The House of Special Purpose Read Online Free PDF Page A

returning home from their labours, expecting us to have some food prepared for them, content to beat us if we did not, and Asya was busy stirring a pot of vegetables, potatoes and water into a thick broth which would act as our supper. Liska was outside somewhere, causing mischief, as was her particular talent. Talya, always the quietest of children, was lying in a nest of straw, playing with her fingers and toes, observing us patiently.
    ‘Far away from here, Georgy,’ she said, placing a finger carefully into the foam of the bubbling mixture and tasting it. ‘But people don’t live there like they live here.’
    ‘They don’t?’ I asked, unable even to imagine a different manner of existence. ‘Then how do they live?’
    ‘Well, some are poor, of course, like we are,’ she conceded in an almost apologetic tone, as if our circumstances were something of which we should all have been ashamed. ‘But many more live in great splendour. These are the people who make our country great, Georgy. Their houses are built from stone, not wood like this place. They eat whenever they want to eat, from plates encrusted with jewels. Food which is specially prepared by cooks who have spent all their lives mastering their art. And the ladies, they travel only by carriage.’
    ‘Carriage?’ I asked, crinkling my nose as I turned to look at her, unsure what the word could possibly mean. ‘What is this carriage?’
    ‘The horses carry them along,’ she explained with a sigh, as if my ignorance had been designed for no other reason than to frustrate her. ‘They are like … oh, how can I put this? Imagine a hut with wheels that people can sit inside and be transported in comfort. Can you picture that, Georgy?’
    ‘No,’ I said firmly, for the idea seemed both preposterous and frightening. I looked away from her and felt my stomach start to ache with hunger, and wondered whether she would allow me a spoon or two of this broth before our parents returned.
    ‘One day I shall travel in such a carriage,’ she added quietly, staring into the fire beneath the pot and poking at it with a stick, hoping perhaps to find some small coal or twig that had not yet caught flame and which could be cajoled into providing us with just a few more minutes of heat. ‘I don’t intend to stay in Kashin for ever.’
    I shook my head in admiration for her. She was the most intelligent person I knew, for her awareness of these other worlds and lives was astonishing to me. I think that it was Asya’s thirst for knowledge which fuelled my own growing imagination and desire to learn more of the world. How she had come to know of such things I did not know, but it saddened me to think that Asya might be taken from me one day. I felt wounded that she should even want to seek a life outside of the one that we shared together. Kashin was a dark, miserable, fetid, unhealthy, squalid, depressing wreck of a village; of course it was. But until now I had never imagined that there might be anywhere better to live. I had never stepped more than a few miles from its boundaries, after all.
    ‘You can’t tell anyone about this, Georgy,’ she said after a moment, leaning forward in excitement as if she was about to reveal her most intimate secret. ‘But when I am older, I am going to St Petersburg. I’ve decided to make my life there.’ Her voice became more animated and breathless as she said this, her fantasies making their way from the solitude of her private thoughts towards the reality of the spoken word.
    ‘But you can’t,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘You would be alone there. You know no one in St Petersburg.’
    ‘At first, perhaps,’ she admitted, laughing and putting a hand over her mouth to contain her mirth. ‘But I shall meet a wealthy man soon enough. A prince, perhaps. And he will fall in love withme and we will live together in a palace and I will have all the servants that I require and wardrobes filled with beautiful dresses. I’ll