In a musical sense, Persia was a key, while the Caucasus was a string. When the key was struck, the string made a sound. When Derbent was lost, Elizabeth had to cease leaning on the Caucasus with her elbow. She simply could not count her riches over there.
Admiral Marko Voinovich experienced those riches first-hand under Catherine the Great. Agha Mohammad, the eunuch, the Persian shah, politely invited him to attend a celebration, and promptly put him in shackles as a punishment for his calculation of riches on the southern shores of the Caspian Sea. In 1769, Catherine requested the College of Foreign Affairs to send her a precise map of the Caucasus. She was unsure as to the exact location of the city of Tiflis: some maps placed it on the Black Sea, others on the Caspian, and then still others inland. The eunuch and she had been involved in mutual hand-slapping; he would rap her knuckles, and she would dodge and try to slap his wrists. All the while, the Caucasus lay between their elbows.
Then, in 1796, Derbent was taken by the armed forces of the one-legged Count Zubov, whose nickname in the Caucasus was Kizil-Aiag, “Golden Leg.”
And immediately, Derzhavin provided a faithful description of the Caucasus in terms of an Alpine landscape:
There chamois bow their horns
And peer placidly into the murk below,
The dwelling place of thunderstorms.
The frosty old man was particularly successful in portraying the Alpine ice:
The sun beams bright amid the ice
And the reflecting waters play
Creating splendid scenery.
Tsar Paul advanced two regiments to Tiflis, and in 1802 declared the annexation of two Georgian regions, Kartli and Kakheti.
Although Derbent had already been conquered by Russia, the pop-eyed emperor Paul had to recapture it in 1806.
The Magnificent Port lay to the west from Imereti, Mingrelia, and Guria.
The pashalyks5 of Akhaltsikhe and Kars belonged to the Ottomans.
The khanates of Erivan, Nakhchivan, and Khoi were in the south, adjacent to Persia. And then there were some suspicious sultanates and khanates, either Persian or Turkish, or possibly no one’s at all.
Paul’s son, Emperor Alexander, faced a difficult task: he was trying to observe a European balance. To juggle France while standing on Austria’s shoulders, and all of them walking the tightrope, was a hard and thankless task. Alexander didn’t want anything to do with the Caucasus or any Persian schemes; he was the ringmaster and the chief juggler in Europe, and if he had allowed himself to get involved in Asian affairs, he would have dropped France and would have been dropped by Austria. He waved Ermolov away as if he were a horseman who had entered the arena at the wrong time.
Who lived in the Caucasus? Who populated it?
Zhukovsky tried to sketch out a brief list claiming that
There nestle the Shapsugs, Bahs, and Abazehs,
Balkars, Abazins, Kamukins,
Karabulaks, and Chechereis.
—and when they did not leap, like chamois, from rock to rock, they stayed at home and smoked their pipes.
The music of their names sounded foreign, like drums, splendid, alien, and actually excessive because there were neither Kamukin nor Checherei tribes in the Caucasus. There were Kumyks but nothing like the Chechereis. They were unlikely to be nestling in there. Persian stories were coming into fashion.
In his 1825 tale “Orsan and Leila,” Platon Obodovsky provided a touching picture of the life of the Ararat and the Persian shah:
Like an old oak on Ararat
Withering on desiccated roots
A solitary padishah
On a gold throne exhausted sits.
That the padishah was sitting exhausted on a throne of gold might have contained a grain of truth, but to imagine an oak withering at a height of 17,000 feet was dubious to say the least. It would be quite impossible for an oak to grow there. And besides, the khanate of Erivan had not been conquered yet.
But its time soon came. The khans now served in the Russian army as generals and major-generals, but in the official reports, they were still referred to as “the khanate scum.” Each of them could not wait for their new fatherland to falter, if not on Persia, then on Turkey.
The problem was the principalities (or pashalyks) of Akhaltsikhe and Kars. No one knew what the outcome was going to be. Paskevich, fearing the evil eye of his wife, Eliza, was now in action over there.
The war in the Caucasus went on all the time, either with the mythical Kamukins or with the nonexistent Chechereis. And if it not Kotlyarevsky, then somebody else “crushed the tribes and wiped them out,” as Pushkin so enthusiastically expressed it.
Essentially, nobody asked themselves why and to what end the perpetual war was waged. The dispatches always made it clear that Russia was succeeding in bringing to submission some tribe, either the Kamukins or the Chechereis.
And the war had been dragging on and the tribes had been fighting back, perhaps even those very same Chechereis. Nesselrode referred to all the Caucasus tribes as les cachétiens, remembering the somewhat sour taste of the Kakheti wines.
Neither Emperor Nicholas nor Volkonsky, nor Chernyshev, knew what would happen if the entire Caucasus were suddenly conquered by Russia. What they did know was this:
If Persia won, the Caucasus would rebel.
If Turkey won, the Caucasus would be sure to rebel.
And what exactly were they fighting for in the Caucasus?
12
It is a strange recital, incomprehensible to anybody but geographers or children. Anyone entering the room will hear a diligent man with soft mustaches repeating the mantra:
“Darachichag iron-ore mine in Armenia, in Magale, ten miles away from the village Bash-Abaran, fifty-eight miles from Erevan.”
“Natural deposits: granite, dark-green diorite, gray serpentine, and obsidian—black with red streaks …”
And the other man, bespectacled, nods and repeats:
“Obsidian … Forget the mines for now.”
“The silk-farms are tended by the rechbars6 in the Shakhi province. The rechbars have fled and the cocoons yielded no silk thread.”
“Cotton in Sanji province, in rather small quantities … They could produce raisins if they mastered the French method …”
Tobacco smoke hangs in the air like cottonwool threads.
“In the Shirvan area, the iuz-bashi7 abuse their powers: four thousand eight hundred pounds of silk have been harvested, four hundred and sixty thousand rubles were due to the treasury, and only one hundred and twenty have been received. General Sipiagin personally …”
“All the better. Forget Sipiagin. Enter the figures into the report.”
“Kakheti indigo …”
“Erivani wild cochineal.”
“The coffee-tree—teak, which does not rot in water, would enable us to build ships better than the European ones …”
What is the Caucasus?
Saffron, cochineal, madder are just words. But the words are already stored in an empty room like the sheaves, bales, and bundles of the future, and one’s feet wade through something, what is it: scraps of madder? silkworms? A bare room in a palace, neither Russian nor Georgian, has turned into a trading office.
“They won’t be able to look at Transcaucasia as a colony that can supply Russia only with natural resources.”
“Why not?” inquires another triumphantly.
“Because there are no suitable roads for their transportation,” Griboedov responds craftily, “and because there are no such factories in Russia as yet.”
Zavileisky twists his Polish mustaches and asks him a question, quietly and cautiously:
“Once the manufacturing in the Caucasus has been established and grows considerably richer, might it not weaken the mutual links with Russia?”
It isn’t an idle question. Governor Zavileisky, whom Griboedov has chosen as his confidant, is warm and friendly, loquacious, and very pleasant with the ladies of the monde. But when he gets tir
ed of his role, it becomes apparent that he is a cautious man and not so warm and friendly after all, that he is a foreigner, a Pole. And he might be so exceedingly urbane because he is mostly preoccupied with himself and his own thoughts. He knows Mickiewicz by heart. He is precise, and with no fuss has amassed a huge amount of data for the project. And he has already asked Griboedov the question he now repeats. What weakening of ties is he worried about? With the Caucasus or with Poland? The very Tiflis air is now uncertain.
Griboedov waves his hand casually:
“Let us not get so much ahead of ourselves. Time will tell. We Russians are good at shooting but bad at bulletmaking.”
And if a man of the previous age, for example Griboedov’s dear papa, Sergei Ivanovich, had entered that room, he would have thought that two boys, one bespectacled and one mustachioed one, were playing a strange and rather tedious game, which seemed to be called Ge-o-gra-phy, while ladies, maids, and whores were awaiting their embraces and their horses awaited their spurs.
Having paid closer attention to what they were saying, he might have exclaimed:
“His mother’s tricks. Cupidity. Never thought Alexander would end up a tradesman.”
Because dear papa Sergei Ivanovich was a simple forthright man.
And only an old Englishman, one of the founders of the East India Company, would blow out his cigar smoke and say mockingly, but with complete understanding:
“Yes, Russians are good at shooting but bad at bulletmaking.”
And he would brush down his sideburns, place a top hat on his solid bulbous head, and set off for a Cabinet meeting at St. James’s Palace.
The Cabinet was dissolved for the summer, and the ministers were splashing about in the various lagoons of the Mediterranean like long, listless fish.
A slanting rain was falling in Petersburg; Nesselrode had moved to Tsarskoe Selo.
Such were the diplomatic affairs. Wounded Russian soldiers were recovering in the field hospitals, the Cossacks’ horses were swimming onto the Turkish shores. The white room was empty. Only a Russian author sat at the desk, moving his long fingers. The heat was unbearable, and he had nothing on apart from his undergarments. He was all by himself. Zavileisky, with his fluffy Polish mustaches, had left.
The project was not working out, it was somehow falling apart. Not the project itself, which was clear-cut and faultless. The trouble was with the workforce, and the funds … And yet perhaps this was how any state was created?
He was sipping wine; the wine was imported and smelled slightly oily; the wineskins in which it was transported had been greased with crude oil.
13
“Soldiers! You have shown the enemy the iron fist of His Majesty’s victorious troops! …”
The gray square dappled like a frying pan with a medley of tomatoes, capers, and fish being fried in it. The fish scales were the soldiers in their uniforms.
General Sipiagin was riding a white steed and waved a white-kid-gloved hand. The horse under him was prancing; the sun was striking the general’s rounded, arched, corseted torso. From the terrace above, it seemed as if a bullet had struck the general and that he was falling backward and had frozen in his fall.
“Soldiers! The campaign is over, and our objective has been successfully achieved by military force!”
Ahead of the regiment stood the carts—each with four velvet-caped horses, and between them there were long-barreled cannon. The horses were covered. Only the front cart was uncovered, and on it stood a throne of dull yellow gold. The drummers’ hands with the drumsticks began to twitch. They were waiting for the general to finish his speech. From the terrace above, the parade looked like a military funeral come to a halt; the throne was the deceased military leader, and the other carts were the nameless dead.
A joint Guards regiment returning from Persia bringing kurors and trophies was marching past the residence of the military governor-general.
The regiment was a special one. It consisted of the remnants of the Moscow Regiment and parts of the House Guards. Their fragments had been reshuffled and carefully reassembled from the wreckage after they had been taken captive by other Russian regiments in the Senate Square in December 1825 and done their time in jail and fortress. And at the head of each division, there was a particularly trusted officer. The commander too was special. He was the Guards commander who had been thrown down the barracks stairs by the junior officers during the December uprising. His plunge down the stairs was the prelude to his elevation. Now he was hanging on to the general’s every word.
The trophies brought by the regiment were: Abbas Mirza’s throne, seven cannon of Persian craftsmanship, the Ardabil library of old scrolls, and two paintings depicting Abbas Mirza’s victories.
The kurors constituted the heaviest load, the throne was the highest, and the dead library the quietest. At Ucar Fortress, the paintings had been seized because there was nothing else to be taken there. At least they could be presented to the Russian emperor so he could display them at his palace to French visitors.
“Soldiers! By spilling your blood in your first military action, you have had the opportunity to expunge the stain of your momentary delusion and to demonstrate your loyalty to the lawful authority!”
Their knee-high boots were covered with dust, and their faces were earthy in color, so unlike the general’s, as if they belonged to different nations.
The entire population of Tiflis had poured out onto the flat wide roofs to watch the parade.
Griboedov accidentally knocked against the tall bishop standing next to him on the terrace. In his forgetfulness, he muttered in French:
“Pardon …”
Not a single muscle twitched under the bishop’s thick purple vestment. The shining panagia8 on his chest looked like a bib; it was so hot that sweat dripped slowly down the episcopal nose.
Griboedov was peering at the soldiers, his eyes searching for somebody below.
“Our fairness and kindness will now demonstrate to our enemies that we desire not to enslave them but are seeking only to free them from tribulation and oppression. Soldiers! These trophies! These kurors! …”
It was becoming increasingly clear that the only tribulation experienced by the Persian people had been the kurors, from which they had now been freed.
“This seems to be from Tacitus,” said Zavileisky into Griboedov’s ear. He stood next to him. It was impossible to recall in such heat whether it was from Tacitus or from Karamzin.
Griboedov had found what he had been looking for.
That man standing below, in the front row, behind the kurors.
Without knowing quite why, Griboedov pulled off one of his white gloves, crumpling and crushing it. His hands were shaking.
The man’s face was shaven bluish-gray, like a dove, and was ruddy-colored under a tan, like a ham that had started to go bad. He was wearing a captain’s uniform, and he stood like the rest of them, upright and to attention, listening but not hearing the words being said, whether by Karamzin, Prince Kutuzov, or Tacitus—depending on the source of the general’s quotations.
Griboedov couldn’t have known that his words, courteous or harsh, the words with which he had addressed Abbas Mirza, jovial and urbane, would materialize in the dead kurors and the dead library in the square.
The general finished. The horse was prancing in place.
Then came a long-drawn-out, steady “hurrah …”
The soldiers’ mouths were open in a regular lineup, as if a dentist were walking along the line pulling their teeth.
Griboedov couldn’t have imagined that his kurors would be delivered by the man with the dove-gray face, the color of stale ham, the lean and upright man whose clownish name was uttered in whispers …
“Hurrah …”
… Captain Maiboroda, the traitor, the informer, who destroyed his benefactor Pestel, who brought him and a few more men to the gallows …
The hands in white gloves kept moving. Next to him, the bishop’s effe
te fingers rested on the railing.
Now, if the glove flew downward …
The glove flew downward.
The bishop watched it curiously as it twirled like a leaf, landed on the airless stones and stayed still.
The drummers beat the drums.
The march-past began. The ladies stirred on the terrace, like rose bushes come to life.
“Oh! Comme c’est magnifique!”
“Notre général …”
“Charmant!”9
“… mant …”
“Magnifique!”
“And yet, I think the rhetoric is from Tacitus,” said Zavileisky and winked at Griboedov.
But Griboedov’s teeth were bared; his lips were quivering. Zavileisky picked him up, and the servants began to fuss around him.
“Alexander Sergeyevich is not feeling well!”
14
Then there were congratulations from the amanates—tokens of loyalty from various tribes: well fed, half-starved, and completely starved, utterly impoverished. They were dressed in their finery for the occasion.
Five hundred captive Persians in perfect formation were paraded under a light guard. Naibs were treated to food. The guards stood at ease.
Refreshments were served on the terrace: for the exarch and the noble gentlemen of the clergy, for the honorary citizens and the captured Persian khans who had been brought without any guard at all: Alim, Hassan—the former sardar of Erivan and another one, the one with the thin beard.
Refreshments were served for Governor Zavileisky and Minister Plenipotentiary Griboedov.
Refreshments were served for the ladies of the nobility.
A public prayer was offered rather dashingly by the exarch, and there was a fair amount of cannon firing. On the terrace near the house, the carpets had been rolled out for the amanates and the artisans to sit on.
General Sipiagin walked about counting them with his finger. He counted five hundred men.
The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar Page 25