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 Etudes in her memory, rather in the manner of Scriabin, which have always been agreed to be his first serious and mature compositions. 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 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. 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 clientele, 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 Petrouchka; last year, he had danced the extraordinary, pagan and erotic L'Apres-midi d'un Faune L'Apres-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 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 -ism today?' 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.