The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

From a tattered folder, Shuiskii pulled out a piece of yellowed stationery with a double-headed eagle embossed on it, picked up a quill, sharpened it with a little broken knife and dipped it into a vial of iodine.

“Damn it!” he said. “And why is it always like this? All because that damned fool Vasilisa never puts anything back in its place.”

From the ensuing conversation it became clear that an elderly woman, Vasilisa, who used to bake communion bread, came over to Shuiskii’s from Bogovo twice a week to clean up a bit, chop firewood, and make porridge for the old man.

Shuiskii found a little jar that had once contained “Metamorphosis” face cream but now served as an ink-well, and began to write. As he wrote, he grumbled about the new times:

Konstantin Paustovskii, Save Your Strength

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“Nowadays everyone speaks and writes as if in Chinese. All around you see this nonsense of the Romanovs! Taxators, ameliorators! They say this good-for-nothing Nicholas dines at the same table with some debauched muzhik [an allusion to Rasputin]. And he calls himself tsar! He’s a whelp, and not a tsar!

“Why do you wrap your face in cotton!” I asked.

“I apply iodine to my face and then, naturally, cover it up with cotton.”

“What for?”

“For my nerves,” Shuiskii answered tersely. “Now then, read and sign it.”

He gave me the piece of paper written in precise old-fashioned handwriting. Listed there were all the conditions of my residence in the dilapidated house, point by point. One item I remember particularly well:

“I, the aforementioned Paustovskii, am bound not to avail myself of the fruit from the orchard, in consideration of the fact that the above-mentioned orchard has been rented to Gavriushka Sitnikov, the petty landholder from Efremov.”

I signed this strange and absolutely useless piece of paper and asked about the deposit. I understood that it was foolish to pay for a house where I was not going to live anyway. But one had to play the role to its end.

“For goodness sake, what deposit!” answered Shuiskii angrily. “If you are indeed a nobleman how dare you mention such things! When you come then we’ll settle up. It is my honor to bid you farewell. Cannot see you off—I have a cold. Shut the door tightly behind you.”

I walked back to Efremov and the further I got from Bogovo the more fantastic this whole encounter appeared to me.

In Efremov, Varvara Petrovna confirmed that the little old man was indeed the last prince Shuiskii. Truth be told, he had had a son, but some forty years ago Shuiskii sold him for 10,000 rubles to a childless Polish magnate. The latter needed an heir, so that after his death all of his enormous entailed estates would not be dispersed amongst his relatives but would remain in a single pair of hands. Some deft secretaries at the assembly of the nobility found a boy of noble blood, Shuiskii, and the magnate purchased and adopted him.

It was a quiet, snowy evening. Inside the hanging lamp something buzzed softly.

After dinner at Rachinskii’s I stayed behind—I was engrossed in Sergeev-Tsenskii’s “The Sorrow of the Fields.”

At the dinner table Rachinskii was composing pieces of advice for women. After having written a few words, he would lean back in his chair, read them over and smirk—obviously, he liked everything that he was writing very much.

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Chapter Thirteen

Varvara Petrovna was knitting. Having withdrawn to an armchair, the fortune-teller was thinking about something as she looked at her folded hands with their diamond rings.

Suddenly somebody knocked sharply on the window. It startled us. Judging by the sound, which was quick and anxious, I understood that something serious must have happened.

Rachinskii went to open the door. Varvara Petrovna crossed herself. Only the fortune-teller didn’t stir.

Osipenko burst into the dining room—with his coat and hat still on; he didn’t even take off his galoshes.

“Revolution in Petersburg!” he cried out, “The government’s been overthrown!”

His voice suddenly broke; he collapsed into a chair and burst out sobbing.

For a moment it was dead quiet. You could only hear Osipenko crying, like a child, gulping air convulsively.

My heart began to thump madly. I was short of breath and felt tears streaming down my cheeks. Rachinskii grabbed Osipenko by the shoulder and cried out:

“When? How? Say something!”

“Here . . . Here . . .” Osipenko muttered and pulled out of his coat pocket a long and narrow telegraph tape. “I’ve just come from the telegraph office . . . Here it is . . . everything.”

I took the tape from him and began reading aloud the appeal of the Provisional Government.

At long last! My hands were shaking. Although the whole country had expected these events for the last few months, still the blow was all too sudden.