“Behind me I heard a woman crying out in despair, and that cry, piercing and filled with unspeakable horror, still rings in my ears. I could not bear it any longer and ran away from the scaffold and the crowd, in which some people experienced a cruel nervous shock, while others prepared themselves to watch the death throes of the country’s best men with an openly keen interest, like they would watch a dangerous performance of acrobats under the cupola of a circus.
“Toward the evening I was visited by my compatriots who told me that the doomed were pardoned and their death sentence commuted to long years of penal servitude in Eastern Siberia.”
The letter had several more lines addressed to Shevchenko, but it fell out of his hands and remained lying unread to the end on the table. Everyone was silent. Czarism was looking into their eyes with the cruel, dull stare of an executioner, which suddenly made everyone feel chilly, although the room was well heated.
“Burn it.” Pospelov was the first to come to his senses.
Nobody stirred. He brought the letter up to a candle and held it to the flame until it licked his finger.
36
On the Outskirts of Orenburg
A sense of dreary loneliness assailed the poet after the departure of Butakov, Pospelov and Levitsky. He moved over into his studio at the Gerns’ where it was always tidy and warm.
The poignant yearning for a home overwhelmed him with unusual force.
“I’m a tramp, a derisible tramp,” his lips whispered.
As long as he could remember he had lived at other people’s homes — at first when he had been a serf, a mute creature who had to follow his master wherever his lordly whims took him. Then he lived in the workshop of Shiryaev, a well-known St. Petersburg contractor who painted the palaces of the nobility as well as the theaters and best buildings in the capital. After the occasional nights at the home of the artist Soshenko, he settled in the huge and luxuriously furnished studio of Brüllow where he lived several years. Then…
Could he really remember all the crofts and manors he had visited in Ukraine, when though a famous poet, he nonetheless remained homeless and a semi-sponger.
It was only in Kiev that he had lived not as a guest but rented with Sazhin a tiny apartment on Khreshchatik Lane in a house which did not differ much from a village cottage.
And again he took to wandering, and was invited to stay at sumptuous manors with snow-white palaces built either in the subtly austere Empire style of Czar Alexander’s era or in the excessively embellished Ukrainian baroque. And everywhere he was but a guest, everywhere a stranger and wanderer. In the end, there was the Third Department, prison, the Orsk Fortress, barracks, the schooner Constantine, and the Kosaral earth house which, too, was not called his but Maksheiev’s.
When would this endless tramping cease? Where was the haven where he could drop his life’s heavy anchor and find a family, a wife, and children? Would he ever find it at all? He was tired of his perpetual wandering, and his soul had grown chilly amongst strangers, even though they were kind people. Even the best of friends can never become the dearest person a man could wish for. His tired heart and lonely soul longed for dear and human warmth.
Thomas Werner and Bronek Zaleski were the first to notice how profoundly sad the poet became after the departure of his friends, and started inviting him more cordially to their homes, surrounding him with heartfelt attention bordering on piety. They saw in him not only a talented poet and artist, not only was he their friend in need, but a public figure who desired the freedom of the people of Russia and Ukraine and, along with them, of Poland as well.
Shevchenko was gratified by the attention he was accorded: it warmed him after the humiliations and offenses of the past year, and he permitted them to console him like an orphaned child picked up by strangers on the cruel pathways of war.
A period of financial difficulties set in for the poet. The fees he had received from Isaiev, the baroness and the others had dwindled away before the New Year. Now he was without a bean in the world.
On Obruchev’s advice, Butakov did not detail Shevchenko to the line battalion stationed in Orenburg, because the commander of the 23rd Infantry Corps, General Tolmachov, a great stickler for form and precise compliance with the letter of the law, would have immediately restricted him to barracks and then sent him to one of the remotest forts of the Orenburg line. For that, however, Shevchenko was deprived of his soldier’s rations and uniform. Now he had to earn his own livelihood.
Gern did not charge him anything for his quarters and food and invited him for breakfast and midday meals every day, but by some barely noticeable signs, Shevchenko sensed that his presence either stood in the way or got on the nerves of Sophia Ivanovna, and so he came only when Karl Ivanovich was at home. Gern’s duties however, made him unexpectedly and frequently leave home, and that was why Shevchenko remained without a meal time and again, and had to be content with black bread throughout the whole day.
Now he did not dare take any commissions for paintings anymore. He had painted a number of good landscapes after his Aral sketches, but did not risk signing them and kept them in Lazarevsky’s room, sadly reflecting that even the best of canvases, without the artist’s signature, lost half its value. One such landscape he sent to Lizohub with the request to add the signature in cinnabar and sell it for at least fifty rubles; he was inexplicably happy and grateful to him when the wished for money arrived with the return mail.
In early March he received a letter from Repnina. As always, it was full of sympathy for the poor exile.
“It is only now that I really appreciate at last the great talent of our Gogol and his Dead Souls. You are right, Taras Grigorievich: it is one of our best hooks. I did not understand him before,” she wrote as an aside.
Shevchenko was sincerely happy at this acknowledgment. He always admired Gogol, and hurried to write a long letter to Repnina in response.
This time he had to resort to guile: he knew Repnina to be deeply religious. She was an exalted, mystically inclined woman, and offending her feelings would mean losing her friendship and respect, which he valued highly. Therefore he omitted any mention in the letter about Gogol’s latest book, in which, influenced by a religious psychosis, he rendered void his great writings and justified such things as serfdom, the execution of the Decembrists, the shackles to which Patreshevsky’s group was condemned, the terrible caning in the army, the flogging, and all the other horrors of Czar Nicholas’ regime.
Repnina was a reliable friend to be sure. She had not been afraid to write to Orlov, pleading that Shevchenko be pardoned or at least permitted to paint, for which she received a stern reply with an outright threat of arrest and trial if she did not stop interceding for the exiled poet. Repnina realized that the times had passed when when the wives of Volkonsky and Trubetskoi could go to Eastern Siberia to ease the penal servitude of their husbands who had taken part in the uprising against czardom in December 1825. Nonetheless, she did not succumb to fear, and continued corresponding with the poet, employing a number of rather naïve ruses for this purpose: lest the letters attract the gendarmes’ attention, she asked her friend Glafira Psyol to write the address in her hand, the letters were mailed not from Yahotin but from some neighboring township, and addressed to the Headquarters of the Orenburg Military District for the attention of Captain Karl Gern. All this entailed a considerable risk, which made Shevchenko value all the higher every word she wrote.
Lazarevsky’s second portrait, which Shevchenko had started working on, was gathering dust, as were the portraits of Karl Ivanovich and Sophia Ivanovna. Gern was always busy and his wife sat rarely and unwillingly for her portrait, while Shevchenko wanted very much to thank the Gerns by painting their portraits, for all the good things they had done for him.
Now he devoted all his time and effort to self-portraits, painting himself dressed in uniform, frock coat, or black cap. One of these self-portraits he sent to Lizohub, and another to Repnina.
His friends tried to persuade him to paint himself not in a usual room, but fettered in shackles behind prison bars. He did not agree with such a symbolic representation of himself, but he did take to the brush again. The self-portrait he did came out quite well. His Polish friends asked him to give them the portrait as a memento. Although he had not a single copper about him at that time, false shame did not permit him to admit his wretched poverty. Thinking tensely how to make a little money at least from the sale of his self-portrait, he told them that he had promised to show it to his acquaintances first and took it to his quarters which he now shared with Lazarevsky back home after his three-week absence.
Shevchenko showed him the self-portrait.
“It’s wonderful! The likeness is remarkable,” Lazarevsky repeated again and again, alternately looking at the portrait at close distance and from afar. “Where did you paint it?”
“At the home of my Polish friends,” Shevchenko explained. “Take it, for God’s sake! I want it to be yours, because it might be begged out of me by others and I need money badly now.”
The offer made Lazarevsky confused.
“I think it’s impossible, old chap. Your portrait is a valuable work of art and very dear to me, but now, with Serhiy in St. Petersburg, I’m in financial straits. He earned much more than I did, you know. So I’ve got nothing to pay you with, ‘pon my word.”
Shevchenko raised his foot and showed him a tattered boot.
“See what footwear I have. Give me your old boots, and that’s all I ask of you.”
Lazarevsky felt the blood rush hotly to his cheeks and his heart contracted into a lump. He rushed over to his wardrobe, took out a pair of boots that were almost new, and gave them to the poet.
“What did you wear during the frosts? You had a pair of felt boots, didn’t you?”
“I had, but I wore holes in them by February. It doesn’t matter much now, though: there’ll be spring soon, and anyway…” and Shevchenko told his friend what a bad turn his personal affairs had taken.
“Butakov and Obruchev wanted to do me a good turn by reminding Orlov about me, but it came to evil. Now my Aral album won’t help me either, perhaps,” he said with a sigh.
Lazarevsky’s heart contracted again. Gern had once told him about the hopelessness of Shevchenko’s situation. Lazarevsky kept silent lest he make Shevchenko’s wound fester the more. The next day he wrote his brother Mikhailo a letter and asked him to help the poet immediately. The letter did not remain without a prompt answer: his friends in the capital clubbed together and sent him a hundred rubles.
Three weeks passed.
It was Maundy Thursday, a sunny day in April. The large bells in the belfries leisurely called to one another in a sad way befitting the mood of the lent, while the rooks cried noisily and fought for the possession of their nests of the previous year in the grove beyond the Ural River and in the willows and birch trees growing throughout the town. The birch trees had turned a brown-lilac, all of them knotted with swollen buds. A sickly green grass had burst forth along the fences on the streets and dingy boulevards which, as usual, were deserted, dull and littered. The smells of pastries and roasted pork wafted from the homes.
Shevchenko had his midday meal at the Gerns’ and went out on the porch together with Karl Ivanovich. Gern stopped on the steps as he girded on his sword belt, and was carried away by the sight of a wedge of cranes drifting past in the sky.
“It’s off to the headquarters again for me,” he said with disappointment. “How I wish I could snatch but one day off to go hunting! There’s waterfowl galore in every lake and puddle throughout the steppe, and here I’ve got so much work to do I burn the midnight oil. By the way, we received the mail today. If there’s a letter for you, I’ll drop in for a minute and treat you to a holiday gift. Will you be in?”
“I intended to take a stroll along the Ural, but for the sake of a letter I’m prepared to stay put until dusk,” Shevchenko said, walking off slowly to his studio in the outhouse.
In the corner stood the easel with Gern’s portrait, the face was already painted, but the hands, arms, shoulders and uniform only sketched in vague outline. Shevchenko picked up the brushes reluctantly and started touching up the golden pads of the epaulettes, then the thick cords of the aiguilettes, glancing through the window now and again.
Carried away by the work, ho did not notice how two hours had elapsed. As he tore himself away from the portrait, he caught a fleeting glimpse of Isaiev passing from the wicket gate to the main building.
So Gern’s back home and I missed him, Shevchenko thought. Isaiev must have brought some papers from the headquarters for him to sign.
Throwing his threadbare coat over his shoulders, Shevchenko trotted across the yard to the back entrance and went into the kitchen where Guriy was taking ruddy Easter cakes smelling delectably of saffron and lemon peel, out of the oven. Shevchenko cleaned his dirty boots on the door mat and made for the door of the inner corridor, when Guriy suddenly blocked his way.
“The captain’s out,” he said. “He hasn’t returned yet.”
“I’ll see the lady, then.”
“You can’t; she’s sleeping.”
“What do you mean, ‘she’s sleeping?’ I just saw Ensign Isaiev going in.”
Instead of an answer, Guriy took hold of both door jambs more firmly.
“Why, have you gone mad?” Shevchenko said indignantly. “If she’s got guests, I can see her just as well.”
“That’s the reason why you can’t, because the ensign’s in there right now,” Guriy snapped back, and looked straight in Shevchenko’s eyes. “Taras Grigorievich, are you a little child, or what? How can you see her, if she’s entertaining her lover?”
Shevchenko looked at Guriy with wide-open eyes.
“Being married to such a fine man, that disgusting skirt had to take up with an outright louse,” Guriy went on. “Today’s Maundy Thursday, and here she… Another woman would’ve been blessing God for such a husband as our captain… But no, she mixes with those Poles and then with the officers… and here I’m made to be covering up all that filth. Ugh!”
“What filth are you talking about?” Shevchenko asked in a feeble whisper.
Guriy carried on, now and then glancing at the door leading into the corridor with hatred:
“That louse comes here to foul up the nest of an honest man, and then he gets drunk and brags, ‘No woman can withstand my advances.’ His batman frequently brings her messages from the ensign. ‘He’d better keep his mouth shut,’ the batman told me, ‘because this affair might end up with trouble.’ Indeed, we common folk would have fought it out between us, given the woman a good drubbing — and that would be the end of it. But the lords take to pistols and swords right away. In such cases, trouble is just around the corner! That Isaiev louse keeps blabbering God knows what in all the restaurants and in the officers’ club.”
Guriy heaved a sigh and carefully pushed Shevchenko away from the door.
“Go now, Taras Grigorievich. It’ll be better that way.”
Shevchenko went out into the yard, then he made for the street and walked wherever his feet carried him.
In the end he came to the house where Lazarevsky lived. Lazarevsky was at home. His room smelled of freshly baked Easter cakes. A red-faced Axinia put the samovar on the table.
Shevchenko took his coat off, only now noticing that he had left his cap at the Gems’.
“All right, let’s get down to supper,” Lazarevsky said. “By the way, here’s twenty rubles for you. That’s the remainder of my traveling allowances which go as payment for your portrait.”
“Thank you,” the poet said, strongly shaking Lazarevsky’s hand, and added unexpectedly, “Don’t worry, brother. They’re all alike: angels to the eyes, but actually such…”
Utterly surprised, Lazarevsky started asking what had happened, but Shevchenko kept silent.
“Move to my place again,” La
zarevsky pleaded. “I feel so lonely now that Serhiy and Mikhailo are gone. You’re the only person I can speak to in Ukrainian. Indeed, move in again! For me you’re not only a favorite poet now, but someone as dear as my homeland.”
“All right!” Shevchenko agreed at last. “Besides, I have to finish your portrait. I’ll bring the paints tomorrow, and on Saturday I’ll move in.”
“Wonderful! We’ll be still working tomorrow, but we agreed to appear at work by turns, since everyone needs to buy something or visit the barber’s. I’ll be home at two o’clock, and we’ll have a meal together.”
Mumbling another “All right,” the poet drank his tea and started undressing.
In the morning, Lazarevsky went to his office, without waking up the poet. Shevchenko woke up late, had a shave, and hurried off to get his paints at his studio at the Gerns’ home. No sooner had he entered the studio than Gern knocked on the door.
“Here is an Easter letter for you, my friend,” Gern said, giving him the letter. “That’s point one. Secondly, I’ve decided to have a rest today and sit for my portrait for a while. I wanted to go hunting, but I’m so tired I can’t go anywhere. Still, you must have taken offense at Zosia and me, seeing as you haven’t finished our portraits yet,” he added, walking up to the easel. “Oh, I see you’ve done something in my absence. Permit me to make one little remark, though: this cord of the aiguillette is always shorter than the other one. Here, take a look!”
The Exile: A novel about Taras Shevchenko Page 44