Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

A young woman appeared, anxiously wiping her hands on a grey rag cloth.

“Yes Ma’am?”

“There you are at last! Where have you been? I have been calling for you.”

The maid shrugged. She had heard nothing.

“I was in the kitchen, Ma’am, plucking a chicken for tonight’s supper.”

“Stealing the silver, more likely,” snapped the old woman. “Never mind the chicken. My guests will be arriving soon. Light the fire and fetch a chair from the dining room for Madame Tortsova. Go on! Hurry!”

No sooner had the maid turned to go than Madame Wrenskaya called her back.

“Have you lit the samovar yet?”

“Yes Ma’am.”

“Good! And are the glasses clean this time? Last week, the Mayor’s wife found grease on the rim of hers. I dare say that she is used to that in her own home, but in this house cleanliness is next to godliness. Do you understand?”

“Yes Ma’am,” replied the girl, her downcast eyes half hidden behind straggling locks of her hair.

“Now run along, and next time come when I call you!”

Exhausted by the confrontation, Madame Wrenskaya sat back in her chair. She really was too weary to play hostess that afternoon, she told herself. Still, there it was; it had to be done. Just because one had become old and tired did not mean that one had an excuse to let standards slip. Too many people had done that. She had watched them let themselves go: resign their position in the world; pass their responsibilities onto younger people less capable and less willing to perform their duties.

At least I have been spared that, she thought. I have no children to disappoint me.

After two miscarriages, she had not tried again, although the doctors had advised her to. As for the few possessions she had left, she had already decided she would leave what little money she had to the Church when the time came. She had no other living relatives, unless one counted the Professor’s nephews and nieces.

Where are they now? she wondered. They had to be in their seventies, at least: if they still lived. They would have little need of any bequest she might make. And even if they had, it was neither her fault nor her concern. People should make provision for their old age, as she had done, and not hang around expecting handouts from older relations who had had more foresight.

No, her mind was made up. All the contents of the house would be taken to Tobolsk and sold. Her lawyers had already received their instructions. She did not intend to give the grubby citizens of Berezovo the pleasure of picking over her bits and pieces. As for the house, it would be sold and the proceeds spent on constructing a new bell-tower for the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She could trust Father Arkady. He understood her motives. She was assuring her place in Heaven not with money – that was too vulgar an idea, if not blasphemous – but with an act of charity that guaranteed the material upkeep of the true religion and the glorification of God. It was a last rebuke against a modern Church tradition that had allowed renegade priests to openly lead processions of godless mobs through the streets of the capital to insult the Tsar. So much Madame Wrenskaya was prepared to acknowledge publicly. In private, she enjoyed the privilege of old age to judge a character by the behaviour of his or her forebears and consequently held the opinion that Tsar Nicholas had too much of his grandfather about him and that he fully deserved the derision of guttersnipes.

She had seen the old Emperor once at the theatre in St. Petersburg, openly sharing the Imperial box with Princess Yekaterina Dolgorukova, while the poor Tsarina Maria lay ill at the Winter Palace. How old had the Princess been then? Seventeen years old? Eighteen, at a pinch? Old enough to know what a man nearing fifty wanted in exchange for his company, especially if he was Autocrat of All the Russias. To his eternal disgrace he had married her barely a month after the Tsarina’s death, even after he had fathered several bastards by her. Only a man as weak as that could allow himself to be defeated by the English and the French, who were bigger enemies to each other than they were to Russia. Only a man as stupid as he had been could have done what he had done next.