An Awkward Revolutionary - 12. Chapter XII

Previously:

Feliks warns his brother he believes Daniil is a bad influence and he does not appreciate the goings on of Daniil. An invite to visit their cousin Victor Frolov in Mamovsk serves to get Daniil and Aleksander away from the house

Aleksander has encounters in the provincial town which change his life. He meets Yulian whom Daniil denies is a friend and yet he appears to know him well. They visit a wrestling match organised by Spiridon and are introduced to the young wrestlers. Aleksander falls into bed with the handsome Anton and Misha.

An invitation to the Ball leads to making the acquaintance of Raisa Stepanova who insists they should visit her at her country residence. On his way home, Daniil takes Aleksander to the house of Raisa Stepanova. There is talk of malcontentment and even revolution in the air, but this rather bypasses Aleksander who meets and falls in love with Petya, Raisa Stepanova's younger brother.

Time presses, although it is not certain why, it would seem it might be because of a rumbling turmoil in the country. Aleksander accompanies Daniil home.

With Daniil's visit home we hear how his own father has made concessions to quell the rising tide of the peasants unrest. We also have an incite into Daniil himself and learn of his long standing intimate relationship with a man servant. Aleksander gets to see another, not necessarily agreeable, side to his companion...

Chapter XII

Aleksander got out of bed and threw open the window. Down below, in the vegetable garden Yuriy Vinogradov was digging the earth, dressed in an old dressing gown tied together with a faded blue sash. The sound of the window opening must have been heard below, because the old man turned and looked up.

"Good morning!" he called out. "Did you sleep well?"

"Yes, indeed," Aleksander leaned out. "Thank you. What are you doing, digging the frozen earth?"

"My morning exercise. The ground is not so hard."

"I must take you at your word."

"I know you are accustomed to a more gentrified life and pleasures, I hope you are not too put out staying here in such modest accommodations."

"Me!" Aleksander exclaimed, "a gentrified life. Not at all. It is not something I know anymore than the life here. At university our lodging was, modest, very Spartan, and at home... Well it is not unlike your own estate."

"Well now, if you say so. Daniil has not spoken about university and I have not asked. We are simply pleased to see him, and you, his friend. May I ask how long have you known each other?"

"Ah, not too long. It was the last few months of my studies when Daniil needed accommodation and I suggested we share."

"I see. Well, we are truly happy he has such a good friend. What do you make of our Daniil?"

"He is very talented and quite remarkable. I have learnt so much in his company and admire him a great deal."

Yuriy Vinogradov's eyes seemed to sparkle like the frost on the land. The spade dropped to the ground. "Do you really think that?"

"Yes, of course," Aleksander confirmed. "Your son will one day make the name Vinogradov famous."

"How is that? How might he accomplish such a thing?"

"The how and the wherefore, I cannot say, but it is something I am more and more convinced of."

The old man brushed a hand across his eyes, his smile as broad as the rounded edge of the spade from which the sunlight reflected.

"Since I've known Daniil he has impressed me," Aleksander smiled down.

"You're talking about me again," Daniil shouted. "I'm here you see."

He joined Aleksander at the window, his hand tracing a line down Aleksander's back and resting in the little hollow at the base.

"Ah, you wanted to visit your friend, but you are too late," Yuriy Vinogradov called up. "We have already had a long conversation."

It was nearly midday and the sun was bright in the clear blue sky. The ground below the window and the rest of the garden was damp with the melting frost.

"He's on good form," Daniil remarked to Aleksander, then took a gentle hold on his arm. "Don't get to telling him too much."

Aleksander turned his gaze to confront his friend and they stepped back from the window. There was a langour in the air, the warmth of the sun promising the end of winter, longer days and a new life in the Spring.

"Let's take a walk," Daniil said, and a few minutes later they had left the house and gardens, strolling down the lane towards the little wood and fields beyond. Their thick winter coats open and worn loose, the sun kissing their faces.

"This whole place," Daniil said. "Being here, like this, reminds me of my childhood."

"Like this?" Aleksander glanced at his friend and smiled.

"In the company of a good friend. As a child I went everywhere with the boy from our farm. Nobody minded the peasant boy and doctor's son. A strange mix, but I was never bored. Never bored and open to many things."

"How much time did you spend here?"

"Oh, the holidays. The long summers. With my grandfather. Sometimes my father, if he was on leave, but mostly with my grandfather. He built the house."

They stopped as they approached a curve in the lane which gave a view through the trees that bordered the river. The water was flowing quickly and sparkling as it rushed over the rocky bed. Beyond the far bank a wall of rock and vegetation cut off whatever lay further away, here the frost remained frozen white, clinging on, hidden from the sun, dripping from the sleeping canopy in tiny shiny droplets.

"There is a certain beauty here, don't you think?" Daniil said.

"Yes, of course," Aleksander looked about. "But, your grandfather, your life here as a child, was it hard?"

"Do you mean was he strict? No more so than my parents who have always been carefree and easy. I envy their way of life. That they can occupy themselves with day to day things without looking or being concerned by anything deeper."

"Isn't that simply how things are for most people?"

"Certainly, but I see how small and insignificant my life is. A tiny place in eternity, the vastness of which I will never see."

They walked on, a chill breeze opposing the warmth of the sun, picking up and fading, like waves in the ocean.

"If I can say something," Aleksander paused, reflecting a moment before speaking. "Is this feeling of insignificance a thing which plays on your mind?"

"No." Daniil said, then changed his reply. "Yes, I believe we can act. I believe we should. We can do things our parents would never entertain."

"The things that Raisa intimates and that your friend Yulian is involved with?"

"Perhaps, but Yulian is not my friend. He is someone I met."

"Someone you met? Like all your encounters. Perhaps like us?" Aleksander wondered if he might discover his companion's true, innermost thoughts.

"I don't hide things from you," Daniil replied. "Yulian, by contrast I would not lend my entire confidence. The world is struggling and young people like ourselves do nothing. Our parents live the lives their parents lived. The woes and turmoil of others forgotten, hidden. Others play games, Yulian for example. What is his goal?"

"You are angry, Daniil." Aleksander frowned.

"Angry? I don't know. Spurred into some as yet undecided action. Yes." It was an emphatic "Yes."

"You might destroy yourself," Aleksander said softly.

"That is one thing I am proud of. I haven't destroyed myself and no one is going to destroy me."

"Shall we turn back? We have gone some distance," Aleksander observed.

Laughing, Daniil looked at his friend. "Turn back? We have gone no distance at all."

He stopped and turned around. Placed an arm around Aleksander's shoulder. "I hope you will stay with me?"

Aleksander was silent a moment, before replying. "Of course I will stay."

"People engage in petty things. They organize their lives and wander aimlessly."

"You're talking significance?"

"Some may make do with insignificance, but those little problems can bring trouble."

"One doesn't need to be consummed by little troubles."

"Listen, some might say education is useful. That is a common idea. But if you say education is harmful, you stand the idea on its head. Is it useful or harmful?"

"I suppose to answer that it depends how you use your education."

"Where is the truth then, on which side?"

Aleksander was silent.

"Russia will become a perfect country when every last muzhik (Russian peasant) has a house and roof over their head."

"Now you are talking revolution. I knew that was where all this was leading."

Daniil waived his arms, spreading his hands wide as if embracing the fields and woodland, the small house and estate of his childhood. "All this is Russia, but all is not well."

"And?" Aleksander questioned.

"And, we must bring down everything. We must not allow, as Puskin said, to let nature bring on the silence of sleep."

"He never said that," Aleksander retorted.

"Well, if he didn't, he should have done. He was a poet. Didn't he serve in the army?"

"Puskin was not a soldier."

"Excuse me, but on every page he says, 'to arms, to arms, for the honour of Russia!'

"You are inventing things. What you are making up is not true, it's nonsense."

They were halfway back and had the house in view. Another silence, but one filled with tension, fell between them. The only sound, the crunching of their footsteps on the semi-frozen earth of the lane.

"Look at nature all around us," Aleksander broke the silence. "Isn't it wonderful, the pristine cold, the melting frost, the sun on your face?"

"Ah, my dear friend." Daniil spoke with a hardness in his voice. "No fine language and poetic words if you please."

"Why ever not? I wish only to raise our spirits."

"Quite so, but the pursuit of art can hide the very troubled reality. As if we were looking at the world through a coloured glass."

"And why should we not do so? We are both lovers of art."

"Of course, of course," Daniil repeated. "But one mustn't lose oneself completely in the abstract, lest you finish in your uncle's footsteps. How pleased that idiot would be if you turned out like him."

"What did you call Feliks Vanya?"

"An idiot! Which he is."

"You're being intolerable. Your moods are unsupportable. He is not an idiot!"

Aleksander distanced himself from Daniil, moving away a few paces as if he would walk back alone.

"Ah," Daniil said calmly. "I have touched a nerve. Your family. It is true, I think, that a man might give up everything, renounce everything, but not his family. Never would he recognise his brother is a thief even were it staring him in the face. It is beyond imagination to confront one's family. How can that be?"

Daniil had succeeded in making Aleksander angry in turn and he resented him acting this way and disliked how he so obviously could find no good word for his uncle. It would, he thought, be so much more mature simply to keep his distance and say nothing.

"It has nothing to do with family,"Aleksander said angrily. "You don't know Feliks like I do. How could you, from one meeting? He has his good points and bad, like we all do."

"If you say so."

"Stop this, please," Aleksander insisted. "It is a quarrel about nothing, or more correctly, a quarrel inflicted by your temporament, and I have no wish to quarrel."

"Oh, Aleksander, let us have one good quarrel, no holds barred!"

"If you continue like this, and I stay, we shall..."

"Come to blows?" Daniil inserted. "And so what if we do? In these idyllic surroundings that prompt poetic words and such valiant defences. You won't beat me."

Daniil moved in on Aleksander and threw an arm around his neck, tugging him towards him. Aleksander was about to fight back. There had been a look in Daniil's eyes and a strange smile on his lips that struck a real fear into him. If this was playing, it was not at all to Aleksander's liking.

At that moment Yuriy Vinogradov appeared and Daniil let go his hold on Aleksander.

"I've been looking for you. Where have you been? Staring at the heavens," the old man said.

"I only look at the heavens when I can no longer stand looking at this land," Daniil replied. Turning to Alexander he whispered, "such a pity he interrupted us."

"Shut up," Alexsander said, equally quietly.

"What's that you said?" Yuriy Vinogradov asked.

"Nothing, father. Nothing at all." Daniil gave Aleksander a sly glance.

"I admire you young men, your freedom, and youth," Daniil's father was saying, as much to himself as to them. "Like Castor and Pollux," he continued, almost mumbling.

"He's gone off on mythology," Daniil smiled.

His father looked up, first at one then the other. "I came to tell you that Father Andrei will be joining us for dinner. Your mother asked for a service for your home coming. Don't worry," he smiled slyly, "the service is over."

Daniil was quiet. He was no more a lover of religion than he was nobility, he simply lived with both, much like everyone in Russia.

"You will like him," Yuriy Vinogradov added. "He likes a game of cards and smokes a pipe. Besides, he very much wanted to meet you."

"Sounds wonderful," Daniil replied, keeping any hint of sarcasm out of his voice.

"He likes the arts, too."

This final statement only managed a raised eyebrow from Daniil in response.

Father Andrei turned out not to be a bad fellow, he was intelligent, quick witted, and told some good stories. He drank two glasses of wine at dinner, but politely refused a third. After diner he accepted a cigar from Aleksander, but rather than smoke it, said he would take it home with him for later. Instead, he took his pipe and filled it from a small leather pouch he kept on his person in one of the deep pockets of his long robe.

When finally, quite late in the evening, the father left, Aleksander accompanied Daniil as they retired.

"He was an interesting character," Aleksander remarked.

"Yes, for once my parents were animated."

"Why do you say that? You are not still in one of your moods?"

"Being here is boring and overpowering. My father says I may use his study and no one will bother me, but he clings to me, giving no space to breathe. Tomorrow I will tell him we are leaving and will accompany you back to Ryavda."

"He will be upset, and your mother too. You have hardly been home a day."

"Yes, but I shall say I will be back. We have important things to do and cannot dawdle here."

Aleksander made no further comment. It was he thought, not for him to interfere between Daniil and his family. He did, however, consider that as he began to see more of his friend, he was discovering certain aspects of Daniil's character which he found odd, perhaps even distasteful.