Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

“Who was that young woman?” asked Trotsky, nodding towards the door. “The one who just left.”

“Oh, her?” replied the Pole with a chuckle. “That was Natalya Sedova.”

Chapter Nine

Saturday 3rd February 1907

Berezovo, Northern Siberia

The Mayor’s wife was not alone in her belief that Modest Andreyevich Tolkach, the administrator of Berezovo’s public hospital, was capable of committing – had indeed committed – murder. It was an opinion shared by most of the people of the town despite there being no evidence to support the charge. On the contrary, on the night of his wife’s death by poisoning, Tolkach had been sitting in the dining room of the Hotel New Century, toasting Nikolai Alexeyevich Dresnyakov’s health upon the occasion of the schoolmaster’s name day. Besides Tolkach the guests had included Father Arkady, the librarian Maslov and many others who had stopped at the schoolteacher’s table to pay their respects. At the hurried inquest that had followed the discovery of the wretched woman’s body, they had all vouched that Tolkach had never left the table. Yet, long after Madame Tolkachaya’s corpse had been consigned to the shabby plot beyond the northern boundary of the churchyard, the rumours persisted. People began to whisper that Colonel Izorov was unconvinced; that the circumstantial evidence was too strong. It was assumed (erroneously) that Tolkach was a medical man and was therefore used to handling dangerous drugs; poisons that could not be traced at an ordinary post-mortem examination. It was well known that the husband and wife had been known to quarrel in public. Had there been another woman? And hadn’t there been bruises on the body? Signs of a struggle, no doubt!

The rumours grew as the gossips’ imaginations, fuelled by half-remembered accounts of similar cases, were allowed to run free. Some whispered that, as with Bluebeard, the deceased woman had not been his first or even his second wife, and that all the former Mesdames Tolkachayas had died in mysterious circumstances, and that was why he had moved to Berezovo. Or that the dead woman had not been his wife at all, but the daughter of a wealthy and powerful Tobolsk family, whom he had seduced and made his mistress and that the reason he had come to Berezovo had been to escape her father’s vengeance. That Madame Tolkachaya had been fabulously rich and had refused to give him more than a meagre allowance. It was even suggested – the most unlikely of all rumours – that having poisoned his wife, Tolkach had been able to bribe Dr. Tortsov to look the other way.

Tolkach had carried on with his daily duties as best he could as the clouds of suspicion gathered over his head. The Chief of Police summoned him to a private interview once, and then a second time. Throughout it all, the hospital administrator maintained a polite and sociable exterior, demonstrating as best he could by his demeanour his innocence of the crime of uxoricide. The most serious charge that could be levelled against him was one of extreme contributory negligence: a charge to which he had already admitted his guilt.

“If only the store cupboard had not been left unlocked,” he told Colonel Izorov sorrowfully. “She seemed so much better in herself… a tragic accident… tragic…”

The colonel had been sceptical but, in the end, he was allowed to go free. After all, who were his accusers and where was their proof? As a hospital administrator facing criminal charges arising from the death of a patient, Tolkach had the right to call for expert lawyers retained by the ministry to conduct his defence; even to ask for a committee of inquiry with full rights of summoning witnesses to the provincial capital. Those gentlemen would make short work of hearsay and conjecture. The case could take years to come to court and there was no guarantee of success: everyone knew how these public officials stuck together and closed ranks.

Inevitably, when the case was closed, some said that Modest Tolkach had had a lucky escape from the gallows. He did not see it that way. Modest Tolkach did not hold with luck, at least not as a boon from a divine providence. Luck, he believed, was made and not given. If pressed on the point he would concede that such things as ‘fortuitous chance meetings’ and ‘golden opportunities’ did exist, although he would maintain that taking pains to be in the right place at the right time more often had a lot to do with influencing a successful outcome to events. But ask him about luck and he would frown and shake his head. In his mind, the concept was too similar in nature to its exact opposite – a predetermined existence – to be an acceptable belief for a modern man, especially one who burned to be a man of note. In either case, there seemed little point in trying to progress in life if one’s efforts were dictated by supernatural forces. Luck was a crutch used by lesser beings to explain away their failures; like God or a belief in the malevolence of the state.