The Exile: A novel about Taras Shevchenko

by Zinaida Tulub

  Korsakov screwed up his eyes ironically.

  “Have you really never taken part in such an opera­tion?”

  “No. I am a military engineer-topographer by education. In the Caucasus I saw some chance action. But here?”

  “Oh, now I understand. Such a raid is not simply a punitive expedition against rebels. It’s a campaign … well, how should I put it…not so much to frighten as, above all, to… well, improve your business at the expense of those … aliens.”

  “In other words, it’s a marauding raid, or a barimta, as they call it here?” Maksheiev specified. “Why put it so bluntly?”

  “And that’s what you do in regard to beggars who live in tattered yurts, and who, as well as being naked, graze their hungry cattle in the snow-covered steppe? What base­ness!”

  Maksheiev jumped to his feet and paced quickly up and down the narrow earth house, bumping into bundles, his drawing board, and the suitcases of the uninvited guest. Korsakov smiled indulgently at the sight.

  “What an idealist you are! I could have understood you, if you were sixteen years old or in your first year at uni­versity, but at the age of thirty it’s — I beg your pardon — simply a quixotic way of seeing things!”

  At that moment the door was opened silently, and Trokhmovich appeared on the threshold.

  “Do you wish me to go to the Kirghiz to trade, sir?” he asked quietly, darting an uneasy glance at Maksheiev and Shevchenko. “They say there is an aul not far away from here.”

  “Of course, of course!” Korsakov answered with a smile. “You know yourself, so why ask about it? And don’t for­get about the furs.”

  “Who’s that?” Maksheiev asked casually when Trokhimovich left.

  Korsakov answered confusedly: “Well, let this be be­tween you and me, mon cher. I am neither an officer nor a Cossack, and so I cannot get rich from a military raid. My wife holds her capital firmly in her grip, and I cannot get my teeth into it. The man you saw is my serf. He buys up sugar, flour, calico, cauldrons and other trifles in Irbit and then sells them to the Kirghiz. He accompanies me as a sort of outsider, so that I am not officially involved, so to speak.”

  “And what about the money he gets from those sales? Who gets it?” Maksheiev asked in a chilly tone.

  “Oh, it comes to me,” Korsakov answered merrily and with shameless candor.

  That moment somebody pulled at the door hesitantly.

  “Who is there? Come in!” Maksheiev called out.

  Jaisak entered. He made a low bow to Maksheiev and Shevchenko and stopped silently at the threshold.

  “What can I do for you, old chap?” Korsakov asked, carelessly crossing his legs.

  “People say you need fox furs, yassak chief. I have some. I was in Raïm. You were not there and came here.”

  “I see. Yes, we take furs, if they are worth it. Show them to me!” Korsakov carried on idly as before.

  Jaisak pulled two wonderful silver-fox furs out of his bosom, Korsakov’s eyes flashed with a greedy glint. He took a fur, huffed at it, stroked it up and down, and then asked with affected indifference:

  “How much do you ask for them?”

  “I don’t know. As much as you will give me, yassak chief. I have to pay the yassak and for the baiga… I need a lot of money.”

  “How many furs have you got?” Korsakov interrupted him disdainfully. He was not interested in Jaisak’s affairs in the least.

  “I have a lot of them. Maybe two times ten or three times that much. I have to count them.”

  “Thirty? All right then, I’ll give you fifty kopecks for each.”

  “Oi, chief!” Jaisak gave a small scream. “A Bukhara merchant gives three rubles for a small fur, but these… They are big winter fox.”

  “Go to your Bukhara merchants then.” Korsakov calmly turned away from Jaisak and sipped from his cup which had more rum in it than tea.

  Maksheiev exchanged angry glances with Shevchenko, while Jaisak shifted from foot to foot and looked with de­spair at his wonderful fox furs.

  “I beg your pardon… but the furs are of large fox and of excellent quality,” Maksheiev broke into the conversation, trying to maintain a proper tone.

  “You can have them if you like them that much,” Kor­sakov replied in French lest Jaisak understand him. “But I’m not that rich as to squander money.”

  Maksheiev wanted to buy a fur or two at first and even readied for his pocket, but then he remembered that he had a long, almost two-month journey ahead of him and his hand stopped halfway. The gesture was not lost on Kor­sakov.

  “After all, in Moscow you’ll get no less than sixty rubles for them,” Maksheiev remarked.

  In the meantime, Shevchenko had inconspicuously pulled at Jaisak’s sleeve and gestured him to take back the fox furs. But something extremely serious must have happened to Jaisak, because he did not heed Shevchenko, heaved a sigh of hopelessness and shook his head in disagreement. He listened intently to the foreign tongue, his eyes straying from Korsakov to Maksheiev and from Maksheiev to the yassak chief, and then he suddenly turned to Maksheiev:

  “Take it, mayir! I’ll give it away for two rubles a piece. I need the money badly.”

  Everyone was silent. Maksheiev did not have the heart to accept the furs for such a minute price, and he really did not have more money to pay. Korsakov smiled ironi­cally.

  “All right!” he broke the silence abruptly. “The chief is taking pity on you: I offer two rubles for each piece of fur.”

  With the mien of a benefactor he extended Jaisak four rubles — not in silver, but in bills, which was considerably cheaper than in silver. Jaisak heaved a sigh again, took the money, and left with a hanging head. Shevchenko picked up his coat and rushed out to catch up with Jaisak. When the door slammed shut behind Shevchenko, Korsa­kov slapped his knee and roared with laughter.

  “That’s a truly sensational bargain. In Moscow I’ll get not sixty but one hundred rubles in silver for each fur. Take a look what beauties they are. What rate of profit does that make?”

  “It’s dishonest!” Maksheiev cried.

  “But I’ve just dealt with a savage! God himself decreed that these savages serve us as a source of profit. What makes you blow up like that, mon ami?”

  “It’s a shame, sir! Instead of us becoming a source of enlightenment, an example of honor, duty and justice, you…”

  Korsakov burst into a roar of laughter: “Ha-ha-ha, my dear friend. They don’t even understand such words. These are primitive people out of the Stone Age! Just travel around the steppe and go into their camps — you won’t find a single cesspit or outhouse anywhere. Even a bird does not soil its nest like these savages their own yurts…”

  “Did you see many lavatories and cesspits in our vil­lages?” Maksheiev interrupted him sharply. “It’s precisely you and the likes of you who are to be blamed for that. We must teach and be an example for them, not plunder them and bring them to their graves with whips, bribes and fraud, my dear sir!”

  Korsakov jumped to his feet.

  “Wh-at? Just repeat what you said?” he screamed in a piercing falsetto.

  Maksheiev grew pale from rage.

  “I will do so with pleasure!” he rapped out the words pointedly. “You swindle and engage in the dirtiest and bas­est speculation and trading which sullies the honor of a nobleman and the uniform you wear!”

  Unexpectedly for himself, Maksheiev took the empty bottle of rum standing on the table, and swinging it like a cudgel, shouted at the top of his voice:

  “Get out! Get out of here, you scoundrel!”

  Korsakov’s arrogance and brash self-confidence vanished in a trice. He recoiled with fright, his mouth gaping for air, snatched his coat and cap off the nail, and made himself scarce, forgetting the fox furs.

  After regaining his breath, Maksheiev put the bottle back on the table, threw Korsakov’s suitcases outdoors, drank his by now cold tea at one gulp, placed his drawing board on the table again, picked u
p his drawing pen, and bent over his work.

  Shevchenko caught up with Jaisak a long way beyond the barracks.

  “Jaisak, wait a minute! What’s happened?” Shevchenko shouted, grabbing the young herder by the shoulder. “Why did you give the furs away to that swindler? I pulled at your sleeve, winked at you, but…”

  Jaisak stopped and, jarred back to reality.

  “There’s trouble, Taras Aga! Ibrai died. We had his fa­ther’s messengers at our aul yesterday evening. Iskhak and the others left for his funeral, and Shauken bore a boy during the night.”

  “What’s so horrible about that?” the poet asked, sur­prised. “Ibrai died — so God rest his soul, but there’ll be the baiga you have been dreaming about all the time. You must be happy, not sad.”

  Jaisak gave Shevchenko a sorrowful look.

  “And Moldabai?”

  “What Moldabai?”

  “Ibrai’s relative. That old man who wants to marry Kuljan. He’ll ruin her life. But it makes no difference to Djantemir, because he does not want to give away the advance he got as part of the bride money.”

  “Oh damn it!” Shevchenko cursed. “And when will that Moldabai show up?”

  “By law, only when the year of tears ends after Ibrai’s death, that is, after the funeral rites, but …”

  “That’s great!” Shevchenko almost shouted for joy. “First of all, nobody can engage her, since she is in mourning, and during that time the old fiancé might kick the bucket forty times over. Secondly, within this time you can make a lot of money and grow rich.”

  “Grow rich?” the young man questioned with a bitter smile. “I need the money now. A lot of money. But where can I get it? Did you see how much the yassak chief paid me for the furs? Back at Jaman Kala, Isai Pasha and Meshka Mayir and even the bald mayir always paid me a red bill. In Orenburg they give you even more. But how can I reach that place? From Jaman Kala it was a three-day journey, but from here…”

  Jaisak waved his hand in hopelessness, and added:

  “Besides, our laws are not always abided by. Moldabai is an imam. It’s enough for him to say, ‘This is permitted!’ and nobody will utter a word against him. Even now he can come here, without waiting for the end of the year of mourning. So there is no one to stand up for Kuljan. Even three years won’t be enough for me to acquire the sheep for the bride money, for the wedding, and to support my mother and wife. Oh, Taras Aga, there’s no place where a poor man can be happy!”

  Shevchenko took sincere pity on the young herder. He had to cheer up Jaisak somehow.

  “What an impatient character you are!” Shevchenko said. “Better half an egg than an empty shell. Don’t carry on like a woman. It’s no sweeter for me either, but I don’t shed tears all the time. That is, I did cry once and a lot at that, but my tears have already dried. Now I’m angry, and that takes the load off my chest. If you want me to help you, I will. Don’t sell any more furs to that scoundrel! Bring me twenty furs tomorrow. I’ll try to gain for them much more than you: I won’t sell them for less than ten rubles a piece, that’s for sure.”

  When Shevchenko returned to the earth house, he did not see either Korsakov or his suitcases there anymore.

  “Where is our guest?” he asked.

  “I’ve chucked him out,” Maksheiev answered, and his temper flaring up again, he said with agitation: “Jaisak is thrashing like a bird in a cage, and here this swashbuckler grows rich on his sweat! I was short of throwing a bottle at him.”

  “To tell you the truth my hands itched as well to kick him out into the cold,” the poet said with a laugh. “All right, the hell with him! We must really help Jaisak. The money I’ve been sent is not much, but nonetheless I’ll give him ten rubles of what I have.”

  “I’m in no better position before leaving,” Maksheiev confessed. “Still, we’ve got to do something for him.”

  “That’s exactly how my friends once broke their heads over how to buy me from my landowner Engelhardt,” Shev­chenko said with a grim smile. “Brüllow did a portrait of Zhukovsky and it was raffled off. The proceeds were enough to buy my freedom and keep me going for some time at the beginning.”

  “A raffle?” Maksheiev said. “Why, that’s a wonderful idea. But what could we raffle off?”

  He looked at the wall and his eyes stopped at the hunt­ing rifle Pospelov and Istomin had glanced at with envy many a time. Was it really worth taking back to Orenburg? He would not need it either on his journey or at his former place of service. And what kind of a hunter was he anyway?

  “We’ll raffle off this rifle to make Jaisak happy!” Maksheiev exclaimed. “Just to spite that scoundrel Korsakov! The rifle is absolutely new, and I paid exactly two hundred rubles for it. The only thing I don’t know is how such lotteries are held. So please help me, since you’re such an experienced hand at it.”

  “That’s very simple. Write a list of all the acquaintances you know at Kosaral and Raïm. Let everyone pay you the price of the ticket right away and put his signature opposite his name. Then we’ll make the tickets. All of them will be blank, except for one which will have the inscription: hunting rifle. Let everyone get together during the next holiday we have on the calendar and draw the tickets out of the basket or bag. Someone will draw the lucky ticket.”

  “Wonderful,” Maksheiev said merrily and immediately got down to compiling the list of the avid hunters from among the expedition members and the Ural Cossacks.

  The next morning, taking his hunting rifle as a good bait, Maksheiev went round the men written in the list. Pospelov and Istomin bought three tickets each at once, from among the sailors there were only two who were tempted by the rifle, whereas the Ural Cossacks were filled with admiration at the sight of the piece, and the tickets sold like hot cakes.

  “The reeds around here are a real paradise for hunters,” the Cossacks said as they paid for the tickets.

  Altogether there were eighty tickets priced at five rubles each. After the midday meal Maksheiev ordered his horse saddled and galloped off to Raïm to tempt its garrison with the prize. Here the hunting rifle had the same success, while the story of the recent tiger hunt produced such a tremendous impression that Maksheiev returned to Kosaral with only two tickets left.

  Shevchenko did not waste his time either. In the morning Jaisak brought him twenty furs, and the first thing the poet did was to go round all the homes of the married couples in Raïm. The wife of the newly appointed commandant Damis paid twenty-five rubles for two furs to make herself a coat collar and a muff. At another home he sold two more furs. Even the Armenian sutler bought one big fur for his incredibly corpulent wife Annush.

  The twelve furs he still had were sold off to the ardent admirers of the dark-complexioned local belle, Liudochka Tsibisova.

  Shevchenko went about his trade in a subtle and diplo­matic way. On learning that Liudochka was to celebrate her eighteenth birthday in a week, he met every one of her suitors as if by chance, and once he was alone with the beau, he engaged him in approximately the following conversation, hiding a cunning glint in his eyes:

  “My dear young man, you and I live in such a wild, out-of-the-way nook where you cannot buy a decent present for a young lady. Liudochka will be eighteen in a couple of days, and here there’s no delicate perfume, expensive candy or live flowers to get by. I got hold of a wonderful thing by chance: a Kirghiz I know has to pay taxes without delay, but he hasn’t the money. So he brought me this wonderful fur. He’s giving it away for a song. It’s grand fur, I tell you! Buy it: it’ll be simply a god­send for you.”

  At that he would produce the silver-fox fur, and the beau swallowed the bait without fail.

  “But please do not so much as utter a word about it,” Shevchenko warned. “Someone might get the same idea, and the effect of the present will be lost on Liudochka.”

  In this way all the furs were sold, and at the last mo­ment even Maksheiev bought one as a present for his wife.

  On Liudochka’s b
irthday every one of her loyal wooers gave her a fur as a present. There was a lot of laughter and banter on that point, but neither the beaus nor Liudochka or her parents had anything against such a miraculous influx of lavish furs. The parents realized at once that the furs would be a real treasure in a big city and thanked Shevchenko from the bottom of their hearts, after which, having treated the furs with tobacco against moths, they left two pieces for Liudochka’s collar and muff and hid the rest in a hope chest where they were gathering a dowry of their “princess.”

  The next Sunday the raffle was held. The winning ticket was drawn by a sailor who, then and there, sold the rifle for fifty rubles to Pospelov, and on Monday, as it had been agreed upon, Jaisak arrived from Kosaral.

  He was in a state of dazed torpor at the sight of the heap of bills, silver, gold and copper coins lying on the table. Tongue-tied, he looked now at Maksheiev, then at Shevchenko.

  “How much of the yassak do you have to pay?” Shev­chenko asked, delighting in the impression all that money had produced on the young man.

  “A ruble and a half,” Jaisak forced the answer in a choked voice. “Father paid only a half of that last year.”

  “But you don’t have to pay taxes for the dead,” Maksheiev remarked.

  Jaisak nodded in agreement.

  “The yassak chief demands it right away, and threatens to whip me, if I don’t pay on time. He gave me three days to think it over.”

  “To hell with the dratted scoundrel! Let him have your father’s share of the tax. That’ll be two rubles and a quar­ter. And another fifty kopecks as a fine on the tax. In all, it comes out to three rubles. How much would you have to pay to enter the baigai?”

  “I don’t know yet. The baiga will be held after the child is one month old,” Jaisak answered falteringly as before, as if joy still had not penetrated to the depths of his heart.

  “All that money is yours,” Maksheiev said. “We’ll count it now, and you can take it with you. Do you have any­where to hide it well?”

  “I’ll give it to apa. We have no other place to hide it.”

  “It’s better if it stays with us. Take three rubles to pay the yassak and some more to buy sheep at once. They say that people are now selling sheep throughout all the auls to pay the tax. You can buy two or three hundred if you want.”