The Exile: A novel about Taras Shevchenko

by Zinaida Tulub

  “May Allah bless you, girl,” Kumish thanked her from the bottom of her heart, as a pale smile of joy touched her prematurely withered lips.

  The morning of the next day was sunny and cloudless. One hour after dawn the aul was ready to depart.

  The caravan set off in a strict, traditionally established order: the first to gallop ahead were three scouts who were to explore the lay of the land, warn the aul of danger if there be any, and choose a place for a halt or for the night. When they disappeared behind the horizon, they were fol­lowed by thirty tyulenguts who were well armed with soyils, shakpars, knives, slings, and Bukhara yatagans, and after them came the slowly and solemnly strutting camels.

  Up front on the two-humped camels rode the women with their infants and children — all of them dressed in varicolored holiday garb which stood out vividly against the tender green of the vernal grass.

  Behind the women the one-humped camels strode along with great dignity, burdened with light travel yurts called jolim uyami, and little summer yurts known as turlin ujami. Then came the cattle surrounded by mounted shep­herds and herders, wolfhounds and sheep dogs. After them walked the camel bearing the sick Jaisak, alongside Kumish riding an old peaceful mare. A second detachment of armed jigits brought up the rear of the caravan.

  They moved right across the steppe, without keeping either to streams, caravan tracks or even wells, because with the arrival of spring there was plenty of water everywhere.

  After midday the caravan made a halt. The sheep and mares were milked, the flocks and herds were allowed to graze, but the men did not unsaddle the horses: they only slackened the girths and took off the bridles, while the guard intently watched the steppe lest any marauding band of Khivans or other Kazakh tribes at odds with Djantemir might fall on the traveling aul and snatch an easy booty. But the halt was uneventful, and three hours later the aul set off again after a good rest.

  The camel bearing Jaisak strutted forward with a swing­ing gait, rocking the sick rider to sleep. His youth was gaining the upper hand, and his wounds were slowly heal­ing. Jaisak was happy to stir the fingers of his maimed hand and feel the pain receding with every day. He was disgusted with having been laid up in the yurt, choking on the smoke and steam, and seeing day in and day out how his mother’s slave labor for the bai was draining her last strength. He dreamed of catching an eagle in the moun­tains, training him for hunting fox, and selling a lot of furs for which the Russian “mayirs” paid lavishly — and then… The first thing he would do then was put up a good yurt, warm and clean, and maybe leave Djantemir’s aul completely and wander about with his own flock. Occasion­ally a number of poor nomads got together into a wandering aul and gradually became not exactly rich, but in any case not as poor as they had been before. And then… then his sweet dream about a young wife — a gentle, bashful girl — made his chest rise and fall with deep, stealthy sighs.

  4

  The First Friends

  Levitsky and Lazarevsky sat by the window, drinking tea, as they leafed through the latest issues of Sovremennik (The Contemporary), Otechestvennye zapiski (Annals of the Country) and Severnaya pchela (The Northern Bee) and exchanged occasional phrases. Suddenly Lazarevsky put the magazines aside, pushed back his chair, and looked out of the window. On the street in the distance he saw a man of medium height, wearing a round felt hat and a gray tailcoat. The man walked slowly down the street, at times stopping and regarding the buildings attentively.

  “That’s him! Shevchenko!” Lazarevsky exclaimed and dashed out.

  Levitsky had not yet finished buttoning up his em­broidered Ukrainian shirt when Lazarevsky led the poet into the room.

  “Dear Taras Grigorievich, may I introduce you to my countryman and best friend, Serhiy Levitsky. Both of us studied at the Chernihiv Gymnasium and graduated from university at one and the same time — he in Kiev, I in Kharkiv. Now we’re here serving on the border commission.”

  Levitsky was a broad-shouldered, sturdy man, tall of stat­ure and seemingly much older than the somewhat lean and lanky Lazarevsky. His lively black eyes had a joyous expression, while his swarthy face bubbled with health.

  Lazarevsky talked animatedly, not knowing where to seat his famous guest. “I have an elder brother, Mikhailo, here, too. He also works with the border commission, not in Orenburg, but in one of the forts.”

  “Could it be Orsk by any chance?” Shevchenko asked, sitting down.

  “No, Troitsk. Why did you ask about Orsk?”

  “It’s where I am to serve. At least that’s what the colo­nel told me this morning.”

  The friends exchanged glances in despair. Had Matveiev de­ceived them? Shevchenko continued speaking, after he had put his hat on the windowsill and wiped his sweating face.

  “He called me over this morning and received me like a good friend: shook my hand, offered me a seat, and said that he had wanted to leave me in Orenburg, but the order on my assignment had already been signed and he had no right to rescind it. He asked me about St. Peters­burg, Brüllow and Zhukovsky, and recalled Pushkin who visited these parts fifteen years ago to gather material about Pugachov. We had a lengthy conversation, and he issued me a leave warrant for two days.”

  The young men from Chernihiv exchanged glances again.

  “Well, we can confess to you now, dear Taras Grigorievich that we went to see him about you yesterday eve­ning. That’s Matveiev. He’s a decent and humane person, and if he could… It is very difficult to help you now, but I am sure everything will be managed with time. Oh, but why are we just sitting like this? Axinia, bring a samovar, quick!” Lazarevsky called to the housemaid. “Also bring from the cellar everything we’ve got from home. And fry some eggs for three.”

  Shortly after the samovar was humming and a sausage was sizzling on a frying pan Levitsky poured horilka, steeped in caraway seeds and anise, into glasses. The con­versation flowed easily and without restraint. It turned out they had common friends in Kiev and throughout Cher­nihiv Province, the length and breadth of which Shevchenko had traveled. Soon it became clear to him what sort of people he was talking to and he told them about the So­ciety of Cyril and Methodius and what he had been accused of by the czar’s secret police. Both of the young men were overwhelmed by the tragic fate of Professor Kostomarov who in their student years had not been a professor, but was already known as a talented historian and connoisseur of antiquity. They were appalled by the actions of the trai­tor Yuzefovich and the careless Andruzsky whose unbridled tongue had caused the greatest harm to the poet. There was a ring of profound sadness in Shevchenko’s voice when he told them what a cruel blow was dealt to Alina Kragelska, Professor Kostomarov’s bride, when she learned about his arrest on the day of their wedding.

  “That is why I am still wearing my tailcoat,” Shevchen­ko concluded with a bitter smile. “I was in a hurry to get to Kiev for the wedding. Kostomarov had invited me as his best man, but instead of a wedding the gendarmes rushed me off to St. Petersburg. I was apprehended in my summer clothes, because it was already warm in Kiev, the cherry and apple trees were in bloom and so were the chestnut trees, while in St. Petersburg there was deep snow.”

  He did not say anything about the interrogation. Levitsky and Lazarevsky tried to divert him somehow from his dark recollections, since they did not know yet that keeping silent and nursing his grief made if even more difficult for Shevchenko.

  Every conversation has some unexpected break, and when such a moment of silence interrupted the conversation’s flow, Shevchenko got up, went to the window and looking at the first stars on the sunset sky, suddenly started to speak about what had grieved him most.

  “Worst of all were the sleepless nights in prison when there was no oblivion or rest. I felt as if I were in a stone grave; I looked enviously at the sparrows chirping outside, although I knew pretty well that every single moment they could fall a prey to a hawk or a cat which are as implac­able as the gendarmes in their blue uniforms. And still I envied
the sparrows.

  “You know” — he dropped his voice to a whisper — “at such moments I wanted to turn into hundreds, into thousands of sparrows and fly in a flock through the bars of that cursed prison; or turn into hundreds of mice to burrow under the walls and come out into the light of the other side or, may­be, much farther — abroad, where I’d turn into a human again. I would lie on my bunk, sleeping, or sometimes I’d sink into a nightmare and it seemed to me that the execu­tioners eavesdropped on my thoughts and were waiting to rush forward to look for me on the other side of the prison wall and trample the helpless mice in which my human essence rested, and when I became a human again I’d see that they had crushed my hands or eyes or ripped my liver, like Prometheus’.”

  Shevchenko’s lips quivered. He poured himself a glass of wine and emptied it in one draft.

  Tears had welled up in Lazarevsky’s eyes; Levitsky stared at the floor.

  “Did you write anything there?” Levitsky asked, pulling himself together with effort.

  “I did — I’ll title those poems In Prison.”

  “Read something to us, if it won’t distress you,” Lazarevsky asked.

  Shevchenko fell to thinking.

  “Some of the verse I dedicated to Kostomarov,” he said at length. “He is a good honest man, but he lives as if in a cloud, believing that schools and education alone will make people more humane and noble. A dreamer, a star­ry-eyed dreamer. No, that’s not the way out! Around us there are tears, misery and slavery, cruel slavery, into which I was born as well. Tears won’t move a crocodile! You have to have power, armies, guns and guillotines. Kostomarov, though, is not a fighter. But I like him. I like and respect him. He has been sentenced to imprisonment, after which he will be exiled.”

  Shevchenko lapsed into silence, probably recalling the opening lines of a poem, and then he recited. At first his voice sounded even and soft, but gradually it gained in force and rang out with tragic power.

  “How wonderful!” the young men said of one accord. “Recite us some more, please.”

  Shevchenko recited again.

  Lazarevsky could not restrain himself, turned away and ashamed of his tears, wiped them off with his fist.

  “More,” Levitsky asked in a dull voice.

  Shevchenko’s eyes glistened with struggling tears as well, but he checked himself and said: “All right, enough of fraying your nerves. I’ll read you another, jollier verse, though written in prison as well.” With a voice grown unexpectedly steadier, he recited:

  A cherry garden at the cottage,

  Above the trees cockchafers buzz…

  Levitsky and Lazarevsky raised their heads. In their mind’s eye they saw a peaceful evening in spring, with dancing chafers and trilling nightingales. The lyrics sounded so simple it seemed that this was not a poem at all, but a real landscape with recreated sounds, smells, a light warm breeze kindly fondling their faces. The walls of their bachelor’s home seemed to have disappeared and opened onto their homeland, revived by the charming force of Shevchenko’s talent.

  Shevchenko fell silent, his hands pressed tightly against his temples.

  “I am sure your friends in St. Petersburg will do every­thing possible to have you freed. They are influential people after all,” Levitsky said.

  “The dying man is always told that he will get well, and the prisoner sentenced to death that he will be par­doned,” Shevchenko said with a bitter smile. “I haven’t seen much of freedom anyway: I was born a slave, grew up a slave, and then became free, but not for long. And then, do we really have such a thing as freedom here in Russia?

  Every one of us is like a dog on a chain, with the only difference that one’s chain is a bit longer, while another’s shorter. Well, enough about that,” he said, bringing his fist down on the table. “All that is nerves, and I’ll have enough strength to cope with the rest. We’ll see yet who’ll win!”

  Axinia brought in the samovar. She brewed some fresh, strong and aromatic tea. Shevchenko drank it with rum, delighted to feel its pleasant, invigorating warmth flowing through his body.

  “How good it feels,” he said, placing the empty cup on the table. “Last night and the night before I came down with a cruel fever. I caught a chill on the way: in St. Pe­tersburg and right up to the Volga the nights were dread­fully cold, and the greatcoat they gave me is thin and threadbare.”

  “So go to the military hospital tomorrow,” Lazarevsky said, happy to have hit upon the idea. “Maybe they’ll let you stay here while you’re ill.”

  “No,” Shevchenko refused flatly. “Shirking isn’t my cup of tea. The fever will rattle me some and then everything will be all right. Better tell me about the Orsk Fortress. It must be a pretty hole, since I am being put away there by the ‘most pious autocrat’?”

  “Well, how can I put it… We have never been there, but all our forts are very much like the Belogorsk Fort in Pushkin’s story The Captain’s Daughter. Orsk Fortress is to the south-east of Orenburg.”

  “How do you like our town?” Levitsky asked to divert Shevchenko from his thoughts of the bitter future.

  “A wretched place I must say,” the poet told him frankly. “When you walk down the street, you see only high-jutting fences on either side without a single tree or shrub, and all the buildings look so naked; they might have been covered with ivy, hops or vines at least. I haven’t seen a single flowerbed under the windows. Its name, too, sounds so asinine: Orenburg. Does it stand for long-eared town?”

  The young men burst into hearty, spontaneous laughter.

  “That’s where you are wrong, dear Taras Grigorievich. Burg really is from the German, but oren does not mean ears in German. It takes its name from the ri­ver Or on which now stands the Orsk Fortress, which itself was the original Orenburg. Later on it was thought that the upper reaches, of the Ural were poor in water for a big town, so the town was moved to this place where the river is much fuller.”

  “Oh, I see,” Shevchenko said. Suddenly he began to sing in a pleasant, powerful baritone:

  On the meadow, by the birch tree…

  Levitsky, who had a wondrously beautiful tenor, imme­diately picked up the song, and their voices flowed forth, intertwining melodiously and harmoniously. Lazarevsky also tried to join them, although his voice was much weaker.

  After that they sang a second, then a third song. The singing was interspersed by recollections about Kiev, their student pranks and sport, the boat rides down the Dnieper, the merry and noisy Kiev fairs, and the wonderful church choruses ringing under the ancient vaults of Saint Sophia Cathedral which was built eight hundred years ago and held the remains of the great lawgiver of Kievan Rus, Yaroslav the Wise, in a marble sarcophagus.

  Levitsky produced another bottle of strong blackthorn homemade liqueur and poured everyone a full glass. It inflamed their minds and they burst into another song when suddenly a wooden cuckoo popped out of its neatly carved “house” on the wall clock and announced the hour. Shev­chenko clutched his head.

  “Oh, my goodness! It’s half past one! The gates of the fortress are closed at midnight!”

  “Stay the night at our place,” the young men said, un­abashed. “Tomorrow, that is, today is a Sunday and we’ll deal with the unpleasant consequences through the very same Matveiev.”

  “I don’t think you’ll have to, because I’ve got a leave pass for two days,” Shevchenko put their minds at ease. “But I’m afraid I’ll be too much of a bother to you.”

  “Oh no!” Lazarevsky exclaimed. “We’re very glad to have your company.”

  Nobody was in a mood to sleep, however. Only after the lights were out did the young men pluck up enough courage to ask Shevchenko to read the verse for which he had been so cruelly punished by Czar Nicholas.

  Shevchenko recited them his epistle To the Dead, the Living and the Unborn… as well as his long poems A Dream and The Caucasus.

  Levitsky and Lazarevsky listened spellbound. Some of the allusions, though, the
y did not understand, but they dared not interrupt the great Bard with questions. New and hitherto unseen and unknown horizons opened to their minds as they listened to his poetry. They seemed to hear the moans of the tortured and see the tears of slaves, as all these sounds merged into a single outcry of suffering, a mighty torrent of indignation and anger as mighty as the Dnieper’s cataracts and as dazzling as a thunderstorm in the steppe. Here was an absolutely different Shevchenko, not the sad bard deploring the lot of a betrayed and aban­doned country girl, neither a chronicler of the hoary past, nor a landscapist fascinated by the beauty of Ukraine’s scenery. Before them was a formidable exposer whose words lashed out at the provincial lordlings, ludicrous in their aping of all things foreign, and at petty tyrants whose liberal word mongering did not stop them from commit­ting any crime or exercising wanton and barbarous des­potism.

  Here was a champion advocating the overthrow of the obsolete czarist machinery of state. He censured the arro­gant and adulating officials, bribers, vanity-minded persons and toadies, and he called on the people to shed their shack­les and build a free, honest and new life, in which every man would find his place and his work — not that of a slave, but work chosen as a vocation to bring joy and lend a purpose lo human existence. And the young men under­stood that the verdict which had doomed the poet was prompt­ed to the czar not so much by personal offense as by fear of the tribune of the people.

  “I wonder whether he himself read that poetry?” Levitsky asked, after the poet fell silent.

  Shevchenko shrugged his shoulders.

  “Probably it was read to him or simply retold.”

  Nobody wanted to sleep. Their conversation was alternat­ed by songs, in which they gave vent not only to their feelings and love for their homeland but also to what they had experienced, which a great Greek philosopher called catharsis — the purification of the emotions through art.