A Allen: Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

Standing at the window of the lounge of the Hotel New Century, Andrey Roshkovsky, land surveyor of Berezovo, looked down at the rider in the street below, and wondered what could be so urgent as to persuade a soul to travel at such a time as this, when the weather clearly showed all the signs of getting ready for a blow. He watched the man dismount and lead his horse wearily towards the uchastok opposite. Large snowflakes were already beginning to race past the window.

“Andrey Vladimirovich!”

Roshkovsky let the long red velvet curtains drop and turned to rejoin the group of men sitting comfortably around the fireside.

“Well?” Belinsky asked loudly. “Is there any sign of Colonel Izorov yet?”

Roshkovsky shook his head.

“If he doesn’t arrive soon,” he replied, “we may be stuck here for the night. The weather is set for a blow.”

“Then let it!” cried the builder, raising his empty glass. “For a while at least we shall be free of nagging wives and unpaying debtors. We might as well make the most of it. While we are snug in here, the world can go shit itself. At least we won’t starve, or die of thirst.”

Seated by the fire, the schoolteacher Dresnyakov lowered the fortnight-old copy of the Birzhevye Vedomosti he had been reading and gave a snort of derision.

“Wherever you are, Yuli Nikitavich,” he remarked, “you shall never die of thirst. That must be the fourth glass you have downed since you arrived.”

“True, true,” admitted Belinsky cheerfully.

“It really is too bad of the colonel to keep us waiting like this,” said Dr. Tortsov testily. “I have a perfectly good supper waiting for me at home, as I am sure you all have…”

Across the chessboard, his opponent, Alexander Maslov, the town’s librarian, nodded in agreement.

“After all, his presence here is only a technical formality,” he muttered, peering at the doctor’s chessmen threatening his queen.

“I suggest,” continued the doctor, “that if Colonel Izorov hasn’t arrived in the next five minutes, we should begin without him.”

With the exception of Belinsky, this suggestion was endorsed with nods and murmurs from the other members of the town’s drama committee; their chairman Dresnyakov authorized the motion with a heartfelt, “Motion approved!” Grumbling, Belinsky abdicated his position by the fire and walked purposefully over to the small wall table, upon which sat a flask of vodka accompanied by a few decorated glasses. After pouring himself another drink (he would show them!), the builder returned to the group and stood behind the sofa upon which Roshkovsky was now reclining, his head cocked to one side as he watched the game in progress between the doctor and the librarian Maslov.

Raising his glass to his lips, Belinsky drank and looked sourly towards Dresnyakov’s long legs protruding from under the crumpled pages of the newspaper. Invisible as the schoolmaster’s face was, his features were well known to the Belinsky household. Whenever little Illya came home with his eyes puffy and red from the beatings he received at Dresnyakov’s hands, his father would take him out into the cluttered yard behind the house and listen to his tale of woe. Sometimes, if he deemed that the punishment had been justified, he would simply cuff the boy around the head and send him back into the house to sit with the women. But when he felt that the beatings had been unwarranted – the boy might be slow but there was no harm in him yet – he would take a stick of charcoal and, with a sigh and a sorrowful shake of his head, begin to draw a caricature of the schoolmaster on the end of a split plank or broken door panel. More often than not the tears were barely dry on the boy’s cheeks before he was laughing and clapping his hands.

“No, Dada! The ears!” the lad would cry. “Give him the ears next!”

Obediently smudging out his first modest portrayal, the builder would draw in its place a head with the enormous ears of a donkey.

“Now the nose!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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