Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

Straightening up, he regarded himself once more in the mirror, brushing away the droplets of water that remained in his moustache. There was much more to shaving than mere cleanliness and tidiness, he reflected. It was a daily accounting with life. So many people just splashed water on their faces, dragged their fingers through their hair and rushed off without having a good look at themselves and at what they had become. A few moments every morning regarding oneself in the mirror, he was certain, would vastly improve the behaviour of his fellow man. It would teach the magnificent humility; the coward resolution, and the potential malefactor caution. He thought sadly of his clerk Nikita Molodzovatov who had taken his own life the previous year, blowing his brains out in the fire tower and recalled that Nikita too had hardly ever shaved. What a pitiful waste that had been, as well as a crime against God and the Tsar. It had meant a lot of paperwork too.

Picking up the razor again, he began to carefully dry the blade. He had few illusions about the population of Berezovo, beardless or not. Once the fearful news leaked out, they would be like startled chickens in a coop hearing the wolf scrabble at the door. He had done as much as he could in the brief time since the rider had handed him the leather pouch bearing the Imperial seal, but nothing could stop them from panicking.

Through the floorboards he heard his wife calling up to him that his breakfast was ready. He carefully laid the razor back into its polished wooden box and smiled grimly at his reflection in the mirror. The whole town was on trial now, including himself.

* * *

Two hours later, Anatoli Mikhailovich Pobednyev sat in his mayoral parlour gnawing anxiously upon a misshapen thumbnail. Before him on his desk lay a single piece of headed notepaper, bearing the legend ‘From the Office of the Chief of Police, Berezovo’.

The note read:

From : Col. K.I. Izorov

To : His Excellency, the Mayor

STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL

Your Honour,

Please present yourself at my office at 9.30 a.m. this morning. I wish to discuss a matter of the utmost urgency. On no account discuss this letter with anyone. I will explain everything when we meet.

Yours, with respect,

K.I. Izorov

P.S. Burn this letter now!

Picking up a small handbell – a clumsily fashioned replica in brass of the great bell at Petersburg – he summoned his secretary. As he waited for the man to arrive, the Mayor’s eyes darted to and fro over the carefully rounded letters of the policeman’s handwriting, seeking vainly to divine the purpose behind the peremptory summons. But when, at last, the secretary appeared he was none the wiser.

“Boris,” he demanded, “what is all this about?”

The secretary, a pale-faced sandy-haired fellow with a tall stooping body that in profile resembled a question mark, approached his desk warily.

“All what, your Excellency?”

The Mayor prodded Izorov’s letter disdainfully with a stubby forefinger.

“This note. What does it mean?”

The secretary shuffled a few steps closer.

“If I could just take a look,” he suggested, “I might be able to shed some light on the matter.”

The Mayor was on the point of passing the letter across to him when he remembered the colonel’s postscript. Irritably he snatched it up and laid it face down upon the desk and eyed the figure bending over him with suspicion.

“You mean you haven’t read it?”

“No, of course not, your Excellency!” his secretary replied. “It was marked ‘Personal’ and in the circumstances…”

Mayor Pobednyev dismissed this denial with a gesture of irritation, well aware that every piece of correspondence addressed to him, whether it was of a personal nature or not, had almost certainly been the subject of the closest scrutiny by his misshapen subordinate.

“Who brought it here and when did it arrive?”

“Colonel Izorov brought it here at about eight o’clock,” the man replied. “He left instructions that it was not to be opened by anyone except Your Excellency.”

“The colonel brought it here personally?” the Mayor repeated nervously.

“Yes, at eight o clock,” the secretary repeated. “Perhaps, Your Honour, the files of the allocation of the Cholera Relief Fund ought to be brought up to date? There may still be one or two irregularities…”

“Shut up!” Pobednyev snapped.