Berezovo Read online

  Stopping by the light from a half shaded window she carefully lifted the lid of the jar, and peered down at the steaming viscous broth of yellow goat meat. Grey globules of fat began immediately to congeal and float to the surface. She debated whether to hook them out with her fingers and throw them into the road, but decided against doing so. Anton Ivanovich had told her that the fat was good for the chests of weak children; he would be upset if she wasted it. Unwilling to displease the doctor’s young assistant, she replaced the lid and moved quickly towards the step that led down to the junction with Alexei Street. From the eastern end of the broad thoroughfare the last clear notes of the church’s bell reproached her as she began to half run, half lope across the frozen sleigh tracks. The lid, clumsily set on the lip of the jar, shifted and some of the broth splashed onto her rough blouse scalding her. Pausing only to wipe off what she could, she continued her journey across the boulevard’s broad expanse. The Pirogovs lived close to Jew Alley, deep in the Quarter and only the thought of seeing Anton Ivanovich’s broad handsome face prevented her from feeling afraid. He would protect her from harm.

  She had once tried to tell Father Arkady what she had felt for Anton Ivanovich but the priest had grown angry and reprimanded her. It was true, he told her, that Anton Ivanovich Chevanin would one day become a hero – as would all good men of science who dedicated their lives to the welfare of mankind – but it was wrong, very wrong of her to have such feelings of adoration for him. What Katya had seen in her employer’s assistant, the priest had explained, was but the outward manifestation of the gifts placed there by God the Father; gifts that could be found in varying degrees within every soul on earth. That she should respect Anton Ivanovich and care for him as a frequent guest at the Tortsovs’ household until he took a wife of his own was quite appropriate, but she must think of herself as a handmaiden of God the Father for there was no mortal man who would return her love as He could. Reminding her of the reason why she was as she was, of the terrible sins of her parents, Father Arkady had assured her that as she grew older she would realise that the emotions she was now experiencing were misplaced and sinful.

  For once the priest’s counsel had fallen upon deaf ears. She had not understood; she had not wanted to understand. Like the lights now burning outside the gate to the hospital courtyard, a small flame had been lit in the loneliness of her heart. The more often Anton Ivanovich visited the doctor’s house, the stronger her feelings had grown. Whenever he saw her, he was always so respectful, so charming. Never once had he berated her when she was clumsy or slow. Just the way he called her name excited her. “Katya…” he would drawl and immediately she would feel her face begin to glow. It was strange, almost magical. When Madame Tortsova summoned her, she made her name sound quick and ugly; like the yelp of a kicked dog. But her beloved (for so she secretly thought of him) had only to murmur it and she had to hide her face in her apron! And it was not only to her that he showed such kindness: he was like that with everybody. How else could she love him? That very afternoon, as she had taken the dishes out into the kitchen, she had overheard him offer to attend to the Pirogovs’ birth simply so that the doctor could go to his drama meeting. On a night like this too! That was the sort of man her Anton Ivanovich was.

  Before she had realised it, the horse and its rider were almost upon her. Katya froze, uncertain whether to rush forwards toward the far side of the boulevard or try to retreat to the safety of the steps she had left. With a tired curse, the horseman wrenched at his rein, pulling his mount away from the woman who had suddenly stepped out into their path. In the darkness the two startled figures peered at each other: the thickset young woman protectively clasping her precious burden; the rider, dressed in the uniform of the mounted gendarmerie, easing himself forward in his saddle.

  Remembering her mission, Katya began to back away, but as she turned to go, the gendarme called out to her gruffly.

  “Hey! You!”

  Fearfully she turned back to face him.

  “Which way is it to the uchastok?”

  Pulling nervously at her shawl, Katya stared at the worn leather scabbard that hung from the man’s left hip.

  “Did you hear me, woman?” the gendarme growled again.

  With a gentle dig of his spurs, he edged the horse nearer to her. The smell of the broth filled the horse’s nostrils and it turned its head away sharply.

  “Answer me!” he demanded irritably. “Quickly, where is the uchastok?”

  Shifting the jar to her other arm, Katya flung out her free hand and pointed awkwardly towards the town’s police headquarters. The sudden movement startled the horse again, making the man swear angrily as he fought to control it. As if he had struck her, she flinched at his violent curses, and began backing away.

  Wearily shaking his head, the gendarme watched her stumble away across the uneven street and wondered why, after three days on the road from Kandinskoye, he had to pick upon an idiot bitch to ask for directions. With an irritable kick he turned his horse and rode on slowly towards the two storey building at the far end of Alexei Street.

  Three days in the saddle, he thought bitterly. Over one hundred and eighty versts, just because the swine of a sergeant was too sick to do his job properly. The bastard hadn’t been too sick to drink the bottle his cousin had sent him from Samarovo. Three days without proper food or rest. Sheltering in stinking yurts when the weather blew up. Sleeping alongside stinking Ostyaks. Just to deliver a stinking package to the stinking Chief of Police at Berezovo. “Why not wait until the postal sleigh comes through?” he had suggested. But no, that had not been good enough for the idle swine. And to be given such a broken winded nag as this to ride. Was ever a man so badly treated? If the son of a whore had obeyed orders in the first place and carried the package himself, he would have made damn sure to take the best horse in the village, the thief! He would have taken Sasha’s horse, or Pyotr’s.

  Despite his fatigue, the gendarme grinned at the thought. No, not Pyotr’s! That brute had the blood of the Devil in him and would have dumped his precious sergeant on his precious arse before he had gone a single verst.

  As he drew nearer he could pick out the name ‘HOTEL NEW CENTURY’ painted above the drab entrance of the building opposite the police headquarters, illuminated by the lights shining from the windows of the hotel’s upper floor.

  “Very grand,” he said under his breath. “A place fit for barines. A regular palace.”

  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!”

  From the cartoon’s sunken cheeks would protrude an exaggerated proboscis, surpassing in its dimensions even that of the moneylender Goldstein. Once the caricature was completed, the boy would begin scrabbling amidst the debris that littered the yard in search of ammunition. Offcuts of timber, discarded remnants of rusting locks and bolts; all served his purpose. As his father looked on with approval, he would hurl them at the hated visage until his arm grew tired and his aim wild. Only then would he return happily to the hearth, to sit beside his father as the builder smoked his pipe in the dark low-ceilinged room that served both as living quarters and kitchen.

  Belinsky treasured those moments most of all: feeling the soft skin of his son’s small hand clasped in his as they sat side by side beside the fire, staring into the witches in the flames. Wasn’t a son the finest house a man could build? Made of skin and bone, but built just the same; designed in his own image and raised from the earth with discipline, patience and understanding. It was not that he had no respect for people of learning: folk like Dresnyakov. On the contrary, he believed the schoolmaster to be a competent teacher and did not question his right to deal with his pupils as he saw fit. Nowadays, having a strong pair of hands was no longer enough. A young man also had to have a head upon his shoulders, a head full of facts and figures; in short, an education.

  The builder’s meditations were punctuated by a sharp cry of despair from Maslov as Dr. Tortsov reached out to seize his queen. Sprawling back on the sofa, Roshkovsky chuckled approvingly as the discarded chess piece rattled into its box. Half turning, he looked up at Belinsky to see if he had shared his amusement at the librarian’s gaffe, but was rewarded with only a sullen stare. Shrugging, Roshkovsky turned back again to watch the doctor close in for the kill.

  Moodily, Belinsky took another sip of vodka. Despite having often had dealings with Roshkovsky, sometimes for weeks at a time, he recognised the distance between them was too wide, the chasm too deep, for there to be even the pretence of friendship between them. It went far beyond the natural antagonism between trade and profession. If pressed, he would grudgingly concede that Roshkovsky knew his stuff and was a reliable land surveyor and a good draughtsman. Yet, as he liked to tell his drinking friends at the Black Cock, like so many so-called ‘educated’ men the land surveyor had little common sense and entertained the stupidest of ideas. He was a dreamer of dreams, who believed that his country’s problems could be solved merely by people being nice to each other and standing meekly by while everything was being torn up or turned upside down. In a word, Roshkovsky was a Liberal. With a sour expression, Belinsky drained his glass and was on the point of returning to the small wall table in order to pour himself another when the raised voices of the players signalled that their game of chess was over.

  “Well done, Doctor!” Maslov was exclaiming effusively. “A nice piece of work.”

  Dr. Tortsov muttered a few diplomatic words in response. The game had held little interest for him. His opponent’s moves had been unimaginative and his own had lacked finesse. Ordinarily he would have avoided playing Maslov precisely because his game was so dull and his demeanour so fawning but, faced on this occasion with the alternative of either playing or having to listen to the librarian’s conversation, he had chosen the least tiresome occupation. He was grateful when Roshkovsky, yawning, proposed that they should no longer wait for Colonel Izorov’s arrival.

  “I agree,” said Dresnyakov, neatly folding his newspaper and gathering together his pile of handwritten notes. “Whatever is keeping the colonel, it must be more important than our deliberations.”

  Remembering the weary rider he had watched from the window, Roshkovsky made room for Belinsky to join him on the sofa but the builder ignored him. Instead Belinsky crossed to the fireside and lowered himself into a chair opposite the schoolteacher, grumbling as he did so. “About time too. Let’s get on with it.”

  “With your permission then, gentlemen,” continued Dresnyakov, “I shall begin by reading the minutes of our last meeting.”

  From his vantage point beside the fire Belinsky studied the faces of the other men. To his eyes they were all the same. Men of letters; smooth men of polished words and endless committees. They would spend weeks and weeks agonising over who was going to be responsible for what and why, forgetting that it was only he – Yuli Nikitavich Belinsky – who could bring substance to the play. He would be the one who built the sets and painted the scenery; who made sure the doors opened properly and that the curtains didn’t collapse (as they had done two years ago when that blockhead Tachminov had been in charge). That is what this country needs, he thought. A few more practical men like myself who know how to get the best out of the materials
that are to hand… Who know how to boot arses and don’t have to go grovelling to the Jews every time their money runs out.

  Having completed reading the minutes, Dresnyakov turned to the second item on the meticulously written agenda that lay upon his knee. Nodding to Maslov, he invited the librarian to present his report. Nervously adjusting his cravat, the small man sprang to his feet and, after acknowledging his colleagues with a series of bows, addressed the other members of the drama committee.

  “As you may recall,” he began, “I ordered the scripts of the two sketches we are to produce, namely The Bear and A Tragedian Despite Himself by Anton Chekhov, from the General Book Distributors in Tobolsk. I am pleased to report that these have now arrived and are, at this very moment, awaiting the committee’s pleasure in my storeroom.”

  This news was not unexpected and his announcement was greeted by wry expressions of congratulation. He had informed each of them individually of the scripts’ arrival several times since the Committee’s last meeting. Neither were the other members of the group tempted to ask what good the scripts were doing in the library storeroom when their rightful place was in the hands of those charged with their translation into the spoken performance. They knew the librarian too well. Alexander Maslov would cling onto the scripts until the very last moment, enjoying the frisson of power conveyed by their possession.

  “I have also taken the liberty,” Maslov went on, “of extracting one or two articles from theatrical magazines in my possession concerning the special problems presented by a production of these works. I thought that, since it is the good doctor’s first excursion into the thespian art, they may be of some small service to him.”

  Dr. Tortsov’s smile tightened as he watched Maslov delve into a pocket and produce a thick sheaf of papers. He steeled himself for yet another lecture from the town’s self-appointed dramaturge.