That morning, her little daughter came to the officer to pick up the clothes to be washed. She picked the shirt up off the floor. The officer said that she could keep it. The girl came back home and fell ill. The commander of the regiment ordered her father and mother into quarantine and sent the girl to the hospital.
The three young children were left at home because the quarantine was overcrowded. The quarantine sheds with their thatched roofs were swarming with people who slept in a heap on the floor.
A sentry was placed at the hovel. The village grew empty. The bullock carts creaked away in different directions. Rags, pails, jugs, motley blankets, among which sat angry and frightened women and shrieking children. Their husbands marched in silence alongside the carts, and the dogs followed patiently, their tongues hanging out.
In the dark of night, the mother fell ill in the quarantine. She felt the fever melt her head and sweep through her body.
She made her way like a shadow out of the quarantine, and like a shadow, she went through the chain of sentries. The night was black. She walked blindly, quickly, without stopping, for a mile, two miles, as if driven by the wind. If she had stopped, she would have fallen down.
All was dark and buzzing inside her head; she had neither sight nor understanding, yet she went to the hovel, to her children, hurled herself over the threshold, and died.
The sentry gasped through the window at the corpse of the mother and the stark naked children who were huddled silently in the corner. He could not leave his post to inform the officer on duty. Finally, the children ran out of the house and clung to the sentry, shaking and shrieking. When the sentry’s relief arrived at dawn, they called for an officer. He ordered the sentry to take a blanket out of the house with a pole, without touching anything to cover the naked children, who were shaking and howling, their teeth chattering.
The sentry obeyed orders.
Having returned from duty, he was taken ill the same night, in his tent. By dawn, the entire tent was sick.
So the plague infiltrated Count Paskevich’s troops.
15
“Dear friend, Sashka, tell me, please, why are you so unkempt and unwashed?”
“I am like everybody else, Alexander Sergeyevich.”
“Maybe you don’t like the war?”
“There is nothing good about it, the war.”
Silence.
“We simply can’t put an end to all these Turks or Persians, can we?”
“Have you thought of it yourself, Alexander Dmitriyevich? And why are you so shiny? What is this smell?”
“I have oiled myself with olive oil.”
“What for?”
“So as not to get sick with the plague. Asked the doctor for half a ration.”
“And has the doctor oiled himself yet?”
“He has oiled his shirt and washed himself with vinegar of four robbers.16 I can get it for you if you like.”
“Why not? Get some, please.”
“The doctor burned some acid in a censer. He and another German got on their horses and left.”
“Why haven’t you gone with them?”
“They’ve gone on business. I’d be of no use.”
“Otherwise, you’d have gone, wouldn’t you?”
“I am a civilian, Alexander Sergeyevich, the plague is their business.”
“And why didn’t you go with Ivan Sergeyevich? He is also a civilian, and yet he has asked to go.”
“It’s all new to Mr. Maltsov. He shows courage for appearance’s sake. My duty is to be with you. Haven’t I sniffed enough gunpowder?”
“Why for appearance’s sake?”
“I have no interest in putting my head in harm’s way. And would you let me go? That’s a good one.”
Silence.
“Don’t imagine that you are going to Persia with me. I’ll send you back to Moscow.”
“Why have you brought me here then, Your Excellency?”
Silence.
“Sashka, what would you do if you were set free?”
“I would know what to do.”
“What exactly?”
“I would become a musician.”
“But you can’t play any instruments!”
“No matter; one can learn.”
“Do you think it’s that easy?”
“I might marry a widow or a shopkeeper and learn music and singing.”
“And what shopkeeping widow would take you?”
“I know how to deal with these sorts of women. They like to be treated well. One doesn’t have to say much: it’s better to be sparing with words. This makes them respect you. The widow would keep an eye on the shop, and I would stay at home and play.”
“Nothing would come of it.”
“Wait and see.”
Silence.
“I’m sick of your singing. And I won’t let you go. We are off to Persia—for two months.”
Silence.
“An hour ago, when you were asleep, Alexander Sergeyevich, the count’s man came looking for you.”
“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”
“You were busy talking to somebody. The aide-de-camp came with an order from the count—you’re to attend a meeting.”
“God damn you, you fool, and a well-oiled one too. Get the change of clothes ready. Now.”
16
Paskevich was poring over the map. The Headquarters chief, Sacken, was a red-haired German with pale blue eyes.
A visitor from Petersburg, Buturlin, a young pheasant, as thin as a rail, stayed silent.
Dr. Martinengo was old and gaunt, with a predatory hook of a nose, a bony face, bristly, thinning gray hair, and a rough little mustache, which was dyed. A huge Adam’s apple bobbed on his withered neck.
With a dagger stuck in his belt, he’d be the picture of a common Venetian pirate.
Colonel Espejo was balding, yellow-skinned, had a double chin, black mustaches, and sad, immobile eyes.
Lieutenant Abramovich stood there with a look of being ready for anything.
Burtsov cast a glance at Paskevich.
“Absolutely agree and will obey your orders, Count,” he said.
“Good,” said Paskevich.
“Set out immediately and advance to join the other troops. All the sick and those suspected of succumbing should be sent to quarantine. Dr. Martinengo will take care of the field hospitals. Conduct a forced march.”
All that had been decided two weeks earlier by Burtsov and Sacken. Sacken said nothing.
“Yes, sir,” said Burtsov respectfully.
“Our correspondence with these thugs will be brief,” said Paskevich, “I’ve sent Ustimov to order them to surrender. Their answer,” he picked up a scrap of paper from the desk: “ ‘We are not from Erivan, we are not from Kars, we are from Akhalkalaki.’”
Paskevich looked at everyone. Espejo and Abramovich smiled.
“ ‘We have neither wives nor children; we are a thousand men, and every one of us is determined to die on the walls.’ That’s just hot air, of course. So, I propose point-blank fire, a frontal attack, in order to take down these forty chicken coops. The batteries should be positioned on the opposite bank of the river.”
He looked askance at Burtsov and growled:
“Agreed?”
“Absolutely, Your Excellency,” responded Burtsov as impassively and respectfully as before.
Paskevich looked at Griboedov.
He was refuting the Journal de débats.
“Your Excellency, in order to carry out your plan,” said Burtsov, “I propose to position the rebound and demount batteries on the right bank of the Gardarchai for bombardment of the fortress, and a breach battery on the left.”
“Of course,” said Paskevich, “what else would you do?”
“I also dare to suggest a few more small batteries of four mortars, each ahead of the left flank, as Your Excellency has already successfully put to the test.”
“I consider this superfluous,” s
aid Colonel Espejo.
Paskevich’s leg began to twitch.
“I am suggesting this because it was Your Excellency who first drew my attention to the importance of such an arrangement,” said Burtsov, and bit his mustaches.
Paskevich addressed Espejo:
“Colonel, I understand that you are against it. It goes without saying that it’s like taking a sledgehammer to a nut. But my motto is: cannonballs, rather than people. They shave twice as clean. That’s why I always insist on it.”
“Yes, sir,” said Espejo.
Martinengo whispered to Griboedov:
“Is M-me Castellas well?”
“Doctor, send me daily reports. Send all doubtful patients to quarantine. Check the food thoroughly. Keep an eye on the water.”
“Yes, sir,” wheezed Martinengo.
“I’ll detain you no longer. Colonel Burtsov, stay here, if you please?”
Paskevich sighed and stretched. He asked Burtsov:
“Have you brought the plan?”
Burtsov placed a sheet of paper before Paskevich. On it, a neat little house was drawn in blue with a black square next to it. The drawing was rather sloppy.
Paskevich glanced at the sheet.
“Well,” he said mistrustfully, “and … are there any chimneys?”
“All here, Your Excellency.”
“Is it a draft?”
“Yes, sir, a preliminary plan.”
“Right,” said Paskevich accommodatingly. “Alexander Sergeyevich, would you have a look? I’ve asked the colonel to sketch a plan along Zavileisky’s lines. He wants to build joint-stock glass factories, but I’m not too sure. He’s not the brightest thing on two legs.”
Griboedov glanced at the sheet. The draft—that is—the plan was a complete joke.
“I am not aware of this project,” he said drily.
Burtsov stared earnestly at Griboedov, looking him straight in the eye.
“You see, Ivan Grigoryevich,” said Paskevich, and his lips widened into a yawn, “Alexander Sergeyevich has submitted a project, one of considerable scope. I believe it has to be given serious consideration. You two go off and discuss it between you. You’ve been dealing with the Azerbaijan matters for some time now, haven’t you?”
“On your orders, Count,” responded Burtsov.
He rose and immediately looked smaller in height. He had a wide chest, broad shoulders, and little legs, as if they’d been shortened.
“Here you are.”
And Paskevich thrust the papers into his hands.
“My own opinion is most favorable. You may go, gentlemen.”
17
A young officer strolled along a Kiev street. His face was pale, his hair combed close to the sides of his head, like laurel leaves. He was starting to grow heavy, but his stride was light and confident. According to his epaulettes, he was a lieutenant colonel. He stopped at a small house and used the door knocker, which acted as a bell.
A footman opened the door, and immediately a very young lieutenant ran out. They hugged heartily, kissed on both cheeks, and entered the room containing Griboedov and another military man, a colonel, broad-shouldered and also young.
“Glad to see you.”
The young lieutenant colonel with the laurels on the sides of his head spoke softly. “A man with a message from Mikhail Petrovich arrived just in time—I was just about to go to Tulchin. Good afternoon, Ivan Grigoryevich; it is so hot outside,” he said to the broad-shouldered one.
Griboedov was charmed by the soft voice and gracious manner.
“I couldn’t leave Kiev without seeing you.”
“And I wish to take you with me to Tulchin. A green, amusing little town. Pavel Ivanovich Pestel has long wanted to make your acquaintance.”
“I am flattered by your attention, but regrettably I am in a hurry.”
“Don’t thank me, Alexander Sergeyevich; all of us here are in a sort of exile, and it is not easy to come across a genuine person. You are not aware of it, but you are to blame for major unrest among the military over here—instead of attending to dispatches, all my scribes are busy copying your comedy. We’ll all grow old waiting for it to get past the censors.”
Griboedov smiled.
“I hope to live to see unrestricted book publishing in Russia.”
“And certainly the first book of that era will be your comedy, national, truly Russian.”
“Sergei Ivanovich writes poetry, but only in French,” said the lieutenant.
The lieutenant colonel blushed and wagged his finger at the lieutenant.
“You treat your superiors with no due respect,” he said, and everyone laughed. “Ivan Grigoryevich knows me well enough, but Alexander Sergeyevich can believe this. So you are going to Georgia, aren’t you? ‘Some are no more, and the others are far away.’ Have you seen Ryleyev? Odoyevsky?”
“Ryleyev is busy publishing pocket miscellanies. They are a great success. Particularly with the ladies. Sasha Odoyevksy is lovely. I’ve got some letters and poems for you from Ryleyev.”
The lieutenant colonel did not open the package.
“What is your opinion, Alexander Sergeyevich of our proconsul Ermolov, our Caesar of Tiflis?”
“Notre César est trop brutal.”17
The lieutenant colonel smiled and then became serious. His mouth was well defined, like a young girl’s.
“We are very interested in the Caucasus. It has given so much to our poetry that one cannot help but expect more and more from that golden land.”
All of them drew nearer to Griboedov, and he felt rather self-conscious.
“The war,” he said and spread his fingers, “the war with the mountain dwellers is handled badly, rashly. Our Caesar is a great old man, though a grumbler, but one always expects the unexpected from all these illustrious pashas.”
The lieutenant colonel cast a quick glance at the lieutenant. The broad-shouldered one sat in silence and did not look at anyone else.
“I am fascinated by his system,” he said suddenly. “It is a purely partisan war, like Davydov’s in 1812.”
“Ermolov and Davydov are friends and cousins.”
“How’s Yakubovich?” The lieutenant colonel began to speak, and suddenly fluffed his words and blushed. “Apologies, I just wanted to find out whether he was in the Caucasus.”
He looked at Griboedov’s hand, shot through in the duel, and Griboedov felt a cramp there.
“He is.”
The footman brought in tea and wine. The young lieutenant colonel and the other, broad-shouldered one left with Griboedov. The other one soon took his leave as well. They were alone. They walked past bushy trees and listened to the watches shaking their rattles.
They talked about Georgia.
The moon stood still, and their political talk sounded like it came from Pushkin’s poems—not the gloomy Captive of the Caucasus, but rather Fountain of Bakhchesarai. The trickle of talk sounded like the tinkling of the lieutenant colonel’s spurs.
They stopped.
“… And if we suffer defeat,” the lieutenant colonel murmured quietly, “we might come to visit you, come to your wonderful Georgia and farther, to Khiva, to Turkestan. And there will be a new land of freedom, like that of the Cossacks, and we shall live over there.”
And they hugged each other.
The moon stood still; it beckoned them into new, blossoming lands.
All that took place on a July night in 1825. The pink lieutenant colonel was Sergei Ivanovich Muravyov-Apostol; the very young lieutenant with no doorbell on his door, but a wooden door knocker, was Mikhail Petrovich Bestuzhev-Ryumin; the broad-shouldered colonel who had spoken of the guerrilla warfare was Ivan Grigoryevich Burtsov, and Alexander Sergeyevich Griboedov, unhappy with the war—was then a few years younger.
And now the fate of the project, and indeed of Alexander Sergeyevich, depended on Ivan Grigoryevich.
Who was Ivan Grigoryevich Burtsov?
Was he a Southern Society rebel
, like Pavel Ivanovich Pestel, whose handwriting was neat and the thin line crossing his French t’s like the blade of the guillotine? Or was he a cloud-dwelling Northern Society rebel, like Ryleyev, whose handwriting waved like the lock of hair over his forehead? No, he was neither a rebel nor a dreamer.
Ivan Grigoryevich Burtsov was a liberal. Moderation was his religion.
Liberals were not always softies, nor did they always have sagging cheeks and flabby bellies as habitually portrayed by later caricaturists. No, they could also be men with abrupt and decisive movements. Their lips could be thick, their nostrils could be shapely, and they could have guttural voices. They preached moderation rabidly. They were called not liberals then, but “liberalists.”
When the idea of unlimited liberty arose in Southern Society, the moderate North sent them the man with the short fuse, Ivan Grigoryevich Burtsov. Rebellion looked at fiery liberalism with the cold eyes of Pestel.
Southern Society separated itself from Northern, and the stand-off, famous in Russian history, took place on the square, in front of the Petersburg Senate. It was a hollow stand. Burtsov spent half a year in the Bobruisk fortress but remained the same: an honest, forthright, power-hungry Russian liberalist, blessed with a savage bark, whom Paskevich was afraid of more than anyone else in the world. The gray hair sprinkled the sides of his head like salt, and the skin on his nose was peeling under the southern sun.
“Would you like to sit down, Alexander Sergeyevich? When did we last see each other—three years ago?”
“I forget, Ivan Grigoryevich. Something like that.”
“Three years. It feels like three centuries.”
Burtsov spoke quietly while his eyes searched Griboedov.
“ ‘Some are no more and the others are far away.’ It is you and I who are far away now.”
“Were you there?” asked Griboedov, amazed.
The spurs, the murmuring, the moon, the dreams of Georgia.
And here it was, Georgia. And just look how it had all turned out!
“I’ve forgotten a lot too,” said Burtsov. “We are at war, as you can see … I’ve long been away from Russia. Now and then, I try to recall Petersburg and suddenly realize that what I really remember is the Bobruisk fortress or some other place, Moscow, perhaps.”
The Death of Vazir-Mukhtar Page 32