The Beginning of Spring

by Penelope Fitzgerald

  In July the fine seed-bracts, pale as meal, were set free from the twigs. The air was full of floating mealy seed. It was useless to try to keep it out of the dacha, all that could be done was to sweep it into weightless mounds in the corner of every room and on the veranda. By autumn, when their aromatic sharpness seemed to have vanished, or rather to have been assimilated into the burial scents of the decaying earth, the birches were hung with yellow leaves, but now the branches seemed too delicate to bear the twigs, the twigs too fragile for the stalks. The long thin fronds seemed to be stretching towards the ground, threatened with exhaustion. In each tree, even in the middle of the forest, there were five or six different movements, from the airy commotion at the top to the stirring of the older branches, often not much thicker than the younger ones, but secure at the dark base. When the heavy autumn rains began the trees gave out a new juicy scent of stewed tea, like the scent of the bundles of birch twigs in the steam-room of a public bath house which the customer used to beat themselves, leaving stray damp leaves on the tingling skin. By early winter the whole forest seemed worn out with the struggle. The clearings were crossed with fallen trunks, here and there, to be stepped over. By the time spring came again they would have sunk into a sepulchre of earth and moss, and beetles innumerable.

  There were other dachas in the forest, but they were to the north-west, nearer to the village. At night there was not a light, not a human sound. Egor and Matryona, under their quilt next to the store-room, slept like the dead. There was only the voice of the birch trees.

  Sleep walks along the benches, according to the Russian lullaby, and says ‘I am sleepy.’ Drowsiness says ‘I am drowsy.’ On the third night, Dolly woke, and knew she had been woken, by the slight noise of a door opening, the door on to the veranda. The noise did not strike her as frightening, rather as something she had been expecting. At home, Blashl would have barked, here there was only the darkness. She put on her boots and school overcoat and went out on to the veranda. Lisa was standing there, leaning against one of the wooden pillars in her waterproof, with her black shawl over her head.

  ‘Are you going out, Lisa?’

  ‘Did you hear the door?’

  ‘Yes, I heard it.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Yes, I’m going out.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘It might have been better if you hadn’t woken up, but you did wake up. Now you’ll have to come with me.’

  She did not take Dolly’s hand, or even wait for her, but walked down the veranda steps into the forest. The little girl followed after her, dragging her feet because she had put on her boots without her stockings. She had never been before among the trees at night.

  There were paths through the birch forest, made for the autumn shooting. In fact there was a path, which might have been called a ride, almost opposite the dacha. Lisa walked steadily along it, taking the middle of the track, which was raised above the rain-worn hollows on either side. You couldn’t say it was pitch-dark. The moon in the cloudy night sky moved among the moving branches. Dolly could see, at first, if she looked back, the light in the dacha front window which was left burning all night. Then, although the path seemed to run quite straight, the light disappeared. The dacha, where Ben and Annushka lay strewn and sleeping, divided from her by sleep, was left behind.

  At the point where another track crossed their own, Lisa stood still and looked round.

  ‘Dolly, you’re limping.’

  ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘I can’t go back with you now.’

  ‘I’m all right.’

  Dolly was no longer thinking either of herself or of anything else, being concerned with struggling painfully alone through the plunging half-darkness. The leaf scent pressed in on her. There was nothing else to breathe. They had turned to the left, and walked perhaps almost as far as they had come along the first path from the dacha. Then Dolly began to see on each side of her, among the thronging stems of the birch trees, what looked like human hands, moving to touch each other across the whiteness and blackness.

  ‘Lisa,’ she called out, ‘I can see hands.’

  Lisa stood still again. They were in a clearing into which the moon shone. Dolly saw that by every birch tree, close against the trunk, stood a man or a woman. They stood separately pressing themselves each to their own tree. Then they turned their faces towards Lisa, patches of white against the whiteish bark. Dolly saw now that there were many more of them, deep into the thickness of the wood.

  ‘I have come, but I can’t stay,’ said Lisa. ‘You came, all of you, as far as this on my account. I know that, but I can’t stay. As you see, I’ve had to bring this child with me. If she speaks about this, she won’t be believed. If she remembers it, she’ll understand in time what she’s seen.’ No-one answered her, no one spoke. No one left the protection of the trees, or moved towards them. Lisa, in her usual serene and collected manner, turned, and began to take the same way as before back to the dacha. Dolly, tired to death, trudged after her. Half-way down the main path she saw the familiar light again in the window of the dacha. When they reached it, Lisa sat Dolly down on one of the old cane chairs on the veranda, took off her boots, and rubbed her wet feet dry with her shawl. Neither of them said anything about what had happened. Dolly went to her room and lay down in the large old bed which she shared with Annushka. She could still smell the potent leaf-sap of the birch trees. It was as strong inside the house as out.

  26

  At Lipka Street the hallway had been cleared of straw and litter, the china and clothes which should never have been packed were now unpacked, and Blashl was confined uneasily to the yard. Frank suggested that the windows might be unsealed for the spring, but was told that the children would be disappointed if the Opening took place without them. He wondered by what guile or what process of persuasion he had been led to allow them to go to the half-savage, mouldering dacha in charge of the girl whom he pressingly and achingly needed here in his own house.

  ‘I’ll go down and fetch them on Saturday,’ he told Toma, who had been forbidden to make any more direct reference to the children. ‘Not for three more days! Even your brother-in-law would have been company for you!’ cried Toma.

  The post arrived. Nothing from England, an invitation from Mrs Graham – just a small party and she’d be glad if he liked to stay on after the others had left – and an official letter from the Ministry of Defence. This was to say that F. A. Reid, a foreign resident, printer and former importer of printing machinery, was released from his responsibility towards V. S. Grigoriev, student of the University of Moscow, who had been taken once again into preventive detention. There would now be no objection, since he held the necessary permits, to the departure of F. A. Reid and his family from the Russian Empire at his earliest convenience.

  First they’d wanted him to stop, now they wanted him to go. In spite of himself Frank felt a deep pang at his first rejection from the magnificent and ramshackle country whose history, since he was born, had been his history, and whose future he could scarcely guess at. The Security, of course, might well change their minds again. In a country where nature represented not freedom, but law, where the harbours freed themselves from ice one after another, in majestic sequence, and the earth’s harvest failed unfailingly once in every three years, the human authorities proceeded by fits and starts and inexplicable welcomes and withdrawals. To try and work out why they had one opinion of him last week, and another this, would be a squandering of time. One thing, though; if he was in disfavour, it would make it easier to arrange matters for Tvyordov.

  On the eve of Palm Sunday Tvyordov had told Frank that he wished to displace himself. He wanted to go to England.

  ‘It’s mostly machine-work there now,’ Frank told him.

  ‘But they print by hand in Russian.’

  Tvyordov had brought out a copy of Tolstoy’s Resurrection – the first complete edition in Russian, without the censor’s cuts. It had been printed by Headley Brot
hers at 14 Bishopsgate Without, in the east end of London.

  ‘I don’t know Headley’s personally,’ said Frank, ‘but I could write to them, if that’s where you want to go. Have you read this book?’

  ‘I’ve looked at the half-title, title page, and end-matter,’ said Tvyordov, ‘the rest I haven’t read.’

  ‘It’s a new explanation of the gospels. The resurrection, for those who understand how to change their lives, takes place on this earth. But this edition isn’t in legal circulation. In your place I think I’d get rid of it.’

  Tvyordov put the book, without regret, into the satchel which he now carried instead of his familiar bag. Frank guessed that Resurrection would go into the river, following Volodya’s automatic, the white apron and the tools, and becoming part of the shoals of murky waste which night and day were making their devious way down to the Volga.

  ‘Do you think, Frank Albertovich, that I shall have any difficulty in getting an external passport?’

  ‘They don’t want skilled craftsmen to leave,’ Frank said. ‘But on the other hand they’re glad to be rid of trouble-makers and political dissidents.’

  ‘I am not a trouble-maker.’

  ‘But you were a union secretary in 1905, and you’re still the branch secretary. I think they’ll let you go, but I don’t know if you’ll be able to come back.’

  Tvyordov’s face was not designed to show much expression, but a kind of iron or wooden disapproval could be detected now. His object had been to earn substantially in England and then to go back to his native village, Evnyak, the place of willows.

  ‘Are there willows there now?’ Frank asked him.

  Tvyordov thought not. The stream, he believed, was dried up, the landlord had got permission to deflect the water. There had been a pretty wooden hump-backed bridge, but it had been replaced by concrete for the Imperial Motor-Car Reliability Trials of 1911, when Evnyak had been on the official route, from the Baltic to the Black Sea. Changes, yes, but it was his village still. It was there that he wanted to lay his old compositor’s bones.

  ‘Possibly I could go to Bishopsgate Without and leave my wife behind for the time being.’

  ‘I shouldn’t do that,’ said Frank.

  Silently he had stored up the history of the bridge at Evnyak to repeat to Ben, who was fanatically interested in the Reliability Trials. At the end of the day he had often found himself quite well supplied with facts and incidents which might possibly be of interest to the children or, when she had still been there, to Nellie. If no-one wanted to listen to them he put them quietly away.

  It occurred to him now, as he read the Security’s letter, that he had better sign Tvyordov’s application at once, and that Selwyn had better be the second recommendation. He took a taxi to the office and got this done. Selwyn, eagerly writing his signature, glad to be asked for help, suggested that after work they should go to the small hall at the Philharmonia and listen together to a programme of Igor Stravinsky. Frank said that it was kind of him, but he didn’t feel much like going out. He found it hard, in point of fact, to concentrate on anything except the first night after Lisa came back to him. Selwyn persisted.

  ‘I thought we could have a serious talk in the interval.’

  ‘Surely it’s a mistake to go to the Philharmonia to have a serious talk,’ said Frank. ‘Why don’t you come to the house? You know you’re always free to come there, or very nearly always.’

  ‘I’d like the setting to be appropriate for what I have to say.’

  ‘You mean it’s something that will only sound right in the refreshment room of a concert-hall?’

  ‘Music always makes its effects, Frank.’

  The undefended gaps in Frank’s mind allowed for a tormenting image of Lisa and, something he hadn’t bargained for, a grotesque Volodya, insisting to the Security, by way of a defence, that he too, was alive. His only resource against these thoughts was the work in hand. ‘In any case, I want that Three Men in a Boat job finished. None of them will be in tomorrow, it’s a compulsory holiday for the Tsaritsa’s name day.’

  ‘Ah, Frank, poor woman! Poor woman!’

  ‘I can’t worry about the Imperial family now. I’m going down to the paper warehouse.’

  He looked doubtfully at Selwyn, who seemed exceptionally pale. ‘Come to the house this evening.’

  Selwyn said ‘Let me start by saying that we’ve often spoken, you and I, about the two sides of man, the spiritual and the material, as though they were divided. What a mistake that is! The two should be indistinguishable, or rather there should be a gradual transformation, until what seems to be material is seen to be nothing of the kind.’

  ‘Selwyn, what are you talking about?’

  ‘About Nellie.’

  ‘I don’t see how you can be. Nellie and I are practical people. I thought when I first met her that I’d never known anyone act more sensibly.’

  ‘But you brought her to Holy Russia, Frank, a land of great contrasts.’

  ‘That’s where my work was. She knew that, and she didn’t object.’

  ‘Russia hasn’t changed you, Frank, because you were born here. But didn’t you find that it changed Nellie? Didn’t her whole nature become, as they say here, wider? Didn’t she talk less about the household, and go more often to Shirokaya?’

  ‘Perhaps a bit more often, I don’t know.’

  ‘Nellie was turning towards the spiritual. Unfortunately she couldn’t, as yet, distinguish it from the romantic, which casts a false glow over everything it touches. I tried to explain to you, some time ago now, that I had recently been through a period of sexual temptation and trial. You remember that?’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t,’ said Frank.

  ‘Nellie saw me in a false glow, my friend.’

  ‘You’re raving, Selwyn. She hardly ever said anything about you.’

  ‘Let me tell you what happened. Before her train drew into Mozhaisk I took a point of vantage where I could see it arrive. You know Mozhaisk, you know the great cathedral there, the Cathedral of St Nicholas. Well, not far from there there’s a restaurant on the station, the last opportunity for the passengers to get boiling water for their tea before Borodino. A half-an-hour stop. They all got out. I saw your wife and children get out. They were quite unmistakable. That red tam-o’-shanter! Nellie sent the three children to the refreshment room and began looking up and down the platform. A woman looking for someone who doesn’t come is a touching sight, Frank. The little ones came out and she spoke to them again – spoke earnestly. The porter took out their boxes and cases from the guard’s van, and a rug, I think a tartan rug. Then Nellie took one long look round, again in all directions – there was resignation in that look! – gave what I suppose was money to the stationmaster, and kissed the children. During all this time I remained where I was. I didn’t go forward. I didn’t betray my presence. She waited on the platform until the very last moment, the third bell, then she climbed back into her carriage. Still I didn’t reveal myself.’

  ‘God give me patience,’ said Frank. ‘Do you mean you were supposed to meet her there?’

  ‘It was not I, Frank, who suggested it.’

  ‘But did you meet her or didn’t you?’

  ‘I’ve told you, what I did. I failed the tryst.’

  ‘What tryst?’

  ‘She wanted to go away with me to some more free and natural place. Perhaps under the sky in forests of pine and birch, where a man and a woman can join body and soul and find out what work they have to do in the world.’

  ‘Why did she send the children back to Moscow?’

  ‘I supposed that, since I had failed her, she didn’t want to take them on with her to Norbury.’

  ‘My God, they’d have been better off in Norbury than with you in the middle of a forest of pine and birch. All right, you arranged to meet Nellie off the Berlin train at Mozhaisk. Why didn’t you?’

  ‘For many reasons. I had to consider your feelings, the feelings of a true frie
nd. And then, if I left the Press, I was without any definite means of earnings, and I was doubtful about my capacity to support such a large family.’

  ‘I’m beginning to understand it. You got cold feet and left her stranded. Poor Nellie, poor little Nellie, ditched at a hole of a place like Mozhaisk, walking up and down the platform, and you flaming well never turned up. I’ve put up with a lot this Easter, but I’m damned if I see why Nellie should have to.’

  ‘Frank,’ Selwyn cried, holding up his hands in surrender, ‘don’t descend to violence! Candidly, that was why I thought it would be better to discuss all this in a public place, where you couldn’t act violently, even if you wanted to.’

  Frank paused. ‘Just tell me one thing. Where is Nellie now?’

  ‘She went to Bright Meadows.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘A Tolstoyan settlement, of which I’d once given her the address. I call it Tolstoyan, although Lev Nicolaievich, I fear, refused to countenance most of such places. But there are handicrafts, vegetable gardening and, I’m sure, music …’

  ‘How do you know she went there? Her own brother didn’t know her address. She hasn’t written, either to me or to her children.’

  ‘Or to me either, Frank.’

  ‘Well then, who told you?’

  ‘I had news from Muriel Kinsman.’

  ‘Miss Kinsman?’

  ‘She undertook to write to me regularly. I recommended her also, you see, to Bright Meadows, as she seemed at a loss, and had very little money.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about Miss Kinsman. What’s the address? Come on, what is it?’

  ‘I can give it to you, but I fear it will be of very little use. I heard from Muriel Kinsman this morning, and she tells me that Nellie found she didn’t care for the communal life.’