The Beginning of Spring. Penelope Fitzgerald

came out into the hall for a moment, saying something about changes to be made, and then retired to the kitchen. Frank went on: ‘Selwyn, it’s about Nellie. She’s gone back to England, I suppose, and taken the children with her.’

      ‘All three?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘But mayn’t it be she wants to see …’ Selwyn hesitated, as though it was hard for him to find words for ordinary human relationships, ‘… might one not want to see one’s mother?’

      ‘She didn’t say so much as a word. In any case her mother died before I met her.’

      ‘Her father?’

      ‘She’s only got her brother left. He lives where he’s always lived, in Norbury.’

      ‘In Norbury, Frank and an orphan!’

      ‘Well, I’m an orphan, for that matter, and so are you.’

      ‘Ah, but I’m fifty-two.’

      Selwyn had a reserve of good sense, which appeared when he was at work, and unexpectedly at other times when it might almost have been despaired of. He said, ‘I shan’t take much longer. I’m checking the wage-bill against what the pay clerks are actually handing out. You said you wanted that done more often.’

      ‘I do want it done more often.’

      ‘When we’ve finished, why don’t you dine with me, Frank? I don’t like to think of you sitting and staring, it may be, at an empty chair. At my place, and very simply, not in the heartless surroundings of a restaurant.’

      ‘Thank you, but I won’t do that. I’ll be in tomorrow, though, at the usual time, about eight.’

      He put the mouthpiece back on its solid brass hook and began to patrol the house, silent except for the distant rising and falling of voices from the kitchen which, in spite of what sounded like a burst of sobs, had the familiar sound of a successful party. Ramshackle, by Frank’s standards, and roomy, the house consisted of a stone storey and on top of that a wooden one. The vast stove, glazed with white tiles from the Presnya, kept the whole ground floor warm. Outside, towards the bend in the Moscow river, a curious streak of bright lemon-yellow ran across the slate-coloured sky.

      Someone was at the front door, and Toma brought in Selwyn Crane. Although Frank saw him almost every day at the Press, he often forgot, until he saw him in a different setting, how unusual, for an English business man, he looked. He was tall and thin – so, for that matter, was Frank, but Selwyn, ascetic, kindly smiling, earnestly questing, not quite sane-looking, seemed to have let himself waste away, from other-worldliness, almost to transparency. With a kind of black frock-coat he wore a pair of English tweed trousers, made up by a Moscow tailor who had cut them rather too short, and a high-necked Russian peasant’s blouse, a tribute to the memory of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. In the warm room, with no ladies present, he threw off the frock-coat and let the coarse material of the blouse sink down in folds around his lean ribs.

      ‘My dear fellow, here I am. After such news, I couldn’t leave you by yourself.’

      ‘That’s what I would have preferred, though,’ said Frank. ‘You won’t mind if I speak out. I’d rather have been by myself.’

      ‘I came on the twenty-four tram,’ said Selwyn. ‘I was fortunate enough to catch one almost at once. Rest assured that I shan’t stay long. I was at my desk when a thought came to me which I knew immediately might be of comfort. I got up immediately and went out to the tram stop. The telephone, Frank, isn’t the right way to convey such things.’

      Frank, sitting opposite, put his head in his hands. He felt he could bear anything rather than determined unselfishness. Selwyn, however, seemed to be encouraged.

      ‘That’s the attitude of a penitent, Frank. No need for that. We are all of us sinners. The thought that came to me didn’t concern guilt, but loss, supposing we think of loss as a form of poverty. Now poverty, or what the world calls poverty, isn’t a matter for regret, but for rejoicing.’

      ‘No, Selwyn, it’s not,’ said Frank.

      ‘Lev Nikolaevich tried to give away all his possessions.’

      ‘That was to make the peasants richer, not to make himself poorer.’ Tolstoy’s Moscow estate was only a mile or so away from Lipka Street. In his will it had been bequeathed to the peasants, who, ever since, had been cutting down the trees to make ready money. They worked even at night, felling the trees by the light of paraffin flares.

      Selwyn leant forward, his large hazel eyes intensely focused, alight with tender curiosity and goodwill.

      ‘Frank, when summer comes, let us go on the tramp together. I know you well, but in the clear air, in the plains and forests, I should surely come to know you better. You have courage, Frank, but I think you have no imagination.’

      ‘Selwyn, I don’t want my soul read this evening. To be honest, I don’t feel up to it.’

      In the hall Toma appeared again to help Selwyn into his sleeveless overcoat of rank sheepskin. Frank repeated that he’d be at the Press at his usual time. As soon as the outer door was shut Toma began to lament that Selwyn Osipych hadn’t taken any tea, or even a glass of seltzer water.

      ‘He only called in for a moment.’

      ‘He’s a good man, sir, always on his way from one place to another, searching out want and despair.’

      ‘Well he didn’t find either of them here,’ said Frank.

      ‘Perhaps he brought you some news, sir, of your wife.’

      ‘He might have done if he worked at the railway station, but he doesn’t. She took the Berlin train and that’s all there is to it.’

      ‘God is not without mercy,’ said Toma vaguely.

      ‘Toma, when you first came here three years ago, the year Annushka was born, you told me you were an unbeliever.’

      Toma’s face relaxed into the creases of leathery goodwill which were a preparation for hours of aimless discussion.

      ‘Not an unbeliever, sir, a free-thinker. Perhaps you’ve never thought about the difference. As a free-thinker I can believe what I like, when I like. I can commit you, in your sad situation, to the protection of God this evening, even though tomorrow morning I shan’t believe he exists. As an unbeliever I should be obliged not to believe, and that’s an unwarrantable restriction on my thoughts.’

      Presently it was discovered that Selwyn’s brief case, really a music case, crammed with papers, and stiffened by the rain of many seasons at many tram-stops, had been left behind on the bench below the coat rack, where the felt boots stood in rows. This had happened a number of times before, and the familiarity of it was a kind of consolation.

      ‘I’ll take it in with me tomorrow morning,’ said Frank. ‘Don’t let me forget.’

       2

      Up till a few years ago the first sound in the morning in Moscow had been the cows coming out of the side-streets, where they were kept in stalls and backyards, and making their own way among the horse-trams to their meeting-point at the edge of the Khamovniki, where they were taken by the municipal cowman to their pasture, or, in winter, through the darkness, to the suburban stores of hay. Since the tram-lines were electrified, the cows had disappeared. The trams themselves, from five o’clock in the morning onwards, were the first sound, except for the church bells. In February, both were inaudible behind the inner and outer windows, tightly sealed since last October, rendering the house warm and deaf.

      Frank got up ready to do what he might have done the evening before, but still hoped wouldn’t be necessary, to send off telegrams. Then, at some point, he had better go to the English chaplaincy, where he could see Cecil Graham, the chaplain, and