Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

As soon as he had dumped the damned package in the fat lap of the Chief of Police (who was, he was certain, another bastard like his sergeant) he would stable his mount, go over to the hotel and demand a bath. By the looks of the building it was a big enough place: it was bound to have a least one tub. It was unlikely, he reasoned, that anyone would be staying there; at least anybody important. Only fools like himself would be on the road during the blizzard season. A bath and a bottle, that was what was needed. After that, he would be fit for anything.

A movement in one of the upper windows caught his eye and he became aware of the silhouette of a figure watching him ride by. The warmth of the room behind the figure reached out to him, throwing into sharp relief his own feelings of cold and exhaustion. Hunching his shoulders, he urged his horse forward with a gentle dig of his spurs as the first snowflakes fluttered from the night sky onto its bedraggled mane.

* * *

Standing at the window of the lounge of the Hotel New Century, Andrey Roshkovsky, land surveyor of Berezovo, looked down at the rider in the street below, and wondered what could be so urgent as to persuade a soul to travel at such a time as this, when the weather clearly showed all the signs of getting ready for a blow. He watched the man dismount and lead his horse wearily towards the uchastok opposite. Large snowflakes were already beginning to race past the window.

“Andrey Vladimirovich!”

Roshkovsky let the long red velvet curtains drop and turned to rejoin the group of men sitting comfortably around the fireside.

“Well?” Belinsky asked loudly. “Is there any sign of Colonel Izorov yet?”

Roshkovsky shook his head.

“If he doesn’t arrive soon,” he replied, “we may be stuck here for the night. The weather is set for a blow.”

“Then let it!” cried the builder, raising his empty glass. “For a while at least we shall be free of nagging wives and unpaying debtors. We might as well make the most of it. While we are snug in here, the world can go shit itself. At least we won’t starve, or die of thirst.”

Seated by the fire, the schoolteacher Dresnyakov lowered the fortnight-old copy of the Birzhevye Vedomosti he had been reading and gave a snort of derision.

“Wherever you are, Yuli Nikitavich,” he remarked, “you shall never die of thirst. That must be the fourth glass you have downed since you arrived.”

“True, true,” admitted Belinsky cheerfully.

“It really is too bad of the colonel to keep us waiting like this,” said Dr. Tortsov testily. “I have a perfectly good supper waiting for me at home, as I am sure you all have…”

Across the chessboard, his opponent, Alexander Maslov, the town’s librarian, nodded in agreement.

“After all, his presence here is only a technical formality,” he muttered, peering at the doctor’s chessmen threatening his queen.

“I suggest,” continued the doctor, “that if Colonel Izorov hasn’t arrived in the next five minutes, we should begin without him.”

With the exception of Belinsky, this suggestion was endorsed with nods and murmurs from the other members of the town’s drama committee; their chairman Dresnyakov authorized the motion with a heartfelt, “Motion approved!” Grumbling, Belinsky abdicated his position by the fire and walked purposefully over to the small wall table, upon which sat a flask of vodka accompanied by a few decorated glasses. After pouring himself another drink (he would show them!), the builder returned to the group and stood behind the sofa upon which Roshkovsky was now reclining, his head cocked to one side as he watched the game in progress between the doctor and the librarian Maslov.

Raising his glass to his lips, Belinsky drank and looked sourly towards Dresnyakov’s long legs protruding from under the crumpled pages of the newspaper. Invisible as the schoolmaster’s face was, his features were well known to the Belinsky household. Whenever little Illya came home with his eyes puffy and red from the beatings he received at Dresnyakov’s hands, his father would take him out into the cluttered yard behind the house and listen to his tale of woe. Sometimes, if he deemed that the punishment had been justified, he would simply cuff the boy around the head and send him back into the house to sit with the women. But when he felt that the beatings had been unwarranted – the boy might be slow but there was no harm in him yet – he would take a stick of charcoal and, with a sigh and a sorrowful shake of his head, begin to draw a caricature of the schoolmaster on the end of a split plank or broken door panel. More often than not the tears were barely dry on the boy’s cheeks before he was laughing and clapping his hands.

“No, Dada! The ears!” the lad would cry. “Give him the ears next!”

Obediently smudging out his first modest portrayal, the builder would draw in its place a head with the enormous ears of a donkey.

“Now the nose!”