Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

She had said at the time that the great emancipation was the worst thing that had ever happened to the country. It was tantamount to a shepherd abandoning his flock to roam, believing in the tenderness of wolves. To remove the protection of ownership from what were little more than children; to rewrite the God-given order of society so that those least qualified to cope with liberty had it thrust upon them; and then to give them land as well… Not even Napoleon had been able to deliver such a blow! Inevitably, merely owning land was not enough: they wanted the best land. In the flames of their former masters’ property, the scum had drunkenly toasted their new found freedom to starve. And since that day there had been no peace in the countryside. From all over the Empire, news had come of massacres in villages and on estates as the situation got out of hand. In the cities murderous assassins stalked the streets hunting down the men born to command, finally destroying – oh, Divine justice! – the Tsar himself with their infernal bombs. For a time, during the reign of his son, the lower orders had been held in check and the Jews and the liberals kept in their place. But now, it was as it had been before, and the lawlessness and the misery of her poor country had increased tenfold since the accession of the weakling Nicholas.

Madame Wrenskaya comforted herself with the knowledge that she would be spared the final collapse. She would die that summer, or what passed for summer in this dismal town. The Professor had told her so the previous night as she had sobbed out her loneliness to him. This coming summer, he had promised her, at home; peacefully and without pain. And in her gratitude, she had sinned; she had asked him to tell her what Heaven was like. As she had listened, she had recognised, dimly at first and then with increasing clarity, not the shining Kingdom that Father Arkady spoke of but her own grandfather’s estate near Voronezh where she had spent the summers of her childhood. She now wondered whether the vision had been a genuine visitation or merely a dream, and shook her head in sadness. Either way, she was resolved to bear out the last tedious months with a minimum of fuss. She had one important thing left to do, after which she could leave everything in order.

But before then, she told herself, I have guests to greet and tea to drink.

Looking about her, she realised that Mariya had followed her instructions to the letter. A fire now burned brightly in the black-leaded grate, and close by her stood one of the hard chairs from the dining room. She could not recall the girl bringing it into the room. Perhaps she had fallen asleep. It was possible.

Stiff from sitting in one position for too long, she tried to turn her body in order to see the face of the clock on the mantelpiece. The Holy Father had been merciful: she had not been afflicted as her grandfather had been. Even though her body was no longer obedient to her mind’s commands she still had all her five senses; plus one or two more, as her mother had often claimed. Defeated by the effort of moving, and longing for a sip of tea to relieve her parched throat, she sank back into the tall chair’s cushions. But no sooner had she settled than she heard the sound of a knock at the front door. Gripping the arms of the chair, she leant forward again and listened to the maid’s felt slippers as they slapped along the hallway. Who would be the first to arrive?

It was Yeliena Mihailovna Tortsova.

For the first time that day, the old woman smiled with genuine pleasure as the doctor’s wife entered and crossed the room to greet her. Yeliena Tortsova was one of the few women in Berezovo of whom Anastasia Christianovna thought of with anything like affection or, a greater compliment, approval. In other circumstances, had it not been for the difference in age and rank, she liked to believe they would have been close friends.

Certainly her young visitor was presentable. Her face was finely featured with a delicately rounded nose and dark brown, thoughtful eyes that went well with her dark auburn hair. Perhaps her mouth was a touch too small, but her teeth were still good even though she was nearly thirty-five. Moreover, she had kept her neat figure, which was complemented by her good dress sense. Of middling height, she carried herself well, taking care to remain at the same time sociable yet slightly distant from the other women of her class. She had none of the famed tragic beauty of Madame Roshkovskaya, for example, yet of her supreme asset, her hands, she took scrupulous care. How Anastasia Christianovna envied her hands! Many years ago, her own hands had been as white and as delicate as Yeliena’s: fluttering like startled doves in expression; pure and chaste in repose. It occurred to her now that such unmarked hands were the compensation for an uneventful life.