Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

If Cesar wants to go to America, he decided, I should let him. Only I will not pay for him, I will not! His dream of playing at the New York conservatoire is just that, a dream. Let some other fool pay for his shirts and his shoes.

Bereft, Kuibyshev felt his grief turn to irritation. Cesar’s behaviour had become increasingly capricious and impractical. Of course one had to return to Berezovo; matters of business demanded it. The winter furs would soon be coming in and they had to be inspected, bought and catalogued. He had an order book to fill and customers to please. All the same, Moscow would be much duller without Cesar’s company. If the young man carried out his threat to leave, he was determined not to revisit the same salons that they had once attended together. Illya Kuibyshev would be nobody’s “widow”.

Cesar is not the only fish in the river, he told himself crossly. If I want company I can always ask Domic for someone. Although that “Circassian” cabin boy he gave me last time was nothing like what he promised. Circassian, my arse! He came from some shippon in Saxony, and must have been sixteen or seventeen if he was a day.

Still, the youngster had been willing enough and quite proficient. He had even thanked Kuibyshev afterwards; always the sign of a young professional. The fur merchant wondered what strange strands of fate had been woven to carry the boy all the way from Germany to Karol Domic’s House of the Sea Scorpion. Had he initially been sold or abducted? He had doubtless passed through several hands before arriving in Tiumen. Would his journey end there or would he have the opportunity to go on to better things, as Irena had done?

Thoughts of Irena brought him back to his present situation. He had confirmed with Domic that their arrangement had worked out to his satisfaction and he had paid the final instalment that had been due at the end of the first eighteen months of marriage. For the princely sum of fifty thousand roubles Irena had now become his property, to do with as he pleased. What he intended to do with her was one of the two questions that had been preying on his mind during the long journey back to Berezovo.

He accepted unreservedly that Irena had more than kept her side of the bargain. She provided an essential service as a block to the ambitions of Olga Nadnikova and her coven of mothers determined to make an advantageous marriage for their lumpen daughters. She was a living rebuttal to the suspicions of bullies like Kostya Izorov, the sniggerings of the other Councillors and the disapproval of Father Arkady and his flock. She was an efficient and thrifty housekeeper and also, in her own way, a companionable partner. Having been prostituted since she was a child, she had no illusions about his preferences and did not make any demands upon him unless they were invited. As far as he had need of one, she was his confidante and he had grown to value her opinion on many matters concerning his life in Berezovo. He had even begun to grow fond of her, much in the same way one grew fond of an adopted dog. The presents he was bringing her had been chosen with some care: a chemise of Chinese silk (if truth be told, an inducement he had accepted from Alphonse Kahn and Théophile Boder to celebrate the expansion of their rue Lafayette Galleries); a box of chocolate drops from Demel’s; a shawl of Brussels lace; a necklace of Adelaide opals that he had purchased in Milan, and as always, a bundle of illustrated ladies’ journals for her to leaf through at her leisure. What he was not returning to her with – and what he knew she was awaiting most keenly – was a prospectus of how she would accompany him when he next travelled in the late spring.