite dishes, and that he would recognise her hand in its preparation.

  Signalling the maid to retire she began serve her husband, saying casually as she handed him his plate, “I haven’t seen much of you since your return. Were your travels productive and safe? Did they go well?”

  “I have been busy since I got back,” replied Illya. “There has been so much to catch up with. So many new developments, you understand.”

  Helping herself to the fish, Irena considered whether she should rise to this challenge and decided that attack was the best policy.

  “Of course, there must be,” she replied. “Two months is such a long time to be away, especially over the Christmas season and the New Year. But how were your travels? Tell me, did you see Cesar when you were in Moscow?”

  Illya looked at her sharply.

  Very well, Madame, he thought. Two can play at this game.

  “Yes, I did. He sends his regards to you.” He paused and then continued in an offhand manner, “I also had a meeting with our mutual friend in Tobolsk.”

  Irena grew pale.

  “Oh yes?”

  “Karol Domic. You remember him? He wanted to know if you were still giving satisfaction.”

  He put a forkful of the sturgeon into his mouth and chewed ruminatively. It really was very good.

  “Of course,” he went on, “I told him that you were but frankly, Irena, now I don’t know what to think.”

  Irena stared at him.

  “Why do you do this?” asked Illya. “Every time I have to leave town, why do you betray me with other men?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” she demanded angrily. “I don’t ask what you get up to when you are away, do I? And let us be honest… we both like the same thing. Are you jealous, is that it?”

  “Why, you insolent little slut,” he exclaimed.

  Incensed by her defiance he slammed his knife and fork down onto his plate. Rising from his chair he rushed around the table towards her, fully intending to box her ears, but his wife was quicker. Acting on instinct Irena flung her own fork away across the table and pushed her chair away. Adopting a crouching position, she held out the blade of her knife towards him and began making short stabbing lunges towards his face. Illya stopped and, taking two steps backward, regarded her warily, his eyes flicking between her face and the knife she held.

  Despite her aggressive stance Irena felt her heart beating wildly.

  “Listen,” she said, as evenly as she could. “I promised to be your wife and maintain this fiction for as long as you wanted, but I never, ever promised to be faithful to you. That was never mentioned in the contract.”

  “It was assumed!” he shouted angrily.

  “Only by you, not by me or by Karol,” she retorted. “Now, like you, I do keep my promises, and I promise you this. If you try to beat me tonight, or any other time, you will have to sleep with your door locked because one night I will come into your room and I will sit on your chest and I will stab your eyes out.”

  “I am still your husband,” he retorted, taking another step backwards, “and I have the rights of a husband to take you in whatever way I want. That is in the contract.”

  Straightening up Irena regarded him shrewdly. Her husband’s meaning was clear to her and she considered her options. If she killed him now or later she would end on the scaffold. If she sent a message to Karol Domic to have one of his cut-throats do it, it would undoubtedly be at the cost of her going back into criminal servitude. Better to be buggered and to bide her time than adopt either of those courses. It was not as if other men hadn’t taken that avenue before.

  Reversing the knife in her hand she dove its blade into the polished veneer of the supper table, saying offhandedly, “I wish you would, then I wouldn’t need to go with oafs like Leonid Kavelin.”

  Relieved that the moment of danger had passed but pained by the damage to the table Illya returned to his chair. Picking up his knife and fork, he resumed eating his supper.

  “What was Kavelin like in bed?” he asked casually.

  Smiling at his attempt at sangfroid Irena pulled her chair nearer to the table and sat down. Her immediate task she told herself as she retrieved her fork, was to rebuild Illya’s pride and to get him to come first and shorten the ordeal before her.

  “Insignificant,” she said, pulling her knife free of the table and wiping it with her napkin. “All huff and puff and over in a flash. Not at all thorough. And tiny with it, not like you, you horse!”

  He grunted in response and for a moment they ate in companionable silence.

  “Where are my presents?” enquired Irena after a while.

  “Do you really think that you deserve presents?” he asked.

  “Do you?”

  Kuibyshev considered the question seriously.

  “No, probably not.”

  “Well, it is just as well that life is unfair, isn’t it,” she replied with a smile, “and that we don’t get what we deserve?”

  Bending down she reached beneath the table and brought out the wrapped nightshirt. She carried it to him and laid it in his arms as if it was a sleeping baby.

  “You see. I do think of you while you are away.”

  Looking down at the package he shook his head.

  “Th
is does not wash away your guilt.”

  Lifting his chin with her hand she gave him a tender smile.

  “There was not guilt,” she assured him softly. “This was made weeks before I went with Kavelin. Open it!”

  Obediently he undid the parcel of cloth and took the nightshirt out of its tissue wrapping. Holding up the nightshirt at arm’s length he examined it.

  “And this is for me?” he asked.

  In reply she punched his arm gently.

  “Look at the embroidery. Polezhayev’s girl worked on the stitch work for a fortnight.”

  Bringing the embroidered breast pocket closer he looked approvingly at the girl’s work. He could, he realised, use the same design to cover the repairs to his carriage, and at the same time confirm the truth of Irena’s story, Polezhayev’s daughter being the second of his three spies in Berezovo.

  Taking the nightshirt from his grasp Irena held it to her bosom and sank to the floor beside his chair.

  “She has also made one for me, with the same initial,” she informed him, adding submissively, “Would you like to see it on me?”

  Despite himself Illya Kuibyshev smiled at her change in manner.

  “Is this how you want me, when you do it to me?” she coaxed him. “Virginal? You will have to show me what you like and how to do it. I might not be very good the first time.”

  “You really are a slut,” he repeated, “such a slut.”

  She began to stroke his thigh. Throwing his head back her husband laughed heartily.

  * * *

  As the Kuibyshevs prepared themselves with differing degrees of enthusiasm to honour their conjugal obligations, the cause of their difficulties was being comforted in the dining room of the Hotel New Century. Pouring his friend another drink Nikita Shiminski, owner of Berezovo’s principal general store, listened sympathetically to Leonid Kavelin’s admission that three days had now passed since he had last received a communication from his wife. There was no forgetting the event: the occasion had been memorable (Kavelin’s return home, drunken and dishevelled, from the debacle of waiting to greet the prison convoy) and the medium of communication carefully chosen: a single resounding slap across his face.

  “I consider myself a fair man,” Leonid Sergeivich was saying sadly. “I realise that there is a case to be made that I deserved a slap but this… this…”

  “Froideur?” suggested Shiminski.

  “Yeah, froideur. It’s disproportionate, excessive and ultimately self-defeating.”

  It was, the timber merchant protested, typical of the incapacity of women to think and act logically. To be upset that he had been with another woman was fair enough, but to make life so unpleasant for him at home that he was driven to seek society elsewhere, made no sense whatsoever.

  “Shouting, weeping, even complaining I can understand,” he declared, “but this silence baffles me. Surely she should be wanting me to stay at home and pay more attention to her, not pushing me away?”

  Furthermore, he maintained, Tatyana had carried on her campaign of silence for far too long; so long that it had simply stopped being effective. If anything, it had now put her in the wrong. What, he demanded, was a man to do in such a situation? If he hadn’t been such a gentleman and a considerate husband he would have already found himself a little seamstress off Jew Alley to spend his evenings with. As it was, he was making the best of a bad job and using his evenings to go over his account books and plan his buying for the spring; for once uninterrupted by her inconsequential prattling.

  Agreeing that this was probably the best course of action to take, Shiminski had comforted his friend with the thought that, like the weather, sooner or later there would be a thaw in his domestic relations.

  Chapter Nine

  Wednesday 14th February

  Berezovo, Northern Siberia

  There had been fighting in the barracks. Watching the squad of defaulters being marched out to the snowfield behind the stables, Captain Steklov reasoned that some sort of scrap had been inevitable. The convoy’s arrival had worsened the troops’ already cramped living quarters. His men were sleeping two or three to a cot and having to wait their turn at mealtimes until the convoy’s escort had finished eating. It had not helped that the convoy escort contained a bad element.

  Fortunately for his men the sergeants had stepped in before any serious injury had occurred; there had been barely enough time for a few noses to be bloodied and eyes to be blacked. Honour had been satisfied and punishment meted out. The garrison troops that had been involved were to round up what they called “the Mayor’s deer” that stood grazing on the nearby riverbank and herd them toward the sleighs. The defaulters amongst the escort were to help the drivers harness the deer and to carry provisions to the sleighs for the journey ahead of them. Standing by the open window of his room, the young officer listened to the distant sound of his men hallooing and clapping their hands as they drove the ungainly beasts through the darkness towards the sleighs. He consoled himself with the thought that in a month or two the whole business would be forgotten; unless the Duma politicians changed their minds again and called for an amnesty.

  If there is a political amnesty, he decided, I will take personal command of fetching the Red swine back from Obdorskoye myself. I might even take them all the way to Tobolsk. There and back in less than a month, maybe twenty days; it could be done. I’ll have myself etched by the newspapers riding at the head of the column, alongside a published account of the journey. It will make a pleasant break from the tedium of life here in Berezovo. And how it will upset Prince Michael!

  Grinning at the thought of his uncle’s choleric response he closed the window and went down to the officers’ mess to eat a solitary breakfast.

  It took the soldiers over two hours to catch and harness all the deer. By the time the last one had been led into the shafts, the sun was casting its weak light across the rooftops of the town. One by one the sleighs were drawn out of the water meadow that in the summer doubled as a parade ground and made their way across the Market Square. Because of the newness of the teams, the drivers eschewed the shorter and more direct route to the police headquarters – via the narrow Well Lane – in favour of the breadth of Hospital Street. Once all forty sleighs had been assembled in a long queue that stretched from the police headquarters all the way down Alexei Street, a sizeable crowd of onlookers had gathered to see them depart.

  The sight of so strange a train drew onlookers and the news soon spread that something was happening. Singly and in groups people began hurrying from the poorer areas of the town towards the uchastok until it seemed that the Quarter was emptying itself into Alexei Street. As Colonel Izorov’s men stationed themselves at intervals between the growing crowd and the convoy, Captain Steklov’s troops took up their positions beside each sleigh. Unslinging their rifles, they fixed their bayonets and eyed the local exiles warily. There was a delay and the onlookers fell silent, the only noise coming from the reindeer restlessly pawing at the frozen street with their heavy hooves, trying to dig beneath the packed snow for plant roots that were not there. Then, as the bell of Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary began to toll the hour of ten o’clock, the door to the police headquarters opened and the first of the condemned Soviet Deputies were led out into the street.

  Immediately those amongst the local exiles who stood nearest the sleighs surged forwards to greet them, pressing small packages of food and comforts upon their comrades until they were forced back by the policemen’s flailing truncheons. At the rear of the convoy, there was a flash of scarlet as someone produced a red flag and stuck it jauntily into the framework of the last sleigh. The gesture brought a few ragged cheers and, more ominously, a chorus of derisive whistles from a group of men from the Black Cock who had followed the sleighs into the road. A single snowball was thrown, landing harmlessly amongst a family of prisoners who were being shepherded into their sleigh. Frightened, their youngest child began to cry. The mood grew uglier.
There was a scuffle, and one of Fatiev’s men disappeared under a flurry of snow-capped boots. Half-heartedly, two of the policemen drove his attackers off and dragged the shaken man into the safety of a shop doorway. The remainder of the prisoners were quickly hustled to their sleighs, their escort looking uneasily around at the townspeople, uncertain as to what might happen next.

  The crowd’s attention was now diverted by the appearance at the head of the convoy of Colonel Izorov, together with Captain Steklov and the sergeant in charge of the escort. Behind them, on the steps of the Town Hall, some of the members of the Town Council were gathering around the figure of Mayor Anatoli Pobednyev who was once more resplendent in the Sash of Berezovo. Producing a sheaf of papers from his pocket, His Excellency began to read aloud the speech he had formerly prepared for the convoy’s arrival. After the first few ringing phrases, his words were drowned out by a barrage of shouted protests from the exiles on the boardwalk which in turn gave way to a chorus of the “Marseillaise”. With an impatient gesture, Colonel Izorov motioned the sergeant to board the leading sleigh and, in a matter of seconds the convoy began to move off. Standing at the window of the Mayoral Chamber, the hunchbacked secretary snickered to himself as he watched His Excellency fold up his speech and thrust it angrily back into his pocket. Within a few minutes, the sleighs were gone and the crowd began to melt away. All that remained of the convoy were several scattered piles of reindeer droppings and a small red flag that lay trampled in the soiled snow. As His Excellency was heard to remark repeatedly as he stomped back to his chambers, it had all been very unsatisfactory.

  The Mayor’s mood did not improve when, upon his return to the Town Hall, he was greeted by his Secretary with the news that Illya Kuibyshev awaited him in his chambers. Pobednyev had been wishing to avoid the fur merchant ever since his unfortunate return a few days previously. Now, it seemed, Kuibyshev was seeking him out, but for what purpose? It had not been the Mayor’s fault that he had been put in the kettle by Captain Steklov’s troops, nor that he had fallen out of his carriage and landed on his face in front of everybody in the middle of Alexei Street.