The Mulberry Empire

by Philip Hensher

  8.

  The morning after Masha’s splendid dinner, Nikolai Mikhailovich woke, as was his custom, at six. He put on his high boots and a cloth coat, and went downstairs to take breakfast standing in the kitchen, a piece of rye bread with tea. The hounds were already roused, and baying in the yard expectantly. Pavel Nikolaievich appeared by half-past six, and they set off into the quiet of the early morning.

  The spot Nikolai Mikhailovich had thought of for their day’s sport was a copse of aspen trees, not far from a stream which ran through the estate. As they set off, their hounds running ahead as if already hungry for sport, Nikolai felt exulted by the quiet solitude of the estate in the early morning. The sun was still low in the sky, and in the clear early-morning light there were few peasants in the fields, just preparing for their day’s work. The leaves in the trees rustled in the light breeze, and overhead, a skylark sang, high in the pale sky. Nikolai felt intensely happy, and, without passing any remark with his son, seemed to see the beautiful landscape through the eyes of Pavel. The estate would one day be his, and he was certain that the sight of so much beauty from here to the horizon would fill him with a joy that even he could only guess at.

  They sat down at the base of an aspen, on a patch of moss, as smooth and dry as a cushion. Laska, the grey bitch, the oldest of the pack, settled by her master, her ears pricked. Somewhere nearby, from deep in the meadow, there was a strange sound, a whinnying, a high cry as of a child. It was a male hare at play. The rippling sound of the brook, the whispering of the leaves in the light morning wind; the bright morning sun, already starting to be hot; Nikolai loosened his stock and took out a hunk of bread from his game bag, and began to chew it contentedly. All at once, as if set off by a single throw, an alarm, there came a crackling firework-noise from above, and the sky was filled with birds in flight. It was going to be a good day.

  The hounds looked up with their master, and all at once started barking eagerly. ‘Hush, hush,’ Nikolai said. There was all the time in the world, this long day, for Nikolai and his son to be together.

  ‘Papa,’ Pavel said. ‘Vitkevich, my friend, you know – he is really the most remarkable man. I hope you come to like him as much as I.’

  Nikolai’s mind had been fixed on the marvellous shooting to come, and nothing else. His eyes were on the sky, and he listened without quite taking in the meaning of his son’s words. When he understood, in a moment, what Pavel had said, he felt abruptly deflated, as if their paths of thought had been running away from each other, and he should have noticed the fact. He looked at his son. He felt that he had misunderstood entirely, but what he had misunderstood, he could not say. He had believed that his son had returned, and returned as he was; but now he knew that he had gone into the world. He should have understood that once a man goes into the world, he never returns as he was, and his son, sitting among the glowing woods of his childhood, thought only of the world he had left, and his childhood was nothing to him. He rose, accepting the fact, and prepared to shoot.

  ‘Tell me of his past,’ he said, accepting a simple fact in the relationship between every father and every growing son, and asking for what he did not care to know. It was with something like pleasure – not precisely pleasure, but sufficiently like it to offer the beginnings of consolation – that he saw Pavel Nikolaievich turn to him gratefully, and begin to tell a sad, sad story.

  Nikolai Mikhailovich felt rather refreshed than anything by the exercise of the day, and after a hot bath and a brief stretch on the sofa in his study, he dressed and went downstairs. The saloon was empty. He went over to the card table, where the books Vitkevich had commented on still lay as he had left them, and Nikolai picked one up. What had he said? He looked at the spine of the book; it was a French novel, one of Nikolai’s wife’s. Vitkevich had said he adored it, had he not? The house was quiet, and Layevsky suddenly, on a whim, called out for Masha.

  ‘How splendid your bag was today, Nikolai Mikhailovich!’ she said, entering without her apron. ‘Who shot the more?’

  ‘Pavel Nikolaievich had a very good day,’ Nikolai said, patting the sofa to persuade her to sit for a moment and talk. ‘As for me – alas, I begin to feel my old age creeping upon me, and my eyesight is not as sharp as it was. Still, I did not disgrace myself, I feel.’

  ‘Nikolai Mikhailovich,’ Masha said, beaming. ‘I believe you outdid your son.’

  ‘I cannot deny it,’ Nikolai said, grinning broadly. ‘How clever you are. But he did shoot well, and I must confess, my aim is not what it was. Twenty years ago, I should have brought home twice the number. The woods are teeming with birds; a man blindfolded might have done as well as I today, they are so numerous.’

  ‘How modest you are,’ Masha said, quickly kissing him on the cheek. ‘And you—’

  She broke off in alarm. Vitkevich was standing in the doorway, observing them. She did not know how long he had been standing there.

  ‘Come in, sir, come in,’ Nikolai said heartily. ‘I hope you had an agreeable and restful day. I was boasting about our splendid day in the fields to Masha.’

  Vitkevich, a look of perplexity on his face, advanced into the room and Masha rose to go.

  ‘No, no,’ Nikolai said. ‘Stay with us, Masha. You must grow used to our rustic informality, sir. Masha, you know, is considered by all quite one of the family; and, Masha, your tasks may wait for a moment longer.’

  Masha sank down into her seat again nervously.

  ‘I hope you begin to find yourself rested after your military duties, sir,’ Nikolai said.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Vitkevich said. A silence fell.

  ‘And your day was not too dull?’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said, casting a glance at Masha. Again, she gave a little convulsion, as if to go, but restrained herself.

  Layevsky persevered; after all, this was his house, and this was his Masha, and he would behave in what way he chose. ‘You said last night, I recall, that you have a heavy task in front of you?’

  ‘Indeed,’ Vitkevich said. ‘As soon as I leave your beautiful estate, I shall be obliged to undertake some rather special duties, which I expect to be more than usually onerous.’

  ‘A great honour, no doubt,’ Layevsky said.

  ‘No doubt,’ Vitkevich said. Then he seemed to change his mind about something, and shrugged. ‘I am undertaking a journey into unknown territory. When I leave, I am to travel to Kabul.’

  ‘To—’

  ‘To Kabul,’ Vitkevich said.

  ‘Forgive us,’ Layevsky said. ‘We live so very quiet a life here – you will think us the most ignorant peasants, but is that beyond Siberia?’

  ‘No,’ Vitkevich said, scowling, and Layevsky cursed his slip; Siberia and Vitkevich were now pointlessly connected in his mind. ‘No, not in Siberia. It lies to the far south, far beyond the bounds of the empire. The Afghans, you know, sir, the Afghans.’

  ‘I am most interested, sir,’ Layevsky said. ‘That must be a most arduous and onerous journey. I always believed there was nothing south of the borders but deserts and savagery.’

  ‘That is not an entirely inaccurate impression,’ Vitkevich said.

  ‘And—’ Masha said. She cleared her throat and started again. ‘And what is to be found there?’

  Vitkevich looked at her, somewhat surprised at her speaking at all. ‘I do not know,’ he said. ‘That, perhaps, is the reason to travel there.’

  ‘I see,’ Layevsky said. He had no idea what questions to ask on this very strange subject.

  ‘You must realize, sir,’ Vitkevich went on earnestly, ‘that the empire cannot remain as it is. Where we sit was not within the boundaries of civilization a hundred years ago, but our grandfathers had the confidence to advance, to our undoubted benefit. And perhaps, now, the time has come … Forgive me, I run on, and these subjects cannot interest you.’

  ‘The Tsar is sending you to new lands?’ Masha said.

  ‘Indeed, madam,’ Vitkevich said, bowing coldly.
/>   ‘And what will come of it?’ she said, boldly.

  ‘I do not know,’ he said. ‘Perhaps nothing. But what we certainly know is that beyond our boundaries, there are Russians living in slavery, the poor subjects of barbarians, and it is our duty – perhaps, madam, a cousin of yours is at this moment living in chains, in the utmost misery, living at the whim of some barbarian Mussulman. It is surely our duty as Russians to venture out. And afterwards … well, I am undertaking a journey to Kabul, at the express wish of my Tsar. We shall see what comes of it.’

  ‘I think I would not wish for more,’ Masha said, simply.

  ‘Madam?’ Vitkevich said. He looked quite baffled at what had drawn him into a conversation on the Tsar’s majestic ambitions with a peasant cook. Masha shrank back.

  ‘I would not wish for more,’ she said again. Then she was silent again, as if she had said enough.

  ‘For more?’ Nikolai said, kindly. ‘Masha, what do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said.

  Vitkevich looked at her, assessing her, and then seemed to understand what she meant. ‘More land?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘I do not know what I would do with more. And it would not be ours.’

  This thought seemed to strike Vitkevich, and he paused. ‘I am at the disposal of my emperor,’ he said. ‘Madam, I think – I believe – that we are in a state of rivalry in some parts of the world, in rivalry with other powers. I think any patriot will want to extend the virtues of his native soil to impoverished and desperate parts of the world. Of course we may say that we have enough land, and sit here. But …’

  He seemed strangely at a loss now, and, pausing, took out his snuffbox, sniffed it up, and sneezed four times into his red handkerchief, neatly, like a cat.

  ‘Out there is the world, and it could be ours,’ he went on. ‘And one day we may wake, and look out of the windows, and there, advancing over the hills, may be your English redcoats. I do not know what is enough.’

  ‘I think we have enough,’ Masha said again, simply.

  ‘Perhaps we do,’ Vitkevich said, and suddenly there was a flash of kindness in his face towards the cook, and perhaps he had seen, now, who and what she was. ‘Perhaps we do, and perhaps that is what I will find out.’

  ‘There is Pavel Nikolaievich,’ his father suddenly said, with evident relief. Pavel had come down from his room and, outside, was restfully pacing up and down the loggia of the house. ‘Shall we join him, sir?’

  Vitkevich bowed, and for the first time that Masha had seen, smiled. The two of them went outside. Masha remained standing in the saloon for a moment, and watched the group through the windows. The sun was almost setting, and when they walked on around the house, she stayed there, looking out of the window. The mistress’s garden looked beautiful at this time of day; the clumps of flowers richer in colour than earlier in the day, refreshed by the golden light as if by rain. The flowers, unrestrained, spilled over each other, and here and there in the rich mixture of grasses in the meadow, a burst of brilliant red or yellow, where flowers had seeded themselves and grown, untouched. The loose radiant garden stretched out, and there, beyond, the wilder stretches; the mown fields of wheat, the dark glowing forest, and there, beyond the end of the lands, the rising lavender hills, one after another into the scented blue sky. A bird sang, somewhere deep in the sky, a long curving song like flight itself, and, as if to answer, a distant song, a man’s song, drifted from the fields. It was Arkady, in his white shirt, trudging with happy exhaustion from the fields into the garden, and singing as if he never feared anyone would hear him, singing in his bright high voice; ‘Rushlight’. She stood there at the window, and gazed at all the land she could see, all the way to the far horizon. Arcturus was rising, and the Great Bear, and Venus, like a nightly unsought blessing. She had never been beyond those dissolving lavender hills; to go into the world would be as unimaginable as to journey to those stars. She had never wanted to, until this moment. Everything she saw she knew, and had thought that would always be the case. But the explorer had come to Boguslavo, and now as she stood in the beautiful rich silence of the earth she knew, beneath the beginnings of the shining night sky, her mind began to roam, beyond the hills, beyond the Crimea, beyond Russia. Here was enough; but as she stood, and listened to the faint murmur of the men’s conversation outside and looked at the warm blue landscape, she all at once understood why men go into the world; understood that, always, always, men must resolve to stay where they are, and not pursue their wishes into the great world.

  SIXTEEN

  IN THE SHADE OF THE CAMEL, the adventurer squeezed his eyelids together and tried to see what it was, that thing at the edge of the vast sandy horizon. There was nothing here to see; a vacuum, a great yellow and gold and brown vacuum. But in the desert something glittered, far away. Nothing moved, apart from the shimmering air; nothing lived, apart from Burnes and his animals and his party, sheltering as best they could from the bleak midday light. But somewhere, miles away, an object glittered, like a shard of metal in a pile of sand. Something lived, and towards them, so slowly, it came.

  To the European eye, the desert and the white sky were one, a single blaze. But Burnes knew that his bearers saw everything in it. An Afghan, taken from the desert and presented with the sea and the sky, saw nothing; saw a single blank blue, never having contemplated the possibilities of azure. And the desert, to them, was alive with change and distance. They looked at it, and saw what their sweating masters could not, a country rich enough for men to live in.

  There were no explorers here, in this awful place, and no animals, and no men bending their heads under the sun. But out there was something. A helmet, a cuirass, a piece of metal, so distant, had caught the sun, and whatever it was had seen them. Towards them came something; it might be bandits, or anything, but for the moment Burnes sat silently and waited. Towards them came a shard of life, towards them in its shining insect certainty, making its way through this vast waste of sand. Burnes waited there, in this improbable place, to see how such a presence would make itself known. He did not know it, but he was waiting for Vitkevich.

  SEVENTEEN

  1.

  THIS TIME IT COULD BE TRUE.

  For two years, since Hasan’s departure, the same news had been brought into the house of the widow Khadija. From time to time, one of Masson’s boys would enter, and sit with him, and talk for a while inconsequentially, before mentioning quite casually that some English were in Kabul. Once, he had been stirred by this information. A boy would break off from his conversation – perhaps he would be describing, in as much detail as he could summon, his brother’s wedding to a girl from the hills, the year before. He would bring his eyes down from their mid-air concentration, gulp, and say, prompted by nothing, that there were English again in Kabul.

  The first time Masson heard this news, he had been thrown into a state of excitement, and had hardly known what questions to ask the boy – Mohammed, had it been? Yes, rather a smelly boy, Mohammed. English in Kabul. That thrill that went through him, he hardly knew what to do with it. If he had seen these English in the street, he could not say whether he would run from them or embrace them; to find out who they were, or to take measures to stop them finding him. It had been years now since he had laid eyes upon an Englishman; years since he had spoken English to anyone but himself, pottering about the white-walled little garden of the widow’s house. He always said to himself that he did not want to be reminded of what he had been – what he was. He did not want to think of himself as English, any more than he wanted to feel that he was a soldier. Those things had passed, and if he spoke to himself sometimes in an odd spiky language, and could not stop himself from counting out coins in English, that was merely an oddity of behaviour which any inhabitant of Kabul might possess. The widow Khadija gave a polite, neat little sneeze somewhere beneath her veil every time she was about to tell a lie; the beggar at the corner pulled apologetically at one ear, and then the other,
whenever he was given a coin; Masson counted and chattered in an angular nonsense language. Seven eight nine ten eleven – that was the thing you never got rid of, the counting in your first language. But it was all the same, and meant nothing but that everyone had an idiosyncrasy. No one had the same one, but in this city, that was what they all shared.

  He had assured himself successfully, then, that he had become something else. He might have killed himself, there, at the gates of the Calcutta garrison, rather than Hastings; and have found no more regret. If he had ever had roots, they were gone now; left in the heavy clay of obligation and unwillingness, left in the clammy dampness of his ignored past, left in Calcutta. Now he had changed, and all that was over. What he was, he did not know: but he knew he was not what he had been.

  And yet the news that the English were in Kabul filled him not just with dread, but with a form of excitement. He did not fear discovery, or punishment; he knew that he was beyond the pale here, beyond what England might approve or disapprove of as definitely as he was beyond the reach of their law. What he feared, perhaps, in his agitation, was a feeling in himself that, if he ever saw an Englishman again, he would not be able to stop himself approaching the other, throwing off his cloak and saying, ‘I am Masson.’ To speak again in English, and be answered; at some level, Masson had to recognize, he longed for that.