Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

The idea of them travelling together as man and wife appalled him. How could he introduce her to his sharp eyed friends, or to his business contacts? What would happen to his haute bourgeois clientele once it had become common knowledge that he had married a poule? The notion of Irena attending the opera in company or her braving the few salons to which he was invited in his role as an “amusing guest” was simply horrendous. What would they make of her? He valued his reputation far too highly to let it run the risk of her being snubbed. Yet, he was not without sympathy for her condition. Without him Irena was tied to Berezovo and its dull round of visiting the old pussies and enduring their endless gossip. Their townhouse was as much a prison as the cellars of Domic’s House, albeit with silk lined walls. It was little wonder that she was providing food for scandal herself. He had his informants in the town, the chief of whom held a position that afforded an excellent viewpoint from which to monitor the comings and goings of its inhabitants. It was on this informant’s reliable authority that he had discovered that he had been cuckolded, and more than once.

Dobrovolsky had been the first interloper, within two months of Irena’s arrival in the town. The matter had been easily settled by the gift of a paté of dog liver slipped into his supplies for his trip across the taiga. Dobrovolsky’s presumption had outraged Kuibyshev and he was gratified to learn that the young upstart had taken nearly a fortnight to expire. (By arrangement, the testimony of witnesses had attributed his death to typhus.) Irena’s second lover – the commander of the garrison that everyone called “The German” – had been fortuitously recalled to Tobolsk, although this had been no doing of Kuibyshev. By this time Kuibyshev had come to his senses, and the German’s successor, the undeniably handsome Captain Steklov, had been warned off by a note from his own mother. For her discreet intercession, Mme Steklov’s closest friend, a client of Kuibyshev’s living in distant St. Petersburg, had received the gift of a slender mink stole. He wondered fondly what indiscretion Irena might have chosen to commit during his most recent absence. He could think of nothing she could do that would cause him undue disquiet. He was certain that her promiscuity, much like his own, sprang from a reaction to boredom and a need for diversion and sensation. She was, when all had been said and done, a practised seductress and had, he presumed, a whore’s itch for conquest.

No, he thought, the real problem I have to face once I reach Berezovo is not how I deal with Irena but what I tell the Town Council about the money from the Cholera Relief Fund. If the Stock Exchange has not…

“Your Excellency, look!”

His driver’s warning shout shook him from his deliberations.

Lowering the carriage window, he stared with astonishment at the sight of a group of horsemen galloping furiously toward him. Each rider appeared to be waving either a fiery torch or an unsheathed sabre.

This can only mean one thing, he decided: the Revolution has broken out again.

The next moment the riders were upon him, circling the carriage with wild cries, and he was only partially relieved to note that they were wearing the uniform of the local Sibirsky garrison. On the driving board, his driver swore violently as he wrestled with his startled team, flinging curses at the soldiers as they pressed in on him on either side and forcing him to brake and stop. Startled, Kuibyshev tried to open the carriage door but one of the soldiers, drunker than the rest, slashed menacingly at the coachwork with his sabre and the fur merchant cowered back in his seat. By the light of the torches, he saw the nearest members of the troop of horsemen begin to fall back, making room for their commanding officer.

Looking flushed from his ride, Captain Steklov saluted him.

“Captain Steklov! What is the meaning of this outrage?” Kuibyshev cried. “First I’m attacked by a mob of ruffians, now this. What on earth is going on?”

“I am sorry, Kuibyshev,” apologised Steklov. “We are expecting someone else. My sentry mistook you for a party of exiled terrorists. I have been ordered to escort them into town under guard.”

Without thinking Kuibyshev opened the carriage door and, jumping out into the roadway, bravely confronted the armed host.

“Terrorist?” he cried, spreading his arms so that the soldiers could see the luxurious pelts of his travelling coat. “Do I look like a terrorist? Who gave such an order? I demand to know!”

Captain Steklov cleared his throat.

“I’m afraid it was Colonel Izorov’s idea. You will have to take it up with him.”