The Silent Land Read online

  “Yes, otets,” my father would mumble. “No, otets. Whatever you say, otets.”

  And as he spoke, he would he look at the ground and fiddle with his cap, acting as if he were retarded. But God, how he and his brats could lie to the otets. And cheat him, too, if they were given the slightest chance. There is no more accomplished dissembler in the world than the Russian peasant.

  Next to my father in the photograph stands his eldest son, Alyosha, almost Papa’s double. He did not have long left to live – the Russo-Japanese War would see him off. Then come my two other brothers, one scarcely out of the cradle, both destined to meet their end fighting the Germans. My mother is beside the older of the two, her arm draped over his shoulder. She is still a pretty woman with large eyes, high cheekbones and an oval chin, yet already there are indications that after one or two more harvests she’ll begin to look old.

  Finally, little Annushka. I don’t seem to belong in the photograph at all. True, it’s possible to see a facial resemblance to my mother, but there’s nothing of my father in me. And my build’s all wrong. Many peasant children are skinny like I am, but it is plain that when I fill out, I’ll still be nothing more than slender. I lack the muhzik woman’s hips, on which can be carried a whole sackful of wheat. There are no signs of future thick legs, which will anchor themselves to the ground during the backbreaking task of harvesting the crop. I’m a freak, a huge practical joke of mischievous fairies.

  Did my father notice that I was different? I think so. And did he know why this should be? Again, I think so. It is very difficult to keep secrets in the small universe of the mir.

  I remember sitting with him on the long winter evenings, sewing gloves by the flickering light of an oil lamp. Often, we would work in silence, but sometimes – occasionally – he would tell me his version of our history, the only story that he knew, the only story his peasant imagination could comprehend.

  “Your grandfather was a serf, Anna,” he told me, “but the Tsar, our Little Father, freed him.”

  “Why, Papa?”

  “Because the Little Father loves us. And he hates the dvorianstvo, who cannot plant and cannot plough.”

  “Is the Count a dvoriane?” I asked, five years old and ignorant of the ways of the world.

  “He is, my child. He rides on his fine white horse when we don’t even have a bony nag to pull our plough. He pays others to work in his fields instead of doing it himself as any real man would.”

  “Why does he do that Papa?”

  My father shrugged. “Because that is what the dvorianstvo do. But one day, one day, Annushka, I will go and see the Tsar myself, and tell him all about it.”

  “Where does the Tsar live, Papa?”

  “In St Petersburg. In a house that is even bigger than the Count’s.”

  “And where is St Petersburg?”

  He pointed vaguely. “Over there. More than sixty versts away.”

  Sixty versts – forty miles. The distance seemed as inconceivable to me as it did to my father. If either of us had been told the truth, that St Petersburg was over a thousand versts away, we would not have believed it – the world was simply not that big.

  “And what will you do when you reach the Tsar’s house, Papa?”

  “I’ll knock on the door. The front door. He’ll not make me go around to the side as the Count does. And he’ll say, ‘Come in, Vladimir Alexovich.’”

  “He will know your name, Papa?”

  My father snorted at my ignorance.

  “Of course he’ll know my name. He is the Little Father.”

  “And what will happen next?”

  “We’ll sit by his stove drinking kvass, and I’ll tell him that no man should have more land than he can farm himself.”

  “And what will he say?”

  “He will agree. And he will take land off the Count and give it to me.”

  Oh yes, my father was a naîve fool, But he was not alone. There were few men in our mir, or in any of the hundreds of thousands of mirs scattered throughout the Russian Empire, who didn’t think as he did. They were convinced that the Tsar knew them, just as the elders of the mir knew them. And they were monarchists to the extent that they felt the Tsar was on their side, and would eventually give them the land they hungered after. But that was as far as their loyalty went. Once the redistribution was completed, he could go hang himself for all they cared.

  Land, land, land. It is the only thing the muhziks could understand.

  “Another man’s tears are only water,” they used to say.

  Because the man matters less than the rich, brown earth, the man is nothing when compared to crumbly soil. They had only one real love, those muhziks – one real loyalty – and that was for the land. To fail to understand this is to fail to understand them.

  I tried to explain it – to Trotsky, Zinoviev, Bukarin and Kameniev – to all the members of the intelligentsia who made a revolution in the name of the People.

  “The muhzik doesn’t give a damn about the international workers’ revolution,” I argued. “He knows nothing about solidarity. The mir is all that counts for him.”

  They listened – Trotsky stroking his thin beard, Zinoviev nodding his head sagely – because I had earned my place in their councils. But they never understood. How much more these wild-eyed idealists might have learned if, instead of studying Plekhanov in some foreign library, they had attended one meeting of the mir.

  Picture the scene. A rough wooden table set up in the village street, a street which is dry and dusty in the summer, but a quagmire in winter. Behind us is the village inn. To the left is the church, distinguished from the izbás only by its onion-shaped dome. The men sitting around the table are dressed in full-length sheepskin shoobas and felt valenki boots. They all have long hair, full beards, blunt features and low-cunning eyes. To the people from the Big House, they will all look pretty much the same, differing only in age and size, like pigs or oxen. Even I, a muhzik myself, notice the similarity – the land is a great equalizer.

  The air is thick with resentment and tension. The mir has been convened to discuss the periodic redistribution of farming strips. A village elder, grey-haired and bowed, is addressing one of the younger peasants.

  “You must take the rough with the smooth, Anton Pavolovich,” he says. “Your strip in the field by the wood is bad, but the one near the village is good.”

  “They’re both bad. I’m always given bad land.”

  “It has been decided. There is no more to be said.”

  But there’s always more to be said.

  A recent widower is the next to be dealt with.

  “Now that the fever has carried off your wife and children, Nicolai Ivanovich,” the elder tells him, “you must give up some of your holding.”

  Nicolai’s face is flooded with grief, though it is not the loss of his family which is tormenting him.

  “I’ll marry again, I’ll have more children,” he says desperately, looking around at his brethren, calculating which of them has a daughter of marriageable age, wondering how soon he can acquire a new breeding machine so that he can claw his land back.

  “When you marry, when you have more children,” the elder says heavily, “we’ll talk again.”

  And what am I doing here, little Annushka, only five years old? Why am I sitting cross-legged in the dirt and watching the whole proceeding? Is it because, even at such a young age, I am interested in village politics? No. I am here because, in the midst of this homogeneity of appearance and outlook, there are two men – Peter and Sasha – who are different. And I’m drawn to them as irresistibly as a pin is to a magnet.

  I wish I had a photograph of Sasha and Peter, taken at the same time as the one of my family. It’s so very difficult at my age – and after all the changes in my life – to separate what I know now from what I knew in the past. So though I can close my eyes and see the two of them at the mir meeting, I can never be certain whether I am seeing them then, or later, when ou
r fates became inextricably bound together in St Petersburg.

  Let us say it was then. Sasha has a thin, intense face with a slim, almost artistic nose and deep blue eyes. He reminds me of an icon of the suffering Christ. Peter has the peasant squareness, but in him it has been altered in subtle ways – his nose, though blunt, is not shapeless, the cunning in his eyes is deeper, more far-seeing.

  In my mind, I picture them glaring at each other across the table. “We sh … should get rid of the strips altogether,” Sasha is saying.

  His stutter, which he never lost, is a sign of nervousness, but also of excitement and intensity. It gives his voice an earnest quality which unimpaired speech would not. It makes people realize that he is serious, but suggests, too, that the thoughts he expresses are only vaguely connected with the real world.

  “If we ha … have just one big field and all work it together, we can make great improvements,” he continues. He holds up a book. “It’s all in h … here. Agricultural improvement schemes, drainage plans – everything we need.”

  The other peasants are impressed. Sasha has always been the clever one. Sasha, with a little help from the village priest, has taught himself to read. Nicolai, who has just lost some of his land, nods his head in agreement. Anton Pavolovich, who always gets – or at least believes he gets – the worst strips, is as deep in thought as a peasant can be. And yet there is a general feeling of unease. The muhziks know there’s some flaw in Sasha’s plan, but they can’t yet place their work-gnarled fingers on it. It is left to Peter to put it into words.

  “How do we share out the crop?” he asks.

  “E … equally,” Sasha replies passionately. “Each m … man will get the same, each woman the same, each child of a certain age the same.”

  Peter pretends to think about it. Sasha looks at him hopefully.

  What a fool you are, Sasha! Peter already has land, bought from the Big House, which belongs solely to him and is not subject to mir redistribution. Nor is that all. During the winter months, half the village works for him, making the gloves which he then sells in Nizhni-Novgorod. But rich as he is by peasant standards, Peter is still cautious. What concerns him most at the moment (though of course, I, a child, do not realize it) is how he can ingratiate himself with the other peasants because without permission from the mir, he can’t leave the village – however wealthy he is – can never lose his peasant status and become a mestchanin – a burger of some large town.

  “Why should I labour hard on the land if I know that my neighbour, doing less than me, will get the same?” he says finally, playing on the peasants’ greed.

  Peter, you hypocrite! You no longer labour on the land at all. Others do the work for you – day labourers.

  Yet the other peasants nod their heads in agreement, casting their limited imaginations into the situation he’s described, knowing that if they couldn’t have all they produced, they would not work as hard as they do now.

  But it’s not just the words – the argument – which has had an effect. Sasha is earnest almost to the point of fanaticism, but Peter has an energy, a power, which is overwhelming. I remember – and this, I am sure, is a real memory – that even then, when Peter looked at me I felt my stomach stirring. I was later to love Sasha – deeply. But it was always Peter I lusted after.

  Chapter Two

  They’ll be here later in the day – Sonia and Jennifer – and there’s much to do before they arrive. My room must be dusted. The window needs polishing. I must search around on my arthritic hands and knees for any odd scraps of food …

  This last is very important. Sonia, who but for her social snobbery would be happiest as a housemaid, once found a few cake crumbs on the floor.

  “You’ll have to be more careful, great-grandmother,” she told me. Slowly, as if I were a child in need of instruction. “Food on the floor attracts all kinds of vermin.”

  And Jennifer, standing near the door, nodded her head in agreement – though carefully, so as not to disturb her immaculate hair-do.

  I’d have had more respect for them if they’d say what’s really on their minds. “You’re an embarrassment to us, old woman. Why don’t you do the decent thing and agree to go into the nice Home we’ve found you. Then we can pay other people to go through all this.”

  Yes, I must clean the place thoroughly. But first, I will have breakfast. A cup of Russian tea and a slice of toast covered with Lyle’s Golden Syrup. And as I spread the syrup on the bread, I think of the first time I tasted it, over eighty years ago, in the Big House near my mir.

  The first time I saw the Big House was in 1904. I was just seven years old – and there on business.

  It’s impossible to imagine the effect it had on me unless you, too, can see it through the eyes of a small girl from a primitive peasant village in which even the church is little more than a shack. Think of it, walking away from the muddy village street and reaching those wrought-iron gates. In the distance, at the end of the long drive, was a white, three storey mansion. It had a veranda at the front. A terrace ran the length of the first floor and was supported by eight magnificent, carved columns.

  And the windows! They weren’t poky little things like the one in our hut. They were wide and spacious, letting more light and air into the house than a peasant would have ever dreamed of. Some of them on the terrace went right down to the floor, I noticed, and opened just as if they were doors.

  Even the Tsar himself can’t have an izbá like this, I thought to myself.

  And there was more – much more.

  In front of the house was a large flower bed. The potted plants in it were laid out to form the date, and so, of course, were all changed every day. I didn’t know that then. I didn’t even know what a date was, nor would I have understood its value if it had been explained to me.

  At the side were strange sheds made almost entirely of glass, in which flowers were being grown. I wondered why anyone would bother to do that when there were plenty of flowers in the woods. Beyond the glass sheds were more gardens, one with a pond in it, though I could not see the stream which was providing the water.

  Just visible behind the house was the orchard, where cherries, apples and pears were cultivated – unknown, exotic fruits which formed no part of the peasant diet – and beside the orchard were the stables, in which the Count kept his wonderful, wonderful horses.

  Was I overawed? Yes. Did I understand any of it? No. It was as alien to me then as Mars is now.

  I made my way up to the front of the house and then, as my father had instructed me, walked around the side. Outside the pantry stood Zossim, the Count’s cook, a bald man with a head like an upturned pear. From behind him wafted the delicious smell of bubbling jam. In front of him was a table on which sat a set of scales.

  I held out the basket of wild strawberries I had spent all day picking. Zossim didn’t speak, or even look at me. He simply took the basket, emptied the contents into the pan and placed a weight on the other end of the scales.

  “Watch him, Annushka,” my father had warned me. “He’ll try to cheat you. They’ll all try to cheat you.”

  “Twenty-five kopeks,” Zossim said.

  He took the pan off the scale and reached into his apron for the money.

  I heard the sound of hooves on the cobblestones behind me, but much as I loved horses, my eyes remained fixed on the scales.

  “It’s not enough,” I said.

  Peasants may be uneducated about most things, but we soon learn to assess weight, and I knew that though the scales had balanced, they shouldn’t have done.

  “It’s a fair price, you urchin,” Zossim said. “Take it or leave it.”

  The clatter of hooves had stopped, and I could hear the horse snorting.

  “Weigh them again,” I said.

  Zossim was reddening with anger, his pear-shaped head turning the colour of an apple.

  “Be off with you,” he shouted, “or you’ll feel the back of my hand.”

  �
��Weigh them again,” a deep masculine voice said, “and this time, keep your finger off the balance.”

  I did turn this time, I couldn’t help myself. The deep voice belonged to a man sitting on a bay horse. He was in middle age, and his hair was already greying. He had a strong athletic body, a long, straight nose and a neatly trimmed beard. He looked vaguely familiar, although I was sure I’d never seen him before.

  “Weigh them again,” the Count repeated to his servant.

  Zossim put the pan back on the scales and then lifted his hands clear to show that this time he was not interfering. The scales did not balance. He put another weight on.

  “I made a mistake,” he mumbled. “It should have been fifty kopeks.”

  “Give her a rouble,” the Count said, and though his voice was stern, I felt that he was trying not to laugh.

  “A rouble,” Zossim protested. “But then, master, you’ll be out of pocket.”

  “No,” the Count replied. “You’ll be out of pocket. And that’s what comes of trying to cheat a poor peasant girl.”

  Zossim reached into his apron and pulled out four twenty-five kopek coins. I took the money hesitantly, not daring to look into his angry eyes, but the moment it was in my hand, I made a tight fist around it.

  The Count had not moved on, so etiquette required that I stayed where I was, too. Also according to etiquette, my eyes should have been fixed on the ground – where a muhzik’s eyes belong – but try as I might, I could not keep them there. I found my gaze wandering along the flank of the horse, up the Count’s lean body and finally resting on his face. He was smiling.

  “What is your name, little girl?”

  “Anna, otets.”

  “And your mother is …?”

  It struck me as strange that he should ask Mama’s name instead of Papa’s. In the world of the mir, the men were the ones who mattered. I almost asked why he wanted to know, but it was not done to question a dvoriane.