The Beginning of Spring

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  ‘She was lying down, as all women do. She’s terrified of animals, can’t stand them in the house.’ But why, Kuriatin continued, why did Frank himself not come to his home that evening, no formality, just to share what God provided?

  ‘No thank you, not this evening, Arkady Filippovich.’

  ‘You won’t partake of our simple fare?’

  Frank knew the invitation wasn’t meant to be accepted. It was out of the question for him to come round like that, as a guest on the spur of the moment. Merchants of the second grade did not entertain in such a way. Preparations would have had to be made. Without them, he would have caused almost as much trouble as the bear.

  Kuriatin took Frank’s arm and escorted him down the bare wooden stairs, both of them, from long practice, avoiding the weak places.

  ‘Why don’t you get something done about these stairs?’ Frank asked. ‘And why don’t you let your clerks have a telephone? The Germans will get ahead of you.’

  ‘Why don’t you get your wife to come back to you?’ shouted Kuriatin, exploding with laughter, as the doorman came out of his cupboard-like room and ushered them, deeply bowing, into the street. For Kuriatin life, like business, was a game, but not a gambling game. On the contrary, it was one in which he had arranged to win, although the rules were peculiar to himself. Knowing that the children had been put at risk in his half-savage household, he had felt Frank’s visit as a reproach. But by insulting Frank – of whom he was genuinely fond – he had restored himself to a superior position. It almost compensated him for the loss of his tablecloth, glass and china, to which he had been insanely attached.

  9

  Frank went straight to the English Chaplaincy off the Marosseika, where he should, perhaps, have gone in the first place. Evening tea-time was one of Mrs Graham’s visiting hours. He was not afraid of Mrs Graham, or at least not as afraid as some people were. In any case, in taking his predicament to her he was doing her a service. She was a scholar’s daughter, brought up in Cambridge, and not reconciled to living in Moscow. Although she hadn’t, Frank knew, attended college herself, she might be called a student of a kind, a student of trouble, or rather of other people’s troubles.

  ‘Mr Reid?’ she called out in her odd, high, lightly drawling voice. ‘This is an expected pleasure.’

  ‘You knew I was going to come and ask you something?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Restless as a bird of prey which has not caught anything for several days, she nodded him towards the seat next to her. There were no comfortable chairs in the chaplaincy, except in Mr Graham’s study.

  Mrs Graham was not alone, indeed she rarely was. Opposite her sofa there sat a woman of about her own age, somewhere between forty and fifty, wearing a grey skirt of stout material, a grey blouse that did not quite match it, a grey spencer with pink bits about it somewhere and a felt hat, put on quite straight. The total effect was that of gallantry in the face of odds. She was introduced as Miss Muriel Kinsman. Frank remembered now that he had been told she was coming to Moscow from the depths of the country, where she’d been a governess, and that she had been unjustly dismissed from her employer’s estate and, as usual, a collection was being taken up to help her with her fare home. ‘Not only does she look like a dismissed governess, but it’s clear that she was born looking like one,’ Mrs Graham had told him. ‘And that I consider unusually hard on her.’ Now he shook hands, saying ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Kinsman. I’m only sorry you’re not staying longer in Moscow.’

  Miss Kinsman fixed him with her great melancholy eyes in her weatherbeaten face. ‘I’d stay here willingly if there was anyone who took the least interest in whether I did or not.’

  ‘But you’ll be going home to your family?’

  She made no answer, and Frank feared he’d been impolite. Bad luck if he was to be reproached for that when in fact he cared amazingly little whether she went home or not.

  Mrs Graham said, ‘I’m inclined to think sometimes that it’s a pity there’s such a thing as a postal service. The pain of waiting for letters which don’t come very much exceeds the pleasure of getting them when they do. I hope I’ve said that the right way round. Miss Kinsman hasn’t heard from anyone in England for some years.’

  ‘I should like you to call me Muriel, Mrs Graham, even if only once. I should just like to hear that name again.’

  ‘What did they call you out at Vladislavskoe?’

  Miss Kinsman explained that although the German governess (who was admittedly younger, or anyway a few years younger, than herself) had always been called Fraülein Trudi, she herself had never been anything but Missy.

  ‘Whatever did that matter?’ asked Mrs Graham. ‘I shouldn’t mind being called Missy.’

  ‘Everything matters when you got out to one of those places. Nothing arrives without your seeing it come out of the forest two versts away, and down the dip, out of the dip, up the road so that by the time it gets to the house, cart or carriage or motor-car or whatever it is, you’re sick of it already, so you’re driven to brood all day about what’s going on in the house itself, and I suppose that gets magnified, every little thing that’s said, every bark and shout, every tick and tock. Perhaps one loses one’s sense of proportion. Yes, one certainly does. One incident gets added to another, and it’s the sum total of them all that weighs one down.’

  The matter of the lost key to the clock. The matter of the lost key to the wine-cooler. The matter of the valerian drops. The matter of the Giant’s Stride. The matter of the cigar case. The matter of the pickled cucumber. The matter of the bath house. The matter of the torn photograph … she’s drifting, thought Frank, and presumably she’s come here to drift, for a length of time which would be decisively fixed by Mrs Graham. He felt sorry for her.

  ‘Wasn’t it quite what you expected?’ he asked.

  ‘There shouldn’t be such a state of mind as expectation,’ interrupted Mrs Graham. ‘One gets too dependent on the future.’

  She offered a box of Crimean cigarettes. Frank refused, but not Miss Kinsman, who said, ‘I’m afraid I’ve formed the habit since I came to Russia.’

  ‘So have I,’ said Mrs Graham, ‘my husband wishes I hadn’t. But I smoke the mahorka.’ Not always, thought Frank, but she did on this occasion, rapidly rolling up the coarse workman’s shag in a piece of yellow paper. She lit it and tossed back her head. The cigarette hung from the corner of her mouth, where it looked quite in keeping with her wild grey Cambridge knot of hair, her peasant sarafan worn with a tweed skirt and her bead necklaces. ‘Tell!’ she cried, puffing.

  Miss Kinsman rambled on, in a low voice, not always easy to follow. Although it seemed that some object, always the same one, perhaps the cigar case, perhaps the cucumber, had repeatedly made its appearance in her room and had suggested to her that the whole household was hostile to her and was showing this in petty ways – ‘in pranks’ Miss Kinsman said – the main trouble had been a noble one, her high concept of education. The Lvovs themselves appeared to take no interest in their children’s lessons, that was left to Pavel Borisovich, an unmarried Uncle who was installed in the house, with not much to do except interfere. This Pavel Borisovich had been intended for the College of Pages, but had been sent to school in Berlin, and thought it right to impose an absurdly strict regime on the children. His enthusiasm wouldn’t have lasted, of course, nothing did, he just had one craze after another – languages, psychology, gymnastics. It was during his gymnastics mania that he’d got one of the estate carpenters to install a Giant’s Stride in the garden after the last hay had been cut. She had thought it her duty to say that it wasn’t, in her opinion, a safe piece of apparatus. You stepped out, holding one of the six ropes, into the air and whirled faster, even faster, from one landing-place to another. It was certain to lead to broken bones. But it isn’t always a good thing to be in the right.

  ‘It’s good, but it’s hardly ever safe,’ said Mrs Graham.

  She was, or probably wa
s, a kind-hearted woman, but she was too sharp, Frank thought. All sharp people, no matter whether they were men or women, were tiring.

  The matter of the Giant’s Stride. The matter of the Lvov children’s timetable. Learning should not be associated with enforcement, but with freedom and joy. The matter of the bath house. Nakedness was not an important thing in Russia. The coachman had not intended any disrespect. The Uncle, Pavel Borisovich, had probably not intended any disrespect. The matter of the torn photograph.

  ‘What about the Fraülein, the German governess?’ Mrs Graham asked. ‘How did this Uncle Pavel get on with her?’

  Miss Kinsman paused. ‘They got on together very well.’

  It was nearly time for Vespers. No church bells were allowed to ring in Moscow except from the Orthodox church itself. Mrs Graham was aware of the exact time, apparently without looking, as she sat with her back to the carriage clock. At three minutes to six she began to stir, and Frank said, ‘I’d better be off now, Mrs Graham. There was something I’d wanted to talk to you about, but it can very well wait till another time.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have thought it could,’ said Mrs Graham. She said goodbye to him in her distinctive manner, looking down for a moment at his hand in hers as though wondering where she’d got it from, then pressing it and looking into his eyes with an assurance that he would not be forgotten.

  In the hallway a door opened and the Anglican chaplain, the Reverend Edwin Graham, came out.

  ‘Ah, Reid. You’re here, Reid. Nice to see you.’

  A servant brought him his galoshes and his hat and cloak. The chaplain put them on, went back into his study, came out with a few sheets of typed paper fastened with a paper-clip, waved away the servant, who appeared again, thinking something more was wanted, looked round at Frank to see if he was coming to the service, waved the sheets of paper at him in ironic invitation, and made off across the square to the chapel. Frank too went off into the darkness.

  He meant to go up to the Novinsky Boulevard and take a tram. That was the quickest way home, quicker, at this time in the evening, than a sledge. A senseless fear had come over him that if he stayed away too long, the children, once again, would be gone by the time he got back. Turning right up the Nikitskaya he looked round, for no very definite reason, and saw that Miss Kinsman was behind him, threading her way efficiently between the many pedestrians. There were no drunks on this respectable street, and she made rapid progress. In Frank’s opinion, she ought to have gone to Vespers. But it struck him now that Mrs Graham, who could act very quickly if she thought fit, had told Miss Kinsman, during those few minutes while he was in the hall, about his difficulties. She had tipped Miss Kinsman the wink. Everyone knew that Nellie had gone, and on this delicate subject all, apparently, were experts. With the ruthlessness of the timid, Miss Kinsman was coming after him now to suggest that she would be suitable for the post of governess at 22 Lipka Street.

  And perhaps she was right, but Frank didn’t feel able to think about the whole thing, much less make up his mind, at the moment. He remembered that he had given something, twenty-five roubles in fact, to the collection for her expenses and her fare to Charing Cross. He didn’t grudge that at all, but, all things considered, shouldn’t it have let him off? He was known in Moscow, in both the Russian business community and the English one, as a just man. He hadn’t anything, quite the contrary, against Miss Kinsman. But if she had it in mind, or had had it put into her mind, to move into his house and take charge of the family, there was Dolly to be thought of. Dolly’s word was not ‘just’ but ‘fair’. She would not think it fair of him to make any arrangement with Miss Kinsman. Miss Kinsman was dowdy, another of the words that couldn’t be translated into Russian, because there was no way of suggesting a dismal unfashionableness which was not intentional, not slovenly, not disreputable, but simply Miss Kinsman’s way of looking like herself. Frank had never pretended to be able to answer Dolly’s objections, but he knew, for the most part, what they would be. On the other hand, what was there to stop him from letting Miss Kinsman overtake him and finding out from her quite clearly – for he could, after all, be wrong – exactly what she wanted?

  There was nothing to stop him, but he turned into a side-street. He might as well go to the Povarskaya and catch his tram lower down the Boulevard. In that way he’d avoid Miss Kinsman, and would never have to speak to her at all. She wouldn’t have to brood on the matter of Mr Reid’s odd behaviour. Really it would be sparing her distress.

  Everyone took short cuts in Moscow. The tram numbers, except for the line round the boulevards, were frequently changed, and unless you felt like paying for a sledge or a cab you were bound to spend a good deal of time on foot. But once you were off the main streets you had to know (since it could scarcely be explained) the way. Street names soon ran out. You were faced by towering heaps of bricks and drain-pipes, or a lean-to which encroached on the pavement, or a steaming cowshed whose rotten planks seemed to breathe in and out under their own volition. All these things, which had no legal right to be there and were unknown to any map, had to be imagined away if you wanted to steer a true course. There might be no alternative to walking through one door of a temporary building and out at the other. The turning Frank had reached was, he knew, Katsap Pereulok, although there was no trace of a sign. The passageway was filled, like a gully, with pearly darkness. There was a light on the corner, though not a municipal one, only a kerosene lamp fixed low on the wall. He looked back, Miss Kinsman, in her felt hat and winter overcoat, was just turning into the passage.

  Not only good sense, but ordinary politeness told Frank that he must speak to this woman and offer to take her back to Povarskaya. She looked lamentably out of place in this unsavoury lane, struggling to put up her umbrella, although no snow was falling. But if she’d come as far as this, she must know the way back, and if she couldn’t catch up with him, she could go back to the Chaplaincy. I shouldn’t like to try and give a connected account of what I’m doing, he thought. I shouldn’t, for example, like to give an account of it to Tvyordov. But I’m being hunted. She’s hunting me down, like a bill-collector. Instead of turning right, back to the boulevards, he went left, through a narrow opening, towards the Kremlin. He was going twice as far as he needed to, because of this hunting process. But poor woman, surely she can’t come much farther.

  Kolbasov Pereulok. The name was painted up, but ahead of him access was narrowed down by towering piles of sacks on either side, as if the two houses opposite each other, dimly lighted, were in competition to block out each other’s windows. There was a reek of tar and frying buckwheat pancakes (Frank sighed with hunger). Once into the lane, the ground floors of the houses became shops, with windows half below the pavement level. There was no way of telling what they dealt in. Very likely they were repair shops, there was nothing you couldn’t get repaired in Moscow, a city which in its sluggish, maternal way cared, as well as for the rich, for the poorest of the poor. Bring me your broken shoes, your worn-out mattresses, your legless chairs, your headless beds, and in some basement workshop or hole in the wall, I will make them serviceable, at least for a few months or so. They will be fit to use, or at least fit to take to the pawnbroker’s.

  On the corner there was a Monopoly, a government vodka shop. It was small, but brightly lit. Inside, a woman of great size and strength, wrapped in a black knitted shawl, sat on a stool behind a wooden partition with a small window in it, wired in, like a ticket office. There was nowhere to sit down. Men and women waited with empty bottles or leaned uncertainly against the wooden walls. The exact money had to be counted out before the taps behind the partition were unlocked.

  Miss Kinsman, Frank was convinced, and the conviction came with a rush of relief, would never risk walking past this place. If she did she was an impostor, with no right to her felt hat and her dowdiness and the touching stories she had told at the chaplaincy. And it came to him that, more than anyone else he’d ever encountered in Moscow, Miss Kinsman
was like his second cousin Amy in Nottingham, younger, but like cousin Amy, who crossed the road rather than go past a public house because she believed that if she did, the doors might open and men would stumble out to piss and inside she would glimpse women stabbing each other with hat-pins. Whether this really ever happened to his cousin he didn’t know. He usually wrote to her regularly, as he did to all of them, but hadn’t this month, and the slight physical sensation, not of guilt, but of feeling he ought to feel guilty, turned into a considerable irritation. Still he was almost in the clear now. The Monopoly, as usual, was on the corner of the main street, in case people started drinking on the premises, and the police had to be called in. He had come out on Znamenkaya, which when you considered that he ought to be home by now, was ridiculous. But he was free now and his mind went back to his own troubles, or rather let them rise from where they had been waiting to the surface.

  He was heading towards the river, and the air was full of the vast reverberations of the bells from the five golden domes of the church of the Redeemer, not at anything like their full power, but like the first barrage of artillery before the main attack. The attack did not come – it was Lent, and they chimed only once, but they were answered from across the river by a hundred others, always with one chime only. He stood listening to the bells in the open starlight. From the cathedral square a ramp went down to the water. The river ran darkly, still choked with the winter’s majestic breaking ice and the debris carried along with it, an inconceivable amount of rubbish – baskets, crates, way-posts, wash-tubs, wheels, cradles, the last traces of the traffic the ice had carried while, for four months, it was a high-road. Watching the breaking ice from the bridges was one of Moscow’s favourite occupations. The Gazeta-Kopeika said that a pair of dead lovers, clutched together, had floated by, frozen into the ice. The Gazeta repeated this story every spring.