Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

Reaching the landing, Tatyana was momentarily alarmed by the sight of a tiger’s head staring glassily at her, its long flattened skin spread out invitingly at her feet for her to tread on. In the corner, a profusion of peacock feathers stood lolling in a pair of highly decorated Chinese vases supported on ebony stools. Fixed to the wall two curved scimitars, engraved with blessings and threats, clashed silently above a circular Persian shield embossed and damascened in gold and silver and scrolled with tendril ornamentation. Alongside the shield hung a scene, painted in oils and exquisitely framed in wood covered with thin gold leaf, showing a group of roseate youths bathing naked beside a rocky shore line. Disregarding their androgynous beauty, Irena swept past them with Tatyana following wide-eyed in her wake. Reaching a door at the end of the corridor, she opened it and stepped back to allow her luncheon guest to enter.

The dimensions and the splendour of the new scene that met her eyes were so different from the rest of the house that it made Tatyana gasp in shock. Irena’s boudoir was a suite of rooms occupying a quarter of the upper floor. She saw that they were standing in the sitting room; through a half-open door she could see through into the bedroom beyond. Decorated and furnished in shades of pale and dark pinks with its richly painted cream woodwork picked out with gold motifs, the two rooms reminded her strongly of one of Gvordnyen’s more elaborate wedding cakes; a confection that transformed her feeling for the house from the darker semi-barbaric decor of the lower floor.

“Irena, it’s lovely,” she exclaimed breathlessly. “What a beautiful room!”

“Do you genuinely like it?”

“Yes, it’s really lovely,” Tatyana repeated. “You are so lucky.”

“Lucky? Oh, I don’t know about that,” said Irena, turning away and sitting down on a chaise longue. “Illya calls it my cage and it feels like that sometimes.”

“Doesn’t he like it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t let him in here,” she replied in a firmer tone. “This is my room. That was a pre-condition of our marriage.”

“Well, I wish I had a cage like this,” Tatyana told her wistfully. “It’s really lovely. Oh, I would have such parties!”

Irena smiled up at her and patted the cushion of the chaise longue invitingly.

“That is the difference between us,” she said as Tatyana sat down beside her. “You have so many good friends here whereas I…”

Irena faltered, as if the truth of her existence was too tragic to contemplate, and then seized Tatyana’s hand impulsively.

“You know, you are the first person that I have invited to see this room. Nobody else has seen it. Nobody!”

“Nobody?”

“No,” Irena admitted, reluctantly letting go of her hand. “They would just be jealous and it would make me more unpopular than I am.”

Embarrassed by her candour, Tatyana patted her clumsily on her forearm.

“You are not unpopular,” she lied. “Not really…”

“Yes I am,” Irena told her with a deep sigh. “Nobody likes me much, nobody important, except you of course. Take Olga Nadnikova for instance. Why doesn’t she like me? Is it just because I am younger and prettier than she is?”

Surprised by her question, Tatyana turned her head away.

She doesn’t know? she thought. Olga had made plans to marry off her daughter Katerina ever since the day Illya Kuibyshev established himself in the town. Making her share cabs to the church and going on picnics with him during the summer months even when she was a child, encouraging her to be alone with him. And Irena doesn’t know? Impossible! How could she not know?

“I am sure that she would like you if she got to know you better,” she murmured.

“I do hope so. I really don’t want to create enemies in the town. It would be so difficult for Illya.”

There was an awkward pause.