Russka

Revolution

1881, September

The Tsar was dead: assassinated. Even now, months later, the ten-year-old girl found it hard to believe.

Why were there such wicked people in the world? For the last three years there had been killings – policemen, officials, even a governor. And now, with a terrible bomb, they had killed the good man, the reforming Tsar Alexander II himself. Rosa could not understand it.

Who would do such a thing? A terrible group, it seemed: the People’s Will, they called themselves. No one had known who they were or how many: perhaps twenty, perhaps ten thousand. What did they want? Revolution: the destruction of the whole apparatus of the Russian state that ruled its people from on high. Month after month, the People’s Will had hunted the Tsar; now they had destroyed him, as if to say: ‘See, your mighty state is only a sham. Against us, even the Tsar himself is impotent, to be destroyed when we wish.’ And now, with the poor Tsar dead, they had supposed the people would rise up.

‘Which shows how little these revolutionaries know,’ her father had said.

For nothing had happened. Not a village had risen, nor a single factory. The shocking event had been greeted only by a huge Russian silence. The Tsar’s son – the third Alexander – had succeeded to the throne and at once imposed order. There had been a huge crackdown; many of the revolutionaries had been arrested and most of the Russian Empire was at present under martial law. The People’s Will had failed, God be praised. Russia was calm and at peace.

Or so it had seemed. Until this new and horrible business – so inexplicable to her, so terrifying – had begun. And once again, as she had done so many times in recent months, Rosa wondered why there were such wicked people in the world.

‘They will not come here,’ her father had promised. But what if he were wrong?

It was early afternoon – a quiet time in this peaceful southern village at the border of forest and steppe. Few people were moving about; Rosa’s parents were resting on the upper floor of the solid, thatched house. Although it was autumn, down here in the Ukraine the weather was still warm. Through the open window, Rosa could see the apple tree in the courtyard and smell the sweet scent of a honeysuckle bush nearby.

Rosa was a beautiful girl. Her pale, oval face, long neck, and a certain slow grace in her movements had made some of the villagers call her ‘the swan maiden’. Her raven hair was worn in a thick braid down her back. She had a long nose and full lips. But her most striking features were her eyes. Dark-lidded, framed under the strong, black arch of her eyebrows, they were huge, blue-grey and luminous, gazing solemnly out at the world like a figure in an ancient mosaic.

She sat by a piano. She was not playing, now, but the music she had been practising that morning – a piece by Tchaikovsky – was echoing in her mind. As she stared out at the blue sky, she went over each phrase, each haunting melody, trying them this way and that until she was satisfied.

Hers was the only piano in the village. She would never forget the magical day when it arrived on a little barge coming upriver. Her father had saved for a year to buy it and brought it all the way from Kiev. All the neighbours had come out to watch as he and her two brothers proudly escorted this wonder to their house. She had been only seven when a visiting cousin, a musician, had told them she was a prodigy. The very next year she had gone to live with that family, during term time, down in the big city of Odessa on the Black Sea coast, where there were fine music teachers. Already she had given a public performance and people were saying she would be a professional musician.

‘As long as her health holds up,’ her mother would gloomily say. It was true: that nagging problem with her chest was often with her. Sometimes she would have to rest for days at a time, when she was longing to go back to school. ‘You’ll grow out of it,’ her father promised her: and how she prayed that he was right. How she wanted to live her life for music.

For once Rosa stepped into that kingdom, everything else became unimportant. Sometimes it seemed to her that music was in everything: as absolute as mathematics, as infinite as the universe itself. Music was in the trees, in the flowers, in the endless steppe; music filled the whole sky. She wanted only to pray, and to learn.

And here was the strange conundrum which had puzzled her for several months, and which today made her thoughtful and melancholy.

For if God had made this beautiful world, and given it music, and if she, it seemed, might have been chosen to serve His musical purpose and to play for Him, then why were there evil men, planning to kill her?

Laid out on the east side of the little river, the village’s comfortable thatched houses with their whitewashed walls stretched on each side of the broad dirt road for nearly a mile. Several, like the house where her parents lived, had little orchards behind them. Near the river there was a market square; and just downstream stood a distillery. Indeed, in the poorer Russian north where settlements were smaller than in the Ukraine, such a place would have been called a town.

It was also quite prosperous. To the huge fields of wheat on the rich black earth of the steppe, two new and valuable crops had been added in recent times: sugarbeet and tobacco. Both were sold to merchants who exported them through the ports on the warm Black Sea, and thanks to this trade and the region’s natural abundance, the peasants lived well.

Rosa’s grandfather had first come to the region to farm. He had died five years ago and her father had taken over. An enterprising man, he also traded wheat and acted as local agent for a firm that manufactured agricultural equipment down in Odessa, so that they were now amongst the better-off families in the village.

She was not aware that once, in former times, this southern settlement had borne the name of Russka.

It was not surprising. The settlement had had two names since then; of its past few signs remained. The little fort on the western bank was only some marks upon the turf; of the church the Mongols had burned down, there was not a trace. Even the landscape had altered somewhat, for centuries of farming had led to the cutting down of many trees, and there were no woods on the eastern side of the river now. The pool and its haunting spirits had gone, dried up. Even the bee forest had disappeared. From the last house in the village, the open steppe of south Russia extended to the horizon, and the only way that the place might have been identified from ancient times was by the tiny mound of an ancient kurgan that appeared upon the steppe in the middle distance.

Rosa walked until she receded the end of the village, where she stopped to gaze over the steppe. There was a pale sun. High overhead, trailing white clouds coming from the west receded over the endless, browning grassland towards a violet horizon.

She had been standing there for some time when the cart came in sight. It was a stout affair, containing two people: a huge, thickset man with big black moustaches, who was driving; and a slim, handsome boy, also dark-haired and just a year older than Rosa. These were Taras Karpenko, a Cossack farmer, and his youngest son, Ivan.

Seeing them, Rosa smiled. For as long as she could remember, she had played Cossacks and Robbers with the Karpenko boys and the other village children; young Ivan was her special playmate. And ever since, some years before, her father had sold Taras some farm equipment which had proved successful, the burly Cossack had looked upon the family with a kindly eye.

There was also another reason why Rosa’s father had found favour with Taras.

It was strange to think that the heavyset farmer was the nephew of the illustrious poet Karpenko, whose delicate features still looked out from drawings or prints on the walls of several local houses. Taras was enormously proud of this fact, however, and would mention his uncle’s name in the same breath, and with the same reverence, as that of the most famous of all Ukrainian poets, the great Shevchenko. When he discovered, therefore, that Rosa’s father not only possessed a copy of Karpenko’s verses, but genuinely loved them and knew many by heart, he had clapped him on the back and always thereafter, if anyone mentioned Rosa’s family, he would announce: ‘Not a bad fellow, that.’ Which stood them in good stead in the village and often caused Rosa’s mother to remark: ‘Your father is very wise.’

He was indeed wise – and very unusual – since this knowledge which formed a bond between him and the Cossack was becoming increasingly rare.

For the rule of the Tsars in the Ukraine, with each decade that passed, had become even more heavy-handed. The Tsars liked uniformity. True, in their huge empire it could not always be achieved. In Poland and the westernmost parts of the Ukraine, they had to put up with the Catholics; as the empire continued to expand eastwards into Asia, they had to tolerate increasing numbers of Moslems. But insofar as possible, everything should be Russified: autocracy, orthodoxy, nationality – those were the things. In 1863 therefore, with that genius for official blindness in which it specialized, the Russian government announced that the Ukrainian language, which was spoken by much of the southern population, did not exist! In the years following, Ukrainian language books, newspaper, theatres, schools and even Ukrainian music were banned. The works of Shevchenko, Karpenko and other Ukrainian national heroes passed out of sight. Intellectuals spoke and wrote in Russian. As for the people, while in the north education was spreading, in the south it declined; and by the late-nineteenth century, eighty per cent of Ukrainians were illiterate. The Tsars were pleased: the Ukraine was not disturbed by discordant voices. No wonder then if the proud Cossack Karpenko would occasionally remark to Rosa’s father: ‘Well, my friend, at least you and I seem to know what’s what.’

As the two Cossacks drove by, therefore, they acknowledged her in a friendly manner: young Ivan with a happy grin and his father with a smile and a nod; and seeing this, Rosa felt a sense of reassurance.

They will not come here. There was nothing to be afraid of, she reminded herself.

For Rosa Abramovich was Jewish.

Until a century before when Catherine the Great took most of Poland, there had been hardly any Jews in the empire of Russia. By adding these western lands, however, Russia gained a large Jewish community.

Where did they come from? The history of the Diaspora is confused and often obscure, but the Jews of Russia derived from Germany, the Mediterranean and Black Sea ports; and also, it can hardly be doubted, from the remnants of the Turkish Khazar community that had spread into many parts of south-east Europe. Of their racial origins therefore, it is hard to say anything except that they were mixed.

But they believed in the one God of Israel.

What should be done with them? Some thought the Jews devious, like the Catholics; others called them obstinate, like the Old Believers. But two things were certain: they were not Slavs and they were not Christians, and therefore they were suspect. Like every other nonconformist element in the Tsar’s empire, they must first be contained, then Russified. And so it was, in 1833, that the Tsar decreed that henceforth the Jews must be confined within a particular area: the Jewish Pale of Settlement.

In fact, the famous Jewish Pale was not the ghetto it sounded like. It was a vast territory comprising Poland, Lithuania, the western provinces known as White Russia, and much of the Ukraine, including all the Black Sea ports – in other words, the lands where the Jews already resided, and some more besides. The purpose of the Pale was, mainly, to limit the immigration of Jews into traditional, Orthodox north Russia, although even in this respect it was often only loosely enforced, and there were sizeable Jewish groups in both Moscow and St Petersburg.

The Jews lived mostly in towns or in their own villages – the traditional, tightly knit shtetl communities. They usually spoke Yiddish amongst themselves. Some were craftsmen or traders; many were poor, and partly supported by their fellows. But there were also those who, like Rosa’s grandfather, went to live in ordinary country villages to farm the land.

But still they were not conformist: something had to be done about that. And the solution of successive tsarist governments was always the same: ‘Let them convert.’

It was a steady pressure that the regime applied, over decades. Jews paid extra taxes; their own system of community government – the kahal – was made illegal; their representation in local elections, limited by unfair quotas. More subtly, they were allowed into the school system, then encouraged to convert; less subtly, they were recruited into the army, then beaten if they didn’t. Conversion was enough. Though some people might be suspicious of one whose ancestry was Jewish, as far as the state was concerned, once the Jew had converted to Orthodoxy, he was a good Russian.

This policy met with some success: numbers of Jews did convert. More important, a gradual process of assimilation had begun, for amongst the younger generation there had arisen a liberal movement, the Haskalah, which argued that Jews should participate more actively in gentile society. Rosa’s eldest brother, who was married and lived in Kiev, had told her all about it. ‘If Jews are going to get anywhere in the Russian Empire, then we should go to Russian schools and universities. We have to take part. That doesn’t stop us being Jews.’ But her father was very suspicious. Though he did not take the view of many strict Jews, who isolated themselves as far as possible from the gentile world, he frowned on the Haskalah. ‘It’s the first step down the slippery slope,’ he would say firmly. ‘First you put secular learning on an equal footing with religious education. In no time, the world comes first, religion second. Then you forget even your religion. And at last you have nothing.’ Rosa knew there was truth in this: she had heard of a number of these liberals turning into little better than atheists. So while Rosa’s family kept on good terms with their Ukrainian neighbours, they always observed their religion strictly with the other Jewish families in the area. Both Rosa’s brothers received a religious education, the elder reaching the highest rung, the Yeshiva; and her father had even hoped the young man might become a religious teacher.

There was one exception to her father’s strict rule, however, for which Rosa thanked God. ‘Studying music in Russian schools is different,’ he had always said. That did not compromise one’s faith. It was the best way for a Jew to advance in Russia.

They will not come here. Why should they? The village was such an out-of-the-way little place. Besides, they had done nothing wrong.

Of course, she knew there had always been bad feeling between her people and the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians remembered the Jews as the agents of the Polish landlords. They also usually lived in towns instead of in the country – they were foreign heretics. To the Jews, on the other hand, the Ukrainians were not only gentiles – the despised goyim – they were also, mostly, illiterate peasants. Yet even so, they might have lived at peace but for one thing: their relative numbers.

Perhaps it was the Jewish tradition of having large families; perhaps their communal self-help saved children’s lives; perhaps their respect for learning led them to pay more scientific attention to hygiene or make more use of doctors: whatever the reason, it was a fact that in the Ukraine in the last sixty years, while the general population had risen by a factor of about two and a half times, the number of Jews had risen by a factor of over eight times. And the cry was beginning to be heard: ‘These Jews will take our work and ruin us all.’

It was that year that the trouble had begun. No one could say exactly what started it. ‘When people get angry,’ her father had told Rosa, ‘almost anything can set them off.’ But whatever the true causes might be, it was in the year that the Tsar was assassinated that, all over the south, a series of disturbances began which made the world familiar with a grim and ugly word.

The pogrom.

Surely not here though? Not in the quiet village at the border of forest and steppe. With this thought in mind, Rosa turned to go home.

People were moving about in the village as she retraced her steps, but the place was still quiet. A cloudbank had arisen in the west and its shadow was advancing towards her. There was a faint chill now in the breeze.

She was halfway down the street when she noticed the little group. It was nothing much: just two women, both neighbours, and three men who looked like strangers, standing in the street in front of her house. From a distance, they seemed to be arguing. She saw two more villagers, both men, going to join them. A few moments later, she saw her father come out.

He was dressed in a long black coat and had put on his round, wide-brimmed black hat. The ringlets that hung down the side of his face were black but his handsome beard was grey. She saw him wag his finger at them severely. He’s telling them off, she thought with a smile.

And then she heard it: a single shout that echoed down the street, and that suddenly made her cold.

‘Kike!’

She started to run.

They were already jostling her father by the time she reached him. One of the men knocked his hat off; another spat on the ground. The two village men made a half-hearted attempt to restrain them but then they drew back, though why they should be afraid of three strangers Rosa could not think – until, a moment later, she glanced again down the street, and saw the reason.

There were six carts. They had just crossed the little bridge over the river; and riding in them, or walking beside, came about fifty men. Some of them were carrying clubs; a few looked drunk.

Rosa looked at her father. He was picking up his hat, with what dignity he could, while the three men watched him. He was fifty years old, rather delicately built with a fine, thin face and large eyes like hers. Instinctively she wanted to take his hand for comfort, then she realized with a shock that the poor man was as frightened as she was. What should they do? Retreat to the house? Two of the men were moving round to block their way. The party down the street was getting close. Behind her, Rosa now saw her mother coming out to join them; though her husband waved her back, she took no notice. If only her brothers were with them, Rosa thought, but they were both away in Kiev that month. Helplessly, she and her parents stood there, waiting.

When the men arrived, they formed a circle round the little family. Rosa looked at their faces. Some looked hard, others wore a look of foolish triumph. For a moment nobody spoke. Then her father broke the silence.

‘What do you want?’

It was not immediately clear whether the party had a leader, but one of them, a huge peasant with a brown beard, now answered.

‘Nothing much, Jew. We’re just going to burn your house down.’

‘And give him a thrashing,’ another cried.

‘That too,’ remarked the first, to laughter.

Rosa could see that her father was shaking, but trying to appear calm. ‘And what have I done to you?’ he asked.

This was greeted with a chorus of derision. ‘Plenty!’ several cried out. ‘What have you done to Russia, Yid?’ called another. ‘Damned Jewish profiteers,’ screamed a third. ‘Usurers!’ But it was another cry, coming from somewhere at the back of the crowd, that really startled Rosa and made her turn pale.

‘Who drinks the blood of children?’ the voice shouted. ‘Tell us that!’

She had heard about this terrible accusation before. ‘Once,’ her father had told her, ‘long ago, foolish people used to accuse the Jews of the strangest things. They even said we killed Christian children and drank their blood.’ This was the infamous Blood Accusation of the Middle Ages. ‘Simple people actually thought it was true,’ he had said with a sigh. How strange, and how terrifying, to hear it echoed now.

Yet it was another voice which, in a way, surprised her even more. For now, suddenly from the back of the crowd, a little old man with a completely bald head and a white beard pushed his way through and, pointing to Rosa’s father, bellowed: ‘You can’t fool us, Jew. We know what you are. You’re a foreign traitor – a Tsar killer. You’re a revolutionary!’ To which, to Rosa’s amazement, there was a roar of agreement.

How strange it was, indeed. For whatever her poor father might have been accused of, this, surely, was the most unlikely.

She knew about the Jewish revolutionaries. Some years before, it was true, a few radical students from Jewish families had joined the movement which, in the famous Going to the People of 1874, had tried to take revolution to the peasants in the countryside. These were the most radical of the Jews who had chosen to assimilate into Russian secular life. Indeed, in a double irony, many – not out of religious conviction but in order to feel closer to the peasants they wanted to influence – had actually converted to the Orthodox Church. These young people were exactly the ones Rosa’s father, and most conservative Jews, hated most. Their example, her father had warned his children, was exactly what became of those who strayed into the world and lost their religion. As for the Tsar: ‘We should always obey the law and support the Tsar,’ her father would declare. ‘He is still our best hope.’ And indeed, until the terrible assassination, the reforming Tsar had relaxed some of the restrictions on the Jews in his empire. The vast majority of Jews at this date were therefore conservative and tsarist; but one cannot argue with a mob.

For the men surrounding them had already burned down some Jewish houses in Pereiaslav the week before and now they were travelling round the local villages looking for more fun.

‘Time to get started,’ someone cried. There was laughter. The huge man with the brown beard, accompanied by the little old man, stepped towards Rosa’s father as she looked around desperately. She wanted to scream.

And it was just then that, twenty yards away, the stout cart bearing the massive form of Taras Karpenko and his son creaked into the street, and the two Cossacks caught sight of them.

‘Thank God,’ Rosa heard her mother whisper. ‘He can save us.’

The big Cossack did not hurry. He drove his cart calmly towards them, and the men parted to let it through. With his flowing moustaches and his powerful frame, he was a commanding figure. When he reached the edge of the circle round the little family, he pulled up and glanced down enquiringly at the fellow with the brown beard. ‘Good day,’ he remarked pleasantly. ‘What’s up?’

The peasant looked at the Cossack and shrugged. ‘Nothing much. Just teaching this Jew a lesson.’

Karpenko nodded thoughtfully. ‘He’s not a bad fellow,’ he remarked placidly.

Thank God. Thank God indeed for the big, powerful farmer. Rosa looked up at him gratefully. He would send these men about their business. She was so relieved that, for a moment, she did not fully take in the conversation that followed.

‘He’s still a Jew,’ the peasant objected.

‘True.’ The thickset Cossack glanced round at the men. ‘What do you plan to do?’

‘Burn his house and thrash him.’

Karpenko nodded again and glanced a little sadly at Rosa’s father. Then he spoke to him.

‘I’m afraid, my friend, you’re going to have rather a rough time.’

What was he saying? Rosa stared at him in disbelief. What could he mean? Her father’s friend, the man whose children she had played Cossacks and Robbers with – wasn’t he going to help them? In astonishment she saw him take up the reins. He was turning the horse’s head – leaving them.

A mist seemed to form in front of her eyes; she felt suddenly nauseous; and before her a great, cold gulf – something she had never imagined was there – seemed to be opening wide: wide as an ocean.

He was on the side of these men.

‘Father!’ It was young Ivan. Rosa blinked through the haze of her tears and stared up at him. The boy was white, trembling; he was standing up in the cart. How slim, almost frail, he looked, yet so tense, so passionate that he seemed to radiate an extraordinary strength. He was looking down at the heavyset Cossack. ‘Father! We can’t.’

And Taras stopped the cart.

Slowly, rather unwillingly, Karpenko turned to the big peasant with the brown beard. ‘They come with us,’ he said gruffly.

‘There are fifty of us, Cossack,’ cried the little old man. ‘You can do nothing.’

But Taras Karpenko, though he glanced round at the crowd, only shook his head. Then turning to the big peasant again he explained, a little sheepishly: ‘I owe this Jew a personal favour.’ He motioned Rosa and her parents to climb into the cart.

‘Call yourself a Cossack? Jew lover! We’ll come and burn your farm down too,’ shouted the old man. But nobody stopped the Abramovichs from getting into the cart.

‘I’m afraid your house will be burned down,’ Karpenko said in a matter-of-fact way to Rosa’s father. But I’ve saved you a thrashing.’ Then he flicked the reins and the cart started slowly down the street.

As they went out of the village, Rosa stared back. The men were busy smashing the windows of her house. She saw the old man going inside with a lighted torch. They are going to burn my piano, she thought: the piano her father had saved a whole year to buy for her. She looked at him. He was sitting in the cart, shaking. There were tears in his eyes, and her mother’s arms were round him. Rosa had never seen her father cry before and she supposed it was not possible to love anyone more than, at that moment, she loved him.

Then her thoughts turned back to the Karpenkos. Ivan had saved them. As long as she lived, she told herself, she would never forget that.

But she would also remember his father, their friend. He would have left them. And she thought of something else her father had once told her: ‘Remember, Rosa, if you are a Jew, you can never trust. Not completely.’ She would remember.

1891, December

Nicolai Bobrov told himself he should not worry too much.

The message from his father had been disquieting, of course – there was no denying it. He also felt a pang of guilt. But I dare say when I get there, it won’t be so bad, he reasoned. Then he sighed.

It was a long way to be travelling alone. As the covered sled whisked him through the broad streets of St Petersburg towards the station, Nicolai gazed out comfortably. He loved the mighty city. Even on a grey day like this, it seemed to have a dull, almost luminous glow. And, it had to be said, Nicolai was a comfortable fellow.

Like any other gentleman in the western world, he wore a frock coat, somewhat shorter than in earlier decades, with a single vent behind and two small cloth-covered buttons in the small of the back. His trousers were rather narrow, of a very thick cloth, and to a later generation might have seemed rather untidy, for the fashion of giving trousers a crease had scarcely come into use as yet. His shoes were polished and boned so that they twinkled and gleamed. Across his waistcoat hung a gold chain from his fob watch. His shirt was white with a stiff detachable collar; around this was a narrow silk cravat with polka dots, tied in a loose bow that gave him a faintly artistic appearance. The only parts of his clothing that were particularly Russian were the big greatcoat with a fur collar, which he had undone inside the enclosed sled, and the fur hat that lay on the seat beside him.

Nicolai Bobrov was thirty-seven. The hair on his head and the neat, pointed beard he favoured were prematurely greying. His nose seemed to have grown more hooked, giving his face something of the Turkish cast of his ancestors; but the face had few lines and still often wore the same, open look it had possessed in the days when he was a student trying to persuade his father’s peasants to usher in a new world.

How far away those days seemed. Nicolai was a family man now. He had a daughter; an elder son, named Mikhail after his grandfather; and this last year there had been a new baby, a boy they had called Alexander. In his pocket now he was proudly carrying a photograph, pasted on board, of the little boy. If asked his politics nowadays, he would certainly reply, in a general way: ‘I am a liberal.’

If the revolutionary fervour of his student days had not lasted, it was not surprising. Nicolai had never forgotten the humiliation of 1874. ‘The peasants weren’t even interested,’ he had soon confessed. He had felt cheated by Popov too. ‘He was just an opportunist who made a fool of me,’ he told his parents. And a few years later, when the terrorists killed the Tsar, he had only shaken his head sadly. ‘Even a Tsar is better than chaos,’ he nowadays declared. To which he would add: ‘Russia will be a free democracy one day; but the truth is, we aren’t ready yet. It’ll take a generation, maybe two.’ Until then, thank God, Russia was quiet.

And quiet, nowadays, it certainly was. Immediately after the assassination of his reforming father, the new Tsar Alexander III had moved decisively. The murderous People’s Will inner circle had been discovered and smashed; that good old reactionary, Count Dimitri Tolstoy, had been brought back as Minister of the Interior and soon had a special police service of no less than a hundred thousand gendarmes. Most of the empire had been placed under martial law by the Tsar’s so-called Temporary Regulations. These had been in force for ten years now – but then, as Nicolai liked to say: ‘When our rulers do something good in Russia, they say it’s permanent and then revoke it; but when they do something bad, they say it’s temporary, and it stays for ever!’

There was censorship and internal passports; in the universities, all student bodies were forbidden; in the countryside, new officials called Land Captains had been appointed to deal out government justice to the peasants without benefit of independent law courts. And the most perfect expression of the official attitude came from the Procurator of the Holy Synod who, when asked the government’s role in education, replied: ‘To keep people from inventing things.’

It was a police state. And yet, Nicolai thought, perhaps it was for the best. At least there was order. True, there had been a few strikes; true, down in the south there had been some pogroms against the Jews. One could not approve of that. But there had been no more bombs. And as he looked out at the winter city a thought suddenly occurred to him, which made him smile.

For the truth is, he concluded, it’s as if the Russian empire has been under snow for the last ten years. Yes, that was it exactly. Winter was harsh and cold. Nothing could grow; the snow stifled everything. People might complain at this huge, Russian stasis, but the snow also protected the land; under it, delicate seeds could survive the howling winds above. Under the great snow-covering of tsarist rule, perhaps Russia could slowly prepare herself for her new and different future in the modern world. And when the time is right, he thought, our Russian spring will be beautiful. The idea pleased him.

Now the sled was crossing the frozen River Neva. On the embankment opposite lay the Winter Palace; to the left, the thin spire of the Peter and Paul Cathedral gleamed in the pale light. In the middle of the ice stood a remarkable construction: a towering wooden scaffolding, over fifty feet high, from which descended a steep runway covered with ice. This was one of the city’s favourite winter pastimes – an ice mountain, as the huge slide was called. As he watched, Nicolai saw two couples in tiny sleds go whirling down it with shouts of glee, and he smiled: police state or not, life in the Russian capital was not so bad.

A few minutes later they were on the south bank, past the palace, and turning into the broad, handsome vista of Nevsky Prospect. And here again, Nicolai smiled.

‘The Street of Toleration’ they affectionately called the Nevsky, these days. On it, almost side by side, could be found the churches of Dutch Calvinists, German Lutherans, Roman Catholics and Armenians, as well of course as the many Orthodox ones. Off the Prospect lay famous concert halls and theatres, and the fashionable English Club. The royal confectioner had a shop down here where one could buy chocolates that, very likely, had lain uneaten in the Winter Palace the night before.

Nicolai had been living in St Petersburg for nearly ten years now. He was not rich, but thanks to a sinecure at one of the ministries, where he appeared only once a week, his income was enough to get by on. He was a member of the Yacht Club, where there was an excellent French chef. Frequently he took his wife to one of the capital’s four opera houses where one could nowadays hear not only the masterpieces of Europe but also the new homegrown operas by those Russian geniuses who had suddenly burst upon the world in the last few decades: Tchaikovsky, Moussorgsky, Borodin, Rimsky-Korsakov. Or they would go to the Maryinsky theatre to see the finest ballet performances in the world. In the summer, the family would go to a pleasant summer house they rented, just a few miles away on the Gulf of Finland. And once a year, he bought his wife a present from Fabergé the jeweller – for while that master produced his fabulous Easter eggs for the Tsar, the Fabergé store also had hundreds of charming little items for more modest purses like that of Nicolai Bobrov.

Truly, in St Petersburg in 1891, a liberal-minded man like Bobrov had little apparent cause to worry about the future.

But the summons from his father had been worrying.

This last year, all over Russia, the harvest had failed. St Petersburg was still supplied but reports were coming in from the central provinces of shortages in the countryside. ‘You needn’t worry though,’ a friend at the relevant ministry assured him. ‘We’re organizing relief. We’ve got everything in hand.’

Nicolai had been surprised therefore when, the previous week, he had received the letter from his father.

‘Frankly, my dear boy, the situation in the villages here is desperate and getting worse. We are doing what we can, but my health is not what it was and I can scarcely cope. If you possibly can, for the love of God, come.’

He had also realized, with a pang of guilt, that nearly two years had passed since he had last been to see his parents. He felt sure that his father must be exaggerating; but even so, it was with some misgivings that, on this grey December day, Nicolai Bobrov set off for Russka.

A hiss of steam, a whistle, a succession of puffs like a drum roll, and the train was gliding out through the suburbs towards the snowy wastes beyond.

The St Petersburg to Moscow express. In its beautifully panelled and richly upholstered coaches, one could dine and sleep in luxury unmatched on any other railway in the world. Or how delightful just to sit, hearing the soft hiss of the samovar that was ready in every carriage, and gaze out as the train rushed along the rails that crossed the endless plain.

For to Nicolai, the railway meant the future. The government of the Tsar might be reactionary, but this very year it had begun a vast and daring enterprise: a railway line that would eventually stretch all the way from Moscow across the huge Eurasian landmass to the Pacific port of Vladivostok, thousands of miles away. The Trans-Siberian Railway. There would be nothing quite like it in the world.

This was the new Russia, the world that was to come. The Russian peasant – the muzhik in his izba – might be a poor, ignorant fellow, still in the dark ages; the newly conquered tribesmen in the Asian deserts might still be living in the world of Genghis Khan and Tamerlaine; but over the surface of this huge, primitive empire, the modern world was running bands of steel. Huge coal reserves were being mined in the distant deserts and mountains above Mongolia; there was gold in the bleak wastes of eastern Siberia. German and French capital was flowing in to finance huge government projects: the vast resources of the empire were only beginning to be tapped.

And this was the point. No one doubted Russia’s military might. She had put the humiliation of the Crimean War behind her. Though she had sold the huge, empty territory of Alaska to the United States two decades ago, her empire still covered most of the vast north Eurasian plain, from Poland to the Pacific. The Turkish empire trembled before her; the British empire watched her advance across Asia with cautious respect; in the Far East, the crumbling empire of China would give her whatever she wanted; Japan was anxious to cooperate and trade. And now, gradually, we shall bring our people into the modern world by exploiting this vast wealth we own. That was Nicolai Bobrov’s hope, and his joy in the railway.

He was sitting alone in the restaurant car. They had just brought him caviar and blinis, and a glass of vodka. The table was laid for four people, but the other chairs were unoccupied. It was a bore, having no one to talk to.

So when the waiter asked if he might seat two other gentlemen at the table, Nicolai nodded that he had no objection and looked up curiously to see what sort of companions he was getting.

The two men sat down quietly opposite him, scarcely looking at him. One was an odd-looking fellow he had never seen before.

And the other was Yevgeny Popov.

There was no mistaking him – the shock of carrot-red hair, the same greenish eyes. He had not changed much except that in his face there was now a certain maturity, a settled strength which suggested he might have suffered. Noticing that Nicolai was staring at him, he looked carefully into his face. And then, without smiling, he quietly remarked: ‘Well, Nicolai Mikhailovich, it’s been a long time.’

How strange. Though they had not met for seventeen years, Nicolai expected his former friend to look awkward. After all, Popov had used him cynically and then extorted money from his father. But Popov looked neither guilty nor defiant: he just gazed at Nicolai calmly, taking him in, asked him where he was going and on hearing said thoughtfully: ‘Ah, yes. Russka,’ before turning to his companion and remarking: ‘The big Suvorin factory is there, you know.’

And now Nicolai looked at the other man. He too was a curious-looking fellow. He might, Nicolai guessed, be in his early twenties, though his ginger hair was already receding fast. He had a small, reddish, pointed beard. His clothes and bearing suggested that he might belong to the minor provincial gentry and probably be destined for a career as a minor official of some kind.

But what a strange face.

‘This is Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov,’ Popov introduced him. ‘He’s just taken his legal exams in St Petersburg and now he’s going to be an attorney.’ The lawyer politely acknowledged Nicolai and gave him a slight, rather grim, smile.

Ulyanov? Where had Nicolai heard that name before? Though his hair was ginger, his appearance was definitely Asian. He had a stocky body, a dome-shaped head, high cheekbones, a rather broad nose and mouth and unmistakably Mongolian eyes. He didn’t look Russian at all. But that name… what was familiar about it?

Of course! Alexander Ulyanov. Four years ago a young student of that name had been mixed up with some half-baked plot to kill the Tsar. The business had been quite isolated – a madcap plan of some idiotic young people. But the unfortunate young man had refused even to apologize and had paid with his life. Nicolai remembered his own revolutionary career as a student and inwardly shuddered. Might he, in different circumstances, have done such a thing? Ulyanov. It had been a respectable family, he remembered: the father had been a schools inspector of humble origin, but had done well enough to reach the rank that gave the family hereditary nobility. He wondered if this young lawyer were anything to do with them.

For the first few minutes, the conversation was hesitant. Nicolai was curious about what his former friend had been doing but Popov gave him evasive answers, while Ulyanov seemed content to sit quietly watching them. Nicolai gathered that Popov had spent some time abroad, but that was all.

Yet it was a pity to let the opportunity go. He’s sure to be up to something, Nicolai thought. And then he’ll mysteriously disappear for another twenty years. So after a few more indirect passes he suddenly asked bluntly: ‘So tell me, Yevgeny Pavlovich, are you still working for the revolution – and when is it coming?’

He noticed Ulyanov look at Popov questioningly, and saw Popov answer with a little shrug. But nobody said anything. A few moments later, Ulyanov got up and left them for a while.

‘There’s an interesting man,’ Popov remarked pleasantly, after he had gone. ‘Where does he come from?’

‘Nowhere important: a small provincial town in the east, on the Volga. He actually owns an estate there – just a small one with a few poor peasants.’ Popov smiled wryly. ‘So he’s both a landowner and noble, technically. Don’t you recognize his name?’

Nicolai mentioned the student who was executed.

‘Exactly. This man’s his brother. The whole family were devastated at the time, of course. Vladimir was very shaken.’

‘He wouldn’t get mixed up in a plot like that himself?’

Popov grinned. ‘Vladimir Ilych is a lot more cautious.’

Nicolai commented on the lawyer’s Asiatic looks and Popov nodded. ‘You’re right. Actually, on the mother’s side I believe he’s part German and part Swedish; but the father’s family are Asiatic, certainly. They were Chuvash tribesmen.’

Of course. He should have guessed from the hair. The Chuvash were an old tribe of Asiatic origin, settled on the Volga, who frequently had reddish hair. ‘I was sure he wasn’t Russian,’ Nicolai said.

‘No. Actually, I doubt if he’s got a single drop of Russian blood in his veins.’

‘And what’s your interest in him?’ Nicolai asked.

For a moment, Popov only gazed at him blandly, saying nothing. Then, very quietly, he murmured: ‘I will tell you this, Nicolai, whatever this fellow may be, I have never met any man like him before.’

Just then, Ulyanov returned and this interesting discussion had to end. Nicolai was rather sorry. He had just been becoming curious about the quiet Chuvash lawyer-landowner. But any sense of disappointment he had was soon forgotten as Popov turned back to him and remarked with a faintly ironic smile: ‘So, Nicolai Mikhailovich, you were asking about the revolution.’

In after years it always seemed to Nicolai that the hour that followed was the most interesting he had ever spent in his life.

Popov spoke quietly, and well. Though from time to time Nicolai recognized flashes of the cold, conspiratorial fellow he had known in his student days, it soon became clear that Popov had developed into something broader since then – a man of larger ideas. A few details of his personal life also emerged. He had been married, but his wife had died. He had been sent to Siberia for three years and spent another year in prison. He had visited a number of European countries, including Britain.

Nicolai knew that, over the years, quite a number of Russian radicals had had to leave and live abroad. He had some idea of their life: constantly on the move, often travelling with forged papers and different identities; agitating, attending revolutionary conferences, writing articles for illegal journals smuggled into Russia; picking up a meagre living by tutoring and translating, or borrowing from sympathizers, or possibly stealing. It was hard not to pity this state of rootless wandering. Such people, it seemed to Nicolai, became trapped in a tiny, conspiratorial world, dedicated by sheer force of habit to the service of an idealized revolution which, quite probably, would never come.

Yet now, as he listened to Popov, it soon became clear to Nicolai that his former friend knew far more about the world than he did. Popov gave him an account of the radical movements in Western Europe, from the workers’ trades unions to the revolutionary political parties. How sophisticated they sounded, compared to anything in Russia. He gave an amusing account of some of the exiled revolutionaries abroad. But above all, as the cosmopolitan Popov explained the European situation, there was something else that struck Nicolai even more forcibly. It was his certainty.

For whereas, when he was young, Nicolai remembered men speaking of revolution and a new world order as articles of faith, he noticed that Popov now spoke in a very different manner, as if everything that was passing were part of some concrete, historical process that he well understood. When he expressed this thought, Popov smiled.

‘Of course. Have you not read Karl Marx?’

Nicolai had heard of Marx, and tried to remember what he knew. The fellow was a German Jew who had lived a long time in England and died a few years ago; an economist and a revolutionary. And there had been a disciple who was still active: Engels. But the works of these formidable men were only just beginning to appear in Russia and Nicolai had to confess he had read nothing.

The theories of Marx, Popov explained, derived from the great German philosopher, Hegel, propounded at the start of the century. ‘And no doubt you remember the great world system of Hegel from your student days, don’t you?’ Popov chided.

‘I think so.’ Nicolai searched his mind. Yes, he did remember. ‘It was called the Dialectic,’ he said.

‘Exactly. The Dialectic. That is the key to everything.’

Nicolai remembered it all now – Hegel’s beautiful, cosmic system which showed that the world was progressing towards an ultimate state of perfection: the Absolute. And the process for getting there? It was all done in stages – a seemingly endless clash of ideas, but each clash marking a step forward. Thus a Thesis – one seeming truth – met its opposite or Antithesis. And from the two emerged a new idea: Synthesis – better than the idea before, but still imperfect. And so the Synthesis would now become Thesis, and the whole business start again. Normally, Nicolai recalled, each Thesis collapsed because it had some flaw, some inner contradiction. Thus, for instance, men had thought the earth was flat – until the evidence contradicted what at first had seemed obvious. Then they supposed the earth was the centre of the universe with the sun circling round it – until this too was shown to be false. He liked the Dialectic: it suggested progress. It was compelling.

‘And the greatest master of the Dialectic was Karl Marx,’ Popov stated. ‘For by it he has explained the whole history of mankind – and its future too,’ he added.

Marxism: Nicolai listened, fascinated, as Popov outlined the system. ‘Only matter exists,’ he began. ‘That is the great truth that underlies everything. Hence the name we give Marx’s system: Dialectical Materialism.

‘For it’s the material means of production that determines everything,’ he expounded. ‘How we feed ourselves, clothe ourselves, how we extract minerals from the earth and manufacture. Man’s whole consciousness, his society, his laws, all derive from this economic structure. And in every society to date there are two classes fundamentally: the exploiters and the exploited. Those who own the means of production and those who sell their labour.’

‘And the Dialectic?’

‘Why, the class struggle – that’s the Dialectic. Think of it. In feudal Europe, who held the land? The nobles. And the exploited peasants worked it. But gradually that structure fell apart. A new world arose: the bourgeois world which has led to full-scale capitalism. Now the exploiters are the factory owners and the exploited are the workers – the proletariat. Thesis and Antithesis.’

‘And the Synthesis?’

‘The Synthesis is the revolution. The workers take over the means of production. Capitalism destroys itself and we enter the new age. It’s quite inevitable.’

‘What happens in the new age?’

‘First Socialism. The workers’ state owns the means of production. Later we progress to perfect Communism where the state, as we know it, will not even be needed.’

‘So we are still progressing towards the new world we dreamed of as students?’

Popov nodded. ‘Yes. But our mistake back in ’74 was to try to make a revolution with the peasants. The revolution can only come from the proletariat. And the big difference is that now, thanks to Marx, we know what we’re doing. We have a framework.’ He tapped his finger on the table. ‘The revolution has become scientific.’

Though Nicolai was not sure he understood perfectly, he was impressed. ‘Are there many Marxists in Russia?’ he asked.

Popov shook his head. ‘Only a few so far. The leader of Russian Marxism is Plekhanov, and he mostly lives in Switzerland.’ He reeled off a few more names, none of which meant anything to Nicolai.

‘And what does all this tell us about the revolution in Russia?’ Nicolai asked. ‘How and when will it come?’

Popov gave a wry grin. ‘Sometimes, Nicolai Mikhailovich, it seems there are as many opinions as revolutionaries.’ Then he grew serious. ‘Briefly, however, there are two views.

‘Consider,’ he went on. ‘Formal Marxism says that everything happens in its proper time. First an agricultural, feudal economy, then a bourgeois state. From this capitalism develops, becomes more and more centralized and oppressive until finally it collapses. The workers break their chains: the Socialist revolution takes place. A clear and logical sequence.

‘Now Russia,’ he explained, ‘is still primitive. She has only just entered the bourgeois stage of development. Her proletariat is small. If we had a revolution of our own, it would probably be like the French Revolution – throw out the monarchy and leave the bourgeoisie in charge. Only Europe can have a Socialist revolution, and then – maybe – Russia could become absorbed into the new world order Europe will create.’

‘So, the revolution can’t start in Russia?’

‘According to classical Marx – no. But as I said, there are two views. The other – which even Marx himself admitted was possible – is this.

‘What if Russia is a special, a unique, case? Consider, Nicolai: a rotten autocracy; a weak noble class completely dependent on the Tsar and with no economic power of its own; a small middle class, hardly developed; and a peasantry traditionally organized in communes. Nothing like England or Germany at all, therefore; a brittle, out-dated regime. Maybe Russia could have a sudden revolution that would move directly to some kind of primitive Socialism after all. No one knows.’

Nicolai listened, fascinated. ‘And what do you think?’ he asked.

Popov shrugged. ‘I’ve no faith in the peasants, as you know. I believe the main doctrine of Marx – Russia must first pass through a bourgeois and capitalist state. The proletarian revolution can only follow after that.’

‘So you don’t think the revolution will begin here?’

‘I’m sure it won’t.’

During all this time, Nicolai had noticed that Ulyanov had been content to say nothing, though once or twice, when Popov had been talking of Marx, the lawyer had nodded in agreement. Now however he spoke, very quietly.

‘Marxism is clearly correct. But we should remember, Marx was also a revolutionary, and revolution is a practical as well as theoretical business.’ He nodded to Popov. ‘Russia is immensely backward, of course, but industry is developing rapidly now. The proletarian class is growing. The basic Marxist conditions for revolution may exist in Russia in our lifetimes. And then – this is the key – the proletariat will need to be educated and led. You’ll need a trained cadre at the centre, otherwise it won’t work.’ It was said quietly, yet with certitude. Clearly, when this lawyer gave his considered opinion, he did not expect it to be questioned.

Nicolai studied Ulyanov. A revolutionary cadre: the leaders or the new men, as he and Popov used to call themselves years ago. And suddenly remembering the arguments with his own father in those days, he asked the strange-looking fellow: ‘Tell me – your cadre: should it use any means to promote the revolution?’

The lawyer stroked his beard thoughtfully.

‘I should say yes.’

‘Including terrorism?’

‘If it’s useful,’ Ulyanov responded calmly, ‘why not?’

‘I just wondered,’ Nicolai said.

The conversation moved on after this, to other things. Nicolai tried to find out a little more about what Popov was doing, but soon gave up, and shortly afterwards Ulyanov announced that he felt tired and would retire to his carriage.

It was just before they parted, however, that one scrap of conversation occurred which, for some reason, always stuck in Nicolai’s mind afterwards. They had been discussing the famine, and he had told them about his father’s letter. ‘It’s quite true,’ Popov told him. ‘Things are terrible in the central provinces.’

And then Ulyanov spoke.

‘It’s a great mistake,’ he remarked.

‘What is?’ Nicolai asked.

‘This attempt at famine relief. We should do nothing to help. Let the peasants starve. The worse things are, the more it weakens the tsarist government.’ It was said quite calmly, without any anger or malice, in a detached, matter-of-fact voice.

‘He’s been saying that all week,’ Popov laughed.

‘I am correct,’ the lawyer replied, in the same tone. And it occurred to Nicolai that it was this very lack of emotion which might make this curious Chuvash rather formidable.

They parted in a friendly manner. Nicolai supposed he might never see either of them again. And, formidable or not, he certainly had no premonition that the balding lawyer with the little reddish beard would ever place himself at the head of a revolution.

It is a favourite hobby of those who study Russian history to choose – each having his own theory – a particular year from which, he will argue, the Russian revolutionary process began, and was perhaps inevitable. ‘This was really the beginning,’ he or she will say.

For Nicolai Bobrov, however, there was not just a year, but a single day: a day on which a tiny domestic scene took place that was witnessed only by himself. And though he participated afterwards in many of the great events that were seen on the stage of world history, it was to this small and unknown incident that he would always return in his mind and say: ‘That – that was the day when the revolution began.’

It took place some five months after the conversation in the train.

If Nicolai had wondered if his father might be exaggerating the difficulties at Russka, that suspicion died the day he arrived home.

The situation was desperate. The harvest of ’90 had been poor, not only at Russka, but down on the Bobrovs’ other estate in Riazan province too. In ’91 therefore, Misha Bobrov and his fellow members of the zemstvo board had tried to save the situation by urging the peasants to sow a mixed crop. ‘Extra potatoes,’ Misha had said. ‘Even if the cereals fail, there will be something to eat.’ But nothing had gone right. The entire potato crop had been blighted; every other crop had failed too. There had been nothing like it since the terrible year of 1839, and by autumn it was clear there would be famine.

Something else Nicolai quickly realized was that, for his father, the famine was also a personal crisis. Though seventy, and not in the best of health, Misha Bobrov had plunged into activity with a fervour that was almost reckless. ‘For the fact is,’ he confessed, ‘as a member of the zemstvo gentry, I feel a double burden these days.’

Nicolai knew very well what he meant. Ever since the elected zemstvo assemblies had been set up by the reforming Tsar Alexander, the government had tinkered with its membership. Sometimes the present Tsar had simply refused to confirm people, even when elected, if their loyalty was suspect. But the crunch had come in 1890, when the Tsar had simply decided to alter the voting rules – so drastically that the electorate was often reduced by more than half, and the gentry composed the vast majority of the board members. It was a shameful business, a calculated slap in the face of the simple Russian peasants, and Nicolai knew that his liberal-minded father had felt deeply embarrassed. ‘We gentry really have to prove ourselves,’ he repeatedly said. ‘Otherwise what are we good for?’ The result of this was that Misha Bobrov had worked himself into the ground; the tragedy was that he had achieved so little.

It was not his fault. The zemstvo had organized grain stores; it had carefully monitored food allocations; Misha and others had toured the area continuously. But nothing could alter the fact that supplies were running low. ‘In another eight weeks, all the grain will have gone,’ Misha told his son. ‘After that – God knows. We’ve been trying to buy grain from other provinces not so badly hit. But…’ He spread his hands. ‘Nothing.’

While they themselves were not short of food, it was clear to Nicolai that the strain of the famine around them had been too much for his parents. His father looked grey and sunken, his usual optimism entirely gone. Anna, usually so decisive, seemed wan and hesitant. But she did take him aside and tell him firmly: ‘Nicolai, you must take over. Your father can’t go on.’

He toured the village. It was always the same. To his delight he found that Arina was still alive – a small, shrivelled little babushka, but with eyes as keen as ever. Timofei Romanov and his wife gave him a warm welcome. Their daughter, baby Arina as Nicolai thought of her, was now a pleasant, rather square-faced girl of seventeen. Only Boris seemed cold towards him; but Nicolai did not place great importance on that. Throughout the village, he found a calm resignation. The elder saw to it that each family had a little bread. There was still salted meat in some izbas. And most families went out each day to try to catch fish through holes in the ice. ‘But,’ as Timofei remarked, ‘I dare say you’ll bury us, Nicolai Mikhailovich.’

At the monastery, which had grain stores, the monks had taken over the feeding of the nearby peasants, giving them flour each day. ‘We have nine weeks’ supply,’ they told him.

‘But the man upon whom everything now depends is at Russka,’ his father told him. ‘And that’s Vladimir Suvorin.’

Vladimir: the elder grandson of that old terror Savva, and the brother of the unfortunate Peter Suvorin. Back at the time, deeming it unwise, Misha had never told his son about the incriminating letter of Peter’s and how he had used it to blackmail old Savva. Since then he had preferred to keep the incident closed. Of Peter therefore, Nicolai knew only that he had run away, and appeared again some time later. ‘I believe he’s a professor in Moscow,’ Misha told him. ‘He never comes here.’ Of Vladimir Suvorin, on the other hand, Nicolai had heard more. The powerful industrialist ran his factories firmly in Moscow and Russka, but fairly. His workers never laboured more than ten hours a day; no children were used; there were numerous safety precautions and both work and living quarters were clean; there were no cruel fines for minor infractions. And unlike some of Russia’s leading industrialists, he had never suffered from a strike. In Moscow, Nicolai had heard, Vladimir had a huge house; but he came to Russka often. Having been away so much himself, however, Nicolai had never met him. ‘What’s he like?’ he asked.

‘Huge. And impressive,’ his father had replied, so that Nicolai had a vision of some tall and forbidding figure like old Savva.

It was on the second morning that Vladimir Suvorin arrived at the Bobrov house. He was huge, all right. But not as Nicolai had supposed. In fact, he was unlike anyone Nicolai had seen before.

Vladimir Suvorin was six feet tall and built like a bear; but there any resemblance to the animal kingdom ended. Even as he stepped off the sled and walked towards the waiting family, his presence seemed to fill the place with a sense of authority as, pulling off a grey glove, he extended a huge, rather fleshy hand to old Misha and smiled kindly.

‘My dear friend.’ He seemed to envelop them all.

This impression was even more striking once they were inside. His big frame was encased in a beautifully cut coat that made his slight paunch seem only a fitting adjunct to his imposing chest. His large, square-cut face had just enough fleshiness to suggest controlled good living. His hair was thinning but cut short; his nose large but regular; his dark brown moustache and short beard perfectly manicured. Around his neck was a soft, grey silk cravat fixed with a large diamond pin. And about his person there was a faint and pleasant scent of eau de cologne.

Nicolai watched him, fascinated. Like all those who lived in St Petersburg, he had a slightly superior attitude to Moscow. Moscow was provincial, a place for merchants. In St Petersburg, Nicolai had moved in the best circles. He knew the men of the imperial court, cosmopolitan aristocrats. He knew nobles with great houses. Yet here was a man – grandson of one of the Bobrov serfs – who did not belong to these upper-class circles and yet who was, Nicolai sensed at once, even more cosmopolitan than they. He spoke Russian elegantly; by a few words he let fall, it was clear he spoke French. And in fact, though Nicolai did not then know it, Suvorin was comfortable in German and English too.

But what was this extraordinary aura that Suvorin had? He’s like a monarch, or an eastern potentate, Nicolai thought. His black eyes, set wide apart, seemed to possess a comprehensive intelligence; above all, there was about him an astonishing sense of comfort and of power. He has perfect manners, yet he says and does exactly as he likes, and everyone obeys him, Nicolai guessed. It was the first time he had met a member of that special group, the cosmopolitan very rich. For though aged only forty-one, Vladimir Suvorin had long ago grown accustomed to the pleasant idea that, if he chose, there was almost nothing he could not buy. This knowledge, when combined with intelligence and culture, could make even the grandson of a serf into a prince.

And so, at once, the great man took them all over. Nicolai he immediately treated as a trusted colleague. ‘Thank God you are here, Nicolai Mikhailovich.’ Towards old Misha he was both courteous and protective. ‘You have done so much, dear friend. It’s time to let the younger generation take some of the burden now. But I know you will keep an eye on us all.’ In two minutes, Nicolai felt proud to be swept into his orbit.

‘There is news from the provincial governor,’ he said. ‘The government will supply grain. It’s being shipped from the Ukraine and we shall have it in a month. As you know, we still have about eight weeks’ supply left. I am going myself to speak to the governor, to make sure there are no slip-ups. So all we have to do is keep everyone in good heart. Yes, thank you, chère Madame, I should love a glass of cordial.’ And he sat down amongst them comfortably.

During his visit, Nicolai learned a little about Suvorin. He had lost a wife, married again and had a son. Normally he liked to travel two months a year. He knew Paris as well as he did Moscow. He knew personally such artists as Renoir and Monet; he knew the great writer Tolstoy and had been down to his estate at Yasnaya Polyana. Tchaikovsky he also knew. ‘And his unfortunate wife,’ he added with a sigh. This was a glittering world of literary men, crowded salons, connoisseurship and judicious patronage – a world where high rank or extreme wealth were a passport to entry, as they are everywhere, but where only talent and excellence were tolerated. It was clear that, on top of this, Suvorin was a formidable man of business. Nicolai also, learned much about the work that the zemstvos had done in the last few months. ‘Without men like your father,’ Suvorin told him frankly, ‘the local administration would have broken down entirely. It’s the zemstvo people in town and country who have held things together, not the central government at all.’

And after he had gone, Misha remarked admiringly: ‘Thank God we have him with us. He makes things happen. The authorities daren’t ignore him.’

Though he had noticed Boris Romanov’s coolness towards him, Nicolai would still have been surprised to hear the dispute raging in the izba of Timofei Romanov round that same time.

The disputants were old Arina and Boris. Timofei and his wife said little; as for the subject of the quarrel, the seventeen-year-old girl, her grandmother’s namesake, no one thought of asking her at all.

‘You can’t do it,’ Boris was fairly shouting. ‘Those people are our enemies, only you’re all too stupid to see it.’ At this Timofei looked uncomfortable and old Arina shrugged contemptuously. ‘Besides,’ Boris cried, ‘she should be here to help her parents.’ But old Arina was obdurate. ‘It would be one less mouth to feed,’ Timofei’s wife remarked at last.

‘Better to starve,’ Boris growled.

The years since the tragic fire that killed Natalia had done nothing to assuage the feelings of Boris Romanov. Indeed, as time passed, his sense that the Bobrovs and the entire gentry class were conspiring against him had grown even stronger. To Boris, the evidence was clear. Ten years ago, for instance, when it was rumoured that the government would finally abolish the burdensome payments the peasants had been making to their former owners ever since the Emancipation, the administration finally announced only a niggardly reduction of twenty-five per cent. ‘And what the devil is the use of that?’ Boris protested. Now the peasants’ voting rights to the zemstvo assemblies had been almost wiped out. ‘Another swindle by the gentry,’ Boris stormed. ‘Now they even take our votes away.’ And when, during the famine, old Timofei had pointed out the good work that Misha Bobrov was doing, Boris had only replied contemptuously: ‘If that old criminal can do it, an honest peasant could do it better.’

His grandmother’s decision that her granddaughter Arina should join the Bobrov household had therefore filled him with fury. Yet, since his father was head of the family, and Timofei was not prepared to contradict the determined old woman, there was nothing he could do.

‘I think it would be best,’ Timofei finally agreed, ‘if they’ll take her.’

And the old woman was certainly adamant. It was astonishing what force of will could be contained in that small frame; it was strange, too, how her determination to ensure the family’s survival had now caused her to shift all her thoughts from her own beloved daughter to the next generation. Her memories of the last great famine, perhaps some guilt from the time she had nearly exposed her as a baby, now caused old Arina to fight for the girl with an implacable determination. If things got worse, there was only one house where there would certainly be food. ‘I’ll speak to them,’ she said quietly. ‘They’ll take her.’

So it was that, shortly after Vladimir Suvorin had left, the Bobrov family was faced by old Arina and the girl. The old woman did not even have to say much. Anna Bobrov understood perfectly. ‘Of course we’ll take her,’ she promised. And then, with a smile: ‘My husband is tired. I’m sure he’ll be glad of her help.’

By that afternoon the girl was installed. ‘Now you’ll be safe,’ her grandmother whispered to her as she left. But there was one other message that remained, for some time, in the girl’s mind. For just as she had departed the village, Boris had pulled her to one side and muttered: ‘Go to those damned Bobrovs if you choose; but just remember, if you ever become their friend, you won’t be mine any more.’

The next six weeks were busy for Nicolai Bobrov. His mother’s prediction that the young Romanov girl would be useful soon proved to be accurate: a few days later, relieved of the strain of, coping alone with the famine, Misha Bobrov suddenly fell sick. Day after day he lay on his bed, seemingly too weak to move, and if it had not been for the calm, steady presence of this peasant girl who nursed him, Nicolai believed they might have lost the old man.

What a treasure she was, this baby Arina. She was fair-skinned with very light brown hair, and though one could not exactly call her pretty, there was a quietness and simplicity in her rather square, peasant’s face that was very attractive. She had a quietness about her, like a nun, that made her a pleasant, peaceful presence in any room she entered. She was very devout. Anna and she would often walk over to the monastery, shawls tied over their heads, so that from a distance one could not have said which was lady and which was peasant. Yet she had also learned from her grandmother a huge fund of folk tales, and when she recited these, her gentle face and blue eyes would seem to glow with pleasure and with quiet amusement. Besides her daily nursing, it was this knowledge in which old Misha rejoiced. ‘Tell me, little Arina, about the Fox and the Cat,’ Nicolai would hear his father’s voice weakly rasping as he passed the room. Or: ‘Pass me that book, little Arina – those Fairy Tales by Pushkin. He has a story like the one you tell.’

‘Your tales remind me of when I was a boy,’ he would tell the girl. ‘Isn’t it funny? We used to call your old grandmother young Arina then. And the tales you know come from another Arina – her aunt, I suppose – who was still alive when I was young.’ And to Nicolai he would say: ‘This young Arina, you know, she is the real Russia, the enduring heartland. Always remember that.’ And sometimes, looking at her affectionately, he would doze off and dream of those sunlit days when Pushkin was still alive, and his Uncle Sergei was putting on theatricals at Bobrovo.

‘If your father gets his health back, it’ll be thanks to that girl,’ Anna told her son. And indeed, Misha did seem to be gradually recovering his strength.

After three weeks Nicolai made a brief visit to St Petersburg to see his wife and children. Then he returned.

But there remained one huge problem: the promised grain supplies never arrived. ‘And I shan’t get well,’ old Misha declared, ‘until they do.’ Messengers were sent to the governor by the zemstvo and by Suvorin. Nicolai offered to return to St Petersburg to try to see certain high officials there. Every few days news came that the arrival of the grain was imminent, and everybody prepared. They still had a month’s supply in hand, then three weeks, then two.

It was in mid-February that the message came through to the local zemstvo. It was quite simple.

It was regretted that, owing to problems of transport and storage, the grain shipments previously notified would not be made.

And that was all.

‘Do they realize what this means?’ old Misha gasped from his bed. ‘It means the people here are going to die. No one’s even caught a fish in the river for two weeks. Two-thirds of the livestock has gone. Our people will be finished. I can’t believe that even those fools in the bureaucracy would do such a thing.’

The news was round the whole area in hours. And when Nicolai went into the village that day, he was hardly shocked when Boris Romanov shouted at him: ‘So, the people in St Petersburg have decided to kill us – is that it? Do they want our carcasses for meat?’ Nor was he surprised that this was greeted by nods of approval from the other villagers.

A week passed. The peasants were sullen. Another week. Many of the grain stores were now empty. A silence descended upon the village.

And then, one morning, grain began to arrive.

It was an extraordinary sight, lines of sleds, arriving from God knew where: a dozen; two dozen; three dozen. It was like a supply train for a small army. The sleds made their way ponderously into Russka where, it seemed, Suvorin’s managers were ready to receive them at one of the warehouses. But a dozen of the sleds peeled off and made their way through the woods towards the village of Bobrovo. When they reached it, they continued up the slope to the house of Misha Bobrov; and as they approached, and people came to the windows of the house to watch them in astonishment, it could be seen that, riding in the front sled, was a large and powerful figure – a figure who, wrapped in furs, his face glowing in the icy air, for once truly did resemble a mighty Russian bear. And it was the bear-like Vladimir Suvorin who now, with a happy grin, got down from the sled, strode over to where Misha – so excited that he had insisted on leaving his bed – was standing wrapped in a blanket, and gave him a mighty, bear hug. ‘There, Mikhail Alexeevich, I’ve brought you and your village some grain. We can’t have my old friend going hungry.’

‘I told you he’d do it!’ Misha cried to his son and his wife. ‘I told you only Suvorin could pull it off. But how the devil,’ he remarked to the industrialist, ‘did you manage to prize it out of the governor, after they told us they had nothing?’

‘My dear friend, you don’t understand. The authorities have nothing. No one is being supplied.’

Misha frowned. ‘Then this?’

The other grinned again. ‘I bought it myself. My agents found it and shipped it all the way from the south. It’s nothing to do with the authorities.’

For several seconds Misha was silent, unable to speak. Nicolai saw tears well up into the old man’s eyes. He held on to Suvorin’s sleeve, then muttered: ‘How can I thank you, Vladimir Ivanovich?’ And shaking his head: ‘What can I say?’

But it was after a moment’s thoughtful silence that Misha Bobrov suddenly made his extraordinary outburst. Throwing back his head, and gathering all his strength, he shouted out in a paroxysm of frustration, shame, and contempt: ‘Damn those people! Damn that governor! Damn the government in St Petersburg. I tell you, these people are useless to us. Let them give power to the local zemstvos since they are incompetent to govern themselves.’

He shouted it in front of the servants, the drivers, and several villagers. He did not seem to care. It came straight from his heart. Misha Bobrov, landowner, noble, liberal but loyal monarchist, was done with his government. So, Nicolai knew, were other landowners and zemstvo men all over the central provinces that winter of famine.

And so it was on this day, in after years, that Nicolai Bobrov would look back and murmur: ‘That was the start of the revolution.’

It was in early spring that the first outbreak began.

It started in the group of huts that straggled along the river bank below the little town of Russka. Why it should have started there no one knew. Perhaps because there was an old rubbish tip there – perhaps not.

At first, when several people suffered from diarrhoea, no one took much notice. But then, after two days, one man suddenly experienced a violent discharge from his bowels of whitish and yellowish matter, like whey. Shortly after, he vomited more of the same, then cried out that the pit of his stomach was on fire, and screamed for water. The next day he suffered acute cramps in the legs and his body started to turn blue. His eyes became so sunken he resembled a skeleton and when he spoke, his voice was only a hoarse whisper. When his wife tried his pulse, she could feel nothing. Just before the following dawn he died.

After his death, his body remained strangely warm for some time. His wife said it had grown hotter. She also noticed that, well after death, the corpse suffered muscular twitches and spasms, which frightened her.

And within a few more hours, all Russka knew that cholera had arrived.

‘If we can just keep it out of the village.’ This was Misha Bobrov’s litany each day. ‘Of course,’ he would say, ‘if Russia was properly run, the whole area would be sealed off. There’d be a cordon sanitaire.’ But neither local nor provincial administration could attempt such a thing: people came and went. Thanks, however, to the efforts of the two Bobrovs and of Suvorin, a sort of informal quarantine was in force that seemed to be limiting the terrible cholera’s spread.

Indeed, their modest success was soon confirmed by a young doctor that the zemstvo managed to employ to help deal with the outbreak. ‘In other parts, it’s raging almost out of control,’ he said. ‘The famine has weakened everyone and made them terribly prone to diseases.’

It was not long before Nicolai had made himself extremely familiar with the disease. ‘It especially attacks the young and old,’ the doctor informed him. ‘The most serious cases usually seem to go straight to the white vomit and diarrhoea stage. They usually die in a day or two. There is one small comfort though,’ he added. ‘Generally, the bulk of the fatalities occur at the very start of the outbreak. So the first week or so is the worst. After that, many of them pull through.’

There were several dozen cases in the town, a few in the monastery, and several in the villages in the area. Nicolai greatly admired the way the young doctor went about his work. ‘Though the truth is, I can’t do much,’ he confessed. ‘The early stages I dose with opium or nitrate of silver; mustard flannels and chloroform for when they get the cramps. If they’re sinking and there’s a chance they might pull through, brandy or ammonia to give them a jolt back to life. And that,’ he said wryly, ‘is about it.’

The unfortunate doctor was soon short of everything. Once more, the central government promised medical supplies, but this time the Bobrovs did not even expect them to arrive – which they did not. ‘All my best brandy went in the first week,’ Misha said with a sad smile. Nicolai went to the provincial capital to get supplies but found none. In Moscow, however, Suvorin was able to obtain some nitrate. And the young doctor worked without ceasing.

‘How do you avoid getting it yourself?’ Nicolai had asked him when they first met.

‘Some people believe it’s carried in the air,’ the doctor told him. ‘But I believe the chief cause of infection is through the mouth. Never drink water or eat food touched by someone with cholera. If you get vomit or any bodily fluid from sick people on your clothes, change and wash yourself very thoroughly before you eat or drink anything. I don’t say it’s foolproof, but I haven’t got cholera yet.’

And though Nicolai several times accompanied the young doctor to places where the disease was raging, he carefully followed this advice and came to no harm.

A week passed. A second. A third. And still the cholera did not spread to the village of Bobrovo. Strangely enough also, while the rest of the world was trembling before the sickness, Misha Bobrov was getting his strength again. He would often walk out now with his wife or young Arina and stroll in the woods above the house. It was pleasant, too, for the old man and his son to come to know each other better again. Indeed, it nowadays caused Nicolai some amusement to remark to his friend the doctor: ‘Do you know, since he turned against the government, my old father’s far more radical than I am. I thought it was supposed to be the other way round!’

Gradually the deaths from the disease grew less, the new cases fewer. After a month it seemed to have subsided. ‘You’ve been lucky,’ the doctor told them. ‘And I’ve just been asked to go to another bad spot over by Murom. Goodbye.’

Soon afterwards, in mid-May, Nicolai decided it was time for him to return to St Petersburg. ‘I’ll be back in July,’ he promised his parents. ‘And if there’s no more sign of cholera in the region, I’ll bring all the family to see you.’ It was with a considerable sense of relief, therefore, that he set out once more for the capital.

He did not go alone. To their surprise, the Bobrovs had discovered that young Arina had always wanted to see the capital. And since Misha was now recovered, and Nicolai’s wife had written to say she had need of a temporary nanny for their children, it was agreed that young Arina should accompany Nicolai and remain with his family for the summer. The girl seemed delighted.

And if, just before leaving, she had had an unpleasant interview with her brother Boris, she kept it to herself.

It was three days after they had left that old Timofei Romanov showed signs one afternoon of being ill. Within an hour he was vomiting a whitish substance with little rice-like grains in it.

He had cholera. It had gone straight to the second, deadly stage.

By the time darkness fell, he was in agony. By morning he was transformed. The terrible discharges had left his body wracked and almost purple. His eyes were hollow caverns; the pallor of death was upon him. His wife and old Arina, who had changed his sodden clothes a dozen times already, stood in the pale light of dawn and gazed at him mournfully. The old fellow’s eyes were staring, sometimes at them, sometimes at the little icon in the corner; but he could no longer utter. Once, with a huge effort, he managed to smile, as if to tell them that he was resigned.

Misha Bobrov was surprised early that morning to find Boris Romanov at his door. He could not remember when the surly and suspicious fellow had last been up to the house. But today he seemed polite, almost friendly.

‘I’m afraid, sir,’ he explained, ‘it’s bad news. My father.’ And he told Misha the details.

‘My God.’ So, just when he thought they had been spared, the plague had come to Bobrovo after all. Thank God I’m fit enough to deal with the crisis, Misha thought, and immediately gave orders to send for a doctor and warn the people in Russka about the outbreak.

He was rather surprised, a few minutes later, to find young Boris still hanging around.

‘The fact is, sir,’ the younger man explained, ‘he’s asking for you. He wants to say goodbye.’ And just for a moment, Misha saw tears form in Boris’s pleading eyes. ‘He won’t last the day,’ he said simply.

Misha hesitated. He could not help himself. The fact was, he had no desire to go into a house where there was cholera. I can’t afford to get it myself, he thought. There’s too much to do. But immediately he felt ashamed. God knows, I ask the doctor to do it. Besides, I’ve known old Timofei all my life.

‘Of course,’ he said. And put on his coat.

How confoundedly hot it was in the Romanov izba. There was a suffocating smell, despite the fact that a window had been opened.

There before him lay his childhood playmate Timofei – or what was left of him. Poor devil. It seemed his mind might have wandered a bit, for he now gazed at Misha with a kind of astonishment; but it was hard to know what was in his mind since the old man could not speak. My God, but he’s the same age as me, Misha remembered. He looked a hundred. Well, now I’m here, I must go through with it.

He glanced round the room. Despite everything, old Arina and her daughter had kept it spotlessly clean. The floor had been scrubbed recently, and the table. Timofei lay in clean bedclothes by the stove. The morning light was streaming in through the window. He glanced at the little icon in the corner, taking what comfort he could from it. Boris offered to take his coat: the heat felt a little less oppressive once it was off. But though they offered him a chair, he preferred to stand, some distance away from the patient, and was careful not to touch anything. And now dear old Timofei was trying to smile.

Misha spoke what words of comfort he could. To his surprise, he did not find it so difficult. He recalled times past, people they had known, and the gentle old peasant seemed to receive pleasure from it. Boris, with a grateful smile, slipped out of the room for a minute. It was strange how, in the presence of death, foolish antagonisms could disappear.

Boris moved swiftly and quietly. He could hardly believe how easy the whole thing had been. His father had looked so surprised to see the landowner that for a second Boris had feared Misha might guess that the old man had not sent for him at all, but he had not; all was well. Now he slipped across the passageway into the open storeroom opposite.

The bedclothes and three of his father’s shirts were lying in a corner where they had been thrown a short time ago. Old Arina said they should burn them but no one had had time yet. Carefully he opened out Misha Bobrov’s coat, and laid it on the pile. Then he turned it over and did it again, gently pressing the coat down. He repeated this, making sure that the coat was thoroughly impregnated. Then, with a look of polite respect on his face, he went back into the room, carrying the coat carefully.

‘This,’ he whispered to himself, ‘is for Natalia.’

What a business that had been, Misha considered a short time later as he walked hurriedly back to the house. How horribly hot the room was. Thank God he had taken care not to touch anything. You couldn’t be too careful.

But he was proud of himself. He had done the right thing, and the old peasant was happy: he could see that.

He must have been sweating himself in there, more than he had realized. As he strode back up the slope even his coat felt damp. He wiped his brow and his moustache with his coat sleeve. Yes, it had certainly been an unpleasant business and he was glad it was over.

A week later the news reached Nicolai in St Petersburg: his father had cholera.

1892, Summer

There was a subdued buzz of conversation in the room. Soon the distinguished speaker would arrive and Rosa Abramovich felt a tingle of anticipation. She had never been to a meeting like this before. There were about thirty people there, almost all in their early twenties.

Outside the evening sun was bathing the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius and its old castle hill in a soft orange light.

Rosa Abramovich was twenty now and she had lived in Vilnius for a decade. She might, she knew, have been in America. Many Jews had started to go there after the pogroms in 1881; but at the family conference her father had called in the autumn of that terrible year, they had decided instead to cross the Jewish Pale, some five hundred miles to the north-west, into Lithuania. ‘There’s not much trouble in Vilnius,’ her father had remarked. ‘If pogroms come there, then we’ll leave Russia.’ He still had faith.

Rosa loved her new home. From the Lithuanian capital it was only a day’s train journey to the Baltic Sea, or south-west to the ancient Polish capital of Warsaw. To the north lay the Baltic provinces where the Latvians and Estonians lived and where once, centuries ago, the Crusading Teutonic Knights had raided Russia. ‘It’s very much a border province, a crossroads,’ her father had remarked.

And indeed, though all these lands nowadays formed part of the Tsar’s sprawling empire, it could not be said that their character was in the least Russian. In the rolling, prosperous farmlands and woodlands of Lithuania, the people had not forgotten that once they and the Poles, in their joint kingdom, had been masters of all these western lands, and more besides. The Lithuanian farmers, with their large, handsome wooden houses, reminded Rosa of the independent Cossack farmers she had known in the Ukraine. As for the capital of Vilnius, it was a pleasant old European city, containing buildings in many styles – Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassical. It contained a fine Catholic cathedral and numerous churches. Of Russian architecture there were hardly any examples at all. And this cosmopolitan city had also a thriving Jewish community.

In fact, Rosa’s father had found only one thing wrong with the place: there were far too many of those secular-minded young Jews who were turning their back on their religion. Try as he might, it had been almost impossible to stop his two sons consorting with them; but little Rosa he had kept a strict watch over, until his sudden and unexpected death the previous year. And now, it was into precisely such dangerous company that she had fallen that evening. It was all rather exciting.

Friends of her brothers had brought her there. Half the people in the room were young men and women from the assimilated Jewish middle class – students, a young doctor, a lawyer. The rest were Jewish workers, including three girls who were seamstresses. It was a pleasant, lively group, but to Rosa they were all strangers. And why had she come? She hardly knew: but mainly, she supposed, because she had nothing better to do.

For though she was only twenty, life had already dealt Rosa some bitter blows. At first, after arriving in Vilnius, it had seemed that everything was going so well. Her musical career had made huge strides: at the age of sixteen she had given several piano recitals and made a small tour; a year later she was promised a major tour with an important conductor. Her parents were delighted; her brothers proud, even a little envious. She had everything she could desire. And now she had nothing.

Why, she used to wonder – why would God give her this gift, only to blight it? This must be another of life’s inexplicable mysteries. The last three years had been a nightmare. Sometimes the sickness had been like a terrible weight on her chest and she would cough until it hurt; for days she would be prostrate, unable to summon up the energy to do anything. The tour had had to be cancelled. Even her musical studies were almost abandoned. ‘If I can’t play properly, I don’t want to play at all,’ she told her unhappy father. She had slowly sunk into a depression, while her family watched hopelessly.

‘If only she had friends to help her,’ her mother would lament. The trouble was that almost all her friends in Vilnius were musicians, and now she no longer wished to see them. Only one close friend remained: young Ivan Karpenko, down in the Ukraine. Even since that terrible day when he had saved the family from the pogrom, there had been a special bond between Rosa and the Cossack youth. It was to Ivan, therefore, that she wrote long letters during this period of pain, and from whom she received back letters of warm encouragement.

The sudden death of her father the previous year had forced Rosa to come out of her lethargy. The family’s main income had gone; her two brothers were having to support her mother. Rosa was forced to consider what to do with her life. A musical career was out of the question now so what were the alternatives. Teach the piano – for a pittance? Her mother suggested it, but Rosa dreaded the thought. There was the Teachers’ Institute in the city, where Jewish students could train to teach in the state schools. Her brothers thought this was better. What does it matter, if I can’t do what I want? she thought. But I must do something. I can’t just be a useless person. She had enrolled at the Institute. And now here she was, on a summer evening, at a Jewish workers’ meeting simply because she had nothing better to do.

There were so many meetings. Some were just study groups, teaching eager workers to read and write; others were more communal and met to discuss how they could improve working and living conditions. And a few were, more or less, political.

Today’s meeting, however, was rather special. A professor all the way from Moscow had come to address them on worker movements in and outside Russia. ‘But I dare say it’ll go further than that,’ one of her companions whispered. ‘The professor’s a Marxist.’ And when Rosa looked blank. ‘A revolutionary.’

A revolutionary. What did such a person look like? Would they all be arrested? It was with some interest that Rosa now looked up as the speaker entered the room.

Peter Suvorin spoke well. At first, his thin, abstracted face, small gold-rimmed spectacles and quiet, kindly eyes might have given him the appearance of a mild-mannered schoolmaster. But soon it was this very gentleness and simple sincerity – combined with a wonderful clarity in all his explanations – that made him impressive.

At thirty-seven, Peter Suvorin had not changed. He was one of those pure and fortunate souls who, having encountered a single and powerful idea, find their destiny. Peter’s idea, the theme of his life, was very simple: that mankind could – and must – reach a state where all men are free and none oppressed. He had believed it in 1874 and he believed it now.

He had had a strange life. Back in 1874, after his sudden departure from Russka, he had wandered in the Ukraine for months and the Suvorins had wondered if he had died. Then, however, needing money, he had contacted his brother Vladimir in Moscow; and Vladimir, feeling he must, had let old Savva know that his grandson was alive.

Was it, perhaps, Savva Suvorin who had sealed Peter’s fate? According to his lights, the old man had been forgiving. For the letter he had seen, supposedly written by Peter and confessing to laying the fire, had been a terrible blow. For months afterwards, in secret, he would mutter to himself: ‘To attack his own family!’ It would have been hard to say whether this treachery, or the accidental killing of the two young people, shocked him more; and he was so shaken that he never told anyone, including Vladimir, about it. Now, therefore, when news of Peter came, Savva sent him a strongly worded message: return at once to make amends for his terrible crimes or be cut off from the family for ever. It seemed to Savva that he was acting with forbearance. And he was shocked still further when, having received the message with a groan, Peter refused to return. ‘His heart is hardened into sin,’ old Suvorin declared, and never spoke of the young man again. Six months later he died.

The Will of Savva Suvorin was clear. The dangerous revolutionary Peter was cut out of all control of the Suvorin enterprises and left with only a modest allowance. ‘You could contest it,’ Vladimir told him frankly. ‘Or I’ll give you part of my fortune myself.’ But Peter was young and proud. ‘Besides, I want no part of it anyway,’ he said. He returned to Moscow and his studies. He fell in love but was rejected. He discovered a talent for physics, studied the subject deeply, and even wrote a small textbook on the subject which was published successfully. He told himself that he was happy enough. And he continued, steadfastly, to look for a better world.

He came to Marxism in the 1880s. Ever since his first meeting with Popov, he had become a student of revolutionary thought. He had several times encountered Popov again, and that secretive fellow had put him in touch with certain radical groups; but by all these people he was seen as a kindly dreamer. In Marxism, however, he had found a system that gave him more stature. Here was his longed-for utopia, but scientifically arrived at – not by some violent, conspiratorial overthrow, but by a gradual and natural historical process. ‘You call my views utopian,’ he would say to Vladimir, ‘but I just call them human progress.’ And in his heart he secretly believed that one day the Suvorin factories would pass into the hands of the workers with scarcely a shot fired.

Strangely, it was his early interest in Marxism that had convinced the tsarist authorities that the mild-mannered professor was harmless to the state. That very year a senior official had privately conveyed the government’s attitude to Vladimir Suvorin himself.

‘My dear fellow, as long as your brother sticks to studying Marx we’re not very worried. We’ve looked at all these things, you know,’ he added wisely. ‘This Marx was an economist. We’ve even allowed some of his works to be translated and published – because right or wrong, no one can understand a word of him anyway. It’s revolutionaries we’re worried about, not economists – and I can’t see your brother throwing any bombs, can you?’

It was a strange relationship between the brothers – the rich industrialist and the poor professor, the family man and the lonely bachelor. They were fond of each other, but some strain was inevitable. Nor was it helped by the fact that Vladimir’s handsome young second wife, who loved to entertain in the great Moscow house, could not help feeling rather sorry for this kindly man whom she regarded as a poor unfortunate. ‘Peter should marry,’ she would tell Vladimir. ‘But I’m afraid he’s too timid.’ Peter sensed her feelings and it hurt his pride. He did not go to the Suvorin house often.

This evening’s meeting was small, but Peter Suvorin believed it was important, and he was especially anxious it should go well. As he spoke, therefore, he tried to gauge the reaction of the audience carefully. With admirable precision, he outlined for these young people the developments in Europe. Only three years before, an important Socialist conference, the Second International, had been held for delegates from many countries. The last year had seen, for the first time, groups of workers in Russia celebrating May Day as a token of solidarity with the international workers’ movement. ‘And these things, in their infancy now, will shape the future of civilization in generations to come,’ he assured them.

Only when he was sure he had them with him did Peter Suvorin broach the real subject that was on his mind, and the reason why he had been so anxious to address them that night. Which was that they were Jewish.

He began carefully, and subtly, by alluding to some of their grievances: for in recent years the tsarist government, for reasons never explained, had undoubtedly turned vigorously against the Jewish community and treated them shabbily. Jews had been forbidden to buy land and told they must only live in towns; education quotas were being applied against them so that only a miserably small percentage of students in higher education could be Jews, even in the big cities in the Pale. And the laws of the Pale were suddenly being enforced with such viciousness that the previous year some seventeen thousand Jews had been thrown out of Moscow. Worse yet were the repeated outbreaks of violence since the pogroms of 1881, which the government had done little to prevent.

It was hardly surprising therefore if in recent years the Jewish workers had begun to think of setting up their own workers’ committees, quite independent of the others. Peter could hardly blame them. But this was exactly what he was anxious to combat.

‘The workers of the world must unite,’ he told them. ‘All groups, all nations, shall be one.’ He saw this vision so clearly. ‘And besides,’ he warned them, ‘as part of a larger movement, your voice will be much stronger than it ever would be as a separate group.’

They listened to him politely, but he could see they were uncertain. And then a tousle-haired young man near the front quietly addressed him. ‘You say we should remain part of a larger brotherhood. Well and good. But what are we to do if our non-Jewish brothers refuse to defend us? What then?’

It was the question Peter had been awaiting. For it was true, he knew, that Russian workers had mixed feelings about their Jewish brothers. In Russia proper, they were foreigners; in the Pale, they were competition; and there were even activists and Socialists who had failed to stand up against the pogroms for fear of alienating the workers they were trying to win over to their cause.

Peter was too honest to deny the problem, but it was a phase that would pass, he assured the young man. ‘Remember, we are at the very first beginnings,’ he said. ‘Even many of the activist workers have to be educated; but as the great brotherhood develops in size and consciousness, this problem will fall away. And,’ he added, ‘you will speed that process by staying on the inside, not by splitting off.’ There was a long pause. He was not sure if he had convinced the young man or not. Some other questions followed.

It was just as the meeting was about to end that the girl stood up. She had been sitting towards the back, just behind a large youth, and he had only been aware of her mass of black hair. Now, suddenly, she was staring at him, with huge, luminous eyes and a look of genuine puzzlement on her face. And indeed, Rosa Abramovich was puzzled. She had listened intently to all that Peter Suvorin had said. She had caught his vision of the great sweep of human history and the better world to come, and it had touched her profoundly: she had never heard anyone speak like that before. Yet when she considered her own life, and her memories of what had passed in the Ukraine, there was something she found she could not understand. And so now, she faced him a little awkwardly and asked in a soft voice: ‘But when the new world comes, when the Socialist state has been achieved, will that mean that the Jews are not persecuted any more – that men will have changed?’

Peter stared at her. It was a question of such dazzling stupidity that, for a moment, he had not known what to say. Was she trying to be funny? No. As he gazed at her large, serious eyes and pale face, it was obvious that she was entirely sincere. What a striking-looking girl she was. He smiled.

‘I’m afraid you haven’t understood,’ he said kindly. ‘In a Socialist worker state, all men will be equal. The persecution of minorities is inconceivable.’ And seeing her looking doubtful: ‘Come to me after the meeting. I’ll recommend you some books to read.’

Rosa sat down. Someone was saying something, but she did not hear. Did she believe the professor? She had no idea. But one thing she did know. He was the most beautiful-looking man she had ever seen in her life.

The courtship of Peter Suvorin and Rosa Abramovich was not long, for from their first meeting it seemed as if they had known each other all their lives.

‘He’s almost twice your age,’ her brothers warned her.

‘He’s a revolutionary, and he’s not Jewish,’ her mother protested. And then, more hurtfully: ‘Remember your father, Rosa, before you do this thing.’

Rosa had loved three men in her life. One, she now understood, was the Cossack boy Ivan Karpenko. Of course, it was only a childhood affection, followed by a friendship conducted by letter. Yet as she grew older and wiser, this innocent childhood love came to seem more and not less important to her. The other man had been a conductor she had watched from afar when she was fifteen, and never spoken to. And now Peter Suvorin. None of them, as it happened, had been Jewish.

What was it that so moved her about Peter Suvorin? Was it his mind? His brilliant mastery of economic theory fascinated her, even if she could not always follow it. He seemed to possess a system that explained all the complex problems of the world. But there was also a purity about him, a passionate idealism that she loved. He was a pilgrim soul, an outsider, a sufferer. He was a bachelor who, in all these years, had never found a woman worthy to be his wife.

As for Peter, he was astounded to find himself with this magical, poetic creature who had somehow dropped from the sky into his life. True, she was Jewish; but she was one of a kind. And besides, he told himself, I really have no one in the world to please but myself.

If Peter felt he had begun his life again, to Rosa it seemed that her own existence had suddenly been resolved. She had a purpose now. Even her health started to improve dramatically. And though she loved her mother and revered the memory of her father, she found she could no longer think as they had. She had seen too much of the younger generation, her brother’s friends. Many of them scarcely went to the synagogue at all. ‘Why should I ruin my life, which has been unhappy, for the sake of religion, which has brought me no comfort?’ she once burst out to her mother who was berating her. ‘I won’t do it. I don’t care any more.’ She was in love. Nothing else seemed to matter.

‘You are leaving me,’ her mother told her bitterly. ‘I will have nothing to do with it.’

‘She’ll get over it,’ her brothers counselled.

It was in September that Rosa left with Peter for Moscow. But it was a short while later, just before they married, that she took one further step. She accepted baptism into the Russian Orthodox Church. ‘You know it means nothing,’ she wrote to her brothers. ‘But it makes things easier in Moscow, especially if there are children. I suppose we shall have to tell Mother,’ she added, doubtfully.

A month later, when she finally heard of it, Rosa’s mother quietly summoned her friends to sit Shivah with her. She herself had sat, only two weeks before, with an old couple whose son had become an atheist and a Socialist. ‘She is dead to me now,’ she announced sadly.

Her sons refused to take part, though they tried to comfort her. But her friends understood.

1905, July

Young Ivan worshipped his Uncle Boris. Uncle Boris knew everything.

He was head of the family now. Timofei and his wife had died in the plague of ’91; old Arina a year later. He had a large family, some of them already full grown; and to these he added his little sister Arina, whose husband had died young, and her six-year-old son, Ivan.

The news that his Uncle Boris had given the boy was certainly exciting. ‘This year, little Ivan, is the most important year in the history of Russia. And do you know why? Because the revolution has begun.’

The revolution. It was certainly an exciting word, but the boy was not certain what it meant. ‘It means,’ his uncle explained, ‘that we are going to kick the Bobrovs out and take all the land for ourselves. What do you think of that?’ And little Ivan had to agree that this sounded wonderful indeed.

He knew that his mother Arina liked the Bobrovs, and not everyone in the village spoke badly of them. But Uncle Boris was always right. ‘Long live the revolution!’ he cried, to please his uncle.

The extraordinary events of 1905 had been brewing for a long time. If the reign of Alexander III had been one of reaction, the last eleven years under his unimaginative son Nicholas II and his German wife had been a sorry continuation of almost everything that was dull and oppressive in the former regime. Indeed, sometimes it almost seemed as if the unfortunate Tsar Nicholas was deliberately looking for people to oppress. For nearly a century, the people of Finland had been an autonomous duchy within the empire; now, suddenly, the government had decided to Russify them, as it had the Ukraine, with the result that the Finns were rioting. In the Ukraine, meanwhile, there had been a peasant rising, and in 1903 a terrible pogrom. Meanwhile the government, frightened and determined to control everything, had become almost irrational. For no reason, there was a sudden clampdown on the universities; and when students protested they were treated like political agitators and sent into the army. It had even alienated the last supporters who might have helped them, by curtailing the work of the liberal gentry in the zemstvos.

Police spies were everywhere. So tangled had the government’s system of supervision become, that in order to prove himself to the terrorists he had infiltrated, a government agent had been forced to shoot the Minister of the Interior! Illegal political parties were forming.

True, there were bright spots. Under the brilliant Finance Minister, Sergei Witte, Russia’s railways and heavy industry had made great strides. The Trans-Siberian line reached as far as the Pacific now. Foreign capital was pouring in, especially from France. But these developments, important though they were, scarcely as yet meant a great deal to the ordinary people, and indeed in recent years there had even been a mild economic depression.

But the cause of the cataclysm, when it came, was the war.

It was the same story as before, when Russia had so disastrously become involved in the Crimea. This time it was in the Far East where the Trans-Siberian railway had caused Russia to extend her influence, bullying the Chinese and coming into conflict with Japanese interest in the region. Over-confident in her army and navy, the mighty land empire had allowed herself to get into a war with the little island nation. And now she had been catastrophically beaten.

It was humiliating. Month after month, news came of Russian failure. Russian troops, fighting a distant war that neither they nor their families understood, were suffering appalling casualties. The cost of the war had caused economic chaos. There was a famine. And the government had not a friend. Even the Temporary Regulations – the martial law still in force since 1881! – were useless to contain the situation. The liberal gentry of zemstvos begged the Tsar to grant the people an assembly.

And then, in January of that year, had come Bloody Sunday.

This incident – the spark which, most believe, ignited the great Russian conflagration – was a strange and confused affair. The demonstration, led by a Ukrainian priest and demanding only the redress of grievances, wound its way in some confusion through the frozen streets of St Petersburg. The massacre did not, as always portrayed, take place in front of the Winter Palace. (The Tsar, in any case, was not in the city that day.) But in one of several incidents, frightened soldiers fired upon the crowd, causing the deaths of a number of people at the city’s Narva Gate.

And then all hell broke loose. The liberal zemstvos protested at the outrage. Strikes broke out. With consummate foolishness, the government closed the universities, leaving the student population on the streets with nothing to do. Every dissatisfied group in the empire, sensing a looming crisis, saw its chance to protest. There were riots in Finland, the Baltic states and Poland, as well as in Russia proper. By summer, police records detailed 492 significant disturbances. The huge textile mills at Ivanovo, north of Vladimir, were in an uproar. In journals and leaflets circulating in the cities, revolutionary articles began to appear under a pseudonym that until then had been known only in revolutionary circles: V. I. Lenin. During May and June came yet more crushing news from the east: the whole Russian fleet had been sunk. Soon after this, down at the Black Sea port of Odessa, the Russian battleship Potemkin had mutinied.

What was the government to do? The police could not cope; the army was mostly in the east, defeated and beyond recall. All Russia waited.

And now little Ivan was in a fever of excitement. What was happening at Russka?

Until that morning, the town and the Suvorin factory had remained quiet. But just before noon, a man returning from the town reported: ‘Something’s going on there in the weaving shops.’ By mid-afternoon word came: ‘It’s a strike.’ And soon afterwards three girls from the village who worked at the cotton mill appeared and reported: ‘They told us to go home.’ And by these signs little Ivan understood that the revolution had come to Russka.

It was late that afternoon, however, that his Uncle Boris began to behave strangely.

Alexander Bobrov was still brooding irritably as he entered the market place at Russka that day.

He was a handsome, fair-haired boy, just fourteen, with the first faint down of a moustache on his upper lip. He had hurried towards the town as soon as he heard about the trouble. But not before certain words had passed between him and his father – words that could not be unsaid. Which was why he was still frowning when he reached the town. Why couldn’t he control himself?

They were a strange couple, father and son: so alike in looks, yet mentally so different. I suppose, Nicolai had thought, as he gazed at the boy that morning, some people are just born conservative.

The sad death of Nicolai’s elder son some years before had left Alexander as his only heir now, and the boy took his position very seriously. A religious fellow, he liked to go to church with his grandmother Anna and was extremely proud of his family’s ancient connection with the monarchy. Above all, he was anxious to take over the estate: and this, for a long time, had been the source of the tension between them.

How well Nicolai remembered his own disgust with his father Misha’s handling of the estate; now it was his turn. Had he done any better? No. The Riazan estate, bit by bit, had gone; he had had numerous offers for pieces of the remaining woodlands and pastures at Russka – one from the village commune, and two, for small parcels, from Boris Romanov. But each time he had refused because of the protests of his mother Anna and young Alexander. Now, he knew, he could not hold out much longer. ‘The fact is,’ he would say, ‘since the Emancipation there hasn’t been enough land for the peasants or for me.’ His fate was not uncommon: half the landowners he knew had sold their estates in recent years, as the Russian nobility slipped into its final decline. But it was no use telling that to young Alexander.

And even this shortcoming was nothing compared to Nicolai’s latest crime. ‘For why,’ his son had accused, ‘are the workers making these wicked demands of the Tsar? It’s because of the zemstvos, Father – because of you.’

Nicolai knew that he should have chastised the boy for such impertinence. Yet as he looked at his son standing there with indignant tears in his eyes, he couldn’t bring himself to. For the fact was, the charge was perfectly true. It had been last year, even before the troubles broke out, that he and the other liberal men of the zemstvo councils had met in St Petersburg and drafted their proposal to the Tsar, asking for an elected assembly, a parliament, to help govern the nation. How heady and exciting those meetings had been. Some present had declared that it was like the meeting of the Estates General before the French Revolution; and Nicolai himself had suddenly felt the same wonderful exaltation he had briefly known as a student, during The Going to the People, thirty years ago. If my son’s a born conservative, I suppose I’m a born radical, he thought with a smile. And it was certainly true that when the troubles broke out after Bloody Sunday, the workers and revolutionaries, having no prepared political plan, had simply taken over the demands of the zemstvo men, and demanded an elected assembly. And how much it says about our backward Russia, Nicolai reflected, that even now, in the year 1905, for the people to demand a vote in their country’s affairs is seen by the government as little short of treason.

It was certainly treason to young Alexander. For that was what the boy, in a flood of tears, had called back at his father as he rushed out of the room: ‘Traitor!’

Alexander was halfway across the market square when he saw a familiar figure, and at once he smiled. It was Vladimir Suvorin.

The relationship between the young noble and the industrialist was very simple. The industrialist was Alexander’s hero. Suvorin had hardly changed with the years: he was slightly heavier; there was a just perceptible greying at the temples; but for as long as Alexander could remember, his robust and perfectly tended figure had always been the same. It was not only Suvorin’s extraordinary charm that captivated the boy; nor was it his great culture, of which Alexander was only dimly aware. The figure that the boy saw at Russka was the practical man of affairs: and above all, he was a conservative.

Though he took little interest in politics, it was almost inevitable that Vladimir Suvorin should be a conservative. Knowing young Alexander’s tsarist loyalties, he used to laugh and say: ‘You must not give me too much credit, my friend. It’s only self-interest that makes me love the Tsar.’

Sometimes Suvorin would try to enlighten the boy. ‘The Tsars have always seen the larger merchants as arms of the state, to make Russia strong,’ he would explain. ‘Peter the Great just taxed the great merchants into bankruptcy; but later administrations have been more intelligent, and nowadays they give us government contracts and protect us from outside competition with tariffs.’ Once or twice, trying to give the boy a better appreciation of the world as it really was, he would caution him: ‘Russian industry mostly prospers, Alexander, by exporting raw materials and by selling manufactured goods, usually of rather inferior quality, to our own huge empire and the poorer countries of the east. So the Tsar and his empire are good for me, that’s all.’ But even these blunt explanations did little to modify Alexander’s view of Russia or his hero. Suvorin supported the Tsar. That was all that mattered. And it amused the older man, in a bluff way, to rest a large hand on the boy’s shoulder and remark: ‘My grandfather was your grandfather’s serf, my friend. But I don’t mind if you don’t.’

When Alexander came up with him, Suvorin was walking towards the cotton mill. He nodded briefly as the youth fell into step beside him. ‘It is really a strike?’ young Bobrov asked.

‘Yes.’ The industrialist seemed quite calm.

‘What will you do?’ Alexander whispered. ‘Call in the Cossacks?’ He knew several strikes had already been broken up by the dashing Cossack cavalry squadrons. But to his surprise, Suvorin shook his head. ‘I’m not such a fool,’ he replied.

For half an hour they walked round various parts of the Suvorin enterprise – the mill, the weaving looms, the dormitories. All the machines lay idle, but there was no sign of other trouble. The workers were mostly standing around in groups, talking quietly, and as Suvorin went by, he exchanged polite greetings with them. ‘The strike’s not against me or the working conditions, you see,’ he explained to Alexander in a low voice. ‘This is different. People from outside have come and persuaded them to strike in sympathy. They’re demanding political reforms.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Calling in the Cossacks would only make things worse.’

Alexander groaned. ‘It’s those zemstvo men, like my father, isn’t it?’ he muttered. ‘They’ve stirred up all this trouble.’

But to Alexander’s surprise, Suvorin shook his head firmly. ‘Don’t blame your father,’ he replied. ‘Wait.’ And for several more minutes he said nothing.

Only when they were outside in the warm and dusty street did Suvorin explain. Taking the boy by the arm, he walked up and down with him, speaking quietly but with conviction.

‘You don’t understand what is happening, my friend. Do you know the story of the emperor who had no clothes? Well, that’s what is happening to the Tsar now. Think of it – Russia is huge, inchoate, disorganized. A vast land of peasants where a semblance of order is maintained by an autocratic Tsar, his army and police, and a minority of privileged people like you who have few links with the people. But the whole state is a huge sham, don’t you see? Because – this is the key – no one has any real power. The Tsar has no power because his army is in the east and he has no true link with his people. The government is not for the people, it’s against them. You and your father have no power: you depend upon the Tsar for all your privileges. I have no power: I depend upon the Tsar to maintain order and protect my business. The people have no power, because they have no organization, and no idea what they want anyway.’ He shrugged. ‘The present crisis shows that the Tsar is actually unable to lead our society or to control it. The emperor has no clothes. And in this huge mess we call the empire, it will only take one spark to set off a huge fire. We could have a revolt any day, that would make the Pugachev look like a tea party. Total, mindless, chaos.’ Suvorin sighed. ‘That’s why I’m being careful.’

‘So what can the Tsar do?’

‘Head them off. The only organized forces out there are two. There are the unions, still forming, and except for the railway men all professionals – the doctors, teachers and lawyers – and there are the zemstvo men like your father, the only people with a programme. The Tsar has to come to terms with them and hope that the people will quieten down. The longer he takes, the worse it will be.’

‘But what about the Tsar and Holy Russia?’ cried Alexander. ‘The peasants believe in that.’

Suvorin smiled. ‘They do on Feast Days, I dare say,’ he replied. ‘But only two people believe in Holy Russia every day of the year.’

‘Who are they?’

‘The Tsar himself, my young friend. Just the Tsar.’ He grinned. ‘And you!’ He liked to tease the boy.

It was as they continued their walk round the town that Alexander noticed that Suvorin seemed to be looking for something. His eyes were constantly scanning the street before him: several times he turned abruptly to glance to one side. When Alexander asked him, however, what he was searching for, the industrialist quietly smiled. ‘Not something, my friend. Someone.’ He glanced down at young Bobrov.

‘Hasn’t it occurred to you,’ Suvorin asked, ‘that all the time we went round inside, we saw only familiar faces. No sign of the outsiders who stirred up the trouble. But I’ve discovered who it is: a single man.’ He nodded thoughtfully. ‘They call him Ivanov.’

‘Will you arrest him?’

‘No. I’d like to, but it would only create more trouble.’

‘Are you going to speak to him?’

‘I offered to, but he avoids me. He’s a cunning devil.’ He paused. ‘I’d like to get a good look at him. Just so I’d know him another time.’

They continued to walk. They strolled to the little park by Suvorin’s house and gazed down from the parapet over the woodlands and river below. Then they went back, past the church, into the market square. And then they saw him.

He was standing about a hundred yards away talking to a group of men and, for a moment, he was not aware that Suvorin and the boy were watching him. He was an unusual figure. One might have guessed he was in his late forties. His face was clean-shaven and marked by two deep lines that curved down his cheeks from the outer corners of each eye. There was a slight puffiness around the eyes themselves. And his head was covered with close-cropped, orange-red hair. ‘So that’s him,’ Suvorin murmured. ‘What a curious-looking fellow.’ He would certainly know him again.

A moment later, the stranger caught sight of them and slipped away.

Alexander, too, took careful note of the face. So this, he thought, is the face of the enemy. For some reason he had a feeling that he might see him again.

Little Ivan watched his Uncle Boris, fascinated. His uncle had not seen him enter the passage and was unaware of his presence.

Only a few minutes had passed since Boris had been talking to the man from the Suvorin factory outside. He had seemed quite casual then. ‘A ginger-haired fellow, eh? Well I never. About my age. Who did you say he was? Ivanov, eh? Never heard of him. And where did you say this fellow was staying? Out of Suvorin’s way, I suppose. Ah, yes. Just outside the town. Well, well. Good luck to him, and to you all.’

Yet there was nothing calm about his Uncle now. Little Ivan had never seen him so excited as he paced up and down the big storeroom muttering to himself.

‘Ivanov indeed. It’s that devil. That ginger-headed devil. Murderer! This time I’ll get you, though. I’ll not miss you this time. Ah, my poor Natalia.’

He was muttering so vehemently that little Ivan was rather frightened. After a minute or two he slipped out again. But whatever could it mean?

It was unusual for Uncle Boris to go out hunting on a summer night, and especially to walk for miles. But tonight, for some reason, was an exception.

‘I’m going down south to the marshes,’ he remarked blandly. ‘Find myself a good spot and see what the dawn brings.’ The nights were short and warm. All kinds of game came over the marshes in the early morning. Dusk saw Boris preparing his gun cheerfully. Before he went, Ivan saw him slip a large hunting knife into his belt. ‘Can’t I come too?’ he had begged, but Boris had just ruffled his hair and remarked: ‘Next time.’ Then as night fell, he had taken his boat, and paddled away towards the south.

It was only some time later, when she was putting him to bed, that the little boy had told his mother Arina about Uncle Boris’s strange behaviour and asked: ‘Who was Natalia?’

How oddly people were behaving that evening. Why had his mother turned so pale, then tried to hide it? And why, having told him to go to sleep and that she was going to join the rest of the family at a neighbour’s, had she instead slipped silently out of the village?

He had watched her out of the window. She had gone up the slope, towards the Bobrov house.

But if all these things were puzzling to little Ivan, the scene the next morning was terrible.

The dawn had just been breaking when he had awoken and gone outside; and he had just been enjoying the first, tentative sounds of the birds when Boris had appeared, walking through the gloom. He could see that his Uncle was furious about something, but it seemed that the fury was not directed at him, for Uncle Boris had even smiled as he paused to exchange a few words.

‘Anyone go up to the Bobrovs’ last night?’ The question was asked so casually, so easily, that the little fellow had not even thought as he answered.

‘Only Mama.’

And now, as the family stood before him in the izba, Boris Romanov was trembling with rage.

‘You warned him, didn’t you?’

Arina quailed; yet even now, there was a hint of righteous defiance in her manner. ‘What if I did?’

‘What if you did? I’ll tell you what.’ And with a sudden spring he was upon her, knocking her down and hitting her twice, hard, in the face. ‘You stupid cow! You Mordvinian!’

‘Don’t! Don’t!’ the little boy screamed, rushing to protect his mother.

But Boris picked him up and tossed him across the room so that he crashed into a bench and lay there, half-stunned.

Damn Arina! Damn the witch! Having taken his boat a little way down-river, Boris had hidden it on the far bank, then doubled back and walked through the darkness into Russka. At dead of night, armed with his long hunting knife, he had crept around the edge of the town to the house where that accursed ginger-headed villain had been staying. It was a warm night. Two men were sitting outside the door of the house opposite; he had waited patiently, in the shadows, for them to go inside. At last they had slowly risen to go. One door had shut. Then another. He had let a minute pass in silence. He had smiled to himself. He would place his hand over Popov’s mouth, then slit his throat, whispering as he did so: ‘Remember Natalia.’ That would be it. Just so the devil knew – just so he understood, as he went down, into the depths. With a bit of luck, they’ll suppose one of Suvorin’s men did it and arrest him too, he thought cheerfully. Revenge – even if one had to wait thirty years – was so infinitely sweet.

And then, suddenly, two horses were pounding along the little road, one with a rider, the other spare. What the devil? The two horses were pulling up sharply by the very house where Popov lay, the rider springing down and hammering on the door.

‘Yevgeny Pavlovich! Popov, damn you! I know it’s you. You’ve got to get out. Listen, it’s Nicolai Mikhailovich. Come quick.’

Bobrov. How the devil did he know? Who tipped him off? And why should he save the fellow’s skin anyway? Damn them all. They were all in league. And now when would he get his chance at revenge again?

He turned back to his sister.

‘You traitor!’ he bellowed. ‘Do you know what you’ve done?’

‘Yes,’ she cried back with equal rage. ‘I asked Bobrov to stop you. What of it? You can’t go round killing people.’

‘Not if he killed my own sister?’

‘No.’

He glowered at her. ‘I see you’re a friend of Bobrov and the red-head,’ he said, suddenly quiet. ‘But I promise you one thing: I shan’t forget this.’

And both Arina, and the terrified little Ivan, knew that he would not.

It was two days later that an unexplained fire burned down a section of Nicolai Bobrov’s woods. People took it to be one more sign that the revolution was getting very near.

1906, May

It was early evening, and in the great Moscow house, preparations were under way. Indeed, there was more than the usual air of expectancy amongst the servants, for this evening, they knew, some very strange guests were due to arrive. But then, they reflected, after the extraordinary events of the last year, anything might be expected.

In the comfortable upstairs room, however, everything was quiet. Mrs Suvorin, in a long, mauve silk gown, her heavy, rich brown hair only loosely pinned so that at any moment perhaps it might tumble down her elegant back, was sitting writing letters at a little desk.

Her daughter Nadezhda was sitting on a French empire chair with a tapestry cover. In front of her was a small round table covered with a heavy, tasselled cloth upon which she was resting her elbows while gazing at her mother.

She is certainly a handsome woman, Nadezhda thought, but I should make Papa a much better wife. Which was, perhaps, a rather strange thought for a little girl of eight.

The first thing people noticed about Nadezhda Suvorin was her auburn hair. She was allowed to wear it long and loose so that it fell in lustrous masses over her shoulders to her elbows. In a taffeta dress, silk stockings, shoes with satin ribbons and a big, wide-brimmed hat from under which her hair poured down, she looked enchanting. And then people would notice her eyes. They were very fine, deep brown, and they knew everything.

It was amazing what Nadezhda knew. Yet how should it be otherwise? Fate had decreed that her brother should be older: by the time she was six, he was already studying abroad. It was natural, therefore, that her father should turn to this bright little girl to be his companion.

She knew every painting in the great house. There were the contemporary Russians – wonderful natural evocations of the country by Repin, Surikov, Seron, Levitan. Levitan had done a huge landscape of Russka – a haunting vision of the little town on its high bank, seen from across the river under a deep blue sky full of retreating clouds. In the dining room hung portraits of her mother by Repin and her father by Vrubel. But her greatest delight was to take visitors through the rooms reserved for Vladimir’s collection of European painters, which was dazzling; and middle-aged Russians who were scarcely familiar with such wonders themselves would be astonished as she prattled: ‘This is a Monet; here’s Cézanne. Renoir’s nudes always seem to have the same two faces, don’t you think?’ Or: ‘This is by Gauguin. He ran away from his wife and children and went to live in Tahiti,’ On his last trip to Paris, her father had even brought back small pictures by two new artists: Picasso and Matisse. ‘These are just getting started, so I bought them for you,’ he had told her.

Vladimir delighted in taking this bright little person with him and showing her his world. As a patron of the arts he went everywhere and knew everyone. Already she had been to St Petersburg and seen the great Pavlova dance; she had visited the great Tolstoy at his Moscow house; at the Moscow Arts Theatre, which Vladimir helped support, she knew all the actors and had even met the playwright Chekhov. When she had been unimpressed by this modest man with his pince-nez, compared to the leonine figure of the great novelist, her father had told her: ‘Never judge by appearances, Nadezhda. For Chekhov is great also. It’s what people do that matters.’ Which had caused her several times to demand, quite innocently, of distinguished old gentlemen visiting the house: ‘Now tell me, Ivan Ivanovich, what exactly you have done’ – to their great confusion and Vladimir’s huge amusement.

Only one thing puzzled little Nadezhda. Why was her mother often cool towards her father? To the outside world they seemed devoted, but the sharp-eyed child knew better. It was her, not her mother, that Vladimir took out: she had watched him approach his wife in private and had seen her gracefully drawing away. It was very strange. And no wonder therefore if the girl considered: I should look after him better.

It was now, having finished her letter, that Mrs Suvorin turned and stood up.

She was indeed a striking woman. With her tall, powerful body, her head thrown proudly back and her brown eyes gazing, apparently, down upon the world, she seemed more like a member of one of the princely families than a merchant’s wife. When men looked at Mrs Suvorin however – as they always did – it was the fine points of colour on her cheeks, the creamy flesh of her wonderful, sloping shoulders, her splendid, rather low breasts that they noticed, while becoming instantly conscious of the powerful, controlled sensuousness that her elegance did not trouble to conceal. If she’d let me, strong men thought, I could make that body glow; while others, less certain of themselves, could only muse: Now that, my God, would take a proper man. A few, more poetic, thought they saw in those proud eyes a hint of sadness; but then, watching her in her drawing room, it was hard to know whether this might not be just an element of her art. One thing in any case was certain: Mrs Suvorin was in full bloom of her maturity.

As she rose, Mrs Suvorin noticed Nadezhda’s eyes fixed upon her, and she gazed at her daughter thoughtfully before nodding to herself.

It would have surprised Nadezhda to know that her mother understood very well what was passing in her mind. Indeed, she had guessed it all long ago, and it made her feel guilty. But as she looked at the girl’s accusing eyes, she could only sigh inwardly and reflect that there were things about her life that she could not explain to Nadezhda. Perhaps when the child was older. Perhaps never. At least, she thought sadly, whatever my faults, I am discreet.

‘I must dress now,’ she remarked briskly.

It promised to be an interesting evening. For these were certainly astonishing times.

Young Alexander Bobrov could only gasp. Of course, he had always known that his hero Suvorin was rich. ‘He’s a director of the Merchants’ Society and the Commercial Bank, you know,’ his father had explained. ‘He’s one of the elite.’ And his home matched his position, being one of the half-a-dozen former princely palaces which had, in recent decades, passed into the hands of the new merchant magnates like Suvorin who had supplanted them in power.

Since they had special business to conduct, they had come a little before the other guests, and now as they awaited their host, young Alexander stared round the huge room into which they had been shown.

It was very long, high and vaulted like a church. Down the centre, on an immense oriental carpet, ran a massive table covered with a green cloth upon which, he supposed, a hundred people could easily have stood. Above, huge brass chandeliers lit what would otherwise have been a cavernous gloom, and caused the golden patterns inlaid in the vaulting to glow. Around the sides of the room, stout upright chairs and tables of dark wood were lined. Heavy, opulent, almost oppressive, it was like the palace of some Tsar from ancient Muscovy. But most astonishing of all were the walls: the paintings were hung so densely that their frames touched. Russian scenes, Impressionists, historical paintings – their brilliant colours blazed out like new-made icons.

One of these, just above Alexander, especially caught his attention. It was a large historical picture of Ivan the Terrible. The mighty Tsar was standing in a long robe of gold brocade edged with fur; in his hand was a heavy staff, and his fearsome eyes were glaring down accusingly, straight at Nicolai Bobrov. As well they might, thought Alexander, considering his father’s disgraceful errand.

For Nicolai had come to sell the merchant his estate.

It wasn’t really his fault. He couldn’t hold out any longer. He was in good company too. Since the troubles began in the countryside last year, landowners all over Russia had been selling off. Suvorin, moreover, had offered him an excellent price for the place. ‘More than it’s worth,’ he reminded his furious son. But now, seeing the boy’s miserable face, he looked down awkwardly at the long table and muttered: ‘I’m sorry.’

Vladimir Suvorin did not keep them waiting long. He swept into the room with his lawyer, embraced Nicolai warmly, gave Alexander’s arm a friendly squeeze, and in a moment the papers were all on the table before them.

Suvorin was in a good mood. He had long considered having a country retreat near his factories at Russka. In recent years, also, he had become interested in Russian crafts. ‘I’m going to set up some workshops for woodcarving and pottery on the estate,’ he had told Nicolai. ‘And a little museum for folk art, too.’ Now, seeing the father and son standing gloomily before him, he understood perfectly what was passing in their minds.

‘Your father’s made a wise decision,’ he said firmly to Alexander. ‘Though I want the estate for my museum, I shan’t be able to make it pay any more than he could.’ He smiled. ‘All the wise men are selling, my friends, and only fools like me are buying.’ Turning back to Nicolai he remarked: ‘Naturally, my friend, I rather envy you. You’re free as a bird now. You should make a tour of Europe. All the Russians are doing it, and nobles like you are treated with great respect in Paris and Monte Carlo. You should show your son the world.’

But even these kindly words failed to draw a smile from Alexander. Not that he felt any resentment towards the industrialist – quite the reverse. All he knew was this: the Bobrovs had held estates as long as Russia had existed; his father, with his liberal ideas, had lost them. His father had failed in his duty. And looking with renewed admiration at Suvorin he thought once more: How I wish you were my father.

But now Vladimir was beckoning. ‘Enough of business, my friends. It is time to meet our other guests.’

Mrs Suvorin’s entertaining was justly famous. Everyone came to her house. Artists, musicians and writers were especially welcome. But the aristocracy did not disdain the merchant’s hospitality and even a proud St Petersburg sophisticate like Prince Shcherbatov was a regular visitor. The Suvorin influence spread everywhere – theatres, journals, art schools. Even a strange young man named Diaghilev, who seemed to want to make himself a one-man ambassador for Russian art and culture, found patronage and encouragement in the Suvorin house. Indeed, of Russia’s celebrities, perhaps only Tolstoy, for some reason, had never come there.

Mrs Suvorin liked her guest-list to have a theme, and this evening was no exception.

‘Tonight,’ Vladimir had murmured to Nicolai Bobrov as they went into the huge salon, ‘will be all about politics.’

It was certainly appropriate. The political events of the last nine months had been astonishing. All the previous summer the situation had grown worse while the Tsar delayed. There had been constant terrorist acts, and industrial trouble. ‘Why the devil won’t he listen to the zemstvos?’ Nicolai would fume. But still the Tsar remained undecided. And then, in October, the unthinkable had happened. There had been a general strike. For ten, terrible days, as winter approached, nothing had moved in the entire Russian empire. The government had been completely powerless. ‘Either we shall have reform,’ Nicolai had declared, ‘or we’re all going to die.’ And then at last the Tsar had given way. He would grant the people a parliament – the Duma. ‘At last,’ Nicolai had explained, ‘that poor man has seen some sense. We’ll have a constitutional monarchy, like England. We’ll be civilized, like the west.’

Except that this was Russia.

The first Duma of the Russian state was organized as follows. Elections were held in which most Russian men could vote, but they did so grouped by class, each class able to send only so many deputies. The arithmetic of this system meant that each vote of a gentleman like Bobrov was worth that of three merchants, fifteen peasants, or forty-five urban workers. At the very time when the voting was taking place, however, the government also issued a package known by the old-fashioned title of Fundamental Laws. These added a second chamber on top of the first, half appointed by the Tsar and the rest selected by the most conservative elements. This effectively hamstrung the Duma. ‘Just in case they wanted to do anything,’ Nicolai Bobrov commented wryly. Even if the two houses were in agreement, they still had no real control over the bureaucracy who actually ran the empire. Further, the Tsar confirmed the autocracy, reserved the right to dissolve the Duma at his pleasure and affirmed that, whenever the Duma was not in session, he could govern by emergency decree as he saw fit.

‘In short,’ Nicolai had summarized, as these measures became known, ‘it’s very Russian. It’s a parliament – and it isn’t. It can talk – but it can’t act. The Tsar gives – and the Tsar takes away.’

Why then, as he walked into Mrs Suvorin’s drawing room that evening, should he have been so pleased? The answer was: two simple reasons. First the Socialists had boycotted the entire proceedings, and so put up few candidates; second, the Tsar’s assumption that the majority of the gentry and of the peasants would be loyal and vote for conservative candidates was completely wrong. The overwhelming majority voted against the regime – and returned a large number of progressive liberals. ‘And do you know,’ Nicolai declared gleefully to his wife, ‘I’m not sure next time I won’t stand myself.’ And so as he entered the room, he looked about him with interest.

Mrs Suvorin greeted him pleasantly. ‘I have done my work well,’ she smiled. ‘We have someone from almost every political party here.’

Nicolai smiled. It was typical of the situation in tsarist Russia that at present almost all the political parties remained, technically, illegal. The Duma was beginning its deliberations arranged in parties which, officially, did not exist!

Her claim was true. Nicolai soon identified men of impeccable right-wing credentials who wanted the Duma abolished. ‘Friends for you,’ he said with a grin to his son. There were conservative liberals who wanted the Duma to cooperate with the Tsar; and there were men like himself, Constitutional Democrats, known as Cadets for short, who were determined to push the Tsar towards a proper democracy. ‘And what about the parties of the left?’ he asked her.

There were two of these nowadays. There were the Socialist Revolutionaries, who represented the peasants, but some of whom were unfortunately dedicated to terrorism. ‘I’m short there,’ his hostess remarked lightly. ‘Though if a bomb goes off, I suppose I’ll know I had one after all.’ And there was the party of the workers, the Social Democrats. ‘And there I have done better. Come and meet my brother-in-law: Professor Peter Suvorin.’

Peter and Rosa Suvorin did not often come to his brother’s huge house. Not that they were unwelcome: the two brothers were fond of each other; but their ways had long since parted. Rosa and Mrs Suvorin had little to say to each other, and Peter found that there was a subtle patronage towards him in her manner which plainly said: ‘I shall be charming, of course, but you are a poor, unfortunate creature.’ Indeed, but for one circumstance the two families might scarcely have met at all: and this was the friendship of their children.

Three children had been born to Rosa, but only one had lived: Dimitri, a dark-haired little boy three years Nadezhda’s senior. They had first met one Christmas when Nadezhda was three, and had at once taken a liking to each other. Since the girl constantly asked for him, Dimitri was frequently invited, although for some reason Mrs Suvorin never cared to let her daughter go to her cousin’s modest house. But it seemed to please her to see the children together and she would say to Rosa, with obvious sincerity: ‘It’s so nice for Nadezhda to have another child to play with.’

But tonight Mrs Suvorin had been positively anxious to see the Marxist professor. ‘He is my link to all these people on the far left,’ she had said to her husband. ‘And I think it’s time I came to understand them better.’

She knew a little about the Social Democrats. She was aware that they had split, in recent years, into two camps, the smaller of which was the more extreme. ‘With typical Russian confusion,’ Vladimir had remarked, ‘the majority call themselves the little party, and the minority call themselves the big party – the Bolsheviks.’ Mrs Suvorin was sure that kindly Peter must belong to the less extreme majority, but she was curious about the Bolsheviks, and a few days before had asked him: ‘Do you know any of these fellows? What are they like? Could you bring one to our house?’ To which Peter had replied: ‘I do know such a man who’s in Moscow at present. But I don’t suppose he’d come.’ ‘Ask him anyway,’ she had requested, which Peter had done.

Nicolai Bobrov was curious to meet Peter Suvorin, whom he only vaguely remembered from his youth; and the two men found they liked each other. ‘We Cadets,’ Bobrov assured him, ‘are going to oppose the Tsar all the way until he gives us a real democracy.’

‘We both want that,’ Peter agreed pleasantly. ‘But we want democracy to usher in the revolution, and you want it to avoid the revolution!’ In answer to Nicolai’s further question he gave his opinions of the future freely. ‘The workers’ organization will be the key to everything now,’ he explained. ‘And the Marxist’s job is to keep them political, committed to a Socialist revolution when the time is ripe.’

‘Who will do that?’ Bobrov asked.

‘In the western provinces, the Jewish workers’ organization, the Bund,’ Peter answered. He was sorry that his earlier efforts to persuade the eager young Jewish reformers not to follow their own path had failed. But he could not deny that the Jewish Bund had been solid and strong in the months of crisis; and they were good Marxists.

‘And in the rest of Russia?’

Peter smiled. ‘The new workers’ committees. They got started last year and they’re very effective. Political cells in every city. They’re the answer.’

‘What do you call them?’ Nicolai asked.

‘We call them Soviets,’ the professor replied.

Nicolai shrugged. It seemed to him that if the Duma did its work well, these Soviets would soon be forgotten.

While they talked, he found himself, from time to time, watching his host and hostess as they moved in their separate paths about the room. There was no doubt about it, they were very good at managing these things. Mrs Suvorin was stately. She had a knack of moving from group to group with a quiet grace that earned the respect of every woman, and left every man surreptitiously gazing after her. She flirts by not flirting, he realized. As for Vladimir, the men liked and respected him, but with the women, one could see, he had a special talent. Why was it that they seemed to flush with pleasure when he talked to them? After observing him a little while, Nicolai thought he saw. He understands the way they think, he decided. He gets inside their minds. It was another facet of his extraordinary intelligence, and Nicolai suddenly wondered: Is he unfaithful to her, perhaps? He had no doubt that many women in the room would gladly have encouraged any interest Suvorin showed.

Nicolai was still musing in this manner when he noticed that Vladimir was talking to Rosa Suvorin. Nicolai also noticed that Vladimir’s usual comfortable smile had disappeared. His face wore a look of tender concern and he was speaking to her earnestly. Whatever was he saying with such urgency? Peter too was now looking at his wife with puzzlement. Rosa, looking suddenly very pale and tired, was shaking her head, apparently resisting him. Then, giving her arm a gentle squeeze, Vladimir moved away, while Rosa suddenly turned away towards a window. To Nicolai Bobrov, and no doubt to Peter, it seemed rather strange. And Nicolai would have thought more about it if, at this moment, something had not happened to deflect everyone’s attention.

For now the door opened and a new figure appeared. It was Yevgeny Popov.

Young Alexander Bobrov had found himself standing beside Vladimir at the moment when Popov entered and, for once, he heard even the perfectly controlled industrialist gasp with surprise.

‘Well I’m damned!’ He glanced down at Alexander. ‘It’s the fellow we saw during the strike.’

It was indeed. The red-headed man they had called Ivanov. ‘Will you throw him out?’ Alexander whispered.

‘No.’ The industrialist smiled. ‘Don’t you remember, my friend, I wanted to talk to him then; and now here he is. Life is wonderful indeed.’ And with outstretched hand he strode across the room to where the revolutionary was standing, and smiled. ‘Welcome.’

But if this action took the youth by surprise, it was nothing to his horror when, a moment later, the red-head walked over to his father, embraced him warmly, and then, when Mrs Suvorin asked in confusion: ‘You two know each other?’ replied calmly, ‘Oh, yes. We go back together a long way.’

His father was a friend of this creature. It seemed to Alexander that there was no limit to Nicolai’s foolishness and disloyalty.

The little group which gathered around Popov eyed him with curiosity. Nicolai in particular, seeing his old acquaintance in this strange new setting, looked on with some amusement, while Mrs Suvorin, gazing at his calm, rather detached expression and comparing him with her Marxist brother-in-law, quickly came to the conclusion: This is a very different sort of man. He recognizes no barriers.

‘You wanted a Bolshevik,’ Peter said to her wryly. ‘Here he is.’

And Mrs Suvorin smiled.

‘You are welcome indeed,’ she said. Which was certainly true. For, excellent though the company always was at her house, Mrs Suvorin knew that recently she had been missing out on something: the true revolutionaries.

In a later age it would be called radical chic, this fashion amongst some of the privileged classes of inviting revolutionaries to their home, and even making contributions to their cause. A few industrialists, convinced that the Tsar was on a road to catastrophe, may have courted the revolutionaries as a kind of insurance policy against the future. But others of the rich and idle certainly did so only because they thought it amusing, or smart, or perhaps to receive a little frisson from the knowledge that they were playing with fire. Mrs Suvorin had always eschewed these activities before, but recently she had feared that, without an occasional revolutionary, her salons might begin to look a trifle dowdy. She needed Popov, therefore: he completed her arrangements.

And, it had to be said, he made himself rather agreeable. It was evident at once that he was well-informed. He had recently returned from the Socialists’ latest congress, held in Stockholm; and while he was obviously careful about what he said, he seemed quite willing to answer questions. To Mrs Suvorin’s enquiry about the Bolsheviks, he was very straightforward.

‘The difference between the Bolsheviks and the rest of the Social Democrats – the Mensheviks as we call them – is not that large. We all want a Socialist society; we all follow Marx; but there are disputes about tactics.’ He smiled at Peter Suvorin. ‘And sometimes personalities.’ He reeled off the names of some of the Menshevik leaders: young Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg in Poland, various others. ‘But it’s the Bolshevik leader who really makes the split, though.’ He grinned. ‘That’s my friend Lenin. He never compromises about anything.’

‘And who is he, this Lenin?’ Nicolai Bobrov asked. ‘I don’t know a thing about him.’

‘Oh, but you do,’ Popov smiled. ‘For you’ve already met him – fifteen years ago, on a train. Remember?’

‘The lawyer? The Chuvash lawyer with an estate by the Volga?’

‘One and the same. He’s been living in exile most of the time. He’s in hiding now, because the authorities don’t seem to like him. But he’s the man behind the Bolsheviks.’

‘And what does he want? What makes him different?’

‘He writes carelessly,’ Popov replies, ‘but the key to Lenin lies in his book. That’s his manifesto.’ And he told them a little about it.

This all-important work had been written only four years before, and smuggled into Russia from Germany; but already, for most revolutionaries, it had become a bible. Choosing the same title as the little novel which had so inspired the previous generation of radicals, he had called it What Is To Be Done. It was not so much a political tract as an instruction manual – on how to make a revolution. ‘Marxism tells us the old order will collapse,’ Popov smiled. ‘Lenin tells us how to give it a push.’ And then carefully: ‘Roughly speaking, our Menshevik friends want to wait until the masses are ready to create the Socialist order of a new and just society. We Bolsheviks are sceptical. We think that a small and highly organized cadre is needed to push for the great change in society. It’s only tactics: but we believe the masses will need leading, that’s all.’

‘Some of us think,’ Peter Suvorin observed, ‘that Lenin regards the workers as nothing more than cannon fodder.’

To his surprise, however, Popov nodded. ‘It’s probably true,’ he replied. Then, smiling again: ‘That’s part of his greatness.’

For a moment or two the little group was silent, digesting what Popov had said. Then Nicolai Bobrov slowly spoke.

‘I can see your point about the masses needing leaders, and you may be right. But isn’t there a danger of such a group becoming too powerful – a sort of dictatorship?’

And to his surprise also, his Bolshevik friend was extremely frank. ‘Yes. It is a danger, in theory. But remember, Nicolai Mikhailovich, that the political objective we seek is not that far from yours. The only way forward for Russia, the only way to Socialism, is through the people – through democracy.’ He paused. ‘Whatever else, always remember this: all Socialists, including the Bolshevik faction, are trying to reach the same thing: a democratically elected body – one man, one vote – with sovereign power. We don’t want to overthrow the Tsar to put another tyrant in his place. We want a Constituent Assembly, just as you do. Democracy will lead to Socialism; but democracy is the all-important means.’

It was said with great seriousness and great conviction. And all who heard him believed.

Or so it seemed, until young Alexander Bobrov broke his silence.

He had been standing beside Vladimir Suvorin all this time, watching Popov carefully. True, he had been listening as well, but for Alexander it was not a question of argument. The red-headed Bolshevik was his enemy. He knew that in his bones. His enemy unto death. For the youth, therefore, it was only a question of observing the object of his hatred so that he might know him better.

And now the revolutionary’s words had infuriated him: not because of what had been said but because, Alexander could see, the hearers had been impressed. Are they all going to be as stupid as my father? he wondered. And he had a burning urge to expose Popov, to throw down the gauntlet, and to humiliate him.

‘I’ve heard that all the leading revolutionaries are yids,’ he said, softly but distinctly. ‘Is it true?’

It was a calculated impertinence, a sort of generalized insult that those on the right liked to use – to anger Jews by calling them all revolutionaries and revolutionaries by calling them all Jews. There was a horrible, embarrassed silence.

But Popov, gazing at the boy, who was now flushing, only chuckled.

‘Well, of course, Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg are both Jewish,’ he said. ‘So are several others I can think of. But so far, my friend, I have to tell you that the Jews are in a minority in our party. Mind you,’ he added, with a wink at Peter Suvorin, ‘Lenin, who’s not a Slav himself, always says the only intelligent Russians are the Jewish ones. So you’ll have to make what you can of that.’

It was well handled, and the company laughed gratefully. Alexander felt Vladimir Suvorin’s large hand resting on his shoulder give him a gentle, warning squeeze, but he ignored even his hero.

‘What about terrorism? I hear that the Bolsheviks are behind some of the bombing, and that they’ve been committing robberies too.’

In fact, these charges were entirely true. Lenin advocated both methods at this time, to maximize disruption and to get funds for the Bolsheviks – a fact which embarrassed party men like Peter Suvorin who tried to cover it up.

‘I too have heard of these incidents and expropriations,’ Popov replied blandly. ‘But I know absolutely nothing about them.’

Now Vladimir’s hand moved down to Alexander’s arm, squeezed firmly, and the boy heard the great man whisper: ‘Enough, my friend.’ But he had not finished.

‘Do you know, I have seen you before,’ he said, more loudly. ‘When you were inciting the workers of the man in whose house you now dare to come. But you avoided meeting him then. You used another name – Ivanov – and ran away like a dog. How many names have you, Mr Popov?’

For a moment, as Popov turned his green eyes upon him, it seemed to young Alexander that he was looking at a snake. But then, very calmly, the Bolshevik replied: ‘It is a sad fact that for a long time – since any opposition in Russia is under police surveillance – many people have had to use more than one name. Lenin, to my knowledge, has used more than a hundred.’ Though cool, Popov had turned pale.

‘You deny that you’re a thief and a coward then?’ Alexander pursued, into the terrible silence.

This time Popov did not reply at all, but only looked at him, for a moment more, with a faint half-smile. Then Mrs Suvorin, with an easy laugh, led Popov away.

‘You’ve made a dangerous enemy,’ Alexander’s father warned him, a few minutes later. To which the youth only replied, sulkily: ‘It’s better than having him as a friend.’

Despite Alexander’s embarrassing attack, it was generally agreed, afterwards, that the evening had been a success. Indeed, it was one of those special occasions which, for long afterwards, and for different reasons, remains as a landmark in the minds of all those concerned.

For Nicolai Bobrov, it was the evening when his son made an enemy of Popov. For Mrs Suvorin it was the occasion upon which, after spending half an hour with her, this strange, red-headed Bolshevik had promised to visit her salon again, when he was next in Moscow.

For two people, however, the evening was to be remembered for small events that took place just as it was ending.

It was only after leaving his brother’s house that Peter Suvorin turned to his wife and asked curiously: ‘Whatever was Vladimir talking to you about?’

‘Oh. Nothing.’

He waited, but she said no more.

‘It must have been something,’ he suggested. ‘You looked upset.’

‘Did I? I don’t think so.’

Why, even now, should his dear wife, at this harmless mention of a conversation with his brother, suddenly look as though she might burst into tears? Surely Vladimir could not have said anything to hurt her.

‘I think my brother’s kind,’ he said, to see if there were any reaction. ‘People say he’s wise,’ he added, for no particular reason.

And then came the reply which he remembered always, afterwards, and never understood.

‘He knows everything. That’s just the trouble. Please don’t speak of him again.’

It was certainly very strange. It made no sense at all.

For young Alexander Bobrov, the event that changed his life came just as he was walking out through the great hall behind his father. And it was only chance that made him glance up at the marble gallery above. But when he did, he found he could not move. Little Nadezhda loved to watch the guests departing. She would lie awake while her parents’ parties were in progress, then sneak out in her nightdress and peer through the marble pillars, taking note of all that passed below. As it happened, most of the guests having departed, she was standing up now, clearly visible, her long auburn hair cascading down.

Which was how Alexander saw her. A youth, almost a young man, staring up at a little girl of eight.

‘She must be Suvorin’s little girl,’ he murmured. He had never seen her before. What an angelic face. What lustrous hair. And she was Vladimir’s – his hero. And straight away, at that very moment it came to him. ‘One day,’ he whispered to her, though she could not hear, ‘one day you will be mine.’

1906, July

Nicolai Bobrov stared sadly at the long wooden house that had always been his home. He could scarcely believe he might never see Russka again.

The rest of the family had all departed a month ago: his old mother Anna, his wife and young Alexander. They were all in Moscow now, while he had returned to remove the last vestiges of his family’s long occupation.

It was mid-morning and he was done. The three carts by the stables had been piled high by the peasants who now stood expectantly beside them. A last search round the empty house had revealed only a few old boxes of papers left in the attic. He thought they would just fit on to the third cart. Then it would be time to go.

Nicolai was leaving things in good order: he was proud of that. He had stopped a leak in the roof and had the little bath house repaired. He had also arranged for Arina and her son to move up from the village and live in as caretakers. They would take good care of the place. Suvorin would have nothing to complain of. Indeed, as he had taken his last walk up the alley of silver birches above the house, and gazed down the slope to the little River Rus below, he had thought what a pleasant spot it was, and brushed away a tear.

Now however, as he glanced towards the door of the house and saw Arina and her son watching him, he took a sharp breath and threw his chest out. He was a Bobrov. They would see him leave with dignity. ‘It’s time,’ he muttered, ‘to begin a new life.’ True, he was fifty-two; but though his hair was grey, his blue eyes were clear and his figure, unlike his father and grandfather at that age, had put on little weight. He might have lost the estate, but there was still the future.

Yet who knew what that future would be? The last three months had hardly been promising. The Duma, having met, had been a shambles. He had made a visit to St Petersburg and found everyone quarrelling. The peasant members had little idea what to do. Some of them had got drunk and started brawls in taverns. One was arrested for stealing a pig. Yet comic as these antics were, the behaviour of his own party, the liberal Cadets, had shocked him even more. Having demanded a wholesale distribution of land to the peasants, which the Tsar refused to consider, they would not cooperate with the government about anything. Worse yet, while the terrorists continued their campaign all over Russia, the Cadets refused even to condemn the violence until the government gave in to their own demands.

‘I’m a Cadet,’ he complained to Suvorin on his return to Moscow. ‘But thousands of people are being killed. We liberals are supposed to be responsible: I can’t understand it.’

Suvorin, however, had been philosophical. ‘You forget, my friend, that this is Russia,’ he said. ‘Throughout our history we have only known two political forms: autocracy and rebellion. This business of democracy and parliament, which only work through compromise, is all new to us. We think we want democracy, but we don’t really understand it. It will take time.’

Days before, having sat only two months, this Duma had been dissolved and new elections were expected later that year. Nicolai had heard, however, that the Socialist parties would probably take part next time. ‘And God knows whether that will make things better or worse.’ The future looked uncertain indeed.

Time to be going. There were only those few boxes in the attic to bring down; if they left soon, they could be in Vladimir by nightfall. Nicolai turned to go inside.

It was just then, however, that he noticed a figure coming up the slope towards him, and realized to his surprise that it was Boris Romanov.

He had not expected to see him. When he had gone down the day before to bid farewell to the peasants in the village, he had been aware that Boris had quietly avoided him. He had long realized that Boris harboured a grudge of some kind against his family. ‘Watch out for that fellow,’ his father Misha had cautioned him once. ‘I had some trouble with him.’ Misha would never say exactly what, though. For his part, however, Nicolai had nothing against Boris. He remembered with a wry smile how he had once incited him to revolution when they were young. And as I’m a Cadet, these days, trying to get more land for the peasants, he really ought to be my friend, he considered. Perhaps, after all, the head of the Romanov family had relented and come up the hill to say goodbye. Nicolai went forward to greet him.

They met by the end of the house. Nicolai gave the peasant a friendly nod while Boris paused a few paces away from him. It was some time since Nicolai had examined Romanov so closely. He, too, was going grey, but he looked strong and healthy. They were a typical contrast: the noble in his straw hat, open linen jacket, waistcoat, fob watch and tie, looking so western he might just have come from watching an English cricket match; the Russian peasant, the perfect muzhik, in loose trousers, bast shoes, red shirt and broad belt, unchanged since the ancient times of golden Kiev. Two cultures, both calling themselves Russian, yet with nothing in common except their land, their language, and a church in which neither of them usually bothered to worship. And now, having lived side by side for centuries, they were bidding each other farewell.

‘So you’re going.’ The burly peasant was standing with his arms hanging loosely by his sides. His broad face, Nicolai noticed, seemed to have closed up somewhat so that his eyes were now like slits.

‘As you see, Boris Timofeevich,’ the noble answered politely.

For a moment Boris surveyed the carts silently, and then the front of the house where Arina and little Ivan were watching. He nodded thoughtfully.

‘We should have smoked you out long ago.’ It was said in a matter-of-fact way, yet it was a far from friendly statement. The process of vandalism and arson by which, in recent years, many landlords had been encouraged to sell their lands to peasants was generally known as ‘smoking out’. Nicolai remembered the fire in his woods the previous year and looked at Boris thoughtfully. ‘But Suvorin’s got the land now, not us,’ Boris added bitterly.

‘The Cadets want land distribution. There are state lands hereabouts you may get which would be far better than my poor woods,’ he reminded the peasant.

But Boris ignored him. He seemed to be following his own train of thought. ‘The revolution’s started, but it hasn’t finished yet,’ he said quietly. ‘We’ll have all the land soon.’

‘Perhaps.’ Nicolai was beginning to grow bored with the peasant’s sullen rudeness. ‘I must be going,’ he said irritably.

‘Yes.’ Boris allowed himself a grim smile. ‘The Bobrovs are going at last. So, goodbye, Nicolai Mikhailovich.’ And he took a step forward.

It seemed he was going to say a half-friendly goodbye after all. Nicolai began to extend his hand. And then Boris grimaced. And spat.

Nicolai had never known what it was to have someone spit in his face before. It was worse, more utterly insulting, more violent, than any mere blow. He reeled back. And as he did so, the peasant hissed: ‘Good riddance, you damned Bobrov. And don’t come back or we’ll kill you.’ Then he turned and stamped away.

So horrified, so revolted, was Nicolai that, for a second or two, he could do nothing. After that he thought briefly of striking the departing peasant, or of having him arrested. Then he was overcome by a feeling of disgust and futility. He looked back at the house and saw Arina and the boy staring at him. The peasants by the carts were watching him impassively too. Did they all, perhaps, hate him so much?

‘We’re going,’ he called out, with what dignity he could muster. And a few moments afterwards, he was seated beside the driver of the first cart as it creaked down the slope. Still red, and shaking with impotent fury, he scarcely glanced back as they went along. And only when they were halfway to the monastery did he remember, with a shrug, that he had left some boxes still in the attic. It didn’t matter. They could stay there. It was over.

And so the Bobrovs quitted their ancestral estate.

1907

To Dimitri Suvorin at the age of twelve the world seemed a wonderful place. Yet there were still things he did not understand.

In particular: what was happening to his mother?

He was a strange boy, his body small and slight. His narrow face sometimes reminded Rosa of her father. Like Peter, however, Dimitri was short-sighted and wore spectacles. But if he looked physically fragile, this was offset by an extraordinary intensity in the pale face under its unruly mop of black wiry hair, and by the sudden laughter to which he was frequently prone.

He was a happy child. Though the little family was very close – his parents obviously adored each other – the atmosphere was never oppressive. The three of them lived in a pleasant, untidy apartment with high ceilings near the centre of the city. The building was three storeys high and its street side was faced with cream-coloured stucco. In the courtyard where the children played stood a mulberry tree. From the courtyard, one could see the dome of the little church where Dimitri had been christened looming quietly over the roof. The district was full of charm. Nearby was the School of Painting and close to that a strange house with a glass roof where Prince Trubetskoy the sculptor had his studio. Two streets away was a little flower market and beside it a coachmaker’s workshop with a huge stuffed bear in the window.

And how delightful it was, on a warm summer evening, to walk about the city. Snobbish St Petersburg with its classical façades might be the empire’s head, but Moscow was still the heart. Though a city of nearly four hundred thousand now, it was a curious blend of the industrial and Muscovite ages. On the outskirts, tall factory chimneys and ancient fortified monasteries dwelt side by side. In the last two decades, the so-called ‘Russian’ style of architecture – Russia’s version of the West’s nineteenth-century ‘gothick’ style – had come into vogue, so that railway stations and other public buildings now arose with strange designs of brick and plaster so ornate that they might have come from the wild Muscovite extravaganza of St Basil’s Cathedral on Red Square. And these buildings, too, had their own heavy charm. Young Dimitri would spend hours wandering about the streets, or on the broad and leafy boulevards that ringed the inner city, or by the Kremlin walls from inside which the silvery tinklings of the church bells could be heard. And sometimes it seemed to him as if the whole city was like some gigantic piece of music by Tchaikovsky, Moussorgsky, or one of the other great Russian composers, that had miraculously been transposed into stone.

He was four when the first clear signs of his musical talent appeared. His mother spotted them at once. By the age of six, at his own request, he was learning both the piano and the violin. When he was seven his father declared: ‘Perhaps he’ll be a concert pianist.’ But at eight Rosa had said: ‘I don’t think so.’ And it was true, as time passed, that though he had a remarkable gift for playing, young Dimitri would often prefer to compose little tunes of his own than spend the extra hours needed each day if he were to climb the rocky path to the performer’s art. Now, at twelve, he went to the excellent Fifth Moscow Grammar School near Arbat Square and studied music voraciously in his spare time.

And prepared for the revolution. There was never any question about that in Professor Peter Suvorin’s home. They all worked for it. Two years ago, they had been up many times all night while Rosa typed out revolutionary articles on her typewriter, and young Dimitri had often been used to take them to various distribution points. It was thrilling to know that he was aiding the great cause.

And now something even more exciting had happened. His father was in the Duma. He had gone to St Petersburg.

It had been a great step. After boycotting the first Duma, the Socialists had decided to participate in the second. ‘If we can get a large number of Socialists in,’ Peter had explained, ‘we can smash the Tsar and end this farce once and for all. Use the Tsar’s own Duma to abolish him!’

‘And then?’

‘A Constituent Assembly elected by all the people. A democratic government. All the Socialists agree about that.’

Freedom. Democracy. The new world was about to begin. And his father, the distinguished Professor Suvorin, was a part of it. Life was wonderful.

Yet there were still things that were puzzling. Why was it, for instance, that his Uncle Vladimir was so rich while they lived so simply themselves? ‘Your father has no interest in all that,’ his mother told him with a dismissive gesture. But as he got older this explanation did not seem quite enough. Though he and Nadezhda were like brother and sister, he knew their parents were not close. ‘If your father had his way,’ the little girl had once remarked, ‘Mama says you’d put us all in the street.’ And then, with perfect innocence: ‘If that happens, Dimitri, can I come and live with you?’ He had promised she could, but it had always seemed odd to him that his kind Uncle Vladimir did not understand the need for revolution.

And then there was his mother. Why was she always so anxious? Was it possible, Dimitri had wondered, to love people too much? When his father left for St Petersburg, Uncle Vladimir had offered to let Dimitri stay with them so that Rosa could accompany Peter. She had refused; yet ever since, each day, had constantly moaned: ‘Do you think your father is safe there? I’m sure something will happen to him.’ She would even fret at night so that, by morning, there were dark rings round her large eyes.

It was late March when the incident occurred. Peter Suvorin was away in the capital and Dimitri was returning from school one afternoon when, having followed an unusual route, he found himself in a long narrow street.

The street was empty. A few bare trees could be seen down the sides; here and there were patches of dark ice in the gutters. A dull grey light pervaded the place.

He was halfway down before he heard a scuffle and saw the little gang, and even then, it did not occur to him to be alarmed.

There were only half a dozen of them: four young men and two boys about his age. They came out of a courtyard and then walked along on each side of him for several yards before one of the young men spoke.

‘I think he’s one.’ They all continued to walk.

‘You do? Hey, boy, what’s your name?’

‘Dimitri Petrovich. Suvorin,’ he added as firmly as he could. He was not sure what this all meant.

‘Good Russian names, young Mr Suvorin. Shall we leave him, boys?’

‘Maybe. Look at his face though.’

‘True. We don’t like your face, Dimitri Petrovich. Why don’t we like his face, boys?’

‘Looks like a kike.’

‘Right, Dimitri Petrovich. That’s the problem. You sure you aren’t Jewish? Not at all?’

‘Quite sure,’ Dimitri answered with confidence, as they continued to walk.

‘What’s your mother’s name, boy?’

‘Rosa Abramovich,’ he replied.

‘Aha. Where’s she from?’

‘Vilnius,’ he replied, in all innocence.

‘A Rosa Abramovich from Vilnius. Then your mother’s a Jew, boy.’

‘She is not,’ he answered hotly. But they had stopped, and surrounded him. ‘She’s a Christian,’ he shouted furiously, not because he had anything especially against the Jews, but because the accusation was a lie. Seeing the boy’s genuine rage, the little gang hesitated.

And it was then that Dimitri did a very foolish thing. ‘Don’t you touch me,’ he shouted furiously. ‘My father’s a deputy in the Duma and you’ll be in trouble.’

‘Which party?’

‘The Social Democrats,’ he said proudly. And instantly realized his mistake. He had heard of the Black Hundreds of course – the gangs of right-wing thugs who beat up Socialists and Jews in the name of the Tsar. But somehow he had always thought of them as the large groups their name suggested; nor, since he was a good Russian, had he ever considered they could have anything to do with him.

‘Kike! Socialist! Traitor!’ The little fellow went down at once.

He had only received a black eye and several kicks in the ribs when a carriage entering the street caused his assailants to break off. Half an hour later he was safely back at home, and though shaken, was able to eat some supper.

But there was one aspect of the whole business that mystified him. ‘They said you were a Jew,’ he told his mother. And was therefore even more astonished when she confessed that it was true. ‘I converted when I married,’ she explained. They had never told him before.

And from that day, her nervousness seemed to get worse.

Strangely, whatever these events meant to his mother, they did not mark Dimitri; and this was due to an extraordinary aspect of his make-up.

It was to do with music.

Ever since he was a little child, Dimitri had thought in terms of music. From as long as he could remember, notes had suggested colours to him. As soon as Rosa showed him the different keys on the piano, each had possessed for him its own distinct character and mood. At first these discoveries belonged to a musical world which he associated with the instruments he played. But then, when he was nine, something else took place.

He had been in the little church beside his home one evening listening to vespers. The church had a fine choir, and the haunting melodies of the chanting were still with him as he left. It was sunset when he stepped into the street and the sky above Moscow was gold and red. For several minutes, he had stood gazing towards the glorious colours in the west.

And then, trying to express what he saw, he had chosen a chord. It was in the key of C Minor. After a moment, he had added another.

It was odd, he thought: he had chosen the chords. He had imposed them on that sunset. Yet as he looked, it was as though the sky were answering him, saying: ‘Yes, that is my sound.’ And in his mind the chords and the sunset became one.

He had walked back into the courtyard, next. There was the mulberry tree, the reddish light catching its upper branches, warm shadow below. And now he heard another chord and a little melody; and this time the music came so instantly that it was as if he had not chosen it, but heard it.

How wonderful it was. He felt suffused with a strange sensation of warmth inside his stomach. When a moment later some children ran out into the yard, and he was afraid he might lose his train of thought, he found that with an effort of will he could hold the chords in his mind so that they did not slip away. And he experienced a small pang of fear, which he did not understand, as though the sunset and the tree had said to him: ‘If you step forward now, little boy, you will lose yourself and belong only to music.’ And being uncertain what this meant, he had decided to preserve this blessed state of being in his mind, as, sometimes, he would preserve a dream, that he might return to it later.

That had been the start. His life had never been the same after that. By a small act of concentration he found that he could step back into this dream whenever he wished; soon the periods of contemplation grew longer, and might last for hours, during which his concentration grew so deep that he could have entire conversations with people, or eat a meal, and emerge with no recollection of these events at all.

Very soon, he had noticed other things. Once he stepped into his other world, it seemed to him that he was not inventing music, but listening to it – that the wonderful harmonies he heard came outside himself; they were given to him, though he could not say with certainty by whom or by what. And before long, the musical otherworld began to invade the everyday world, like a light encroaching upon shadow, so that even such mundane things as a carriage in the street or a dog barking now seemed to Dimitri to contain their own music which he would joyfully discover. His whole mind, now, became crowded with musical phantoms: the people he saw every day, his schoolmasters, his mother, his Uncle Vladimir, came to be presences, each with a voice – his father a tenor, Uncle Vladimir a rich baritone – like characters in some wonderful opera that was as yet only partially revealed to him.

And – this perhaps was the most wonderful thing of all – it was often as if, stretching before him on an endless, symphonic plain, he could perceive the lives of all people and all things, including his own small life: so that his joys and sorrows became part of that huge, echoing process, and were returned to him as music. When the young men from the Black Hundreds attacked Dimitri, therefore, the pain they caused him only turned to music in his mind.

Two events took place that summer, however, which did make a deep impression upon Dimitri.

In June, the Tsar dissolved the Duma; and on the very next day, a new electoral system was announced. ‘The Tsar couldn’t stomach the Socialists,’ Peter announced on his return. ‘This new system is quite amazing,’ he remarked. Under the Tsar’s new rules, the vote of a landowner counted for that of roughly five hundred and forty workers. ‘The conservative gentry will have a majority. And I’m out for certain.’

‘But is it legal? Can the Tsar just break the rules like that?’ Dimitri demanded.

Peter shrugged. ‘It’s illegal according to the constitution issued last year. But since he made the rules then, the Tsar reckons he can change them now.’ He smiled. ‘The Tsar honestly believes it’s his duty to be an autocrat, you know. He thinks Russia is like a huge family estate he’s got to pass on to his son exactly as it was when his father gave it to him. He calls it his sacred trust.’ He shook his head wearily. ‘It’s so stupid it’s almost funny, really.’

But though his father was philosophical, young Dimitri could tell that he was inwardly outraged. There was another worrying side to these events, also. The Tsar’s new minister Stolypin was a highly able man, bent on reforming the backward empire. ‘But reforms can only take place after pacification,’ he had declared; and his pacification had been thorough. No less than a thousand people suspected of terrorist involvement had been executed last year – ‘Stolypin’s necktie’ Russians now called the hangman’s noose. Police spies were everywhere. Popov, and others like him, had wisely disappeared, perhaps abroad, and Rosa was constantly anxious about her husband. ‘I’ve done nothing to offend Stolypin,’ he would assure her. ‘But you know people who have,’ she would reply. And now for the first time, young Dimitri began to think of the revolution not as a joyous state that must inevitably come in the future, but as a bitter and dangerous struggle between his father and the Tsar. And it was this, rather than his encounter with the Black Hundreds, that made life seem darker to the boy.

The second event took place late that summer, when a letter arrived from the Ukraine. It was from Rosa’s childhood friend, Ivan Karpenko, and it contained an unexpected request. He had a son, just two years older than Dimitri – a gifted boy, he said – who wanted to study in Moscow. ‘I wondered if he could stay with you,’ he wrote. ‘He would pay for his keep, of course.’

‘We’ve nowhere to put him,’ Peter complained. But Rosa would not hear of any difficulties. ‘We’ll manage,’ she declared, and wrote at once to Karpenko that he should send his son. ‘He’ll be company for Dimitri,’ she said firmly. But both Dimitri and his father knew what she really meant. She was thinking: He’ll be a protector.

He arrived at the start of September. His name was Mikhail. And from almost the moment he came, Dimitri announced: ‘He is a genius.’

Mikhail Karpenko was a slim, dark, handsome youth with sparkling black eyes, who had just entered puberty; and it was certainly amazing what he knew. Within minutes of his arrival, they discovered that he was intensely proud of his Ukrainian heritage and his distinguished ancestor, the poet. ‘There’s been a big revival of our Ukrainian culture, you know, just in the last few years,’ he told Rosa. ‘And I’m part of it,’ he added rather grandly. But his interests were far wider than that. He seemed fascinated by everything to do with culture and the arts; and he absorbed new ideas with an astonishing speed. When Dimitri took him to visit his cousin Nadezhda, Karpenko seemed in his element, and quickly found favour there. Even the great man himself was impressed. ‘Why, it’s quite amazing the things you know, my little Cossack,’ he would say with a chuckle; and often he would come and sit with his daughter and Dimitri on one side and Karpenko on the other, his great arms round them, and relate all the latest news from the world of art.

It was an exciting time in the Suvorin family. For that year, in addition to his huge mansion, Vladimir had decided to build himself a new house, about a mile away. ‘A little retreat,’ he told them with a grin, ‘but an unusual one.’

This was an understatement. Only a handful of men in the world would have dared to do what the Russian industrialist now proposed. Which was nothing less than a whole house, constructed entirely in the style of Art Nouveau.

The design he showed Dimitri and Karpenko was astounding. Though the basic structure of the house was a simple, square box with a side entrance, there all conformity ended. Every window, every pillar, every ceiling, was shaped in the swirling curves of the Art Nouveau style. The effect was magical, plant-like. ‘It’s like some fabulous orchid,’ Karpenko remarked, which pleased the industrialist greatly. ‘It will have the latest of everything,’ he explained. ‘Electric lights. Even a telephone.’ Designers from France were coming to supervise the work.

And afterwards Karpenko remarked with awe to Dimitri: ‘Your uncle’s like a Renaissance prince.’

What a joy Karpenko was. The three of them – Dimitri, his cousin Nadezhda and Karpenko – soon became firm friends. The ten-year-old girl, sophisticated though she was, would listen fascinated to the handsome boy, with his flashing eyes and his infectious enthusiasms. This year, he was devoted to the new Russian poets who belonged to the Symbolist school. ‘Music,’ he would cry, ‘music is the supreme art because it reaches into the perfect, mystical world. But with words we can come close.’ And he would quote whole verses of Russia’s brilliant young poet, Alexander Blok, transporting them to a realm of mysterious goddesses, or to the end of the world, or the coming of some nameless messiah, while Nadezhda gazed at him with shining eyes. The two boys came to see her several times a week.

The gay intimacy of their afternoons together was only occasionally dampened by the presence of a rather serious sixteen year old.

It was November when they first began to notice that Alexander Bobrov had entered their lives. His father at that time had just become one of the Moscow deputies, for the liberal Cadet party, to the Tsar’s new and conservative Duma – which, after losing their estates, had been some comfort to the family. Since his own father had just been cut out of the Duma, however, this did not make Dimitri especially friendly towards the solemn youth. Nadezhda was polite, because he was a friend of her father’s. But Karpenko, only two years Alexander’s junior, made no secret of his contempt.

Alexander seldom said much. Having called upon Suvorin on some pretext, he would come in with him, or sometimes venture in alone, speak a few polite words to Nadezhda, and stand around for a short while, listening to their conversation rather awkwardly. And it was not long before Karpenko had found a nickname for him. ‘Look out,’ he would whisper, ‘here comes the Russian calendar.’

It was a clever joke. Though Peter the Great had reformed the calendar, he had used the old Julian system for counting the days; and whereas the rest of Europe had since transferred to the more modern Gregorian system, Russia and her Orthodox Church had stuck with the Julian. As a result, by the start of the twentieth century, the huge empire now lagged thirteen days behind the rest of the world. The cruel nickname exactly captured Alexander’s conservative mentality.

Whenever he saw young Bobrov, Karpenko would speak enthusiastically of the coming new age, of the folly of the Tsar, and declaim the lines of Alexander Blok on Russia’s years of stagnation:

And poor young Bobrov would watch, morosely.

It was the following Easter, in 1908, that a small incident made plain what was in young Bobrov’s mind.

As for everyone in Russia, Easter Day was a busy time in the great Suvorin house. Though neither Vladimir nor his brother Peter were religious, it never occurred to either to miss the long Easter vigil the night before; and on Easter Day the house was open to a constant stream of visitors. In the huge dining room, the long table was piled high with the rich foods that were allowed now the Easter fast was over. In the centre of the table were the two traditional Easter dishes: kulich, the creamy, thick bread decorated with the paschal sign; and the white sweet shaped like a little pyramid – the paskha. And everywhere, of course, decorated Easter eggs, some painted red, some in the Ukrainian manner covered with elaborate designs: people brought them, received them – several thousand eggs would be consumed in the huge Suvorin mansion. And all washed down with iced vodka.

The Bobrovs came by in the middle of the day, just after Peter Suvorin and his family, and so Dimitri and his friend were witnesses to the little scene. Young Nadezhda and her mother were both wearing the traditional festival dresses of Russian women. Mrs Suvorin also wore a high diadem – the kokoshnik – of gold and mother of pearl, which made her look more regal than ever. As was the custom, each arrival went from one person to another, kissing each one three times and exchanging the Easter greeting: ‘Christ is Risen’: ‘He is risen indeed.’

When young Alexander Bobrov reached Nadezhda, however, he did not pass on but paused and reached into his pocket and drew out a little box. ‘This is a present for you,’ he said gravely. Astonished the girl opened it, to find a tiny but beautiful little Easter egg, made of silver with decorations in coloured stones. It came from Fabergé.

‘It’s lovely.’ For once, she was so astonished that she did not know what to say. ‘It’s for me?’

He smiled. ‘Of course.’

Dimitri and Karpenko watched, equally amazed. It was one of Fabergé’s smallest pieces, of course, but still an astonishing present for a boy at school to give, and hardly appropriate. Nor were they alone in thinking so for the little scene had caught the eagle eye of Mrs Suvorin. She swooped.

‘What a charming present.’ She gathered both the boy and his egg and somehow whisked both across the room before Alexander knew what had happened. ‘But my dear Alexander,’ she said, gently but firmly, ‘I can’t allow you to give such a thing to Nadezhda at her age. She’s really too young, you know.’

Alexander blushed scarlet.

‘If you do not wish…’

‘I am very touched that you should have thought of it. But she is not used to such presents, Alexander. If you wish you can give it to me and I will give it to her when she is older,’ she said kindly. And feeling now that there was nothing else in politeness he could do, Alexander sadly gave it to her.

But the message was clear. He had tried to make a declaration and Mrs Suvorin, for whatever reason, had not let him do so. He felt embarrassed and humiliated. And even when Vladimir put his arm affectionately round him and led him off for a stroll in the gallery, he was hardly comforted.

As for Dimitri and Karpenko, they were beside themselves. ‘Poor young Bobrov,’ Karpenko mocked. ‘Fabergé sold him a rotten egg.’

And Nadezhda, deprived of her egg, could hardly decide what she felt about it all.

1908, June

In the summer of 1908 it seemed that Russia, after all, might be at peace. The wave of terrorism was passing. Stolypin’s harsh measures against the revolutionaries had greatly damaged them; and the recent discovery that the leading Socialist Revolutionary terrorist had long been a police agent had weakened that party in the eyes of the people. There were signs of progress too. The new Duma was not, as some had feared, the Tsar’s lapdog. Liberals like Nicolai Bobrov spoke up boldly for democracy; and even the conservative majority backed the minister Stolypin in his plans for careful reform. Finally, that year, the excellent weather gave every promise of a bumper harvest. The countryside was quiet.

And it was in the country that the blow which was to decide Dimitri’s destiny fell, quite unexpectedly, out of the blue sky.

It was Vladimir’s idea that they should go to Russka. All spring, Rosa had looked unwell and both Vladimir and Peter had urged her: ‘Escape the city in the summer heat.’ In the end it was agreed that Dimitri and his friends should come; Karpenko would stay for the month of June before returning to the Ukraine for the rest of the holidays, and Rosa would try to come with Peter in July.

Dimitri found the place delightful. His uncle’s remarkable vision was already at work. Thirty yards from the old Bobrov house there now stood a long, low wooden building which housed the museum and, at the far end, some workshops. In these Vladimir had already installed an expert woodcarver and a potter, whom Dimitri and Nadezhda loved to watch. The museum, though only just begun, was already a little treasure house. There were the traditional distaffs, elaborately carved painted wooden spoons, presses for making patterns or bread and cakes, and wonderful embroidered cloths, featuring the curious oriental bird design that was customary at Russka. Vladimir had also begun a collection of icons of the local school from the time when the monastery had been a centre of production.

In the house itself, Vladimir had provided a varied library and a grand piano. Mrs Suvorin, evidently rather bored by the country, usually sat reading on the verandah; but the house was efficiently run by Arina, whose young son Ivan was constantly hovering, hoping for a chance to play. He and Nadezhda were almost the same age, and it was amusing to see the sophisticated ten-year-old girl go whooping down the slope after the peasant boy or play hide and seek with him in the woods above the house.

In the afternoons, Vladimir would often take Nadezhda and the boys to bathe in the river. The big industrialist was surprisingly agile and a strong swimmer. Karpenko, it turned out, could hardly swim, but Vladimir personally held him in the water and coached him so that soon he could outstrip any of them. Afterwards, their bodies tingling from the cold water, they would sit on the bank and talk.

The industrialist was a wonderful talker. He would put his great arm round Nadezhda or one of the boys and discuss all manner of things with them, exactly as if they were adults. And it was on one of these afternoons that he gave them his view of Russia’s future. As usual, it was to the point.

‘It’s really quite simple,’ he told them. ‘Russia is now in a race against time. Stolypin, whom I personally support, knows he has to modernize Russia while he keeps the lid on the forces of revolution. If he succeeds, the Tsar will keep his throne; if not…’ He grimaced. ‘Chaos. Peasant and urban insurrection. Remember Pugachev, as they used to say.’

‘What must Stolypin do?’ Karpenko asked.

‘Three things, chiefly. Develop industry. Thanks to foreign capital that’s going well. Next, educate the masses. Sooner or later some kind of democracy will come, and the people aren’t ready for it. Stolypin is making progress there. Thirdly, he’s trying to reform the countryside.’ He sighed. ‘And that, I’m afraid, will be hard.’

The attempt to change the Russian peasant, Dimitri knew, lay at the heart of the great minister’s reforms. In the last two years, important changes had been made. The payments due to the former landowners, together with all arrears, had been entirely cancelled. The peasant had been given full civil liberties, the use of the same law courts as any other citizen, and an internal passport for travel without the permission of the commune, which he was now free to leave at any time. At last, half a century after the Emancipation, he was a free man in fact as well as theory. But there still remained one huge problem.

‘For what can be done about the commune?’ Vladimir wondered aloud.

Even now, the commune’s wasteful strip-farming of medieval times with its periodic redistributions had changed but little. Russian grain yield remained only a third of those in much of Western Europe. In his attempt to change this, Stolypin was trying to encourage peasants to withdraw from the commune, cultivate their own personal land, and be independent farmers. Laws were being passed; easy credit made available through the Peasant Bank. But progress so far was slow.

‘Isn’t Stolypin trying to make the peasant into a bourgeois, though – a capitalist?’ Dimitri objected.

‘Of course he is,’ Vladimir replied. ‘Unlike you, Dimitri, I’m a capitalist. But I do confess that it’s going to be very difficult to make it work.’

‘I’d have thought it would be easy,’ Karpenko remarked.

‘Yes, my friend.’ Vladimir tousled the boy’s head affectionately. ‘But that’s because you come from the Ukraine. Down there in the western provinces of White Russia there’s a tradition of independent farming. But in these central provinces, in Russia proper, the commune system is solid. And if you want to know why, just look at the village here. Look at Boris Romanov, the village elder.’

Dimitri and Karpenko had soon come to know Romanov. As village elder now, he was a figure of some power, which he clearly enjoyed. The family, with three strong sons, had the largest share of strips in the village now and Boris’s house had handsome carving round the eaves and painted shutters. Yet that spring, when Stolypin’s reforms had made some state land by the monastery available for purchase, and Vladimir had remarked to him – ‘Well, Boris Timofeevich, I dare say you’ll be buying some yourself’ – he had glowered and replied: ‘The commune’s buying it.’ And then, quietly but audibly: ‘And we’ll smoke you out too, one day.’

‘Nothing will persuade Romanov that the answer to everything isn’t to take this estate,’ Vladimir continued. ‘And do you know the irony? In many provinces there isn’t enough land – even if you dispossess every landowner – to do the peasants the slightest bit of good! Their best answer is to resettle to less populated provinces – which Stolypin’s also trying to encourage.’ He sighed. ‘So the peasants support the social revolutionaries – even the terrorists – because they promise to distribute all the land.’

The industrialist smiled grimly as he summed up.

‘So the communal peasant does little for himself but waits for a miracle that will solve everything in the twinkling of an eye. Passive, but angry. He’d prefer decades of unnecessary suffering, followed by a moment of useless violence.’

Though Dimitri, coming from the Socialist household of Peter and Rosa, naturally knew that in his conservative politics his Uncle Vladimir was mistaken, he had a great respect for his intelligence and recognized the truth of much of what he said. And thinking of the revolution he knew one day must come, he asked: ‘So do you think Stolypin will fail, and the Tsar lose his throne?’

‘It isn’t clear to me,’ his uncle replied frankly, ‘but remember this: in 1905 we had a war and a food shortage. That’s what actually caused the revolution. My guess, therefore, is that in order to win the race, Stolypin needs two things: peace, and good harvests. That is what will really decide the fate of Russia. Nothing much else.’

Yet it would have been hard, that peaceful summer, to think for long about such serious matters.

It was a happy time. In the mornings, Karpenko would often go out to explore the countryside, or sketch, or devise fantastic games to amuse young Ivan and Nadezhda, who both seemed to look upon him as a god. Meanwhile, for three hours, Dimitri would practise the piano. He had concentrated on the piano now, to the near exclusion of the violin, and though he might lack the driven technical virtuosity of the professional performer, his playing was of a remarkable musical sophistication.

In the afternoons, if they were not swimming with Vladimir, they sat on the verandah and read books or played cards with Mrs Suvorin.

One day Vladimir had taken them round the factories at Russka. It had been an impressive tour. Dimitri had studied the factory workers with interest as they quietly went about their tasks; but Karpenko had been fascinated by the mechanism of the plant itself. ‘Such raw power,’ he whispered to Dimitri afterwards. ‘Did you notice the incredible, harsh beauty of the place? And your uncle – he’s in charge of this machine. I admire him more every day.’

Several times they had visited the monastery. And in the second week of June, Arina took them across the river and along the little path to the old springs, which utterly delighted Karpenko. ‘How Slavic!’ he cried. And then: ‘How pagan.’

The evenings Dimitri especially enjoyed. For sometimes, while the others laughed and talked in the library, he would quietly sit at the piano and try out his own tentative compositions. It was on these occasions that he discovered a new and extraordinary feature of his uncle’s character. For sometimes, as he was playing, he would be aware of Vladimir softly entering the room and sitting in the shadows. But often as not, when he came to a pause, his uncle would come over, gaze thoughtfully at the keys, and then in his rich baritone suggest: ‘Why don’t you try it this way?’ Or: ‘If you changed the rhythm here…’ And – this was the remarkable thing – Dimitri nearly always found that, unknown to himself, it had been what he wanted to express all along. ‘How do you know my mind like that?’ he would ask. ‘Am I composing, or are you?’ To which his uncle would reply, with a touch of sadness: ‘To some, Dimitri, it is given to create. To others, only to understand the creative act.’ And Dimitri could only marvel at this man, with whom he felt he was developing an even closer bond.

It was the day before he was due to leave that Karpenko drew Dimitri to one side and said: ‘Let’s go for a walk. Just the two of us.’

‘Where to?’

‘An enchanted place.’ He grinned. ‘The springs.’

Their walk was delightful. Karpenko was at his charming best, full of infectious laughter, and as they went along, Dimitri reflected how lucky he was to have such a friend. How handsome he was, he thought admiringly. Though fifteen, Karpenko had suffered few of the disadvantages of adolescence. He was nearly always in a sunny mood. The beginnings of his beard were so soft he scarcely needed to shave, his smooth skin was quite without blemish; he might have been conceived by a Renaissance sculptor like Donatello. Their slight difference in age precluded any rivalry: Karpenko knew more than Dimitri, but shared his knowledge freely and always with kindness, like a protective elder brother. Best of all, behind the façade of his jokes and brilliant manner there lay a deeply thoughtful nature that Dimitri loved and respected.

And it was in this last vein that, after they had rested on the mossy ground by the springs for a while, Karpenko suddenly turned to him rather seriously and remarked: ‘Tell me, Dimitri, have you ever heard the proposition they call the Extraterrestrials Argument?’

Dimitri shook his head.

‘It goes like this,’ Karpenko explained. ‘Imagine that beings arrived from another planet and saw how we live – all the injustice in our world. And they asked you: “What are you doing about it?” And you replied: “Not much.” What would they say, Dimitri? How could they understand such madness? “Surely,” they’d say, “any rational being would put such a state of affairs right, as his first and most pressing duty.”’ He looked at his friend earnestly. ‘Don’t you agree?’

‘I do.’

‘So, what I wanted to say, before I leave, is – shouldn’t we commit ourselves to do something, to make a new and better world, you and I?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Good, I knew you’d agree.’ Slowly and solemnly now he reached into his pocket and drew out a pin. Then he pricked his finger and drew blood and handed the pin to Dimitri. ‘We’ll make a pact, then,’ he said. ‘Blood brothers.’

And young Dimitri flushed with pride. It was the fashion just then, especially among young men in revolutionary articles, to use the ancient custom of blood brotherhood. But to think that Karpenko was doing him such an honour! Dimitri took the pin and did the same. Then they pooled their blood.

Karpenko had only been gone four days when Mrs Suvorin, receiving a message that her sister in St Petersburg was ill, felt obliged to depart. Nadezhda and Dimitri remained, however; with Vladimir and Arina there, it hardly seemed that they could come to any harm. And so a pleasant week passed.

It was the custom for the stable boys to take the horses down to the river each day. If they were being watched, this was done in an orderly manner; but if not, they would mount them bareback and, with loud whoops, go careening down the slope. Little Ivan, whenever he could escape Arina’s watchful gaze, would slip off to join in.

If Nadezhda had not been watching, that warm July day, perhaps Dimitri would not have done it; but seeing the nine-year-old Ivan looking cheerfully down at him from a horse in the stableyard, he suddenly decided: If the little boy can do it, so can I. And a moment later he had clambered on to a horse himself, and was moving out towards the slope.

First a walk, then a run: the horses were excited. Hoofs pounding on the hard ground; wild cries; the ground both coming to meet him, yet falling away at the same time. Dimitri clung to the horse’s mane. There was dust everywhere, a smell of sweat. Suddenly he felt a branch from a sapling slap him in the face and cut him. He laughed. Then he was losing his balance. How foolish. Next he was falling, headlong, as the flanks of the other horses rushed by. Then the ground, or was it the sky, hurled itself at him.

Dimitri heard his leg snap. In that strange, silent moment before the searing pain, he heard it quite distinctly. And he was still just conscious when Nadezhda came running down the slope to where he lay.

Dimitri did not realize, for some time, that things would never be the same.

They had put his bed downstairs, in the big, airy room where the piano was. He was not too bored. There were plenty of books. Arina frequently came in and Nadezhda would happily sit and chatter in her inimitable way. But he looked forward most to the time when his Uncle Vladimir would come and talk or read to him by the hour. The only thing he missed was that, for the present, he could not play the piano.

And then his mother came.

If there was any consequence of his accident that Dimitri would never have foreseen, it was that it would change his view of Rosa. What had she been to him until then? The loving mother who had helped him take his first steps in music; the woman who adored his father; the selfless, strangely sad figure who worried incessantly about her husband and her son. She did not look well when she arrived. Her large eyes were haggard. Her black hair was streaked with grey, and because it was both thick and long the effect was to make her seem unkempt. He loved her but felt sorry for her, because she could not be happy.

It was Vladimir who revealed another side of her. ‘You must rest, now you are here, Rosa,’ he urged. ‘And,’ he added firmly, ‘you must play. We cannot allow this young man to be without music.’ And to Dimitri’s great surprise, the very next day, she began to do so.

How strange it was. He had never heard her play before. He had known that once she had played. Often, when he was younger, she would help him over a few bars here and there, where he ran into difficulties, and from this he knew that she had considerable technique. But for some reason she would never sit down and play. Now, however, hesitantly at first, she began to do so: simple pieces the first day or two. Then a Beethoven sonata or two. Then pieces by Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and other Russians. She would play for an hour, then two, her face sometimes frowning with amusement as she asked her fingers to perform tasks they had not done in years, sometimes smiling gently. And as he listened, Dimitri was more and more astonished. She is formidable, he thought. A major talent. He could hear it coming through in every phrase. By the fifth day, the transformation in Rosa was astonishing. It was as if she had shed her sad persona like an unwanted skin. She had drawn her hair back more tightly, so that it no longer seemed untidy. Fresh air and several nights sleep had relaxed her face and smoothed out the lines. Now she threw her head back in calm triumph as the Beethoven ‘Appassionata’ flowed like a wave from her fingers. And often Vladimir stood beside her.

‘I never knew you played like that,’ Dimitri remarked one day; and almost added: ‘Or that you were so beautiful.’

‘There are many things you do not know,’ she replied gaily, and strolled out, with a laugh, on to the verandah with Vladimir and Nadezhda.

And then, just as suddenly, it ended. It was a sunny afternoon. Rosa had been there ten days. The day before, Vladimir had brought her the scores of some studies by his favourite of all the Russians composing just then, the brilliant Scriabin. They were wonderful pieces, as delicate and measured as a Chopin prelude, as haunting as one of the Russian Symbolist poems of Alexander Blok. Rosa was playing them while Vladimir basked in an easy chair, a seraphic smile on his face. And unusually Dimitri had fallen asleep.

Rosa had stopped playing when he began to awaken, and Vladimir was standing beside her at the piano. They obviously imagined he was still asleep, and though they were speaking in low tones, he heard most of their words distinctly.

‘You cannot go on. I’ve been telling you for three years.’ His uncle’s baritone voice, gently persuasive. ‘I can’t bear to see it.’

‘There’s nothing to be done. But, Volodya…’ Dimitri had never heard anyone use this diminutive form of his uncle’s name before. ‘Volodya, I’m so afraid.’

‘You need sleep, my little dove. Stop tormenting yourself. At least stay with me here a while.’ Vladimir paused, apparently to think. ‘I have to go to Berlin and Paris next spring. Come with me. We can go to one of the spas for a health cure. I think you know you will be safe with me.’

Dimitri stared, his eyes wide open. He saw his mother touch Vladimir’s large hand affectionately. ‘I know.’

Dimitri sat bolt upright, then winced with pain. He saw their two faces turn towards him: his uncle’s irritated, his mother’s distraught. Then Vladimir said, as calmly as though nothing had happened: ‘Ah, my friend. You have woken up. Let’s all have some tea.’ And Dimitri himself could not make out what it was he had just heard.

The next morning, Rosa announced that she must return to Moscow. ‘I’ve been away from your father for too long,’ she told him. ‘I worry about him so.’ And once again her face looked haggard, suggesting she had not slept the night before.

The days that followed might have been sad for Dimitri. Not only did his mother depart, but Nadezhda was summoned back to Moscow by Mrs Suvorin; and since the doctor said he must not be moved, he was left at Russka almost alone. It was Vladimir who now, quietly but firmly, took over his life.

Just two days after Rosa left, his uncle appeared with several books and scores and dumped them on the table beside his bed. ‘You play well, my friend, and you’ve made some pretty compositions in the evenings,’ he announced firmly. ‘Now that you’re confined to bed though, you should make the most of your seclusion. It’s time you began to understand what you’re doing. These are books of musical theory and composition. Study them.’

It was hard work at first, even boring. But each evening his uncle made him go through the exercises: harmonies, counterpoint, the complex business of musical discipline. Though only an amateur, Vladimir’s understanding was considerable and he was a stern taskmaster. ‘Now I know why your factories make a good profit,’ Dimitri once laughed. But the results, he had to confess, were excellent. In just six weeks, with nothing else in the world to do, the thirteen year old made astonishing progress. And he found something else, too: that as his technical understanding increased, he began to have a burning desire, an absolute compulsion, to use this new knowledge he was mastering, and to compose. So that in September, when the doctor finally agreed that he might travel back to Moscow, he remarked to Vladimir: ‘Do you know, I think perhaps I’m really going to be a composer.’

To which his uncle, to the boy’s surprise, simply smiled and replied: ‘Of course you are.’

And it was because of this period of study that Dimitri Suvorin, long after he had become famous, always remarked: ‘It was a fall from a horse that made me.’

The fall from the horse had one other effect. Whether it was the carelessness of the stable boys who carried him back to the house, or the fact that the fracture was multiple, or the poor technique of the factory doctor who set his leg, Dimitri Suvorin’s right leg was twisted out of shape for the rest of his life and he walked with a stick.

1908, September

As well as visiting whenever he could think of an excuse, Alexander Bobrov often walked past the outside of Vladimir Suvorin’s great house in the hope of catching sight of Nadezhda. Despite the embarrassing incident at Easter he had never, for a moment, given up his idea. ‘I shall marry her,’ he told his father bluntly.

Once already, that month, he had found an excuse for going in and had found Mrs Suvorin and her daughter there, and learned that Vladimir would not be back in Moscow until late that month.

This evening, however, it was already late. The curtains and blinds were all closed, and only habit had made him walk by the Suvorin house at all. A light mist had fallen; the street lamps were so many yellowish blurs; few people were about. He would probably not even have glanced at the house if he had not heard a light footfall in that direction, a sound which seemed to end by the front door.

He peered across the street. For a moment he could not see anyone; then, standing by the portico, he made out a muffled figure in a broad-brimmed felt hat. He paused to watch and to his surprise, a moment later, saw the front door open a little and the figure swiftly step inside. But it was just as the door was closing that he caught his breath. For as the figure took off his hat, Alexander saw, without a shadow of a doubt, the reddish hair of Yevgeny Popov.

What the devil does she want with me? It was a question Popov had asked himself many times. She had everything: a brilliant husband, a huge fortune – all that the bourgeois world had to offer. Of course, the upper bourgeoisie, having no useful purpose, sometimes got bored. In a celebrated case, one of the heirs of a great Russian merchant fortune had recently blown his brains out in his brother’s house – not for any reason, but purely on a whim because he happened to see a revolver on a table. ‘Ennui’, they called it. Bourgeois decadence, of course, was what it really was.

Was she just bored? He did not think so. Unhappy, perhaps, but not bored.

He remembered a conversation he had had once with Lenin. ‘Don’t expect too much from women,’ his friend had told him. ‘I’ve never yet met any woman except my wife who could play chess or read a railway timetable.’ Popov grinned to himself. He knew that in recent years Lenin had been having a sporadic affair with a certain countess who lived in St Petersburg. He wondered if the countess could play chess. And now, as he looked at Mrs Suvorin, he idly asked: ‘Do you play chess?’

‘Yes,’ she replied, ‘but it bores me.’

As for Mrs Suvorin, whether she played chess or not, there was no doubt about her intelligence. Although recently he had heard that the authorities wanted to arrest him, Popov had managed to come discreetly to the house several times in the last two years. Each time, she had questioned him carefully about his beliefs; and though she had declined to read any Marx, it seemed to him that she was genuinely interested in what he told her.

It was also becoming clear that she was interested in him.

But why? From the first it had occurred to Popov that Suvorin might be unfaithful. If his wife wanted to revenge herself with an affair though, hadn’t she plenty of her own kind to choose from? Unless of course she wanted him because he represented the revolution that would destroy her husband’s world. That, of course, would be a special kind of insult. But whether that idea amused him, or whether it would make him feel he was being used, he was not sure.

The house was quiet. She had sent the servants to bed long ago. She was sitting on a low chair in front of the fire, which was burning low, and she wore a pale blue peignoir. She seemed to be lost in thought as he sat, his legs apart, leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees.

‘Tell me,’ she said slowly, ‘why you come here.’

Popov was silent for a while before answering. There were good reasons of course. The first had been that the Bolshevik Party was short of funds. Whether he could get money out of the industrialist’s wife he had no idea, but it was worth looking into. He remembered how, not long ago, when a rich sympathizer had left a legacy to the party and his two daughters had disputed the Will, a pair of enterprising Bolsheviks, concealing their affiliation, had somehow persuaded the two women to marry them and got the money for the party that way. Even Popov had been impressed by that piece of audacity. It showed what could be done.

Yet there was more to it than that. He was frankly flattered that this proud, clever woman should feel attracted to him. Indeed, he had to confess, he felt something for her, and if his first thought had been to humiliate her, now he found himself even wondering: Could she, perhaps, be saved?

‘I find you interesting,’ he said at last.

She smiled. ‘You’re just curious?’

‘Why not?’

Certainly he was curious. Suvorin impressed him. This was not a weakling, like a Bobrov, to be brushed aside. Suvorin was powerful and intelligent, one of the great capitalists whose final overthrow would begin the revolution. How could he not be curious about the man’s world? When he entered the Suvorin house, Popov also realized that it represented something else that had been missing in his life.

For though he had travelled, and studied history and economics, Popov had never taken much interest in the arts. When he was with Mrs Suvorin, he was sometimes reminded, with a wry smile, of a conversation he had had in Switzerland last year with his friend Lenin. They had been speaking of the countess in St Petersburg when Lenin burst out: ‘Do you know, she showed me a strange thing once. A postcard of a painting called the Mona Lisa.’ He had shaken his bald head. ‘Have you ever heard of it, Popov? I hadn’t. What on earth is it about? I couldn’t make head nor tail of it.’ And though Popov was not quite so prosaic as the great revolutionary, he had often to confess a sense of ignorance in Mrs Suvorin’s presence; and he would let her lead him to one of the rooms where her husband’s modern paintings hung and stare at them, fascinated, while she explained them.

But now she was looking at him thoughtfully. ‘Tell me,’ she suddenly said, ‘if you knew, for a certainty, that all this was going to continue, that there would be no revolution for at least a hundred years, what would you do?’

It was a fair question. ‘Actually,’ he confessed, ‘I think Stolypin may succeed. So does Lenin. The revolution may not even come in my lifetime.’ He shrugged, then smiled. ‘I suppose the truth is,’ he admitted frankly, ‘I’ve spent all my life being a revolutionary and I wouldn’t know how to be anything else. It’s a vocation, you know, like any other.’

‘But in the long run, you think all this,’ she gestured round the beautifully furnished room, ‘has to go.’

‘Certainly. There isn’t room for such privilege. All men will be equal.’

‘And when the revolution comes, you will destroy the capitalists and their supporters ruthlessly.’

‘Yes.’

‘Then tell me this,’ she continued pleasantly. ‘If the revolution actually comes soon, and I choose to resist it,’ she smiled quizzically, ‘would you kill me too?’

At which, instead of answering, he frowned and paused to think.

That, she decided, was what she liked. However devious he might be in his dealings, there was still a strange if cruel honesty about him. Something almost pure. He was undoubtedly dangerous: perhaps her fascination with him was, in part, the excitement of a forbidden love. And now, rather than lie, he was calmly considering whether he would kill her or not.

‘Well?’

‘I don’t think it would be necessary. Actually,’ he added, ‘I think you could be saved.’

He did, too. She was like a bird in a cage, he often thought: trapped in this huge mansion and her bourgeois world, certainly; yet still a free spirit, capable of leaving all this behind if called to a higher purpose.

‘I suppose that’s a compliment,’ she smiled.

‘Yes. It is.’

For several more minutes they sat in silence, each conscious of the other, yet following their own thoughts.

And then the fire in the grate hissed, and spat.

The fire was low, just some brightly glowing embers amidst the ash, and the little piece of sparking cinder it threw out might easily have lain on the floor and slowly extinguished itself. But by chance it came to rest upon the edge of Mrs Suvorin’s peignoir and immediately flared up with a sharp flame. She gave a little cry and, intending to whisk her peignoir away, stupidly flicked the lighted cinder on to her lap instead.

It was nothing really. An instant more and she could have risen and stamped out the tiny fire. But seeing the fear on her face, Popov suddenly thought that she was catching fire and, without thinking more, threw himself forward, plucking the burning cinder from her in his bare hands and tossing it back into the grate. Then, grabbing a cushion, he smothered the little fire.

And now, finding him almost in her arms, Mrs Suvorin looked into his face and saw, to her surprise, a look of tenderness.

‘Don’t move,’ she said.

It was another two hours before, in the damp cold outside, young Alexander Bobrov gave up his lonely vigil. He could not understand it. The devil Popov was with her; there could be only one reason why.

And what on earth, he wondered, should be done?

1910

At first sight, in the years 1909 and 1910, it might have seemed that the household of Professor Peter Suvorin was a place of perfect harmony.

Everyone was busy. Dimitri had two music professors now and was making rapid strides. Karpenko had entered the School of Art and was already gaining a reputation as a fellow of ideas. As was his custom, kindly Vladimir had given the young man a helping hand, inviting him frequently to his house when distinguished members of the art world were gathered there, and introducing him to several artists. And Peter Suvorin himself was particularly busy: for it was during these years that he wrote his classic textbook, Physics for Students, which was to make his name familiar to a whole generation of Russian schoolboys.

These were quiet times for Russia too. To Dimitri, as he walked into the shady courtyard of the apartment building, if often seemed that, if great events were stirring in the world, their sounds had been muffled by the time they reached the narrow, tree-lined streets of Moscow. Of the doings of the Tsar, his German wife and their children in their private palaces in St Petersburg, he heard hardly anything.

Dimitri knew, too, that Stolypin and the Duma continued on their road of slow reform; though when he read the newspapers it seemed to him that the great minister, though he brought peace and prosperity, had few friends. ‘The liberals hate him for clamping down,’ Vladimir explained, ‘but the reactionaries hate him because his system of governing seems to weaken the absolute autocracy of the Tsar. He’s winning through though,’ he added.

To Dimitri, the evenings were the best of times, when the family sat together round the table and discussed the day’s events. How delightful it was, especially in the spring and summer months when his mother would prepare tea, served with raspberries, and through the open window one could see the mellow turquoise sky and hear, faintly, the singing of vespers from the church next door.

Karpenko was a constant source of conversation. While Dimitri’s studies at this time were of a gradual and private nature – he would be immersed for weeks at a time in the Beethoven piano sonatas, or in a Tchaikovsky symphony, which profound joys could not easily be shared in words – Karpenko was in a continual ferment of intellectual excitement, and hardly a week seemed to pass when he did not bring home some new discovery which changed the world. Sometimes it was a new school of painting, inaugurated in an exhibition with some name like The Blue Rose, or The Golden Fleece. One month he read the Confessions of the writer Gorky and some writings of a new group in St Petersburg who called themselves the God Builders, and each evening he would lecture the family: ‘Don’t you see, all through the centuries man has been like Prometheus, chained to a rock of superstition. But now, Dimitri, man is risen. The people is God. The people will be immortal. Think of it, Professor: first the people will create the revolution and be free; then, maybe one day we’ll even take over other planets, the universe.’ And afterwards he and Dimitri would continue these weighty discussions in the room they shared, late into the night.

But the discovery of Karpenko’s that meant the most to Dimitri was something more modest. There were many poets in Moscow and St Petersburg just then; indeed, poetry was so popular that poets could even make a living at their craft. And one night Karpenko arrived with a collection of verses by some people Dimitri had not heard of before. ‘They’re a new school,’ he explained. ‘Instead of using symbols and abstract ideas they write more directly, about experience.’ Two of these in particular Dimitri loved at once. ‘I feel as if they’re writing about this very street, this very apartment and family,’ he said, delightedly. And so, at the start of their careers, he discovered two of Russia’s greatest twentieth-century poets: Osip Mandelstamm and Anna Akhmatova.

Yet despite Karpenko’s brilliance, it was during these evenings that Dimitri gradually came, as never before, to appreciate one other member of his close-knit family: this was his father.

Peter Suvorin seldom spoke much, but he would sit, with his gold-rimmed spectacles propped below the bridge of his nose, quietly reading a paper or looking over the pages of his manuscript. His face was clean-shaven except for a small wedge of beard on his chin; and though his hair was grey and his face, somewhat drawn, had collected little lines upon it, he still looked less than his fifty-five years. With his look of kindly serenity, one might have taken him for a Swedish pastor.

And in his gentle way, he presided over everything. ‘Do you know what your father reminds me of?’ Karpenko once laughingly remarked to Dimitri. ‘He’s like one of those elders at a monastery. We all worship and make a noise and believe. But the elder in his hermitage, he’s quiet and serene: because unlike the rest of us, he knows. That’s how it is with your father and the revolution.’

Indeed, Peter Suvorin had reason to be content with his modest, steady course. The Bolsheviks in the last two years had little to show for their extremism. Police spies had infiltrated their ranks and made it hard for them to operate. Their lonely leader Lenin seemed to have been forced into permanent exile in Switzerland and their membership had plummeted. But the moderate, Menshevik Socialists had continued about their business, gradually building up support in the factories, organizing trade unions, educating and publishing – mostly legal activities. Some were ready to work with the Duma. There was even talk of changing the party’s name to the Workers’ Party. And Peter Suvorin was happy because, as he would tell his family: ‘It’s progress.

‘The new age is coming,’ he liked to say, ‘not because of your will, Karpenko, nor even the cunning of a fellow like Popov. You shouldn’t worry about the now or the when: we do not know the hour or the manner of its coming. The point is that we know the process is inevitable.’

Once, with a smile, the professor had remarked: ‘It occurred to me as I was working on my book the other day, that the Marxist Dialectic is like the laws of physics. Consider an electric current. It has a positive and negative charge: Thesis and Antithesis – they create a tension, the potential difference. They flow together, making a Synthesis. When Trotsky speaks of a permanent revolution in the world – a continuous process – I suppose it’s like an electric current: endless, dynamic, capable of powering anything.’ Listening to his father Dimitri would get a wonderful sense that all things in the universe were scientifically related, and that his little family, with their different forms of expression, were all moving along the great highway to an ultimate and marvellous destiny.

Nothing ever seemed to change the professor. He taught; he wrote; his pupils came to the house. His life was as quiet and ordered as his mind. Whatever else was going on, Peter’s activities gave the household a certain rhythm and purpose. It was comforting.

And, by the summer of 1910, Dimitri was certainly in need of comfort.

For by then it was clear that Rosa Suvorin was going mad.

For some months after Dimitri’s accident, Rosa’s habitual anxiousness seemed to have lessened. It was as if, fearing something worse, she was actually relieved that tragedy had struck and that now it was over. But then, just around the time Peter began writing his book, something began to change.

Why did she insist upon typing his book herself? Several times he had begged her to let him give the work to someone else, but on each occasion she had gone white with determination, as though he were somehow trying to violate her act of passionate devotion, and he had given up.

Each night, after supper was finished, she would set up her typewriter in the little dining room and start to work. She refused to do this during the day, saying she had no time then. Over and over again, she would type whatever Peter had written, until she was satisfied that it was perfect. Sometimes she would be done in an hour or so; but often she would continue, late into the night, lovingly placing her offering on the table in the hall in the early hours, and appear in the morning with eyes dark from lack of sleep. And how many nights, Dimitri wondered, had he fallen asleep to the faint sound of the typewriter going tap, tap, tap in the darkness?

Worse however than this obsessive behaviour, which wore Rosa down, was the reawakening of her old anxiousness, which now returned with a vengeance.

It took strange forms. If there were the faintest chill in the air, Peter must have an overcoat and a fur hat; if the sun was warm, she feared for sunstroke; whenever there was ice upon the ground, she knew he must have slipped and injured himself. This anxiety soon extended to cover Dimitri as well. Sometimes, to his great embarrassment, she would even insist that Karpenko go with him to school, in case anything should happen to him on the way. She could only relax, it seemed, in the evenings, when her husband and son were safely at home again.

Then she began to follow them. At first, they did not even realize that she was doing so: she would have some perfectly plausible excuse – a friend to visit, some shopping to do – for accompanying Peter to the university or Dimitri to school. But before long the excuses wore out and it became clear that she simply wanted to keep them in sight. Peter, who went in to the university only twice a week, decided to humour her; but Dimitri had to beg her to let him alone, and often thereafter he would turn irritably, to find her pale, wan face a hundred yards behind him.

More embarrassing were her suspicions.

They came, it seemed, from nowhere. Yet they tortured her. She would decide, quite suddenly, that a fellow professor was out to get Peter, or a neighbour with whom she was on friendly terms was a police spy, watching her whole family. She would earnestly warn Dimitri that there was a hidden conspiracy, coming from the Black Hundreds, to destroy all Jews and Socialists. ‘Anyone may be in it,’ she would warn him, ‘you never know.’ And no one, it seemed, was above suspicion.

In the first months of 1910, Karpenko became agitated because the government, having allowed the Ukraine some cultural freedom, became nervous of the growing sense of nationalism emerging there. ‘The word is that they are about to close all the Ukrainian cultural societies,’ he told them dejectedly. ‘We Cossacks should rise up again as we did under Bogdan,’ he added wryly, ‘and take over the Ukraine again.’

It was an innocent statement, said jokingly. But suddenly Rosa’s face clouded. ‘What do you mean by that?’ she demanded. ‘What sort of uprising?’ And for some ten minutes she cross-questioned the youth suspiciously. And afterwards, when Dimitri asked her what the matter was, she turned to him with a troubled face and explained: ‘Don’t you realize, the Cossack rising was the greatest massacre of Jews that Russia has ever seen.’ ‘But you surely don’t think…?’ ‘You never know, Dimitri. You can never be sure of anybody.’ And he could only shake his head.

It was a week after this incident, when the two of them happened to be alone, that Rosa sat him down at the kitchen table and said to him earnestly: ‘I want you to make me one promise, Dimitri. Will you do it for me?’

‘If I can,’ he replied.

‘Promise me, then, that you will be a musician. That you will never become a revolutionary, like your father, but that you will stick to music.’

Dimitri shrugged. Since he had every hope of devoting his life to music this did not seem too hard a thing to promise. ‘All right,’ he said.

‘Your word?’

‘Yes.’ He smiled, half irritated, half with love and pity at Rosa. How haggard her face looked. ‘Why?’

She gazed at him sadly. It occurred to Dimitri that the seers of ancient times, like Cassandra in Greek tragedy, might have looked a little like his mother, with huge, sorrowful eyes that seemed to see beyond the present, into a terrible future. ‘You don’t understand,’ she told him. ‘Only Jewish musicians will be safe. Only musicians.’

And there was nothing he could say at this obvious sign of madness.

Several times, in the spring of 1910, Peter tried to persuade Rosa to see a doctor, but she would not hear of it. He discussed the matter with his brother Vladimir, who twice came to the apartment and suggested she should go down to Russka for peace and quiet. This however she also rejected. ‘I’m going to Germany in May,’ he informed Peter. ‘I believe there’s a doctor there who could help her.’ But though Peter was agreeable, Rosa utterly refused even to consider it. And no one knew quite what to do.

It was at the start of May that Dimitri overheard a strange conversation which, even in retrospect, continued to puzzle him.

He and Karpenko were spending the evening with Nadezhda. As usual the time had passed delightfully and after a long discussion about music he had suggested he play them the Tchaikovsky Seasons, only to find that the music was not in the house. He had returned to the apartment, therefore, with the aim of collecting the score and hurrying back to the big Suvorin house to play it.

He knew that his mother was alone that evening, since Peter was out at a meeting nearby. He was surprised therefore, upon opening the door, to hear voices coming from the little drawing room off the hall. They belonged to his mother and to Vladimir. His mother’s for some reason was only a faint murmur, but Vladimir’s rich voice he could hear clearly.

‘I’m more concerned with you. This can’t go on. For God’s sake, my dear, come away with me to Germany.’

Then his mother’s voice, too soft to make out.

‘Nothing will happen to anyone.’

Another murmur.

‘I tell you truthfully, the boy’s better off here at present. There are no better music teachers in the world than in Russia.’

Now there was a longer pause. Dimly he heard his mother say something about a letter. Then his uncle’s voice again.

‘Yes, yes. I give you my word. Of course I can arrange it. If anything happens I’ll get him out. Yes, Dimitri shall go to America if that is what you wish.’

After this there was a long silence, and then he thought he heard his mother sobbing. Instead of collecting his music, he quietly withdrew and returned to his friends saying that he had been unable to find it. But later that night, as he lay awake in his room and listened to the faint tap, tap, tap of his mother’s typewriter he wondered: what on earth would he want with America?

There was no question about it. Mrs Suvorin had scored one of the greatest coups of her social career so far. A personal triumph.

For in mid-June 1910, the week after All Saints Day, she entertained the monk, Rasputin.

He had said he would come in the afternoon and take tea. It was therefore an intimate gathering that Mrs Suvorin had prepared, consisting of family members, some of her more important friends, and those few women who, over the years, had deliberately or inadvertently hurt her vanity, and who now could not fail to be impressed by this visitor who was known to be on intimate terms with the imperial family.

Vladimir was still abroad, but she kindly invited Peter Suvorin and Rosa, and naturally Dimitri and Karpenko accompanied them. And so it was that the two youths found themselves in a company of forty or so persons eagerly awaiting the arrival of the strange man.

It was five years since Rasputin had first appeared before the Tsar, but much about him was still a mystery. People called him a holy man – though he was never a monk, as some supposed. Indeed, though he seldom bothered to see them, he had a wife and family in the distant Urals. And though voices had been raised in the capital about his lewd behaviour, many credited him with supernatural powers. ‘He’s a real hermit from the Russian forests,’ Karpenko told Dimitri. ‘They say he walked to the capital all the way from Siberia.’ He gave a little laugh: ‘He’s supposed to have the power of second sight, you know. Just watch his eyes.’ What everyone knew however, and what made him nowadays a figure to be courted by fashionable ladies, was the fact that he had a devoted admirer in the Empress.

What did she see in him? Few people knew. The imperial household was a little world apart, utterly cut off from the rest of society by a phalanx of noble courtiers from old service families who thought it their duty to separate the monarchy from the barbarous Russian people as far as possible. The Tsar, his German wife, his daughters and the heir to the throne, the little Tsarevich, were as hidden from even prominent subjects as the family of an oriental despot.

And that the heir to the throne had a terrible disease that made him bleed, and threatened his life, and that this extraordinary, hypnotic peasant from Siberia seemed able to cure it, not even rich Mrs Suvorin had the least idea.

If Mrs Suvorin had intended to stage a memorable little occasion, she was afraid for a short time that her efforts might collapse in ruins, since Rasputin was extremely late. But at last the doors opened, conversation dropped, and a black-clothed figure was ushered in. After which, all the company stared in surprise. For he was not what they had expected.

‘I thought he’d be taller,’ Karpenko whispered, in obvious disappointment.

The man who was the imperial family’s confidant, and who knew the most terrible medical secret in the Russian empire, was hardly an impressive figure. He was only of medium height: the top of his head reached no higher than the base of Mrs Suvorin’s coiffure. He was rather slightly built with a narrow chest and sloping shoulders. His long, dark hair was parted in the middle; his beard, which hardly reached the top of his chest, was rather wiry. His blunt nose veered noticeably away to the left. He wore a simple, long coat of black silk that reached below his knees. He might have been a small-time priest from one of a thousand villages. Though his clothes were clean and his beard combed, there was a faint, acrid smell from his body that suggested he washed himself less often than other men.

He bowed politely to everyone in the room and seemed grateful when Mrs Suvorin led him to a sofa, and offered him tea.

The little party, however, soon seemed to be going rather well. Mrs Suvorin, rather meeker than usual, sat and made polite conversation with her honoured guest. The imperial family was mentioned and pious sentiments about them expressed. Various people were brought over to speak to Rasputin and for each, it seemed, he had kind and modest words. When Nadezhda was introduced, he politely told her mother that the girl had a beautiful nature. To Peter Suvorin he respectfully said: ‘You study the wonders of God’s universe.’

‘There doesn’t seem anything so remarkable about him,’ Dimitri remarked to Karpenko.

He was to revise this opinion somewhat, however, a few minutes later when Mrs Suvorin motioned him to approach. For it was only now, as he came face to face with Rasputin, that he encountered that strange man’s most extraordinary feature.

While he observed him before, it had seemed to Dimitri that the fellow’s eyes were rather foxy: curious, watchful, probably cunning as, from under his heavy peasant brow, their gaze darted here and there about the room. But now, finding them turned and fixed upon himself, Dimitri experienced their full effect.

They burned: there was no other word for it. They were like two searchlights, boring through the darkness, and everything else about the man was forgotten as one felt their astonishing, primal force. Only when he drew very close did the hypnotic gaze seem to soften and the eyes appear kindly, if a little bloodshot.

‘A musician. Ah, yes.’ That was all Rasputin said to him. It seemed he was not especially interested in Dimitri, though for some reason, after he had returned to his place, the boy felt a strange tingling sensation in his back.

Despite this little glimpse of Rasputin’s power, the rest of the visit passed quietly enough; and it might have remained in Dimitri’s mind as nothing more than a social event but for two small incidents that took place shortly before Rasputin left. The first concerned his mother.

Rosa had already been introduced, just after Peter, and apart from a polite bow, Rasputin had appeared to take no notice of her at all. Indeed, he was not even looking in her direction when suddenly, as if impelled, he rose from the sofa, turned, and walking swiftly over to where she was standing, took hold of her forearm with one hand and stood there, like a doctor feeling a pulse, quite silent for almost a minute. Then, without a word, he calmly let the arm drop and returned to his place, continuing his conversation with Mrs Suvorin as though nothing had happened. As for Rosa, though everyone else looked awkward, she did not blush, or even look startled, but stood very still, and neither then nor later did she ever refer to the incident.

The more frightening occurrence took place as Rasputin was leaving.

For some reason, after watching him for a while, Karpenko had suddenly decided he did not want to meet Rasputin. When it looked as if Mrs Suvorin was about to summon him, he had slipped away to a far corner of the room. And as the visitor finally rose to take his leave, Karpenko watched discreetly from behind the cover of two elderly ladies.

And Rasputin was halfway to the door when he abruptly stopped, wheeled, and came straight towards him.

The two ladies blushed and parted. Rasputin came nearer, then paused about ten feet in front of the young man. The hypnotic eyes stared at him, as Karpenko, stripped of his protection, seemed to quail before them. For a full quarter minute Rasputin looked at Karpenko. And then he smiled. ‘Well, well,’ he said softly. ‘I have known others like you, in Siberia and St Petersburg.’ And to Mrs Suvorin: ‘What a clever young Cossack to have in your house.’

What on earth did he mean? Mrs Suvorin seemed to understand him, but she only looked a little awkward, and escorted Rasputin to the door.

But the effect upon Karpenko was devastating. By the time Rasputin had gone and Dimitri had gone over to him, he was white as a ghost, and shaking. When Dimitri put his arm around him and asked him what was the matter he could only whisper: ‘He saw through me. He saw everything. He is the devil himself.’ And when Dimitri gave him a look of blank incomprehension, he just grimaced, shot an awkward glance at Mrs Suvorin, and muttered: ‘You don’t understand. You know nothing.’

And for several weeks afterwards, the young Cossack was moody and withdrawn, and Dimitri could not discover why.

1911, September

For some reason, Rosa noticed, her breasts felt cold. Why should that be? The chill damp air smelt faintly of smoke as she walked down the street. Darkness had fallen an hour ago. Here and there, lamps glowed.

At the corner she stopped and looked back. The bedroom she and Peter shared was the only room in the apartment that looked on to the street and for some reason – she herself did not know why – she had lit a candle and placed it in the window there. She could just see it now, a small, guttering flame set in the dark frame of the building, a strange, intimate little sentinel. A message perhaps, of love and of hope. Except for a note to say she had gone for a walk, she was leaving no other.

She walked round the corner. Her footsteps, oddly, felt light.

No one would know: that was the point. That was, in truth, her gift of love to them, that they should never know. Only Vladimir would know, and he was with his son in Paris now, not due back for a month. She had not written to him: there was no message; but he would know, and keep her secret.

A party of Cossacks clattered by on their horses on their way back to barracks, capes pulled tightly round them against the autumn chill.

When had it all begun? At the very start, perhaps: she had married Peter Suvorin when she was still depressed. That was her fault. Yet she had loved him passionately. No, she thought, she could pinpoint the real beginning. It was in 1900, when little Dimitri was five and the letter had come from America.

Since her marriage, Rosa had had little contact with her family in Vilnius. Four years afterwards, her mother had unexpectedly died, and then her elder brother and his family had emigrated to America. Then, in 1899, her other brother had followed. Their departures had not surprised her. Tens, hundreds of thousands of Jews were leaving; indeed, by 1914 some two million Jews would leave Russia for the United States, and the tsarist government was glad to see them go. Rosa had been happy that her brothers had crossed the Atlantic to find happiness; but their lives, by now, seemed far removed from hers.

And then came the letter. It was from her second brother, who normally disliked writing and from whom she had not heard since several months before he left. Yet now he wrote at length, giving a detailed account of the crossing and news of the family; and his letter also contained a long final section.

The letter had made a lasting impression upon Rosa. If in recent years, with her new life and her child, she had seldom thought about the past, the letter brought it all back to her with a strange force. With poignancy she found herself thinking of her poor father and all he had tried to do for her. She thought of her own music, which she had never gone back to since marriage. She remembered rather sadly, now, the pain she had caused her mother. And picturing her brothers she thought: I wish I could see them again.

The letter worried her too. Though her brother spoke of the Jews, she did not fail to notice his veiled reference to police spies and enemies of the regime. Peter, with his Socialist activities, could also find himself in danger. She had mulled over the letter for a month before showing it to Peter one morning and asking: ‘What do you think?’

But even she had not been prepared for his response.

‘How terrible,’ he said, ‘to want to leave Russia.’ And when she suggested that perhaps it might be better for them to move to America, he just looked at her with blank incomprehension and suggested she might want to lie down. She knew better than to raise the subject again. She had discovered that, though gentle and kind, Peter also possessed a strange obstinacy that made him blind to anything that did not fit his idea of the universe. They would never go to America: there was nothing more to say.

Had she resented this? She did not believe so at the time. She loved Peter, he was so good and simple; and though he had been almost a father-figure at the start, as the years passed she realized increasingly how much he relied upon her. He did so with such touching faith. ‘I can’t imagine how I would have lived without you,’ he would sometimes say. ‘It was surely the angels who sent you.’ And once he had even confessed: ‘That day you spoke of America – that was the worst day in my life. For a moment, you know, it was as if you were suggesting you wanted to turn your back on everything I love. Thank God that madness passed.’

He needed her. He plainly adored her. And how could she tell him, therefore, what was happening to her now?

It was in 1905 that the terrible dreams had begun. They came quite suddenly and without warning. And the subject was always the same: the pogrom.

Often it was her father’s face that she saw, surrounded by the mob. Then she would see the burly Cossack, sitting in his cart – sympathetic but ready to leave them to their fate – and it would seem to her that this time the men got her father, and dragged him away. After a while, however, the dream would get more complex. Time would be telescoped. She would be in the village in the Ukraine, but a grown woman instead of a child. Her father would suddenly become transformed into Peter. Worse yet, under an echoing grey sky, he would turn into little Dimitri.

Night after night the dreams came, and she would awake in a cold sweat, terrified. They were so terrible that at times she dreaded even going to sleep. And in her waking hours, now, a terrible new premonition began to form in her mind – a gnawing conviction that, try as she might, nothing would shake: something was going to happen to Peter and Dimitri.

Only some months after the onset of the dream had the other problem begun. Whether it was related or not, Rosa could not be sure. Was it some hidden resentment, or a fear about which she knew nothing? Whatever the reason, the new misery not only came to her, it refused to go away.

She could not bear her husband to touch her any more.

Even now, five years later, she could be proud of one thing: Peter never knew. She loved him. She knew that he could never understand. Sometimes of course she had slept with him, and, by a supreme act of will, had completely disguised her secret revulsion at the act. But week after week, month after month, she had devised excuses that allowed her to avoid lovemaking at night while she heaped her affection upon him by day; and whether it was guilt at this subterfuge and betrayal, or the recurring dreams, or whether they were all tangled up together, she found that she was becoming more and more filled with a terrible premonition that her husband and her son were in danger. This had been her frame of mind when Dimitri had been attacked and discovered he was Jewish.

Only Vladimir had guessed her secret. Dear Vladimir. Somehow, he had guessed everything.

She found she had reached the broad boulevard that circled the inner city. The wind was driving along it, picking leaves off the little trees at the edge of the street and carrying them eastward. A carriage rattled by.

Had she briefly, when she was young, thought of Vladimir as a lover? She gave a little laugh. An impossible love: a love that could never be. Yet even a platonic love like theirs contained pleasures and pains. For what did it mean to a woman to know that it was not her husband but his brother who truly understood her? She loved his company; he made her happy. Yet she feared him. For he returned her to herself; he induced her to play again; he showed her too clearly what she tried to hide from herself – the agonizing gulf that separated her from her husband. And so she would flee from Vladimir back to her prison. ‘You must get away, just to sleep,’ he would urge, and she knew it was true. But she could not. ‘You’ll destroy yourself, my little bird.’ Then so be it.

Vladimir had promised to get Dimitri to America. That was all that mattered to her now.

She passed a store where they sold newspapers and glanced in. There was a little board by the door, proclaiming a headline. Poor Stolypin, the loyal minister, had been shot in Kiev earlier that month. Now it turned out that his assassin was a double-agent: a police spy who had only committed the atrocity because the revolutionary group he had infiltrated had begun to suspect him. She shook her head wearily. ‘Only in our poor Russia do we live with such insanity,’ she murmured. Was the whole Russian empire just a bad dream, she wondered. Perhaps.

A dream from which it was time to escape.

The street she now took contained tramlines. Since before the turn of the century, there had been trams in Moscow – stout vehicles with a lower and an open upper deck, and drawn by a pair of horses. They moved along at a pleasant, easy pace. In the last year or so, however, these had begun to be replaced by electrified trams – single deckers which moved along at a far greater speed. The new age was coming, there was no doubt. A little way up the street, Rosa noticed, there was an intersection of lines at a crossroad, and she made towards that.

Dimitri would go to America, and he would be a musician. That was what her father had always said: ‘They often forgive Jews if they are musicians.’

There was a little knot of people standing in a lighted doorway by the crossroads and they watched the woman idly as she walked up the street. One of them noticed that she looked rather cheerful. ‘Quite normal,’ as he later said. ‘Nothing unusual.’

Peter Suvorin’s book, of course, had been her standby for the last eighteen months. How many nights had she devotedly typed for her husband until the early hours when he was safely asleep? The act of devotion that kept her from his bed and about which she had not had to explain. But the book had been finished last week. It was going to press. It would probably make him famous: and leave her with nothing to protect her.

It was not difficult to accomplish. Like a friend who had only been waiting for her to arrive, the electric tram hastened towards her through the night, just as she reached the crossing. Rosa paused. She had taken off her gloves, as if to fumble for something in her pockets; now, casually, she put them on again, not even noticing that she had pulled her glove from her left hand on to her right. The tram, as it came closer, seemed to be whispering: ‘At last. Come with me.’ Two paces, three.

They all saw. There was no doubt about what happened. The woman standing on the kerb and looking in her pockets had glanced up at the tram, turned, and slipped. She uttered a little cry as her foot, trying to find its balance on the damp stone, had shot up in an ungainly manner. She had seemed to grasp for support as, twisting, she fell into the street. The tram had been almost on top of her as she went down. It was all so absurd.

Just as the tram passed over her, Rosa saw her father.

There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that, even if she was subject to moods, this wretched business had been an accident.

It was two months afterwards that Dimitri Suvorin completed the three Etudes in her memory, rather in the manner of Scriabin, which have always been agreed to be his first serious and mature compositions.

1913

As the year 1913 drew towards its close, Alexander Bobrov looked forward with some confidence to a pleasant future. True, there were some obstacles to overcome, but he had prepared his personal campaign carefully and he was quietly confident. The girl was fifteen now and already a dazzling young woman. Soon it would be time to begin.

Alexander was twenty-two. He was above average height, powerfully built, and had the saturnine, rather stern good looks of his great-grandfather Alexis though, unlike him, he was clean-shaven.

He was acutely conscious of his good looks. This, however, was not exactly vanity. As the last representative of his noble family, and, despite his father’s liberal tendencies, a representative of the order which was dedicated to protecting and preserving the Tsar, he felt it was his duty to be handsome. He took care, besides dressing carefully, to hold himself with a military uprightness – with what, in those days, was referred to by the French term as a proper tenue – and to be seen, as far as he could afford it, in the best places. His position in life, his whole desire, prompted him to seek two things and two things only. One was a court appointment; the other his marriage to the heiress Nadezhda Suvorin. For both these objects he was steadfastly preparing himself.

This preparation included sexual experience. ‘I shall be faithful to my wife,’ he told a friend, a young officer in the imperial guard. ‘But I shall get some experience first. My plan is to have ten mistresses. What do you think?’ ‘My dear fellow, why not twenty?’ ‘No,’ Alexander had replied seriously, ‘I think ten will do.’

He had gone about the business methodically. His first had been the wife of an army doctor – a pleasant woman in her mid-twenties who had been amused, as much as anything, by the solemn eighteen year old’s evident determination to get into bed with her. That had lasted three months. There had been a charming dancer from the corps de ballet in St Petersburg: after all, every man of the world was supposed to have had an affair with a dancer. To make sure he had, so to speak, covered all the ground, he had a brief fling with a gypsy singer from a theatre – though whether she was really a gypsy he was not sure; and for a month he had gone regularly to a certain young lady in one of the capital’s most select brothels, patronized only by those from a certain milieu. Notwithstanding its select clientèle, he lived in constant fear of unhappy consequences and, besides, found it awfully expensive. After a month, he went there no more. He was currently on his sixth experiment, an amusing, blonde-haired widow in her twenties, half-German, half-Latvian, who, it seemed, saw no reason why a young fellow like him should sleep. And with this arrangement, for the time being, he was quite content.

When he looked to the future of Russia itself, Alexander also had reason to be hopeful. The third Duma had lasted its full five-year term until the previous year and now a new, fourth Duma was sitting. The Tsar had succeeded in somewhat increasing the conservative element, though the radicals had also strengthened, leaving the centre weaker; but taken as a whole, the new body was no worse than the last. His father, indefatigably, had got himself elected again. And, it had to be said, the condition in the country as a whole was now excellent.

‘Stolypin’s gone, and his place has been taken by nonentities,’ Nicolai Bobrov had remarked to his conservative son, ‘but his work lives on. Look at the results.’ And he would tick them off on his fingers enthusiastically. ‘Trade: hugely up. Agricultural yields: up, and we exported thirteen and a half million tons of cereals in 1911. The state debt’s well down: we’ve run budget surpluses in three of the last four years. The countryside’s quiet.’ He would smile contentedly.

‘Do you know,’ he told Alexander once, ‘I met a Frenchman the other day who calculates that at our present rate of economic growth, we’ll overshadow the economy of the whole of Western Europe by 1950. Just think: you’ll probably live to see it.’ Of the revolution, little was heard in those years. ‘With a little luck,’ the elder Bobrov liked to say, ‘we may have headed it off.’

Indeed, only if one looked abroad were there any clouds on the horizon; but neither of the Bobrov men, nor anyone they knew, was overly concerned.

‘Diplomacy will sort any problems out,’ Nicolai would tell his son. ‘The great powers have to live together. That’s why we have all these alliances.’

The huge system of alliances, indeed, seemed rather in Russia’s favour. The need for huge French finance, and a better understanding with the British Empire, had drawn these three countries into the pact known as the Triple Entente; Germany, Austria and Italy had formed the Triple Alliance. ‘But they balance each other,’ Nicolai often pointed out. ‘Each keeps the other in order.’

Only down in the mountainous Balkan region above Greece was there any sign of real danger. Here, as the power of the almost defunct Ottoman Empire finally crumbled, Austria was advancing. In 1908 she had taken the two provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, inhabited mostly by Slavic Serbs. Other Serbs felt threatened; Russia, sympathetic to her fellow-Slavs, and watchful of this region so close to Constantinople and the Black Sea, monitored each development carefully. ‘But all these things will get worked out,’ Nicolai predicted. ‘It’s not in anyone’s interest to start a war.’ There were few statesmen in Europe who would have disagreed with him.

Indeed, in the last five years only one matter had marred the serenity of Alexander’s world and caused him mental discomfort.

Yevgeny Popov: what should be done about him?

In a sense, even Alexander realized, Mrs Suvorin’s affairs were none of his business. Yet so great was his loathing of Popov, so huge his respect for Vladimir, that the thought of Popov’s liaison preyed upon his mind. On that first misty night when he had seen the Bolshevik sneak into the Suvorin mansion, he had felt a kind of personal violation.

Even then, after his chilly vigil in the street, he had not wanted to believe it. Trying to fathom the mystery, he had taken to wandering about the area late at night; and twice more that very month he had witnessed Popov arriving for a tryst. There could be no doubt: the household of his future wife, and the person of his future mother-in-law, were being contaminated by the redheaded Socialist.

It was terrible.

But what should he do? Vladimir was his friend. If the great man was being deceived, then surely it was his duty, Alexander considered, to warn him. It wasn’t only the dishonour, either. One never knew what trouble a man like Popov could bring to a respectable family. He would be protecting Nadezhda too. To tell the older man directly was embarrassing, though. Besides, if Mrs Suvorin discovered what he had done, he’d earn her undying hatred: hardly a satisfactory situation when he was hoping to become her future son-in-law.

If he could just remove Popov from the scene somehow… He was fairly certain that the police would arrest Popov if they could find him; but he couldn’t very well direct the police to him when he was anywhere near the Suvorins. Twice he waited until the early hours and tried to follow the Bolshevik; each time, though, Popov somehow managed to disappear within a few blocks.

The solution he finally hit upon was straightforward enough. He sent an anonymous letter to Vladimir. It was rather a successful production, made with cuttings from newspapers, and rather illiterate: he was proud of it. He did not refer to Popov by name, but rather as ‘a certain red-head revolutionary’. He continued after this to walk past the Suvorin mansion whenever he could late at night, and for a month or two, catching no sight of Popov, he assumed his letter had worked. But then, some months later, he saw him lurking there again.

From time to time, then and in succeeding years, he would casually ask Vladimir questions such as: ‘What happened to that damned Popov, the Bolshevik, who came here once?’ or ‘Did they ever arrest that cursed red-head we once saw at your factory? I wonder what became of him.’ But Vladimir never gave any sign that he knew or cared about the fellow and, it seemed to Alexander, he had done all his duty bid him do. ‘I’ll get even with that criminal one day, though,’ he secretly vowed. ‘I’ll put him away.’

Apart from these secret nocturnal watches, he was quite often at the Suvorin house; and it was partly as an excuse for visiting Vladimir, and partly to give himself something in common with Nadezhda, that he began during these years to take an interest in painting that was almost professional.

His university studies were not too taxing. In his spare time he worked hard. He made a thorough study of the main movements of Western painting; he also – which he came to enjoy rather more – started to study the ancient art of icon painting in depth. As was his way, he was methodical and serious; but with time he also began to develop a real feel for the subject. More ambitiously, perhaps, he started to venture into contemporary art. Vladimir’s son, who still spent more time in Europe than in Russia, had recently sent back astonishing works by Chagall, Matisse, and a curious new figure on the scene who seemed to be starting a whole new school of painting, full of geometric shapes and unlike anything seen before: Pablo Picasso. And whether he liked them or not, whether they were interesting or quite meaningless to him, Alexander Bobrov studied each new item as thoroughly as if it were a riddle to be solved, asking questions, relating them to other work, until he knew more than anyone else. He also began to have a shrewd idea about values so that Vladimir one day remarked to him with amusement: ‘Funnily enough, my friend, though you’re a Russian noble you actually have the makings of a dealer.’

Thanks to this knowledge and Vladimir’s good opinion of him, Alexander found that Nadezhda treated him with a respect that was pleasing to him. She would be content to leave the high-spirited Dimitri and Karpenko extemporizing at the piano, and walk through her father’s galleries with him for a few quiet minutes while he outlined some new and interesting discovery he had made. ‘You do know a lot,’ she would say, and look at him with large, serious eyes.

She was fifteen now and, he often noted with approval, filling out nicely. Soon she would be a young woman. Alexander was very careful, therefore, in his relationship with her, keeping a friendly distance, quietly impressing her with his store of knowledge, and waiting for her to come to him.

There was only one problem to overcome at present. He hoped it would pass before too long.

Nadezhda was in love with Karpenko.

To Dimitri Suvorin, the year 1913 was not just a time of promise, but of wild excitement.

For never before had Russian culture risen to such dizzy heights. It was as if all the extraordinary developments of the last century had suddenly come together and burst forth upon the world.

‘This isn’t a flowering,’ Karpenko liked to say, ‘it’s an explosion.’

Europe had already thrilled to Russian music, to her opera and the bass voice of the legendary Chaliapin. Now Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe had taken London, Paris and Monte Carlo by storm. Two years ago the astounding Nijinsky had danced Stravinsky’s Petrouchka; last year, he had danced the extraordinary, pagan and erotic L’Après-midi d’un Faune; and in May 1913, in Paris, he had choreographed the event which was to change the history of music: Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. Vladimir Suvorin, by good luck, had happened to be visiting Paris at the time.

‘It was amazing,’ he told Dimitri. ‘And frightening. The audience were scandalized and went berserk. I saw poor Diaghilev afterwards. He doesn’t know what to do with Nijinsky: he’s terrified he’s gone too far. Yet it was brilliant, I tell you. The most exciting thing I ever saw in my life.’

He had also brought Dimitri a copy of Stravinsky’s score and the young man went over it for days, fascinated by its titanic, primitive energy, its dissonances – never heard before – and its jarring rhythms, finally declaring: ‘It’s like seeing a new galaxy being created by God’s hand. It’s a new music with new rules.’

‘Russia is no longer behind Europe,’ Karpenko had declared on this occasion. ‘We’re ahead.’ And few could have denied that in this thrilling ferment of all the arts, Russia had become the avant-garde.

If Dimitri was excited by his musical discoveries, the life of his friend Karpenko was now a perpetual whirl. Since Rosa’s death, they had rearranged the apartment so that Peter, Dimitri and Karpenko each had a separate room, and these shared bachelor quarters suited them all very well. Thanks to Vladimir’s kindness, Karpenko had enough money to continue his studies and rent a small studio besides; and since he was now in the thick of the avant-garde, one never knew when he would show up at home.

The avant-garde – remarkable in Russia for being led by both men and women – was seething with ideas, and whenever he appeared Karpenko would inform Dimitri and his father about some latest wonder: a riotous abstract canvas by Kandinsky; a brilliant stage-set by Benois or Chagall; and invariably some new -ism, so that Peter would quietly enquire: ‘Well, Karpenko, what’s the -ism today?’

In 1913, it was Futurism.

It was certainly a remarkable movement. Led by such brilliant young figures as Malevich, Tatlin and Mayakovsky, the Russian Futurists liked to combine painting and poetry, producing illustrated books and pamphlets whose daring effect has never been equalled. ‘Picasso’s Cubism was a revolution,’ Karpenko explained, ‘but Futurism goes much further.’ In their paintings the Futurists took the broken, geometric forms of Cubism and set them into explosive forward motion. In their poetry, language was broken down, even to mere sounds; grammar changed, creating something new and striking. To Dimitri, the Futurist productions reminded him of some huge, elective dynamo. ‘This is the art of the new age – the age of the machine,’ Karpenko declared gleefully. ‘Art will transform the world, Professor,’ he told Peter, ‘along with electricity.’ He had even put aside his own experiments in painting to write some poems for the new Futurist publications.

At the age of twenty, Karpenko had grown into a strikingly handsome young fellow. He was clean-shaven, and his slim, dark good looks were so noticeable that Dimitri would often, with amusement, watch respectable ladies in the street forget themselves and stare after him as he passed. Dimitri used to see him in the company of artistic young women who were obviously very taken with him: but Karpenko preferred to keep his love life to himself and which, if any, of these young women had success with him Dimitri could only guess.

Occasionally Dimitri remembered his friend’s strange behaviour the day he met Rasputin; but he never saw anything like it again, and gradually put it out of his mind. Indeed, he could find few character flaws in Karpenko. Despite being handsome, he was not vain. Sometimes in the last two years, it was true, he had retreated into short bouts of moody silence; but these, Dimitri thought, might be nothing more than periods of creative concentration. The only fault he could find with his friend, really, was that his witty remarks were sometimes a little cruel; but that was understandable in someone with such a quick and brilliant mind as Karpenko.

Though their lives were more separate now, the two young men often went out together. Sometimes they would go to visit Vladimir Suvorin. The industrialist’s Art Nouveau house was complete now and it was an astonishing work of art. The main hall especially was breathtaking, with a floor of coloured marble and granite in a spiral design, lilac-coloured walls, stained glass windows that might have come from Tiffany, and a staircase of creamy white marble whose banisters, carved in elaborate, swirling shapes, looked as though they might melt at the touch of a hand. Vladimir was collecting a library of contemporary books which he had decided to place in the new house, and was then spending much of his spare time there. Karpenko, who was helping him obtain a fine collection of Futurist publications, seldom went there without bringing some new item which assured him a warm welcome.

And, of course, they went to see Nadezhda.

They were lively visits. Sometimes they would take some friends and then, more often than not, heated discussions would ensue in which Nadezhda, though she was only fifteen, was able to take some part. The subjects, in those heady days, were usually artistic rather than political; but they were invariably argued with extreme passion as only, perhaps, the Russians and the French can.

‘Have you read Ivan Sergeevich’s latest poem? What do you think?’

‘It’s terrible. Appalling. His attitude is sentimental but without real feeling. He is false.’

‘It’s outdated.’

‘He’s let everyone down. He’s completely discredited.’

‘He is dead. There’s nothing more to say about him.’

‘No. You are all wrong.’

The opinions would fly and Nadezhda would listen, gazing at Karpenko with sparkling eyes.

Sometimes Alexander Bobrov would appear on these occasions and then Karpenko if, say, the company had just condemned the poet Ivanov, would casually ask: ‘What do you think of Ivanov, Alexander Nicolaevich?’ So that when, as he always did, Alexander made some non-committal reply like: ‘Not bad,’ the company would all look at each other or burst into howls of derision while Bobrov gazed at them glumly.

‘Poor old Alexander Nicolaevich,’ Karpenko would say behind his back. ‘He knows everything and understands nothing.’ And to his face he once remarked: ‘You keep studying, Alexander, but you’re always an artistic movement behind.’

Why did Karpenko hate Bobrov so much? ‘He represents every pig-headed Russian who ever lived,’ the Ukrainian claimed. But one day he confessed: ‘I can’t stand the interest he takes in Nadezhda. I try to expose him to her whenever I can.’

Yet what did he want with the girl himself? It was increasingly clear that she was in love with him: how much it was hard to know. And he did nothing to discourage her affection. ‘So you truly care for her?’ Dimitri once asked as they were returning home.

‘I feel protective, I think,’ Karpenko answered frankly. ‘I can’t bear to think of her being wasted on a booby like Bobrov.’

‘But what about you yourself?’

Karpenko gave a short laugh. ‘Don’t be silly. I’m a poor Ukrainian.’

‘Uncle Vladimir likes you.’

‘His wife doesn’t.’

Dimitri had occasionally noticed that, while she never said anything, Karpenko’s charming manner, which usually delighted older women, seemed to meet with a certain hauteur from Mrs Suvorin. ‘I don’t think she means anything,’ he said. And after a short pause: ‘You’re not just letting her love you to spoil things for Bobrov, are you?’

To which, to his great surprise, Karpenko suddenly let out a little moan. ‘You don’t understand anything, do you? She’s like no other girl in the world.’

‘So you do love her?’

‘Yes, damn you, I love her.’

‘Then there’s hope,’ Dimitri said cheerfully.

But Karpenko only shook his head with a despondency Dimitri had never seen before. ‘No,’ he declared quietly, ‘there isn’t any hope for me.’

It was on a December evening in 1913 that the bad feeling that had long been simmering between Nadezhda Suvorin and her mother suddenly erupted.

The spark which lit the flame was the simple fact that Mrs Suvorin had warned her to be careful of Karpenko.

What was wrong with him? the girl demanded to know. Was he too poor? Did her mother have social ambitions? But Mrs Suvorin denied these charges. ‘Frankly, it’s his character. And to tell you the truth, I think he’s playing with you. He’s not serious. So don’t lose your heart.’ That was all she would say.

And Nadezhda decided she hated her.

She was in love with Karpenko. How could she not be? Was there anyone more brilliant, more handsome? She had admired him as a child, but now, in the flush of her adolescence, she was suffering all the yearnings of first love. She might have forgiven her mother’s attack, however, had it not been for one fact.

A year ago she had discovered about Popov.

It had been late one night that she had happened to wake and, wandering out along the passage, heard a faint sound in the hall. To her surprise she had seen her mother glide across the hall to the door to let a stranger in; and crouching by the balcony, just as she used to do as a child, she had seen them mounting the stairs together. Her mother and the red-head, Popov.

For a while she found it hard to believe. Her mother and the Socialist? And apart from her disgust she had thought: How could she do such a thing to poor Papa? Yet he tolerates her. He is a saint. And ever since, though she said nothing, she thought of her mother as a secret enemy.

And it was unfortunate, therefore, that on the very evening of Mrs Suvorin’s remark about Karpenko, Popov should have chosen to come again.

Had Nadezhda known Popov’s mission that night, however, she would have been still more astonished. Even more, perhaps, than was Mrs Suvorin when she heard it.

‘Would you like,’ he asked simply, ‘to run away?’

How strange. When he was younger the idea would have been unthinkable, but now he was wondering whether to give up.

A few years ago, he had hoped to extract money from the Suvorins for the Bolshevik cause. Knowing all he did, he supposed he might have. Yet he had not.

God knew, the party needed funds. Not long ago a new Bolshevik newspaper had been started with articles by a strange young fellow from Georgia whose writing reminded one of a priest intoning the liturgy. ‘Stalin’ he had called himself, in the revolutionary manner – man of steel. All that year Popov had tried to find funds for Pravda, but he had never asked Mrs Suvorin.

She had become a being apart. He supposed he loved her. And now he was thinking, instead, of asking her to finance their personal flight.

For in 1913, Popov was weary. There was no hope of revolution. Lenin’s attempt to reunite the Socialist left had met with little success. There had been more arrests. Even young Stalin had been exiled to Siberia. Truly, it seemed to him, he had done all that reasonably could be done.

‘We could go abroad,’ he suggested.

And, to her own astonishment, Mrs Suvorin, for a long moment, considered it.

He was an extraordinary man. She had learned much from him. He had caused her to think long and hard about her life; and he had even altered her political outlook. ‘I do think we must have democracy,’ she had finally confessed. ‘I just can’t see anything else that’s fair. I still want, personally, to keep the Tsar; but we need a Constituent Assembly.’ It had become a point of secret passion with her.

Yet he also troubled her. Talking to him about the revolution it was as if, sometimes, he had grown a protective covering – a carapace – that shut out all human feelings that might interfere with the business in hand. At such times she would think: He would kill and never care.

And now the revolutionary had surrendered. He was smiling almost sheepishly. And she wanted to take him in her arms.

The door burst open quite suddenly, as Nadezhda stepped into the room. She was wearing a long dressing gown and her hair was loose down her back. She was shaking, yet also smiling.

‘Ah, yes,’ she said calmly. ‘My mother worries about my friends. Perhaps she would prefer it if they were Bolsheviks.’

Popov gazed at her, but said nothing.

‘Would you, Mama?’ she insolently asked. Then with sudden fury: ‘Just so you know I know how you treat poor Papa.’ And turning to Popov: ‘You ought to be locked up. Perhaps you will be.’

‘Nadezhda, go to your room,’ Mrs Suvorin said promptly. But to Popov she had to murmur: ‘You had better leave.’ And to his look of enquiry she could only shake her head sadly. ‘Impossible.’

Both mother and daughter knew, from then on, that they would never mention the incident again.

1914, August

Slowly and solemnly, through the dusty summer heat, the procession wound through the streets. Priests in their jewelled robes, and wearing heavy mitres, led the way. Some carried icons, others huge banners. A choir was chanting. And as they passed, like waves unfurling themselves along a shore, a sea of hands rose and made the sign of the cross, while heads and backs bowed low. For this was Holy Russia still; and Russia was at war.

Alexander Bobrov watched with tears of emotion in his eyes. What a summer it had been. There had been a drought, and a total eclipse of the sun. Every peasant in every village had therefore known that some disaster was probably at hand. But now that it had come, here in the streets of Moscow, it was as if some wonderful religious transformation had taken place. Suddenly all differences were forgotten, all Russians became brothers, united in defence of the fatherland.

Behind the icons, someone was carrying a huge portrait of the Tsar. It might have seemed strange, had anyone paused to consider it, that this man with scarcely a drop of Russian blood in his veins, and who resembled his cousin King George V of England as much as anyone, should be the central figure in this almost Asiatic pageantry. His serious, rather unimaginative face with its short brown beard gazed out, not like some icon, nor like the grim rulers of Muscovite times, but in his own persona – a puzzled, well-meaning, and rather reluctant German prince, trapped by destiny in an alien eastern empire. But he was the Tsar, the little father of all the Russians; and now as his portrait passed, the people bowed.

Alexander bowed too. He was in uniform now. And tomorrow he would leave to fight.

How had it begun, this gigantic mobilization that was about to shake the world?

The events down in the Balkans which had sparked the conflict off were simple enough. In 1908, when Austria backed by Germany had annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, she had signalled her intentions to expand, but it had seemed the threat could be contained. The summer of 1914 ended that hope. When Bosnian terrorists assassinated the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo, Austria had insisted it was the doing of next-door Serbia and demanded an apology with humiliating terms. Serbia had at once complied. And Austria had then refused to accept it and prepared to move on her. ‘There’s no question now: Austria and Germany mean to dominate all the Balkan states. That means they’ll control Constantinople and the Black Sea,’ he had declared to his father. But apart from such an obvious strategic consideration, there was another which weighed with Alexander just as much.

‘The Serbs are fellow Slavs, and fellow Orthodox,’ he declared. ‘Holy Russia must be their protector. We must go to their aid.’ It was exactly what Russia had done.

Might it not have remained a regional conflict, though? God knows, there had been intermittent wars down in the Balkans for centuries. For a short time, with England’s Lord Grey engaging in frantic diplomacy, it seemed that it might. But it was not to be: once put in motion, the juggernaut of war rolled on. Russian troops were sent to aid Serbia; Germany declared war on Russia; then France and Britain followed. By August, the civilized world was beginning a general conflict.

At least, thank God, it would be a short war. Everyone was agreed about that. That very morning, Alexander had received a thoughtful letter from his father, still a member of the Duma, in St Petersburg.

Alexander had gone to volunteer at once. As the only son of his family, he was technically exempt, but he was longing to take part. Given his social status, of course, he would be an officer and he was off the next day to begin training. ‘But by the time we’ve got through the existing reserve,’ he was told, ‘it will all be over. So you needn’t expect to fight.’

He was wearing a uniform already. He was proud of that. It added to his mood of exaltation.

And only one thought troubled him. Soon he must go to bid farewell to Nadezhda. And after what had happened, would she even speak to him?

How could he have been so foolish? It had been two days before at the Suvorin house. He had gone there to tell Nadezhda he was going into the army. He had been feeling rather proud of himself: there was, even nowadays, something glamorous about a fellow in an officer’s uniform.

And then he had found Karpenko there.

He sighed. It was no good denying the fact: Nadezhda’s fascination with Karpenko had not worn thin; in the last six months, she seemed to have fallen truly in love with him. How ironic it was. He, Alexander, was twenty-three and just finishing his studies; Nadezhda was sixteen and a young woman. This had been the year when he had always planned to make his move. But now, instead, he found himself thinking: She’s still a child, she’ll grow out of him; not yet.

They were standing together by the window when he came into the room. Karpenko had obviously just said something amusing and she was laughing. How at ease they looked together. And then Karpenko had turned, and spoken.

What had the fellow said? The odd thing was, Alexander could hardly remember. Something like: ‘Here comes our warrior, Bobrov the bogatyr.’ Something harmless enough, though faintly mocking.

And he had lost his self-control.

‘As a Ukrainian, I wouldn’t know how you view this war,’ he had said coldly.

It was true, they both knew, that there were Ukrainians living in the Austrian empire, and also a small body of Ukrainian nationalists, who saw the coming war as a chance to liberate the Ukraine from Russian rule. There was talk of interning some of these. But it was also true that hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians were, even now, being mobilized in the Russian army. Karpenko went white.

‘Ukrainians are not traitors. We shall fight for the Tsar,’ he said quietly.

But, still bitter, and pleased for once to have put his adversary on the defensive, Alexander continued: ‘Really? And shall we see you in uniform? Or are you, perhaps, unwilling to face such danger?’

There was a terrible silence. The question was unfair because most students were exempt and most young men with powerful friends were speedily using them to get exemptions anyway. But this time he saw Karpenko blush.

But, oh, what stupidity.

‘I think that’s the most horrible thing to say.’ Nadezhda’s eyes were blazing. ‘And I think, Alexander Nicolaevich, that you should leave us now.’

What had he done? What idiocy had made him do it? Dare he go back? He must. ‘I can’t go away,’ he muttered, ‘leaving things like that.’

It was therefore with some nervousness that he slowly made his way towards the great Suvorin house.

Alexander Bobrov would have been surprised indeed had he known about a brief interview that had taken place just an hour before.

It was Mrs Suvorin who had made Karpenko do it. She had summoned him that morning. Their meeting had been brief but, though she had hardly been friendly, he had to admire the calm, matter-of-fact way she went about the business.

‘The girl’s in love with you,’ she said simply, ‘and it’s gone too far. You and I both understand what you must do.’

He stood a little awkwardly by a large, upright armchair. How did one manage these things? She was standing a few feet away from him, completely unsuspecting.

‘I think you know, Nadezhda, that I’m very fond of you,’ he began.

It was not so bad. He loved her and felt protective. He explained gently how much their friendship meant to him and led slowly towards his message. ‘In case, you see, I might inadvertently have misled you, there is something you should know.’ He paused. ‘Our friendship can never be more than that: a friendship.’

She had helped too. Though she went pale, she continued to look at him calmly. Now, however, she frowned.

‘You mean there’s someone else?’

‘Yes.’

‘I did not know. For a long time?’

‘Yes.’

She frowned again. ‘You’re not actually married, are you?’

‘No.’

‘Perhaps you will change.’

He looked sadly at the Turkey carpet on the floor. Then he shook his head.

‘My heart is engaged elsewhere,’ he said, and then felt embarrassed at such a ridiculous expression.

But she did not seem to notice.

‘Thank you for telling me,’ she said simply. ‘I think I’d like you to go now.’

To Dimitri Suvorin, both then and thereafter, that warm August afternoon had the quality of a dream.

Perhaps it was the dusty heat or the sullen grey-blue sky; perhaps it was the echoing bells or the chanting of the priests; or perhaps those medieval Russian masses moving timelessly through twentieth-century streets. Or perhaps it was the people in the houses – thousands of pale faces at every window and balcony, looking strangely small and detached in this mighty city turned stage-set.

It was mid-afternoon when he chanced to find himself near the Suvorin mansion just as the procession was about to pass by. He had known that Karpenko was going there that day, and thinking that his friend might still be there, he went in. And so it was that he came upon Nadezhda, alone, in the small salon upstairs.

She was standing by the window, staring out at the street. Her face was rather pale; she seemed unusually quiet; together they crossed themselves, along with the crowds in the street below, as the priests with their icons led the long procession past.

‘It’s strange,’ she said at last. ‘The last war, when we fought the Japanese, never seemed very real to me. I suppose I was just very young.’

‘It was far away, too.’

‘Did people feel like this – so patriotic – before that one?’

‘I don’t believe so.’

‘Holy Russia.’ It seemed she did not need to elaborate. She just left the two words hanging. ‘It’s hard to realize,’ she went on, ‘that people one knows are going to die.’

Dimitri nodded. His own limp meant that he could never pass the medical for any kind of military service. It did not make him feel guilty. It was just a fact. ‘Who do we know who’s fighting?’ he asked.

‘There’s Alexander Nicolaevich,’ she replied.

‘That’s true.’ He paused. ‘By the way, have you seen Karpenko?’

‘Yes. He left.’

‘Any idea for where?’

‘No.’ She was silent for a short time. Then she remarked: ‘It’s a commitment, isn’t it? I mean, you say: “I’m ready to lay down my life” and perhaps you do lose it.’

‘I suppose so. Yes.’

She continued staring at the long procession, mostly of simple peasants in their shirts, for a while before remarking: ‘I’m rather tired, Dimitri. Come and see me again soon.’

A few moments later, outside, it was only a whim that decided Dimitri to see if Karpenko might have looked in at his Uncle Vladimir’s new house. As he made his way towards it, the side-streets were almost deserted. Apart from the occasional pealing of patriotic church bells, the afternoon seemed to have withdrawn itself into silence. There was no breeze. He noticed that a fine dust had settled on everything, even the leaves of the trees he passed.

When he reached the Art Nouveau house, standing on its large corner plot, it too seemed dusty and deserted, as though the plasterers had just finished working on the house and left it empty. He went up the steps to the entrance and pulled the bell.

He heard it ring but there was no reply. He waited. Vladimir only kept a skeleton staff there, but it was odd for there to be nobody in the place. ‘Asleep, I suppose,’ he muttered and pulled the bell again, though without conviction. Still nothing. Probably gone to watch the procession, he decided with a shrug. I may as well go.

It was an idle impulse to turn the handle of the heavy door. He certainly didn’t expect anything to happen. Yet to his great surprise, it opened. They had forgotten to lock it. And since he was hot, and had nothing better to do, he stepped inside.

How delightfully cool it was. The high hall with its creamy white staircase was still. Blue and green light filtered softly through the high windows. It made him think of being a fish in some beautiful grotto. The main drawing room, the dining room and the library all gave off the hall. Quietly he went from one to another to see if he could find anyone, but there was nobody.

Should he go? He might as well. But before doing so, he thought he might as well look upstairs. Even if there was no one about, it was rather pleasant exploring the house like this, by himself.

Although he was familiar with all the rooms on the main floor, Dimitri had only once been to the upper floor of the house; he knew there was a sitting room and a study up there, but he could not remember where they were. Having reached the top of the curving stairs he went slowly round the landing, opening one door after another. He found the sitting room and a bedroom, but not the study, and was about to go down again when, down a short passage on his left, he noticed a single door. That must be it. He went towards it, and turned the handle.

It was a handsome room. The walls were blue; the window depicted a strange, dreamy landscape with mountains in the distance and trees in the foreground, whose fruits were red and gold. On the far wall was a painting by Gauguin, depicting two naked women with a Tahitian sunset behind them.

It was not the study, however. Though there was a desk on the left and a chaise longue in the centre, at the far side of the room stood a large bed.

And upon it lay his Uncle Vladimir and Karpenko.

They were both naked. Vladimir’s large, hairy form was turned away from him, but there could be no mistaking it. His powerful arm was resting across Karpenko’s back. Karpenko, however, had his head turned towards the door and now his handsome face looked straight into Dimitri’s.

Dimitri stared. Then Karpenko gave him a strange, rather guilty smile, as though to say: Well, now you know, don’t you?

And not knowing what to do, Dimitri very quietly retreated, closed the door, made his way down the stairs to the silent hall and walked out of the house.

For some time, as he walked towards his home, he could not make out his own feelings, the shock and horror were so great. And it was with surprise, perhaps, as he finally turned into the courtyard with its dusty mulberry tree that he realized that, for his friend, he felt a new kind of protectiveness. As for Uncle Vladimir, he felt a kind of betrayal together with one determined thought: Nadezhda must never know.

And on that dream-like day it also came to him how much there was about people he did not understand.

It was late that afternoon, having at last summoned up the courage, that Alexander Bobrov entered the Suvorin mansion and, rather to his surprise, was told that Nadezhda was free to see him.

Still more surprising was the fact that, before he could stammer out the apology he had carefully prepared, she reached up, touched him on the lips and said: ‘Never mind.’ Then she linked her arm in his and suggested they walk through the gallery.

Looking at her face, it seemed to Alexander that earlier she might have been crying; but whether for that reason or some other, there was a quietness, a tenderness in her manner he had never seen before.

But this was nothing to his surprise and joy when, as he was about to leave, she turned to him and said, ‘Well, Alexander, you’re going off to war. Don’t forget to come back to me, will you?’ And then, turning up her face and looking at him with a little smile: ‘Perhaps you would like to kiss me.’

And she reached up her arms.

1915

There had been a shower. The ground was wet and steaming in the sun as Alexander waited with his men. In front of them lay a huge Polish field; behind, a line of trees.

Soon the action would begin.

Alexander Bobrov surveyed his men. There were thirty-three of them, all, except one, raw recruits, conscripted that winter and given four weeks basic training. The single veteran, a reservist of twenty-seven, Alexander had deputed to act as sergeant.

The trench in which they were standing was not very deep. Once they had got to six feet down, the captain inspecting the line had told them impatiently, ‘That’ll do. We’ve come here to fight, not dig.’

He was a short, fat man, the captain: an officer of the old school with fierce grey whiskers and a red face who, it sometimes seemed to Bobrov, secretly regarded the war as an exasperating diversion from his proper military business of sitting in his club. This morning, though, he had been bustling and brisk.

‘Won’t be long now,’ he had told them an hour ago. ‘Be brave, lads.’ Then he had disappeared.

Alexander gazed at the huge, muddy field before him. About half a mile away, it dipped down, and past that one could see only a lightly wooded ridge some way beyond. Would German helmets suddenly appear? Or puffs of smoke? Alexander hardly knew. For this was his first action, his first real taste of war.

War. In their primary objective the Russian command had been successful. Her immediate, lightning strikes in the summer of 1914 had taken the enemy by surprise. In the north, Russian forces had raced across Poland and smashed into the Germans in East Prussia, causing a momentary panic-stricken retreat. In the south, a Russian army had swept westward from the Ukraine into Austrian territories, and only just been prevented from cutting north, through Silesia, into Germany and towards Berlin itself.

True, the initial success was achieved at appalling cost. The offensive in the north was not properly supported. When the Germans counter-attacked, the losses were horrific. A quarter of a million men were killed in the August offensive in the north; by the end of 1914 Russian losses, including prisoners-of-war, reached an amazing 1,200,000 men.

But Germany was fighting on two fronts. Her master plan had failed. And the empire of Russia, having been humiliated in her last two wars – the Crimean and the war with Japan – had shown herself a military power to be reckoned with. By the start of 1915, Germany was concentrating its main effort against her. And by March 1915, so necessary was she to France and Britain, that those allies had reluctantly to agree that when the war was over she should receive nothing less than the ancient city of Constantinople – her dream since the time of Catherine the Great – as her prize.

In 1915, however, the Germans were beginning to strike back. And now they were advancing with thunder.

Alexander Bobrov looked at his men thoughtfully. He liked them. He thought they liked him too. But he wished they were better prepared.

For if the great offensive of 1914 had been dramatic, the second round, of 1915, had taken on a very different character.

He had never forgotten his surprise the day they were issued with arms. For when twenty of his men had received rifles, the officer in charge stopped, with an abrupt: ‘That’s it.’

‘But what about the rest?’ he had asked, surprised.

‘They’ll have to get them at the front.’

‘You mean, there are stores up there?’

The officer had looked at him pityingly. ‘They’ll get them from their fellow soldiers,’ he said. ‘The ones that have fallen.’ And it was not long before Alexander discovered that, in some regiments in this section of the front, twenty-five per cent of the men had been sent forward with no arms, expected to scavenge them, so to speak, from the hands of the dead. Somehow he had managed to beg and steal rifles for all his men; but he knew of one unit where half the men were armed with pitchforks, and there was a rumour that to the south, one company were preparing to fight the enemy with their bare hands.

The artillery supporting them, he knew, had only two rounds per field gun; but he had not told his men this.

Then there had been the incident of the wireless.

He had been at the company command post two days before, where they had a wireless set up. The captain was busily engaged with this, giving the colonel a detailed briefing on their position and dispositions and looking rather pleased with himself. But only one thing puzzled Bobrov.

‘Are we transmitting everything like that, sir?’ he asked the captain when he was finished.

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, there’s no code. You were transmitting everything in clear.’

The captain stared at him with a frown. ‘Why ever not, for God’s sake?’

‘I just thought – what if the enemy was picking up our signals? He’d know all our dispositions.’

And now the captain’s face cleared. ‘Don’t be silly, Bobrov.’ He smiled. ‘We’re transmitting in Russian, man. The Germans can’t understand a word we say.’

His attitude was not unusual. The transmissions for the entire Russian army were transmitted in clear, which, as the German High Command was later to remark: ‘Made things simpler on the eastern front.’

Why were things so badly organized? Partly, he knew, it was because the high command was dominated by men like the captain: old-fashioned, parade ground soldiers who despised modern weaponry and modern methods. The commander-in-chief, Sukhomlinov, was just such a man. There was, he also knew, a cadre of forward-looking younger officers who chafed under this regime; but these men were not in control.

But it was not just the generals. As the captain himself, in a moment of honesty, suddenly admitted to him: ‘The trouble is, we had enough ammunition for a short war but not a longer one. Our factories just don’t produce enough.’

And what, Alexander wondered, did his men make of it all? They were mostly in their early twenties. None of them wanted to be in the army, but they seemed to understand well enough that Russia must be defended. Except, perhaps, for one. He was a pleasant young fellow with a broad face, not quick of mind, from a small village in the province of Riazan. Alexander liked him and often chatted to him in the evenings. But there was one thing he could never seem to make the fellow understand.

‘I mean, sir, they haven’t attacked Riazan, have they?’ he had said one day, with genuine puzzlement in his voice. ‘So what does the army want with me?’

‘But if we don’t fight them here in Poland, they might get to Riazan later,’ Alexander had suggested.

It had not worked, however. For the fellow had only looked at him earnestly, and then, with a childlike smile, replied: ‘Yes sir. But, then again, they might not.’ And Alexander had wondered how many others, like this simple fellow from Riazan, there might be in the Russian army.

It began quite suddenly, and it was unlike anything he had expected.

There were no German helmets; no squadrons of artillery and flashing swords; no lines of men with rifles. Nothing but a distant, sullen roar.

And then the crashes. At first the German shells fell into the woods behind. Then some more smacked into the field in front of them, sending up little typhoons of mud. The enemy knew their positions all right. And then while his men, frightened and mystified, cowered in their inadequate trench, the roaring went on, and on.

For the spring and summer of 1915, the Russian army experienced the full weight of an orchestrated German bombardment.

It was two hours later that the captain came by. His whiskered face was covered in mud as he peered down into the trench. They had taken only one direct hit. It was strangely clean. The young fellow from Riazan had simply disappeared.

‘Come on, Bobrov. Get out,’ the captain cried. ‘We’re moving back.’

They clambered out of the trench and followed him, keeping just inside the wood where the shells were not falling. After a time they came to the command post. It had been obliterated.

‘Damn Germans! They know how to shoot, I must admit,’ the captain said to him with a wry grin.

He’s not such a bad fellow, Alexander thought. Just a bit old-fashioned. And he glanced back to make sure all his men were together.

A shell screamed over. Then another.

And then there was a very loud bang. It was, really, quite extraordinarily loud. And everything went white.

1915, July

He awoke very slowly, through a haze, and to the sound of a piano.

How strange, he thought. I must have died. For how else should he be here, in his own bedroom, in his childhood home at Russka? Curiously he gazed around him. It seemed that the angels had decided to change the furniture somewhat, but there could be no doubt about where he was: he could see a familiar tree out of the window. That sound from the piano was certainly heavenly. He closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, stranger yet, it was to see Nadezhda staring down at him and smiling. He gazed at her in wonder, then frowned. Had she died also? He was sorry for that.

And then her voice, excitedly.

‘Dimitri – Dimitri! He’s come round.’ And the heavenly music stopped.

It had been Vladimir’s idea. When Alexander had been brought back to Moscow, still barely conscious, and his father had wondered what to do for him, it was the rich industrialist who had organized everything. Alexander had been lying there, delirious and tended by a doctor and a nurse, for three weeks.

Gradually he learned what had happened. The shell whose blast had so nearly killed him was a tiny part of a huge bombardment which had pushed the Russian army in the north back from Poland nearly three hundred miles.

‘It’s a catastrophe,’ Nadezhda told him, the third day he was well enough to talk. ‘Most of Lithuania’s gone. They’re advancing across Latvia. And our people are still pulling back. Old General Sukhomlinov’s been dismissed. About time too. Everyone says the government’s incompetent. They say we can only hope for help from St Nicolas the Miracle-worker!’

But the really fascinating news came from his father.

Though the Tsar had dismissed the Duma early in the year and ruled by decree, the set-backs in the war had been so great that he had been forced to call it into session again, and so Nicolai Bobrov was in the capital. So great had the anti-German feeling been since war began that the government had changed the capital’s name from St Petersburg, with its German-sounding ending, to the more Russian Petrograd. It was from Petrograd, therefore, that Nicolai’s letters were now addressed.

They were full of information. He gave his son character sketches of the important men in the parliament: Rodzianko, the chairman of the Duma, portly but wise; Kerensky, the leader of the Socialists – ‘A good speaker, but with no real political plan except to destroy the Tsar’ – and several others. He related all the gossip from the court. ‘The Empress’s friend, the fellow Rasputin, caused so much trouble with his lechery that he’s been sent back to his family in Siberia. Let’s hope he stays there.’ And above all, to Alexander’s amazement, his father was optimistic.

Alexander could only hope his father was right.

For a long time he was still very weak. It seemed the blast had damaged his insides in some way. His wounds, which were extensive, still caused him pain. ‘But you’re young. You’ll mend,’ the doctor told him cheerfully. They put him in a wheelchair and arranged a room for him downstairs so that he could wheel himself out on to the verandah and enjoy the company.

The house was busy. Dear Arina, as housekeeper, ran everything with wonderful efficiency, and she personally would supervise the samovar of tea and the wonderful pastries that appeared on the verandah every afternoon. Despite the war, the little museum and the workshops were functioning and Arina’s son Ivan, now sixteen, was an apprentice to the woodcarver there and showing great signs of promise.

Though Peter Suvorin and Karpenko remained in Moscow, the rest of the family had all moved to the country and Alexander was interested to see how each person seemed to have their own appointed task. Mrs Suvorin was busy helping a new Zemstvo organization to house the flood of refugees from the front. ‘We’ve even got two Jewish families in the village,’ she informed them. Vladimir had converted the Russka cloth-works into a small armaments factory, making cartridges and grenades. As for Dimitri, he was playing and composing each day. A dozen suites for piano and two movements of his first symphony were already written, the scores being kept in a locked cupboard which was treated by all the family with the reverence that used to be reserved for an icon.

And then there was Nadezhda.

Her father had set up a little nursing home where wounded soldiers could convalesce in Russka, and every day she would go over there to nurse them. Sometimes those that were fit enough were brought over for tea at the house. And though Alexander sometimes observed a slight coldness in the girl towards her mother, it seemed to him that there was a new gentleness in her manner: a gentleness that, in particular, was meant for him.

And so the month of July passed peacefully, and that of August. During that month the doctor allowed him, twice, to be taken by cart to the monastery. How delightful it was, he thought, to be back amongst such familiar sights.

Except for one thing: the village.

‘It’s extraordinary,’ he remarked to Vladimir. ‘What happened? I never saw the place so prosperous.’

It was true. For while, by the summer of 1915, the great cities were suffering from the war, in the huge Russian countryside, the First World War ushered in a time of plenty. How could this be?

‘Actually,’ Vladimir explained, ‘it’s quite simple. Like most administrations in wartime, the government’s paying for things by printing money. Consequently there’s inflation. And the one thing everyone needs, which the peasants have, is grain. Grain prices are high, we’ve just had a bumper harvest, and the villagers have all got excess income.’ He grinned. ‘Do you know, that rogue Boris Romanov’s even bought himself a phonograph. He even plays Tchaikovsky on it, I believe.’

A week later, visiting Boris Romanov’s comfortable house, Alexander saw this marvel for himself. And he wondered to himself: Could it be, after all, that this war would be the saving of Russia, and that his optimistic father was right?

The blow fell in late August. The Tsar dismissed the Duma. At the same time, he decided to take over, personally, as commander-in-chief of the Russian armies. He would go to the front himself.

In the first week of September, Alexander received a long letter from his father. It was no longer optimistic. And its ending was filled with foreboding.

1917, 2 March

Yet even now, it was hard to believe.

The rule of the Tsar was over. Russia was free.

Nicolai Bobrov stood at the window and looked out eagerly. A head cold had kept him indoors that day. It was three hours now since his son Alexander had gone over to the Taurida Palace where the Duma met to see if the news had come. Any moment he would be back.

Surely the news must have come. Surely by now the Tsar must have signed the abdication. ‘For God knows,’ he murmured, ‘the Tsar can’t possibly go on.’ Not now that Bobrov and his friends had taken power.

For in the end, it was the Duma who had deposed the Tsar.

What a strange business it had been; yet not really so surprising. The fears he had expressed back in that fateful summer of 1915 had been justified.

The Tsar had been frequently away at the front. True the army had not done so badly. The great Brusilov offensive of 1916, mounted while the British were making their mass attack on the Somme, though it had failed to break the enemy, had made some gains on the western front. Down in the Caucasus, Russian troops had advanced into Turkey. But in the south, Germany and Austria had pushed to the western shore of the Black Sea through Rumania and the British had been forced to pull out of Gallipoli, leaving Russia still blockaded at the entrance of the Black Sea and unable to export her grain.

The war on the Russian front, as on the western front, was a grim stalemate.

But at the centre – Bobrov could only shake his head. It had been a nightmare. The Empress, that foolish and ignorant German woman, had been left holding the reigns of government. It seemed she had got it into her head that she was another Catherine the Great – so she once told a startled official. And beside the Empress – seen or unseen – had been the terrible Rasputin.

It had been bewildering to watch. It sometimes seemed to Bobrov that anyone who had an ounce of talent was dismissed. Only blind loyalty to the Tsar was rewarded. And the endless list of appointments and dismissals – over forty new provincial governors in a single year! – had made one Duma wit remark that the administration was having an epileptic fit. All faith in the government had evaporated. Ugly rumours about the Empress and Rasputin had even reached the troops at the front. They were said to be secretly in league with the Germans.

Thank God, in December 1916, two aristocratic patriots had murdered the evil Rasputin; but by then the damage had been done.

Before his eyes, Bobrov had witnessed the signs of the breakup. Every party in the Duma, even the conservatives, had turned against the Tsar. Though the army held firm along the front, there had been a million desertions. And then a terrible winter had left the capital short of food and fuel.

It couldn’t go on. For weeks the entire Duma had been in an uproar. Those close to the Tsar said he showed signs of depression. Even some of his relations, the Archdukes, said he should step down to save the monarchy and spoke of a regency.

‘But personally,’ Nicolai Bobrov would always say afterwards, ‘I think it was the weather that really did for the Tsar.’

For suddenly in February 1917, after a bitter winter, the weather turned warm, and in Petrograd everyone came out on to the streets.

The demonstrations were spontaneous. The people had had enough. Not only strikes but massive street disruptions began. The police and Cossacks were hopelessly outnumbered. And then the authorities made a huge mistake: they called out the garrisons.

They were not regular troops. Most of them were recent conscripts, taken from their villages and cooped up for months in overcrowded barracks. Why should they fire on the people? They mutinied, and joined the protestors.

And then, on 28 February, it was over. The Tsar, trapped outside the capital after visiting the front, sent word that the Duma should disband until April. ‘And we refused,’ Bobrov would say, with a calm smile. ‘We refused to go, and suddenly realized we were the government.’

The deputies declared it. The mobs in the street seemed to agree. After all, what else was there, if not the Duma? The next day, the Duma asked the Tsar to abdicate, and the Russian monarch found that he had not a friend in the world.

Where was the young fellow? Nicolai was very proud of his son. Alexander was able to walk about now; he was still an officer, but had been pronounced unfit for further active service and had been spending the last weeks in the capital with his father. Though still a monarchist, he nowadays tolerated his father’s liberal views with good humour; and even he had been shocked by the conduct of the government in recent months. He’s been gone such a time, Nicolai now concluded, there must be some news just coming through.

And then Nicolai smiled. How strange, he thought. Here he was, a widower, aged sixty-two. He had lost his estate. His country was locked in a terrible war, with no end in sight. His monarch had just fallen. Yet today he felt as if his whole life was beginning again.

He was sorry for the Tsar, personally. He didn’t think he was a monster – just an inadequate man in an impossible position. But although he had worked hard for years to reach some sort of liberal compromise with the stubborn ruler, now Nicholas was gone, he realized he was relieved. Democracy could begin at last.

What was it his son had said the other day? He had argued so passionately.

‘You don’t see what you’re doing, Father,’ he had warned. ‘The whole empire has been set up to revolve around the Tsar. Everything, everyone, is attached to him. It’s like some huge machine that turns around a single lynchpin. Take that pin out and the whole apparatus will just fly apart.’

Would Russia fly apart? Nicolai didn’t see why. ‘The Duma is there,’ he had said. ‘There are sensible men in it.’

‘Ah, you liberals,’ Alexander had replied with sad affection. ‘You always think people are going to be reasonable.’

The Duma would do very well, in Nicolai’s view. At least for the time being. It was, after all, the nearest thing to a democratic body that Russia possessed. Already it had chosen a group to act as a Provisional Government, and almost all the parties had agreed to support it. Yesterday, he had heard, some of the workers’ leaders and Mensheviks in St Petersburg had formed some sort of workers’ council – a ‘soviet’, they called it. He knew one or two of the leaders, not bad fellows. They could certainly help to restore some order in the factories.

And then there would be progress. The programme of the Provisional Government was already clear – prosecute the war. Everyone except the Bolsheviks agreed to that – and the Bolsheviks didn’t count for much these days. Then move quickly to hold elections to a new Constituent Assembly which would replace the Duma. A full democratic body. One man, one vote. Everyone, left and right, was agreed about that too.

‘I can feel it,’ he murmured, as he gazed into the street. ‘A warm ray of hope.’

And then he saw Alexander.

The fellow was hurrying along, certainly. He had a piece of paper in his hand and he looked excited. This must be it, then: the formal abdication. With a happy smile, Nicolai prepared to greet him.

So why was the boy frowning? Had the Tsar said something foolish, even now?

‘The abdication came through?’ he enquired.

‘No. The Tsar still can’t bring himself to sign it. But he will. He hasn’t any choice. The army chiefs are telling him to go as well.’

‘Then what’s this?’ Nicolai pointed to the paper.

Alexander handed it to him without a word. And Nicolai read.

It was not long. It was addressed to the Petrograd military garrison, and it contained seven terse clauses.

It told every company to elect committees who would remove control of all arms and equipment from the officers. Officers were no longer to be addressed by honorary titles or saluted off duty. The committees were also to elect representatives to the Petrograd Soviet, which announced that it, and not the Provisional Government, was now the final authority on all military matters.

It was signed by the Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, dated the previous day. And it was headed, simply and without further explanation: Order No. 1.

Nicolai stared at it in disbelief. Then he exploded with laughter.

‘This is absurd! The Petrograd Soviet is just an informal workers’ body. It’s not elected by anyone and has no authority. Nobody’s going to take any notice of it.’

‘But they already are. I’ve been to some of the barracks. They’re all going to comply. Some of them just laughed at me because I was wearing an officer’s uniform.’

‘But the regular troops, our soldiers at the front…’

‘The order’s already on its way to them. I tell you, most of the troops will follow it.’

Nicolai was silent, thunderstruck.

‘Then who’s in charge?’ he cried.

Alexander shrugged.

‘God knows.’

1917, July

Boris Romanov grunted with satisfaction as he stepped from the shady verandah into the salon. Only the ticking of the clock in its marble case could be heard.

He enjoyed the house with its green walls, its little white portico and its cool interior. He went up every afternoon and sat on the verandah. Once it had belonged to the Bobrovs; then Vladimir Suvorin. And now, to all intents and purposes, it was his. He smiled grimly at the thought. The revolution – his revolution – had finally come.

The last few months at Russka had been strange. News of the Tsar’s abdication and of the new Provisional Government had only filtered slowly through to the provinces. Boris had not known for sure until ten days afterwards. He had met a peasant travelling from Riazan province who, a month later, still refused to believe it.

And what did these events in Petrograd mean? The Provisional Government had promised a Constituent Assembly. Good. There was complete freedom of speech and assembly now. No harm in that. But above all, the fall of the Tsar must mean one thing.

‘Now,’ he told his family, ‘we shall get the land.’

Everyone knew it. The Provisional Government was discussing how it was to be done. All that spring, soldiers had been deserting from the front and making their way home, so as not to miss out on the distribution. Two had appeared back in the village.

But nothing had happened. The Provisional Government, as it did in all things, moved slowly, legalistically and hesitantly.

It was in late April that he had led the villagers onto the estate. It had been very simple. There was nobody to stop them. When he entered the house, only Arina had been there to protest.

‘What right have you got to do this?’

He had grinned. ‘The people’s right.’ And when she had foolishly tried to bar his way, he had just shoved her aside with a laugh. ‘This is the revolution,’ he had told her.

It was a curious situation – as if the place had entered a sort of limbo. Technically the estate still belonged to Vladimir Suvorin, just as did the factories at Russka. But Vladimir was in Moscow now. Arina continued to live in the house; so did her son Ivan, who for the time being continued his woodwork. Meanwhile, the villagers cut down some of Suvorin’s trees and grazed their cattle on the slope before the house. And who was going to say anything? It was only a question of time before it was all made legal, whatever that might mean.

And as far as Boris Romanov was concerned, this was the revolution.

To others, perhaps, it might involve something more. That very month there had been an attempt to take over the Provisional Government in Petrograd. A madcap plan – an armed rising – by those Bolsheviks. Boris knew about Bolsheviks. They were fellows like that accursed red-head, Popov. They had been growing in numbers lately with their slogan ‘All power to the Soviets’, and their screaming editorials in their paper, Pravda. But their revolt had been smashed. One of their leaders, Trotsky, was in jail. Another, Lenin, had fled abroad. ‘And let’s hope that’s the last of them,’ Boris had said.

There was a new man at the head of the government now, a Socialist called Kerensky. He’d called in General Kornilov to restore order. Perhaps he’d speed up the Constituent Assembly and the legalizing of the land distribution, too.

Slowly now Boris mounted the stairs. During the last three months he had examined the house and its contents with interest. There were certainly some strange-looking books and paintings there. The grand piano, however, he had much admired. One of his sons had played a tune on it.

Only today had it occurred to him that there was one part of the house he had never investigated. He would go to the attic.

Rather to his disappointment, however, he found that Suvorin had made no use of it. The long low room under the roof was almost empty, the floorboards bare. Only at one end did he notice, under a small round window, a few dusty old boxes.

With slow deliberation, but not much interest, he opened them, then made a grimace. Papers. Old letters, bills, and other nonsense of the Bobrovs. He shrugged. He couldn’t be bothered to look at them, and he was just about to turn away when he noticed one piece of paper that seemed to be sticking out slightly from the rest. Along the top, he noticed, was a heading: ‘Fire at Russka’.

He frowned and pulled it out, to find another slip of paper folded inside the first. It seemed to be a letter of some sort.

It was signed: Peter Suvorin.

1917, 2 November

It was one in the morning and they were alone.

The night before, when the Moscow Kremlin had still been holding out, there had been fighting in the streets; but now the city was quiet. In Petrograd and in Moscow, Lenin and his Bolsheviks were now in power.

Or were they?

Popov smiled at Mrs Suvorin, and despite all that was passing, she smiled back. She thought he looked younger.

‘So tell me,’ she said, ‘what really happened.’

And then he laughed.

The world-shattering event known as the October Revolution was, strictly speaking, nothing of the kind. It was a coup by a minority party, about which the majority of the population did not even know.

All through that year of 1917, since the abdication of the Tsar, Russia had staggered along under a strange duality: a Provisional Government, which had little real power, and a Congress of Soviets, which had a growing network of local bases in factory, town and village, but no real legitimacy. Elections were needed to form a democratic Constituent Assembly; but the government, even after its leadership fell upon the popular Socialist, Kerensky, was painfully slow. Meanwhile the economy was collapsing, there were food shortages, and the members of the government themselves were becoming weary.

It was while this government was wavering that the Bolshevik party began to make steady progress in the soviets. In July, foolishly, they had attempted an insurrection which was crushed; but this did not stop their political advance. By the start of September, Trotsky and his Bolsheviks had a majority in the Petrograd Soviet. A few days later, the Bolsheviks also had a majority in Moscow. In the country as a whole, however, they remained in a minority. With time it seemed possible that the Bolsheviks would become the dominant leftist party: but then again they might not. And it was in this rather uncertain situation that, in the month of October 1917, Lenin with some difficulty persuaded his fellow Bolsheviks to gamble once more on a bid for instant power.

It began on the night of 24 October and it was orchestrated, chiefly by Trotsky, from the former convent and girls’ school, the Smolny Institute, which had become the home of the Petrograd Soviet.

‘And the amazing thing,’ Popov declared, ‘was how easy it all was.’ He grinned: ‘We did the main part by stealth.’

All through the evening the conspirators had done something so simple it was brilliant. They had just gone from one vital installation to another, picketing or taking over, and few of the workers they had relieved had bothered to oppose them. They had already done their best to win the military garrisons over, but they need not have worried, for the military was not much inclined to act, and poor Kerensky failed to make any proper defensive plans. By morning, almost all the city’s key points had been quietly taken over.

‘Kerensky went off to get military support from outside the city,’ Popov told her, ‘but had little luck. That just left the ministers of the Provisional Government sitting in the Winter Palace with a guard of some Cossacks and, if you please, the Women’s Death Battalion. There were forty war invalids too, God bless them!’

‘Then you stormed the Winter Palace?’

‘More or less. Actually, some of the women, I suppose, knew how to shoot, so our people wouldn’t go near the place. Then we got five thousand sailors. But when they saw there was shooting, they went away too!’

‘I heard the Winter Palace was bombarded.’

‘Correct. The heroic cruiser Aurora fired upon the palace. They hadn’t any live shells unfortunately, so they fired a single blank. Then the Peter and Paul Fortress had a go. But they missed.’

‘That’s impossible. The fortress is directly opposite the Palace.’

‘I was there. They missed.’

‘And then?’

‘Oh, in the end they gave up and our people went in and looted the place.’ He chuckled. ‘Though in the future, I’m sure we shall tell the story rather differently.’

Mrs Suvorin looked at Popov thoughtfully. She had seen little of him in the last year, but they still felt an attraction for each other. She could understand why, in his moment of triumph, he should have sent a message that he would call upon her that night.

Several thoughts went through her mind. What would this change mean politically? Some people, she knew, were outraged. The civil service, the banks, and a number of unions had resisted the usurpation of the Duma by going on strike. It was still possible that armed forces would be used against the Bolsheviks. Yet other people were taking things very calmly. The Petrograd stock exchange had not reacted at all: prices were firm. As a businessman had remarked to her: ‘These Bolsheviks are just a party within the workers’ soviets: and it’s the soviets, not Kerensky, who’ve had the real power for months. I doubt it will make much difference.’

True, the first act of the new group had been to declare that all estates were now to be distributed to the peasants but that had been coming anyway, and she knew very well that the peasants had already occupied the estate at Russka. She had reconciled herself to that.

What about the men involved? What were they like? She had seen the list of ministers. Lenin she felt she knew about; also Trotsky. Them she feared. Yet Lunachazsky, the Minister of Culture, she had met and found to be a cultivated and sympathetic man. Other names meant less. And one, the Chairman for Nationalities, named Stalin, meant nothing at all.

Which brought her back to Popov. Even now, after a decade, she did not really know him. Sometimes, like that time in 1913, she had broken through and found a man of warmth; yet at other times the thick shell of the revolutionary had descended. She felt he would kill without caring. And, perhaps worse, he would lie without hesitation.

Somehow, she felt instinctively now, he represented them. If she could gauge him, she might have an insight into these men who were his colleagues.

And it was with this in her mind that she now asked him the question that had been troubling her more than any other.

‘What, then, are you going to do about the Constituent Assembly?’

All the parties, including the Bolsheviks, had been calling for it. Before being overthrown, the Kerensky Provisional Government had set the dates for elections in November. Now, with this coup, what would become of those?

He looked at her in surprise.

‘The elections are scheduled.’

‘Will they take place?’

‘Certainly.’

‘Nothing is certain. How do I know that your Lenin isn’t a dictator.’

‘You have my word he isn’t.’ Popov gazed at her earnestly. ‘I assure you the Constituent Assembly will be called. It’s part of our programme. Not only that, all the decisions of this government – the distribution of the land, everything – are only provisional, and subject to ratification by the Assembly.’

His eyes looked straight into hers. She supposed she must believe him.

‘Do you promise me that?’

‘I do.’

1918, January

On 5 January, 1918, the Constituent Assembly met in Petrograd. Since the elections had taken place well after the Bolshevik coup, it would be hard to deny that the results reflected the people’s will under present conditions. Of the 707 members, the largest group – 370 – belonged to the peasants’ party, the Socialist Revolutionaries. Of the lesser parties, the Bolsheviks had 170 members. Other parties included the Mensheviks, and there were over a hundred members with marginal or no party affiliations. The ruling Bolsheviks, therefore, were in a definite minority, with only 24 per cent of the vote.

The Constituent Assembly met for one day. Lenin watched the proceedings from a balcony. The Assembly refused to agree that the Bolshevik Government was the supreme power or to bow to the decisions of the soviets. That same night, Lenin, with a show of military force, disbanded it.

Thus, after centuries of tsarist rule, and after its February and October revolutions, Russia enjoyed its one and only day of democracy. ‘It’s a pity,’ one of the sailors who disbanded it remarked, ‘but,’ using the tsarist term of affection which many soldiers then applied to Lenin, ‘the Little Father doesn’t like it.’

The following day, Mrs Suvorin sent a note to Yevgeny Popov.

1918, February

The fate of Alexander Bobrov was decided in an icy Moscow street. It was foolish of him to have lost concentration – and all the more so since it was the very eve of his departure.

For it was clear that, for the two Bobrovs, it was time to leave. ‘It seems,’ Alexander said wryly, ‘that we shall not be required in the modern age.’

And the new age had, indeed, begun. Officially it started on 31 January. For on that day, by government decree, Russia moved to the western, Gregorian calendar, and ceased to be thirteen days behind the rest of the world. Whatever the date, however, the Russia that Alexander knew was dissolving in the strangest way, before his eyes.

She was neither at war nor at peace. An armistice had been signed with Germany, but the peace terms, negotiated by Trotsky, had yet to be agreed. The assumption of some idealistic revolutionaries, that if they offered to go home, the Germans would do so too, had been swiftly disproved. The general revolution in Europe that some, including Lenin, had hoped for, showed no sign yet of taking place. Meanwhile, in this uncomfortable half world, the old Russian empire was showing every sign of breaking up. In the north, Finland, Lithuania, and Latvia had already declared independence. In the west, Poland was sure to be lost. In the south, formal authority in the Ukraine had broken down, but while the Bolsheviks were trying to get control, the Ukranian nationalists had already proclaimed a new Ukrainian state.

At home everything that seemed familiar was being broken up. The land belonged to the people; the programme for nationalizing industry had begun; and the Orthodox Church had been told that all its property was confiscated and all its legal rights taken away. In effect, it was outlawed. ‘In six months,’ Lenin had declared, ‘we will build a Socialist state.’ It seemed he might succeed.

For if the Bolsheviks were still a minority, they were a determined one. The opposition forces were in disarray; cleverly, Lenin had drawn some of the extremists of the peasants’ party – the terrorists – into his government so that they would not oppose him; Red Guards and other units were everywhere; Bolshevik cells were growing in the factories; and, most significant for the Bobrovs, a new organization, headed by a ruthless fellow named Dzerzhinski, had begun to operate in the last two months: the Cheka.

The Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counterrevolution, Sabotage and Speculation was a very effective body. It was remarkable what it could come up with. It seemed that a number of political opponents of the Bolsheviks had been guilty of sedition, including many of the liberal Cadets. They were declared to be enemies of the people. Nicolai Bobrov had just learned that he was one of them.

Alexander Bobrov was walking quite slowly, because he was lost in thought. He was wearing an old coat, a worker’s cap and a pair of heavy boots. The coat collar was turned up against the cold, and his face was hardly visible. He had taken to dressing like a worker a month ago. His father was in hiding.

Their escape had been arranged by Vladimir Suvorin. Mrs Suvorin was to cross into Finland and go thence in stages to Paris where Vladimir’s son was awaiting her. The two Bobrovs, dressed as workers, were to accompany her. In the confusion which still existed everywhere, the journey itself should not be unduly difficult. ‘You just need to keep out of trouble until you leave,’ Vladimir had said.

The industrialist’s own position was curious. Though the Bolsheviks wanted to nationalize all industry, they were still uncertain what to do with men like Suvorin. If he cooperated, with his wide knowledge and his many contacts he might be useful. ‘They know that industry and finance still have to run,’ Vladimir had explained to Alexander. ‘I’ve a friend in the Culture Minister, Lunarcharsky, too. All the same,’ he added, ‘I fear it may not be many months before I follow you.’ Nadezhda, despite much scolding, had insisted she stay with her father, and Alexander had just come, an hour before, from bidding her farewell.

Since their time together in Russka while he recovered from his war wounds, they had grown very close. Twice he had proposed. But in the upheaval taking place all around them, she had simply begged: ‘Not now.’ Alexander had no doubt that she and Vladimir would be in Europe too, within the year. And then, he thought, will be the time. It was funny: they would both be nothing then – just a pair of emigrés. But he didn’t mind. ‘Take care of yourself, my Alyosha,’ she had said, and had given him a long kiss.

And it was just these thoughts, as he went along the steet, that made him foolishly forget.

‘Got a cig?’ The soldier was standing in front of him, looking up. ‘Cigarette?’

Alexander gazed down at him, hardly focussing. There were six or seven other soldiers, Red Guards, watching him. The one who had approached him was a disreputable little fellow. When he was serving, Alexander would have made him clean himself up.

‘You want a cigarette, do you?’ he said irritably. ‘Well, I don’t smoke.’ And he started to walk on.

What the devil was the matter with the fellow? The soldier had suddenly caught his coat. His hopeful look had turned into a snarl. He was calling to the other guards, who were coming towards them, one of them unhoisting his rifle.

And then he realized what he had done.

He had spoken naturally, just as he would have done a year ago. He had forgotten to disguise his voice which had the faint but unmistakable burr of the aristocratic intonation. He had addressed him with a certain haughty disdain; and, worst of all, he had used the familiar ‘thou’ which officers always used when addressing their men.

He was discovered.

‘Here’s an officer. What’s your name?’

‘Ivanov. I’m not an officer.’

‘You were though, weren’t you? I think we’ve got ourselves an enemy here, boys. Fine suit of clothes you’ve get there, my lord. Nice coat. Think you’re a muzhik, do you?’

And suddenly Alexander doubled up with pain as a rifle butt was swung and hit him in the stomach. He went down.

‘What shall we do with him, lads?’

‘Take him to a tribunal.’

‘Search him first, maybe.’

‘I think you’d like to have a nice talk with the Cheka. That’s what I reckon,’ the first said with a laugh. ‘Up you get, baron. Come along, Excellency. What a fine officer you are, sir, to be sure.’

He staggered up. Thank God he had no papers on him.

‘My name’s Ivanov,’ he said weakly.

Then one of the soldiers cried out: ‘Here’s the man we need. He’s on the Committee. Let’s ask him.’

And Alexander looked up to see Yevgeny Popov, who gazed at him with mild surprise, while the soldiers told him what they’d found. ‘Says his name’s Ivanov,’ the first one added. Then Popov smiled.

For a few, long seconds he said nothing. His green eyes rested upon Alexander, yet it seemed he was thinking of something else. At last he spoke.

‘This man, comrades, is a good Bolshevik. He’s one of us.’

The soldier who had discovered Alexander gazed in amazement.

‘But he talks like a noble,’ he protested. ‘I swear he was an officer.’

Popov smiled. ‘Have you heard Vladimir Ilich speak?’ he asked. It was a subject of some amusement that Lenin pronounced his diatribes against the capitalist classes in an accent that was markedly upper-middle class. ‘Besides, comrade, there are officers who served in the imperial army who are loyal Bolsheviks now.’ It was true that, even in the higher command, there were men who had thought it their patriotic duty to obey the new government as thoroughly as they had the old. ‘We just shoot them if they don’t,’ Popov added pleasantly.

The men looked at him doubtfully. ‘Are you sure, comrade?’

Popov shrugged. ‘Ask him,’ he said. And he smiled again at Alexander.

Afterwards, Alexander often wondered how he got through the next few minutes. Probably because his life was at stake. He had not prepared himself, and there was no time to think.

‘My name is Alexander Pavlovich Ivanov,’ he began slowly. It was not a long story. He was terrified that if he made it long, he might forget what he had said. He told them that he had been wounded in action, that on his return he had become disgusted with the old régime and that, immediately after the October coup, he had offered his services to the Bolsheviks. ‘I’ve got no money,’ he said. ‘And unfortunately I’m still sick.’ Then he offered to show them his wounds.

‘Long live the revolution,’ Popov said quietly.

‘Long live the revolution,’ Alexander repeated.

The soldiers turned to Popov.

‘You heard him,’ he said. ‘I vouch for him.’

‘Oh, well, if you’re one of us,’ the first soldier said. And he clapped Alexander on the back. ‘Pity you’ve got no cigarettes,’ he added. Then the soldiers left.

As he stood there, watched by Popov, Alexander felt physically sick. It was not only the blow from the rifle, nor the fear: it was the complete humiliation of having to swear to these pathetic lies in front of the man he hated and despised the most in the world. Unwillingly, he met Popov’s eye.

‘Why?’ he asked.

For a moment Popov did not reply. It seemed that he, too, was contemplating. ‘Do you remember that you once called me a liar?’ he said. ‘I used a false name too. That disgusted you, didn’t it?’ He paused, still looking at Alexander coolly. ‘You called me a coward too, I recall.’ He nodded slowly. ‘And why did you lie just now, so eagerly, Alexander Nicolaevich? I will tell you. You didn’t do it for a cause. You haven’t got a cause. You did it to save your skin.’

Alexander couldn’t deny it.

‘I just wanted to see,’ Popov said calmly. ‘It was interesting to watch. Tomorrow, or the next day, or the next, you’ll be caught. And then I shan’t save you. You’ll be on your own. If they ask me, I shall tell them exactly what you are.’ He paused. ‘But in the meantime, you see,’ and now it seemed that Popov was speaking for a lifetime, ‘you will know that you are no better than me. In fact, you are worse. You’re nothing. Goodbye.’

He walked away.

And Alexander Bobrov, looking after him, wondered if he was right.

The next day the Bobrovs left for Finland.

1918, July

In the months leading up to June 1918, a rather unexpected change began to take place in Vladimir Suvorin. Whether it was the effect of the events surrounding him, or whether it was one of those physical changes which sometimes occur rather suddenly with age, it was hard to say.

The events of that spring might have shattered a lesser man.

A week after his wife had left, the Cheka called him in to ask him where she was. He told them with perfect truth that she had gone to Finland. ‘We estimate your fortune at twenty-five million roubles,’ one of the men remarked. ‘What have you to say?’

‘I didn’t know I had so much,’ he answered blandly.

‘You won’t for long,’ they promised.

In March Vladimir was informed that the Art Nouveau house belonged to the state; two days later, the great Suvorin mansion became a museum. In April, the factories at Russka were taken over. Late in May, after asking him to spend several days explaining various aspects of their workings, all the Moscow plants followed. By the month of June, Vladimir controlled nothing.

It was strange. He had never taken a great interest in affairs outside Russia except in so far as art was concerned. He had no overseas investments. The only deposits in foreign countries that the great industrialist possessed were the accounts in London and Paris that his son and he used for purchasing works of art and enough for Mrs Suvorin to live on for a while, but no more. By June, therefore, Vladimir was poor.

He was not personally harassed. When the house became a museum, he received a personal visit from the minister, Lunarcharsky, a kindly man, who with his bald pate and pince-nez perched on his nose looked more like a professor than a revolutionary. Lunarcharsky was straightforward: ‘My dear fellow, the museum needs a curator. Who better than you? Nadezhda can be your deputy.’ And they were permitted to inhabit a small apartment at the back of the house, which had once been used by the housekeeper.

Each day, therefore, Vladimir would solemnly lead round the parties of workers whom Lunarcharsky would enthusiastically send along in lorries, while Nadezhda would try to explain a Picasso to puzzled peasant women, or quietly sweep the floor.

The physical change in Vladimir was two-fold. In the first place, he lost weight, so that now his clothes hung somewhat loosely on his large frame. But secondly, whether it was his weight loss which showed the bone structure of his face, or whether some other process was also at work, his physiognomy began to change. His jaw seemed longer, his eyes more deepset, and his nose appeared to be longer and coarser. By the end of June, though not quite so tall, the resemblance had become extremely striking – he looked just like his grandfather, old Savva Suvorin.

And perhaps hardship had given him something of Savva’s temperament, too. For now the man for whom all things were always possible had become rather silent and cautious. And determined.

He watched events closely. Since the spring, two important developments had taken place. First, the capital was transferred from Petrograd to Moscow. Second, under Lenin’s direct instructions a peace had been signed with Germany at Brest Litovsk. It gave way to all Germany’s demands. Finland, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia all became independent. So, under German control, did the Ukraine. The loss was devastating in terms of agriculture and mineral resources. But as Russia was then in no position to fight, it may have saved the Bolshevik régime. Since Russia was no longer their active ally, however, the peace also caused the western powers to look carefully at the new Socialist government whose leaders had long and actively espoused the cause of world revolution. By summer, a British force had already established a beachhead in the far north, officially to guard allied ammunition supplies; and soon a Japanese force, encouraged by the United States, had landed upon the Pacific shore in distant Vladivostok. Other forces were also at work. In the far south, the Don Cossacks were preparing to resist the Bolsheviks; other opposition was gathering in the east beyond the Volga. Lenin, clearly anxious, was busily recruiting a new Red Army. Trotsky was in personal charge. In Moscow, they had been offering steadily higher salaries all spring to get recruits. ‘There’s going to be a civil war,’ Vladimir told Nadezhda. ‘Though God knows who’ll win it.’

Quietly, carefully, Vladimir watched. June passed, then July. And then, in the last part of July, the news came which decided him.

They had shot the Tsar.

Dimitri looked thoughtfully at his Uncle Vladimir and then his father. It was the first time he had seen a tension between them. Still stranger was it to hear his father, standing in the dining room, say in almost cutting tones to the great man: ‘I am surprised you should even ask me to desert my country.’

They had been talking for half an hour and reached only an impasse. Patiently Vladimir had explained his reasoning. The increasing terror from the Cheka, the danger from outside. ‘Only one thing can result when a régime is in this kind of position,’ he argued. ‘Either it falls, or it imposes a tyranny. I’m sure now that the Bolsheviks will hold on to power. And the killing of the Tsar signals their intentions. They’ll stand and fight. And I for one will certainly be destroyed.’

‘The Tsar was killed by the local Siberian Soviet anyway,’ Peter objected.

‘I don’t believe it. And history will prove me right.’

But Professor Peter Suvorin wasn’t very interested in the Tsar.

There was no doubt, Vladimir considered, as he looked at his brother, that Peter could be irritating. He thought sadly of Rosa; then, with a grim smile, of his old grandfather. What, he wondered, had poor old Savva made of Peter? Not much, it seemed. To Vladimir’s deep and wide-ranging mind, accustomed to weigh causes and intentions as well as to appreciate the beautiful, his brother’s intelligence, however fine in its way, was superficial. Carefully he had questioned him about the events of recent months: the Bolshevik seizure of power, the ousting of moderate Socialists like the professor himself. All these things, Peter agreed, had disturbed him greatly. ‘But in the long run, don’t you see, Vladimir, it may have to be this way. We have the revolution. That’s the point, die revolution.’ And he had smiled with that sweet, clear look in his eyes which made Vladimir shake his head and remark grumpily: ‘I may be wrong, but I think you see what you want to.’

Yet why, Dimitri wondered, despite my father’s refusal, should Uncle Vladimir still be putting such pressure upon me to go? For I haven’t the least desire to.

Indeed, the last few months had been thrilling. In the ferment of the revolution, the artists of the avant-garde had been taking to the streets. Posters and proclamations were signed by artists like Mayakovsky. ‘Every artist is a revolutionary and every revolutionary is an artist,’ a young friend of his had declared. Huge murals were appearing. On top of a building near their apartment, a bristling sculpture made of metal girders towered up as if to proclaim the new, scientific age to the blue sky. There was a huge banner by Tolkin draped halfway down a theatre nearby. Each day, he and Karpenko had roamed the streets in wonder. Karpenko was painting busily and he, Dimitri, planned to astonish them all with his new symphony – a hymn to the revolution. How, therefore, could he possibly want to leave?

It was only when Peter was out of the room for a moment that Vladimir confessed to him: ‘I must beg you to come, Dimitri, because I promised your mother that I would.’ He paused. ‘It was really her last request, you know.’

‘But why?’ Dimitri asked. ‘Why should she be so anxious for me to leave?’

Vladimir sighed. ‘She had dreams.’

‘Of what?’

‘That something would happen to you if you stayed.’ He paused. ‘The dreams became very terrible to her, very vivid, just before the end.’

‘Before the accident?’

Vladimir looked at him sadly. ‘Quite.’

But the boy was shaking his head. ‘I couldn’t leave my father – I don’t want to go anyway.’ He looked down. ‘My mother always told me I’d be safe as long as I was a musician, you know.’ Then he looked up again and grinned. ‘As you see, I am.’

And so, reluctantly, Vladimir gave up. Only one person in the professor’s apartment agreed to go. And this was Karpenko who, after hearing the debate, said quietly: ‘I will come with you to Kiev. I want to get home.’

It was the following day that Dimitri asked his father a favour. The Symphony to the Revolution was going well, but in the slow movement he wanted to incorporate some material he had written out, fully orchestrated, when he had been down in the country two years before.

‘And the devil of it is,’ he explained, ‘I must have left it down at Russka, in Uncle Vladimir’s house. As I hear the place was hardly touched, it’s probably still sitting there; but I haven’t really time to go down there.’

And Peter had smiled. ‘I’ll gladly go for you,’ he promised.

Nadezhda had got used to her new life. She liked the simple workers she took round the house. She was even used to having them watch her sweep the floor. For sheer convenience now, she often dressed like a simple peasant woman herself, with a scarf over her head. And above all, she was glad to feel that in this, the great crisis of his life, she was there beside her father. I at least, she thought bitterly of her mother, remain always at his side.

Only one thing made her angry and caused her to fall silent for an hour or more. And this was the presence of Yevgeny Popov.

‘Why does he come here?’ she would moan aloud. ‘Does he come to taunt me? To gloat?’ Two, sometimes three, times a week Popov would come by, curiously inspect the house, look in at their apartment, and then with a brief nod, depart. ‘I’d like to slam the door in his face,’ she once said bitterly to her father, but he only warned her quietly: ‘Never annoy a man like that. He’s dangerous these days.’

Did her father know about Popov and her mother? She had always supposed he did, but never asked. How dare the man come around like this to look at her poor father now?

It was understandable therefore if, as their departure approached, she should dream happily of being rid of the intruder.

Vladimir’s plan of escape was very simple.

He had noticed that the Bemsky railway station was, at certain times, a scene of general chaos. And it was from there that trains left for the Ukrainian frontier. It was still not too difficult to get forged papers. The main thing, in his position, was not to be recognized. The plan was kept secret. Once the date was decided, not even Dimitri or Peter were to be told.

Everything seemed quite normal, therefore, on the afternoon before their departure, when Popov came by the house.

He made his usual round of inspection, then carefully looked in upon the apartment, where he found Nadezhda alone; no doubt he would have gone without delaying if she had not glanced up at him and remarked: ‘Well, have you come to gloat as usual?’ Adding drily: ‘No one’s stolen anything – unless you have, of course.’

He looked at her curiously. ‘Perhaps you should be more polite to a People’s Commissar. But then, you do not like me.’

She shrugged. She had said too much already and it would be madness to say more. But because she knew she was leaving, she foolishly gave way to her feelings.

‘I’m sure you are a thief. I imagine you are a murderer. And you tried to steal my mother from my father, who is an angel. Why should I do anything but despise you?’

For nearly half a minute, Popov said nothing. Why was it, he wondered, that the bourgeoisie so often lived a lie? Why should this impertinent girl, who was old enough to be someone’s wife, continue in complete ignorance of the simple truth? So he told her about Vladimir.

After all, it wasn’t so important. Then he left.

For a long time, Nadezhda did not move. Her mouth had fallen wide open in shock, and as she sat, very pale in her chair, an onlooker might have supposed that she had died.

Surely it could not be true. She had heard of such things, of course. There was a rumour that had been whispered to her, a year ago, about Tchaikovsky. But her father – the angel she had adored and looked up to all her life! She was too shocked even to weep.

And still she had told herself it was not true until, early that evening, Dimitri had looked in, and she had said, with calculated lightness – ‘So, Dimitri, do you know about my father and Karpenko?’ And poor Dimitri, caught offguard, had gone bright crimson and asked hoarsely: ‘How the devil did you know?’

It was evening. To lessen the risk of detection, they did not enter the ornate Bemsky station all together.

Vladimir, as he strode along the platform dressed in his peasant’s shirt and belt, his heavy hand holding a bag on his shoulder, looked exactly the Russian muzhik his grandfather Savva had been. Some minutes later, a bashful young peasant couple, the boy dark and handsome, boarded another part of the train. Nobody particularly remembered them.

Karpenko was elated. Firstly, the business was an adventure; secondly, he was going to see his family for the first time in a year; and thirdly, he was returning to his beloved Ukraine.

It was time to go home. The revolution was all very well, of course. He had supported it like everyone else. ‘And who knows?’ he had remarked that spring to Dimitri. ‘If I were a Russian, I might still be a Bolshevik.’ But how could he tolerate the way they were treating his homeland? The Bolsheviks had no love of the Ukrainian nation or its language. Earlier in the year, the Cheka chief in Kiev had shot people in the street if he heard them speaking Ukrainian. How could a Karpenko stand for that? Since the Germans had come in, the Ukrainians had been allowed to elect a Cossack Hetman, just as in the old days. And already, he had heard, Ukrainian texts were coming back into the schools, and the poet Karpenko was occupying a place of honour again. Yes, this Russian revolution had been exciting; but it was time to go home.

He noticed that Nadezhda seemed tense and preoccupied, but thought little of it. Nor did it disturb him when, as he went forward from their carriage to let Vladimir know they were safely aboard, she asked him to remain up front with her father. ‘I just want to be alone tonight,’ she said. As she liked.

He was entirely unaware, therefore, that a few minutes before it was due to leave, Nadezhda stepped off the train.

Popov was in a hurry. He had commandeered a military car to take him to the Suvorin house; now he drove swiftly away again.

How could he have been so stupid? He should have guessed. Why would Nadezhda take the risk of insulting him, unless she knew very well that she would not be seeing him again? As he drove, his face set. There were only two obvious ways for the Suvorins to try to leave the city. He tossed a coin, and headed for one of them.

As she went down the platform, Nadezhda could no longer see through her tears.

Since last evening, she had kept herself under rigid control. She had kissed her father when he came back, exactly as usual. She had made him supper. The following morning she had shown some factory workers round the museum, then in the evening, just as planned, she had locked the great house, dressed as a peasant, and slipped out to join Karpenko.

But she was not going with them, her father and his lover. She was not going to share that secret shame and betrayal, that opened like a deep, dark and terrible abyss before her.

It was a horror – worse by far than the financial ruin that had befallen them. Everything that she had believed in was shattered.

If Karpenko stayed with Vladimir in his carriage, they would not realize she had gone until they were at the Ukrainian border in the morning. Then it would be too late.

What would become of her? Perhaps she would be kept at the museum. Or Uncle Peter and Dimitri would help her. Or Popov might have her shot, for all she knew. She hardly cared.

She had reached the end of the platform. Dully, she heard whistles blowing. Then someone bumped into her, holding her. She looked up.

It was Popov.

Never, in after years, did she fully comprehend what happened next. Popov, the hateful Popov, with his arms firmly around her. Popov, surprisingly gentle, yet firm, turning her round, forcing her to walk, numb and uncomprehending, back up the platform. His voice in her ear.

‘Were you running away from them, pretty one? Because of what I told you, eh? Was that it? I think so. Don’t say a word. What else would you be doing?’ A squeeze on her arm.

‘Believe me – please believe me – there are many worse things. He’s not so bad, your father. Not so bad at all. Here we are.’

He was walking her up the train. He was walking up to the front, gazing in at the windows. He was going to discover them. Dear God! What had she done? She struggled to get away. He held her with ease.

‘Don’t fly, little bird. Don’t fly. Ah, there they are.’

He was pulling open the carriage door. She could see, as through a haze, her father and Karpenko. Popov was murmuring something now. What was he saying? Whispering something about her mother. Tell her… tell her what? That he loved her?

Then suddenly she was pushed inside the carriage, into her father’s arms, and the door slammed. For a second everything seemed oddly still. Then there was a jolt as the train began to move.

As it did, Popov watched with a wry smile.

For months now, he had been visiting the house to make sure the girl was safe and well. It was foolish of him to have been angry with her. When he realized that the Suvorins were making a run for it, he had certainly meant to stop them. When he entered Bemsky station, he had intended to arrest Vladimir.

But then he had changed his mind. Why not admit it? It was the sight of that foolish weeping girl. Moscow was no place for her. Let her go. Let her father take her away to where she belonged. To Mrs Suvorin.

Mrs Suvorin – the solitary island of love, the only one he had encountered in many years upon the great stream which carried him inexorably, now, high in its mighty flow.

Popov seldom allowed himself to be weak. Perhaps never again, he thought, would he step out from the tough, protective shell which grew, like a carapace, upon him. He turned. Mrs Suvorin and his last connection with her was gone. There was only the revolution now. It was, after all, what he had lived for for so long.

It was a strange business that no one could ever explain.

On a day at the end of July, Peter Suvorin had been seen at the town of Russka. From there he had gone to the village and asked the village elder if he might be let into the big house.

A few villagers, standing nearby, noticed that when he told Boris Romanov his name, the elder stared at him in complete astonishment. But then it was odd, perhaps, to realize this trim professor was the brother of the heavy-set Vladimir.

The elder couldn’t have been more helpful. He took Peter up to the house and found the package he was looking for. Some music, it seemed, locked in a cupboard. Then he had personally escorted him back through the wood towards Russka.

No one knew what had happened to him. No trace was ever found. It was just one of those mysteries.

And young Dimitri Suvorin completed the splendid slow movement of his Revolution Symphony from memory. It was dedicated, naturally, to his father.

1918, August

Young Ivan watched tensely as the troops approached. Red Army. They had been busy in the town of Russka that morning; they had a commissar with them, a man of some importance; and to Ivan’s amazement he had just heard the commissar was coming to the village in person.

The commissar and his Uncle Boris. He wondered who would win.

The village had prepared carefully. A week before, on a moonless night, the entire village, men and women, had turned out and moved all the grain to new hiding places. Because he and his mother lived up at the big house, and because his uncle hated Arina, they had not been asked to take part. But Ivan had sneaked down and watched them. Two stores were underground, at the edge of the wood. More ingenious, some fifty sealed containers had been lowered into the river a short way upstream. Some grain, however, had been left in plain view, in a large storehouse at the end of the village. ‘Let the thieves take that,’ Uncle Boris had said. And then, with disgust: ‘Even when my father was a serf, they never came and took away his grain.’

All over Russia, the countryside was in a state of seething revolt. To the south, a week before, the people in one hamlet had chased two Bolshevik officials away with pitchforks and killed one of them.

The problem had begun last year when the Provisional Government had directed that all surplus grain must be sold to the government at set prices. Naturally since the prices were low, most of the peasants had ignored this; besides, every peasant had been accustomed to sell his produce at market since time began. But now the Bolsheviks – or Communists, as they nowadays called themselves – said this was speculation and the Cheka officers had been shooting people they caught. ‘But have you seen what these fools want to pay?’ Boris had thundered. ‘They’ll pay sixteen roubles for a pud of rye. And you know what that’s worth if I can sell it in Moscow? Almost three hundred roubles! So let them come,’ he said grimly, ‘and see what they can find.’

They were coming now: thirty armed men in rather dirty uniforms. At their head walked two figures, both wearing leather coats: one young, the other perhaps sixty, with greying hair that had a reddish, sandy look. And it was only as they drew close that Ivan heard his uncle mutter.

‘I’ll be damned. It’s that accursed red-head.’

Popov approached the village without particular emotion. Indeed, he had only come to this region because Lenin had personally asked him to do so.

He had never known Vladimir Ilich so angry. Of course, they both knew, the fact that most of the old officials from the agriculture ministry had gone didn’t help. Someone on the Central Committee had even suggested allowing grain to be freely sold for a while. ‘But if we’re going to allow a free market, then what are we Communists doing here at all?’ Lenin had countered. Meanwhile, the cities were so short of food that they were emptying. It was absurd.

The object of the exercise today was two-fold. Firstly, to obtain grain. Secondly, to discipline the villagers. Lenin had been very explicit.

‘The trouble, Yevgeny Pavlovich, is the capitalist class amongst the peasants – the kulaks. They’re profiteers, bloodsuckers! If necessary the entire class should be liquidated. We’ve got to take the revolution to the countryside,’ he had added grimly. ‘We have to find the rural proletariat.’

Popov smiled thinly as he remembered his experiences down here in the past. Who was a kulak? A selfish peasant? A successful one? In his own view, all peasants were petit bourgeois, but then he had never liked them. It was time to sort them out.

‘If only,’ he remarked to the young commissar who was accompanying him, ‘it was as easy to organize these cursed villagers as it is to sort out a factory.’

The morning in the factory had gone very well. There was a soviet there, led by a young Bolshevik he could trust. One of the factory managers had been kept on for the last few months to ensure that the plants functioned smoothly. This morning, however, in conversation with the committee, he had satisfied himself that they could operate without the manager now.

‘So you’re to be taken to a concentration camp,’ he had told the astonished manager at noon. Lenin and Trotsky were both very keen to see these camps used more. ‘A new camp is just being set up at Murom,’ he informed the manager. ‘I hope you enjoy it.’

‘But for what crime?’ the fellow had asked.

‘That will be decided in due course,’ the young commissar at Popov’s side had snapped and, grimly amused, Popov had left it at that.

And now the commissar and the village elder faced each other. If either recognized the other, neither gave any sign.

‘Where’s the grain?’ Popov asked quietly.

‘Grain? Over there, Comrade Commissar.’ And he indicated the storehouse.

Popov did not even bother to glance at it. ‘Search the village,’ he ordered the troops peremptorily.

It was a strange little comedy, Ivan thought, as he watched the two men. The two commissars strolled round the village, inspecting the huts, accompanied by Boris who, it seemed, was anxious to show them everything. Indeed, Ivan had never seen his burly, overbearing uncle put on an act like this. He bowed and scraped like an innkeeper from the old days, calling Popov: ‘Comrade Commissar’, ‘Sir’, and even once, in an apparent fit of absent-mindedness, addressing him like a tsarist official: ‘Your Highly Wellborn’.

But Popov’s face remained a mask.

‘Nothing, Commissar,’ the sergeant reported.

To which Popov only replied: ‘No, I didn’t think there would be.’

Turning suddenly to Boris he demanded: ‘What’s up at the big house?’

‘Nothing much, esteemed Comrade Commissar. Just his mother, now.’ Boris indicated Ivan.

‘Good. We’ll see it.’

As they went up the slope, the young commissar asked Popov quietly: ‘You think they have grain?’ Popov nodded. ‘What will you do?’

‘Find it and take it all.’

‘All? Won’t the village itself go hungry then?’

‘Yes.’ Popov glanced at him. ‘You should know, comrade, that hunger is sometimes very useful. It makes the people turn on each other at first – they’ll attack the kulaks who have food. And then they become submissive. These things are well studied, and useful.’

They reached the house. Popov made a brief tour of inspection, insisting on seeing the attic as well as all the outbuildings and the workshops. Having satisfied himself that the place contained no stores, he came back outside. Then he called the people there to come to him in front of the verandah.

There were half a dozen villagers, who had followed out of curiosity, Boris, Ivan and Arina, and three Red soldiers. Popov gave them all a faint smile. Then he turned to Boris.

‘You are the elder. Do you swear you have no grain?’

‘I do, Comrade Commissar.’ Boris nodded vigorously.

‘Very well then.’ He beckoned one of the soldiers. ‘Take aim at her.’ He pointed to Arina. Then he turned to young Ivan. ‘Now tell me where it’s hidden,’ he said gently.

The Red soldier shot Boris by the river, as soon as the last of the containers of grain had been pulled out.

‘And now,’ Popov announced, ‘it’s time to set up a proper village committee.’

Bringing the revolution to the countryside – it wasn’t easy. But the new plan which the leadership had hit upon had a certain brutal logic. The kulaks, the swindlers, the rich peasants, must be hounded out: and who better to do this than the poor peasants – the majority? Committees of the Poor must be set up at once, therefore, to seize control of the villages.

Privately this was one of the few ideas of Lenin’s that Popov did not agree with. ‘For the simple fact is,’ he would argue, ‘that the majority of peasants aren’t poor: they’re middling. They can’t employ labour usually, but they have a modest surplus of their own. The poor peasant half the time is just an ordinary peasant who’s become a drunkard.’

However, if Vladimir Ilich wanted his Committees of the Poor, he should have them. Popov looked about him. ‘You,’ he suddenly pointed to young Ivan, ‘your mother’s a widow. What land do you hold in the village?’

It was true that, as an orphan and with no help from his uncle, Ivan actually had the smallest holding of any male in the village just then.

‘I am putting you in charge of the Committee,’ Popov said with a smile. ‘How’s that?’

There would be a Committee on paper, anyway. He wondered how long the boy would last.

It was late afternoon when Popov, satisfied with his day’s work, returned to Russka. On his way, he passed the monastery. It was empty now. The monks had been forced to abandon their home after the confiscations of January; but strangely enough, hoping that the government might relent or be overthrown, they had left everything in place. An old priest who still resided in the town kept an eye on things.

Since he was here, it occurred to Popov he might as well inspect the monastery too. ‘We’ll go in,’ he said.

It was entirely empty and very quiet. The kitchens and storehouse had been ransacked at some point, and a few of the windows had been broken, but otherwise the monastery had not been harmed. Popov walked all over it, carefully, by himself. When he had finished, he was glad he had taken the trouble; he made a brief note: ‘Monastery at Russka will make an excellent small prison or detention house. Inform Cheka.’

He had certainly done a good day’s work.

When he returned to the entrance, he found that the soldiers had built a small bonfire. The young commissar was busy carrying things out of the church to burn. Popov looked at him in mild surprise: the objects he was carrying were icons. ‘I didn’t know you were so strongly anti-religion,’ he remarked mildly.

‘Oh, yes. Aren’t we all?’

Popov shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’

He glanced at the icon the fellow was tossing on the fire. It looked vaguely familiar. ‘I think that one may be rather good,’ he remarked.

‘No such thing as a good icon,’ the other replied.

‘Perhaps.’ He watched the little object begin to burn. Its lines had a remarkable grace.

And so disappeared the greatest gift of the Bobrovs to the little religious house: the icon by the great Rublev.

As darkness fell that summer night, long after the little bonfire in the monastery had died down, a single figure emerged from the woods below the village to the river bank where Arina was waiting with a small boat.

Ivan had been hiding since the soldiers left. After the events of that afternoon, he had no choice. Would the sons of Boris Romanov forgive him for getting their father killed? Would the villagers forget he had given away their grain? As for this position the Bolshevik had just given him on this Committee – that in itself might have been his death warrant. ‘If I’m here in the morning, I’ll be dead,’ he had told his mother, and she knew it was true.

Now she helped him into the boat.

‘Which way are you going?’ she asked.

‘South. I daren’t go past the village. I’ll get down to the Oka, then follow it to Murom, I dare say.’

‘And what will you do?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Join the army maybe.’ He smiled despite himself. ‘Seems the safest place to be!’

‘Here’s money.’ Arina kissed him. ‘You’re my only son,’ she said simply. ‘If you die, I want to know. Otherwise I shall believe you are alive.’

‘I’ll live.’

Once again he embraced her, then got into the boat.

There was a quarter moon, away to the south. He pushed the boat out and began to row, slowly up the silvery stream towards it.

1920, October

It was getting cold but the work was nearly done: a simple mopping up operation. The truck and the artillery piece before them were little more than charred metal. Half a dozen bodies lay there, and one man apparently alive. An officer.

Ivan moved forward, cautiously. All around, the empty steppe of south Russia extended to the horizon.

The war was almost over. The Whites and their foreign allies had nearly been successful once or twice. For a brief period it had seemed Petrograd itself would fall. Denikin, Wrangel and others had fought well. But they had always lacked the coordination that the Reds enjoyed. And, perhaps, the determination. Now the final White front was being rolled back, and the capitalist allies – Britain, America, Japan, Italy – had all given up.

And now here was a Cossack officer still alive. A handsome devil certainly, but doomed.

Karpenko watched Ivan draw close. It was a pity, certainly, to be dying. Two years ago he could never have imagined himself fighting like this. But, to his great surprise, it had brought him a kind of satisfaction. The pain in his stomach was like a fire.

It seemed to him that the young Red looked vaguely familiar; but it scarcely mattered.

‘Well, comrade, you’d better put me out of my misery,’ he said cheerfully.

Which Ivan did, as kindly as he could. As it happened, it was the last shot he had to fire.

The revolution had been won.