The Exile: A novel about Taras Shevchenko

by Zinaida Tulub

  The books heightened his days at the hospital for a long time. He repeated with rapture the charmingly beautiful verse of Lermontov, delighting in their music, and clenched his fists every time he recalled the poet’s tragic death. He read them out loud to Fischer and Alexandriysky, and dur­ing his sleepless nights he recited from memory the verse from the incomparable Mtsyri which echoed his mood so much at that time.

  Shakespeare’s tragedies moved him deeply as well. Fisch­er and Shevchenko argued at length about Hamlet and Othello. They were captivated by the immediacy of Romeo and Juliet’s love and the power with which Shakespeare ex­posed to the reader the dark souls of Iago and Shylock.

  But Gogol’s book evoked in Shevchenko a feeling that bordered on despair. There was nothing left of the former satirist who wrote The Inspector-General and Dead Souls. The great master and artist of the written word, whose keen eye did not miss a single dark feature of serf-bound Russia, had practically buried himself alive. Seized by dark mystic visions and hypocrisy, Gogol was now extinguishing the light he himself had kindled.

  Shevchenko’s health was getting better. Alexandriysky was glad to see his patient convalesce, but he realized with sadness that the time was approaching when he would have to discharge him from hospital. He wanted to continue the treatment until spring when it would be warmer, but his patient could not force himself to moan and complain of an unexisting illness.

  An unexpected letter from Orenburg excited the physi­cian: Lazarevsky wrote to tell him that a naval officer, Butakov, had arrived in Orenburg and started building a two-masted schooner to explore the Aral Sea. Further on he informed him that Colonel Matveiev and Gern, together with General Fedyaev, had talked Butakov into including Shevchenko in the expedition party.

  Alexandriysky hurried to Shevchenko with the news, but the poet, instead of being overjoyed, was horrified.

  “What? To a place still further away from here? Into the boundless steppe where wolves prowl in winter and every crack swarms with snakes in summer?”

  “For God’s sake, come to your senses, old chap! This is a happy chance! It’s a way to freedom!” the physician ar­gued. “Hear me out attentively. Firstly, you will be relieved from drill for a year and a half, or maybe two. Everyone refers to Butakov as a clever, decent and learned man. There is an officer from the general headquarters with him and several junior naval officers not assigned to the expedi­tion by the war ministry but picked by Butakov himself. Of course, every geographic expedition has its difficulties to reckon with: lack of food, exposure to heat and cold and the like. Such an expedition is likely to win you a citation. And your very first citation might be a good investment for the future: you’ll be officially permitted to paint. Do you understand? To paint! In this way the first part of your verdict will be null and void, and then you will be granted permission to write. Thus your talent will not decay, and you will not lose the art of working with pen, brush and pencil.”

  At first Shevchenko listened like a distrustful child be­ing told a fairy tale, but when he heard Alexandriysky’s last argument and then read the letter from Orenburg, his heart was filled with joy.

  In the barracks no one knew about the future expedition. Alexandriysky advised Shevchenko to keep silent about it as well.

  After thinking the news over, the poet decided that these were no more than his friends’ dreams, and his Orenburg betters would never permit him to join the expedition. The “most august monarch” himself had given orders to keep him under strictest surveillance, and what kind of strictest surveillance could there be in an empty steppe or on some island in a sea, the existence of which was known only from rumors?

  On discharging Shevchenko from the hospital, Alexand­riysky ordered the medical attendant to relieve the poet from drill for a couple of days. The commanding officers had nothing against it, since they remembered the drinking spree at the aul: now they regarded Shevchenko different­ly, addressed him politely, and did not shove a hairy fist under his nose whenever the raised tip of his boot trembled in formation from the rheumatic pain he still felt in his legs.

  “You just follow my example of how to feast on reason, mon cher,” Kozlovsky once said to Shevchenko approaching him with his peculiarly wobbly gait. “When they forget about the battue, and it is ‘overgrown with the grass of oblivion,’ as Eugene Sue put it, treat them to booze and make them remember you. For the time being, lend me twenty kopecks, because if I don’t down at least a thimbleful of vodka today, my soul will turn into vapor and dis­appear altogether.”

  In the evening, the older and more level-headed soldiers frequently asked Shevchenko to sing something: “Your songs are very beautiful. They make our souls warmer, and then life doesn’t seem to be so dull.”

  Shevchenko responded with a song in which two or three voices would join by and by — and thus an impromp­tu chorus appeared. Imperceptibly, the cussing ceased; standing in a tight circle around the singers, the men lis­tened quietly, after which they went to sleep silently, soothed by the beauty of folk songs.

  In his letters to Lizohub and Repnina, Shevchenko wrote that he would probably be included on an expedition to the Aral Sea in spring, although he himself did not believe it as much as before.

  One day he met Meshkov near the barracks. Shevchenko snapped to attention and took off his cap with his left hand.

  Meshkov smiled, came up closer to him, and said: ‘“Well, Shevchenko, we’ve been sparing you for over six weeks. You’ve received medical treatment and been given the chance to rest. It’s time you got down to soldiering.”

  Three days later Shevchenko marched off to the parade ground.

  “What makes our precentor and soloist look so despond­ent?” Kozlovsky asked him one evening in the barracks.

  “I’m plagued by a toothache which gives me no sleep, and I can’t eat because of it. Meshkov, though, is making me stump around the parade ground without any letup.”

  “That’s his way of planting a seemingly stray thought in your head.”

  “Unfortunately, I can’t stage another battue,” Shevchen­ko said with a sigh.

  “Oh, mon cher! Apart from hunting, there are birthdays, nameday parties, official holidays when all loyal subjects have to drink to the health of the czar and other most august persons. You could think up such pretexts by the dozens. The only thing is to find them. Comprenez?”

  “So you suggest holding a binge right here in the bar­racks?” Shevchenko remarked angrily, annoyed by Kozlovsky’s rudely condescending tone.

  “As if there didn’t exist married clerks, Cossacks and noncoms,” Kozlovsky sniffed scornfully. “Go to hell, Shevchenko! I’m sick of teaching you!” He shuffled off into the corner where Belobrovov and Schultz were beating two recruits at cards.

  Shevchenko lay down on his bunk and covered himself with a greatcoat, under which he slipped his head as well, pretending he was asleep. The next day he intercepted Lavrentiev by the porch of the company office. The clerk re­sponded to his new troubles with sincere sympathy, and when Shevchenko told him of the conversation with Kozlovsky, the clerk immediately grasped the underlying idea.

  “You know what — you just find a pretext and lay up some money, and Oxana and I will throw you a fitting party, with pies, roasted geese, sausages, and home-brewed beer. As for blackthorn brandy, we’ve always got some at home. We’ll also buy the vodka, which will cost you three times less than before. Then I’ll invite the officers, telling them that you were feeling awkward to do so your­self. They’ll become kinder to you again, and probably let you lodge at my home. That’ll make things easier for the other soldiers, too. They say that in the barracks the men just pray to God for you. What about it?”

  The only reasonable pretext Shevchenko could find was his own birthday. In two days Lavrentiev’s wife had bought everything that was needed and prepared such appetizers for the party it amazed Shevchenko. Apart from the offi­cers, he had to invite the medical attendant, the sergeant-major, the comp
any’s noncom, and a blind accordion player vho had been a former soldier and lived at the settlement. He alternately played marches and folk songs, and before the officers were at the stage of babbling drunkenness, he played a bouncy Russian folk dance. Globa and Stepanov went through its steps with gusto, and then Meshkov came mincing into the circle, waving a handkerchief as he enacted the part of a bashful girl. Then there was drinking, singing, and drinking again. Shevchenko was congratul­ated on his birthday, wished the best of luck in getting a commission as fast as possible, and being granted pardon. Then Meshkov, barely standing on his legs, dragged the poet into a corner, and releasing stenchy vodka-laden breath in his face, whispered with a faltering tongue:

  “You, Shevchenko, will be leaving u-ush s-shoon. There is-sh an order. You’ll go to Raīm with s-shome mar-riners. But s-sho far thish ish a s-shecret.”

  Shevchenko’s heart fluttered like a bird’s. So what his friends had told him was true, after all. But to Meshkov he said:

  “Now who would need such a sick man as me, your Excellency? A limping weakling? My legs are hurting me again. You cannot possibly recommend such a man as me to anyone.”

  “Don’t worry, old chap. W-we’ll help you out,” Meshkov uttered, and when the accordion player struck up a dance tune, he went off in a dance on his unsteady legs, tripped in the process, plopped on the floor and burst into laughter. Shevchenko went up to the table, poured himself a full glass of wine, and emptied it in one gulp.

  A new page had opened in his life.

  20

  From Orsk to Raïm

  In February all of Orenburg was abuzz with the news of the future expedition. New people showed up in the streets and offices, and the uniforms of the mariners stood out among them. Lieutenant Butakov was appointed head of the expedition on the recommendation of the famous seafar­er Admiral Belingshausen, and in March construction work on the two-masted schooner Constantine commenced. A large vacant plot of land on the bank of the Ural was fenced off, and there two sheds were built — from sunup till sun­set axes hacked away merrily, sharp-toothed saws whizzed, planes and drawshaves swished and scraped, and steel chisels tapped steadily at the fresh bright yellow timber like so many woodpeckers. But in vain did the passersby peep into the chinks in the fence: they did not see any schooner but only logs and planks, around which huge mounds of splinters and bark accumulated every day.

  The mystery was easily explained: the schooner was intended for a distant sea to which no river or any other body of water had access. That was why only sections of the future schooner were built in Orenburg; they had to be transported thousands of versts to the unknown sea, and then assembled into a schooner which would be launched for a long and hazardous voyage.

  Butakov had to shoulder all the burden of preparing the expedition that was to last two years. At the same time while parts of the schooner were being built, he had to pro­cure the food, clothing, all the equipment for the schooner, navigation instruments, sails, ropes, crockery, bedding, pa­per, tools, paints — everything to the last nail which would be needed throughout the winters and summers of the voy­age. Some of the things he needed were available in Oren­burg, but most of the gear was arriving from St. Petersburg and Sevastopol, and all this tremendous load, along with parts of the schooner, had to be transported somehow to the banks of the Syr Darya.

  For all his worries of preparation, Butakov did not for­get Shevchenko. He was overwhelmed by the horrible fate of the poet. Butakov was not personally acquainted with him, but knew him only as a poet: his collection Kobzar and his personality had been frequently commented on at the editorial offices of the magazine Otechestvenniye zapiski which, in 1843 and 1844, carried Butakov’s skillfully writ­ten essays about his round-the-world voyage on board the supply ship Abo.

  But it proved not that easy to snatch Shevchenko out of Orsk Fortress.

  First of all, Butakov handed in a report to the military governor Obruchev. The latter refused to grant Butakov’s request, arguing that Czar Nicholas had categorically pro­hibited Shevchenko from writing and painting.

  Butakov was not cast down by the refusal, however: af­ter consulting Gern and Matveiev, he wrote another report to Obruchev, in which he referred to Shevchenko not as an artist, but simply requested that Private Shevchenko be in­cluded in the expedition force. Obruchev refused him again. The second failure disheartened Butakov, but Gern and Matveiev advised him to approach General Fedyaev.

  The general received him courteously and affably. After a short conversation, Butakov told him straight out the rea­son of the visit, saying that he could not manage without an artist.

  “I know the poor chap,” the general replied, treating Butakov to a cigarette. “I wanted him to stay in Orenburg, but the gendarmes added to the verdict their own instruc­tion to keep him at the farthest fortress. And I had to retreat. But today when the case has lost its initial acute-ness, the man can be helped.”

  Butakov gave a contended smile and extended to the gen­eral the report written beforehand.

  “I feel a bit guilty in regard to him,” the general con­tinued, looking for his spectacles. “When we failed to keep him at Orenburg, Gern and I wrote a letter to Meshkov at Orsk, asking that he help Shevchenko, but that moron of a martinet did not understand us properly and started to torment him with drill. He almost plagued the life out of the poor chap. But you must understand my position as well: I just could not write Meshkov bluntly what I had in mind.”

  Fedyaev found his spectacles at long last.

  “Why do you address your report to me and not to the military governor?” he asked.

  Butakov had to tell him about the two failures he had gone through. Fedyaev fell to thinking: “Oh well, what will be, will be. I’ll have a talk with Obruchev, and if he does not relent, I will assume all the responsibility.”

  The general had to argue with Obruchev for a long time: Obruchev was afraid of deviating from the letter of the czar’s prohibition.

  “All right, write the resolution as follows: ‘At the dis­cretion of Brigadier-General Fedyaev.’ In this way, you will relieve me of any responsibility whatsoever, and untie my hands,” Fedyaev said. “You see, I could not have known anything about what the czar and the gendarmes added to the verdict. But destroy all the previous reports from Bu­takov.”

  Obruchev wrote the necessary resolution, and the next day Fedyaev informed Butakov that everything was done as he had requested.

  In early April the building of the schooner sections was completed, and caravans of wagons from St. Petersburg, Bryansk, Tula, Sevastopol and other towns trekked through the spring mire to Orenburg to bring the equipment for the expedition.

  To transport all this load from Orenburg to Raïm called for over fifteen hundred wagons and six hundred camels with camaleers and numerous guard troops, all under the command of General Schreiber. Late in April the expedi­tion set off.

  Two days earlier Djantemir’s aul had left its camping site, the bai being intent on conclusively deciding Kuljan’s destiny.

  Jaisak came to Shevchenko to say his farewell. Through­out the winter the poet had frequently thought about him, but he did not have the courage to see him again.

  “We won’t come here anymore,” Jaisak said sadly. “Meshkov told our bai he must look for another winter ground. The steppe is big, so big, and the people in it so small: we’ll probably never meet again,” he said with a sigh and hung his head.

  “I won’t be here, either,” Shevchenko said. “I’m going to Raïm. My betters are sending me there.”

  “To Raïm? The one on Syr Darya?” Jaisak’s face bright­ened suddenly. “But that is where we are bound for. Maybe I will see you there. Oi boi, how happy I shall be then!” the young man added with fire, and even laughed for joy.

  “Good luck to you, Jaisak. I wish that Kuljan becomes your wife,” Shevchenko said and clasped the young man in a strong embrace.

  “Are you out of your mind, Shevchenko, to embrace a K
ir­ghiz? Fie!” Lavrentiev spat with disgust on seeing the two men part as he passed by.

  After the party at the clerk’s home, Meshkov told his fellow officers that Shevchenko had been included on a scientific expedition to the Aral Sea, and before the cara­vans were to appear near Orsk, his health had to be im­proved somehow. The poet was relieved of drill and appointed assistant to the battalion’s quartermaster-sergeant. The things at the storehouse had to be put into order, for an inspection commission was expected.

  From that day on Shevchenko did not march around the parade ground to the deafening roll of the drums, but hung linen and musty felt boots in the sun to dry, destroyed rats, counted heaps of linen, and lugged bundles of rags to the battalion tailor. For Shevchenko it was tantamount to a good rest and he became noticeably stronger and mer­rier.

  Shevchenko wrote to Lizohub and asked him for paints and brushes. Lizohub sent him everything right away, and the poet took all these treasures to Alexandriysky.

  The caravan with supplies reached Orsk on the ninth of May and pitched camp for a day on the far bank of the Ural to give the tired people, horses and camels a respite.

  Orsk became astir at such an unexpected sight. The peo­ple from the settlement and the Cossacks rushed to the Ural with pails of milk, boiled eggs, roast, fish, fowl, and pots of borshch and porridge. The hungry wagon drivers and cameleers bought up the food in no time, and the house­wives hurried back to their homes to bring more food. Now and then Shevchenko walked beyond the ramparts to the bank of the Ural to have a look at the noisy camp and then returned to the barracks lest he miss the moment when his betters would summon him. All the time he had a feeling they had forgotten him, but he did not dare re­mind them, waiting instead by the porch of the office until Lavrentiev would notice him through the window. When the latter came out onto the porch for a smoke at last, Shevchenko ran over to him. But the clerk only shrugged his shoulders and replied quietly: