The Mulberry Empire

by Philip Hensher

  ‘Twelve,’ Vitkevich said, not needing to count, as if he regularly boasted of the fact.

  ‘Twelve!’ Pavel said. ‘A genius, you see, papa, and he talks sense in all of them.’

  ‘That is a prodigious accomplishment, sir,’ Nikolai said civilly. ‘You must be a great traveller.’

  ‘No, sir,’ Vitkevich said. ‘At one time in my life, I had a great deal of leisure, and devoted it to the study of languages, an endeavour which has proved of some use and considerable satisfaction.’

  ‘Tell us your languages, Vitkevich,’ Pavel said puppyishly. ‘No – better – translate for us. Papa, you will enjoy this. Translate a sentence through all your languages, one by one.’

  ‘Really, Layevsky,’ Vitkevich said. ‘This is too bad. Very well, what sentence shall I take?’

  ‘Compliment Masha on her excellent dinner,’ Pavel said, since Masha had been unable to leave the dining room, and was standing, nervously watching the enjoyment of the gentlemen in the shadows.

  ‘The dinner is excellent, and extremely well cooked,’ Vitkevich said in French. He paused, and said it again, in Russian.

  ‘Bravo!’ Pavel cried.

  ‘The dinner is excellent, and extremely well cooked,’ he said, again, now in German. He spoke again, nine times, each time in a different language, in English and German, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, and languages no one could identify, each time taking a pause, a sip of water, a sniff. Finally, he returned to French, and said, ‘How well you cook, madam, and the product of your kitchen and larder is beyond compare. You see, sir—’ dropping into a lower, more confidential tone, ‘when one translates from one language to another, a sentence changes into the habitual modes of expression of that tongue, and alters somewhat, so that by the time one has taken the most ordinary sentence in the world through several tongues, it would hardly know itself, like our Lithuanian tale of the drunk coachman who cracked his master’s mirror.’

  ‘Bravo,’ Nikolai said, startled by this austere party trick. ‘How do you come to be so very learned, sir?’

  ‘My life has been spent between periods of great activity and great enforced idleness,’ Vitkevich said. ‘And it was in one of my idle periods that I applied myself to acquire a few languages. Your cook is a woman of great accomplishment, sir,’ he went on, bowing towards Masha. ‘It is rare, these days, to enjoy a dinner in the old country style. You know, sir, in my opinion, there is nothing to come near this good simple cooking.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Nikolai said; it was what he had hoped Pavel would say, and he would have preferred his son’s compliment to his friend’s.

  ‘My digestion, sir,’ Vitkevich went on. ‘Well, no one could benefit under a regime which alternated the excesses of city hostesses with the austerities of army life. A stomach which is expected to deal with foie gras one week, and coarse rotten mutton in the open air the next, will rebel, sir, and in the most decided way. I am a martyr to the succession of pastry confection and maggoty meat, and such a meal as this represents a true golden mean. I truly compliment your cook, in her own language.’

  Masha bobbed, and left rapidly. Pavel gazed in admiration at his friend.

  ‘Your family is Polish, I perceive?’ Nikolai said.

  ‘I believe so,’ Vitkevich said. ‘I bear a Polish name. But my family has lived on the shores of the Baltic for many generations. Our lands are in the ancient nation of Lithuania.’

  ‘Do you care to shoot, sir, tomorrow?’

  ‘Thank you,’ Vitkevich said. ‘I fear I would be poor company for you; the rigours of the last weeks, and the long journey, have left me no good for anything. And I am too aware that, once I leave, I have a heavy task in front of me. For the moment, I propose to spend my days on your beautiful estate in rest and recuperation, if you have no objection. Reculer pour mieux sauter, you know, sir, mieux sauter.’

  ‘Well, we need not shoot tomorrow,’ Pavel said. ‘The day after that will be quite as good.’

  ‘Alas—’ Nikolai began. He was about to say that it had to be the next day, since, all in all, he would much prefer to spend a day alone with Pavel. And it was not entirely false; the beaters would probably be needed and expected back in the fields the following day.

  But Vitkevich, unknowingly, helped him out by saying, ‘I should not delay. I suffer so at this time of year from the effects of the harvest that I doubt I should be able to accompany you in any case. And I anticipate that the exertions which lie ahead of me, as well as behind, will be best served by the most quiet life imaginable, while I am here.’

  ‘Very well,’ Nikolai said, relieved. He was damned if he was going to inquire into this fellow’s adventures, and left the conversational bait where it lay. ‘That is most unfortunate, sir, but we shall leave you to recuperate in peace.’

  7.

  Pavel had known Vitkevich for three years at this time. He was at the age when he had not met every type of man which the world could supply, and on meeting a man who did not resemble anyone he had met before, he could still feel an excitement which is denied to those who have seen more of the world. His friendship with Vitkevich awakened in him a feeling of pride and pleasure; he thought Vitkevich the most remarkable man he had ever met. When he contemplated the extraordinary fact that Vitkevich had not only chosen him as a friend, but had actually come to stay in his family’s house, he experienced an emotion which, the reader will appreciate, is not uncommon in young men before they marry, but which still struck Layevsky as unique and thrilling. But everyone was infatuated by Vitkevich; it was inexplicable, but in the officers’ mess, he was as instantly prominent as a dancing heroine before the corps de ballet.

  As soon as he joined the regiment, he had heard of Vitkevich. The other junior officers often mentioned him, adding apologetically that he was on leave for a week, as if Layevsky had come specifically to meet this remarkable fellow. No one explained why Vitkevich was so impressive, as if the heroic fact of his existence were too well known to require any recitation of his deeds. Not that he seemed, from the way the officers talked of him, to be a great military hero; rather, when a subaltern made reference to him, it was usually with reference to some exploit which would have been enough to land any other fellow in the soup. The admiring way the mess room mentioned him made it clear that here was a fellow permitted some kind of licence, a chap who could sail close to the wind and escape with honour and dignity, as the mess room shook their heads. They did not trouble to explain quite why this was, and Layevsky, curious as he was, did not feel he could ask for elucidation. Nor did he feel enlightened by their frequent casual references to him; it seemed as if he were a fellow who could speak the simplest words, and imbue them with some kind of fascinating individuality. The first night in mess, the Colonel had remarked, ‘I adore cabbage stew, as our Vitkevich would say,’ and the entire table had broken up, chuckling and shaking their heads. And they all did it; every member of the officer corps would, from time to time, be prone to say, ‘If Vitkevich were here, he would say this is a complete bore,’ or, teasing, say to a junior officer whose batman had carelessly left a cuff-button undone, that he was attempting to out-Vitkevich Vitkevich. What was remarkable about the man, Layevsky could not perceive, and he began to feel mildly irritated by the stream of inexplicable, naïve admiration. He could only see that the most ordinary comments were somehow made brilliant and fresh by their connection to a singular personality, the image of which was too fresh in the minds of his comrades to require any kind of explanation.

  The second week after he had joined the regiment, Pavel entered the mess room to find a solitary man there, smoking a cheroot and inspecting a French journal. He bowed to the unfamiliar man, who nodded back casually, and took himself to an armchair. Lighting a cigar, Pavel covertly inspected the famous Vitkevich. There seemed nothing, on the surface, remotely remarkable about the man. Dark, whiskered, slight in build, there was nothing obviously impressive about him. His boots, too, were somewhat in need of a clean, and his
uniform far from immaculate. Pavel began to experience the faint disappointment of a traveller who has heard much of the wonders of a remote and exotic city, and arrives there to find the aesthetic rapture he had hoped to experience obscured and clouded by the most banal realities. Watching the furrowed look of concentration, Layevsky felt almost satisfied that he, at least, would not be remotely impressed by a man like any other.

  At length, the man set down his journal with a sigh, and inspected Layevsky from top to bottom with a disconcerting thoroughness. Layevsky prepared to introduce himself, but Vitkevich forestalled him with a great groan. ‘How frightful,’ he said with a curious quick drawl. ‘How completely frightful.’ And Layevsky recognized, in his unexplained comment, the grand original of the many unsuccessful impersonations he had listened to over the previous week, and, quite suddenly, was smitten.

  Vitkevich said little, then or afterwards, but every time he said something, however banal, it struck Layevsky as completely imbued with the strength of a personality. Whenever the other fellows made a comment, it was merely a comment, which any of them might have made. They seemed to speak a language like anyone else. Vitkevich, on the other hand, could say the simplest thing, and it seemed always like a statement only Vitkevich could have brought out. The words he came out with – they were undeniably in French, but all in all, Vitkevich spoke Vitkevich. ‘How charming and amusing it is, to be sent on manoeuvres, all in all,’ he would mutter, and the table would be struck with admiration. Vitkevich, in every way, was the hero of the mess, the man who set the tone, whose escapades and remarks would be raised and commented on for weeks. For the most part he projected an appearance of mildly complaining laziness, and from his recumbent form would issue a series of startlingly irreverent bons mots, but sometimes he seemed to be seized with a demonic energy, and organized the entire mess into a splendid practical joke, like the occasion when he thought of bundling up Nozdryov, dead drunk and limp as a sack of old rags, and locking him in a cell with a chained angry bear. Sometimes he would be seized with a mad, original fancy, and argue that the happiness of the individual would be greatly improved if everyone, by law, were to suffer a week of solitary confinement once a year. He would propose these extraordinary fancies to the mess, quite simply, and then sit back while they argued, with outraged futility, against his eccentric idea. Layevsky was quite certain that he thought each idea up on the spot, and his arguments seemed only to be produced to ward off some terrible inner boredom; but he listened to the man speak, and could not restrain his fascination. He was infatuated.

  Vitkevich took no especial notice of Pavel, but he took no especial notice of anyone. He was a negligent, brilliant performer, who no more needed to choose his audience than a great tenor at the opera. Anyone, it was apparent, would be pleased to be able to listen, and Vitkevich was entirely uninterested in the make-up of his mess room claque. Layevsky was surprised and excited, then, when one day, as he met Vitkevich coming from the stables in his stockinged feet, riding boots in hand, the elder man confessed to a feeling of dreadful boredom, and proposed a visit à deux to the brothels of—Street that evening.

  Pavel accepted with alacrity, sweeping to the back of his mind that he had planned to pay a visit to his dandified Uncle Stepan that evening. For him, an hour’s ceremonious call would now have to suffice, and he agreed to a rendezvous, as Vitkevich put it, at nine o’clock that evening.

  Stepan Mikhailovich occupied a splendid town house three streets behind the imperial palace, and Pavel Nikolaievich made his way there a few minutes before six o’clock. He was welcomed into the chilly marble hall by a sour blue-coated footman, powdered to within an inch of his life and glittering with silver frogs, who took the heaviest of Pavel’s winter furs with a lip-smackingly ceremonious air, as one who has been handed a dish of sweetmeats. The footman led him past the daringly prominent marble copy of Canova’s statue of Pauline Borghese which Stepan Mikhailovich had acquired in Rome, and up the sweeping stairs. At the top, the footman deposited Pavel in a chilly directoire anteroom, and went through to announce the nephew. Pavel was always somewhat in awe of his worldly uncle, and he allowed himself to be summoned through with a sense of mild nervousness.

  Stepan Mikhailovich was discovered in a state of déshabille and prostrate on a sofa. His carefully undone shirt and loosened stock, however, gave only a momentary impression of carelessness, since when he moved, the surface of his corset could be discerned through the shirt, and the carelessly ruffled appearance of his hair was somewhat at odds with the care with which the dark strips of mouse-fur had been attached to his eyebrows and rouge applied to his cheekbones. He greeted Pavel with courtly casualness, not rising, and waved to a seat.

  ‘You will dine with me, of course?’ Stepan inquired, after the state of health of his brother at Boguslavo had been established.

  ‘I fear not,’ Pavel said. ‘I have engaged to dine with my friend Vitkevich this evening. Perhaps—’

  ‘How very distingué,’ Stepan said, raising a false eyebrow. ‘I had no idea we dined with M. Vitkevich these days.’

  ‘Are you acquainted with him, sir?’

  Stepan shrugged. ‘He is a great favourite of the Tsar, after all,’ he said modestly. ‘A remarkable young man. I had forgotten he and you served in the same regiment.’

  ‘I think he is the most remarkable man I ever met in my life,’ Pavel said with the ingenuousness of the very young.

  ‘He is certainly a man of parts,’ Stepan said. ‘Some, naturally, are somewhat surprised to see a gentleman with so very chequered a history gaining so much esteem.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘I see you have not been acquainted with the gentleman very long,’ Stepan said. Pavel confessed this to be the case. ‘A very remarkable gentleman, nevertheless. I cannot think of another man whose crimes have been so completely forgiven.’

  ‘You exaggerate, surely, sir.’

  ‘Well, I am not accustomed, I confess, to meet treasonous criminals at the imperial court. Yes, treasonous – surely, sir, you knew that in youth he rose up against the Tsar and was exiled for his pains? And to be so utterly forgiven – and, really, he is a most decided, a most intimate favourite of the whole imperial family – I cannot think of its like occurring before. They say he is to be trusted with the most important mission sometime soon. A remarkable man.’

  There was something not entirely admiring in Uncle Stepan’s professions, and Pavel soon excused himself coldly and left the old man to his cosmetics. At nine he made his way to Vitkevich’s quarters, and the two of them left the barracks on foot. It was the dead of winter, and the streets were lit only by the bonfires which coachmen had lit at each corner. They made their way swiftly through the dry, crackling, fiery night without exchanging much in the way of remarks, and soon found themselves among the festive lights of—Street.

  Pavel had been here once before with his fellow subalterns, but to come here with Vitkevich was quite a different experience. Before, it had seemed shameful and Pavel had not felt at all easy as they walked up and down, discussing nervously which of the many brothels they should visit. It seemed a mark of Vitkevich’s originality that, without consulting, he merely walked into the first house on the street. Inside the plushly furnished house, a respectable middle-aged woman sat picking at popular tunes with one finger on the pianoforte, while around, young women in showy, bright dresses sat in bored silence. Two elderly men sat in a corner, discussing with each other in lowered voices; they might have been talking about serious affairs, were it not for the frequent, covetous glances they shot at the ladies of the establishment.

  Vitkevich banged on the lid of the pianoforte with his fist, and the madam left off her music-making. ‘Bring us a bottle of your very worst champagne,’ Vitkevich said. ‘And make it truly revolting.’

  The madam made a gesture at the maid and, from her seat, made so very ceremonious a bow, it might have been the envy of Pavel’s uncle’s powdered footman. They sat down and diveste
d themselves of their furs. Vitkevich made a cursory survey of the room, after which he paid no attention whatsoever to the girls of the establishment, but addressed himself solely to Layevsky.

  ‘How boring all this is,’ Vitkevich said. ‘And how very unwise we are, to entrust our health to the Petersburg night and these overheated establishments. I do not wonder that our friends find it better to walk about so nearly naked here.’

  ‘I believe you are acquainted with my uncle,’ Layevsky said. ‘I paid a visit to him earlier today. He said he knew you somewhat.’

  ‘Yes?’ Vitkevich said. ‘Ah – yes. Of course. Yes, a very fine gentleman, a pillar of the court. I so admire his confidence and courage. I so hope that I grow to be exactly like that, when I too am seventy years old. It is not everyone, after all, who would venture out with little strips of mouse-hide stuck to his face.’

  Layevsky was startled, as one is when someone else notices a fact which one believes is apparent only to oneself.

  ‘He told me a little of your history,’ Layevsky persevered.

  ‘My history?’ Vitkevich said, clouding over. Then he seemed to brighten, and said, ‘Where is that terrible champagne? Can it be that they cannot find anything bad enough for us?’

  Layevsky let it drop, curious as he was. The evening pursued its course, as they drank several bottles of champagne in a series of brothels, in not one of which did Vitkevich pay the slightest attention to the girls, even when they came and draped themselves around his neck. This proved a terrible torment to Layevsky, who felt he could not express any kind of interest in the girls, or propose that they use the houses for their proper purpose. Nor did Vitkevich tell Layevsky the slightest thing about his life, his history or his future plans, or say anything which suggested that he might have selected the young man to be his intimate. And yet, the next day, when Layevsky woke with a sore head – they had returned after two in the morning, muzzy and poisoned with all the hilarious bad champagne the brothels of—Street could supply – that had proved to be the case. The following evening, Pavel had felt the desire to sample the pleasures which had been denied him the previous night, and had, rather shamefacedly, slunk off alone. When he returned, he found a note from Vitkevich, rather peremptory in tone but still thrilling to Pavel’s infatuated heart, intimating that he had hoped to be able to dine with him, and suggesting the following night instead. Since then, they had become ‘the inseparables’ in the amused eyes of the mess room, and nothing Vitkevich ever said tended to lessen the intense admiration Pavel felt for him.