The Exile: A novel about Taras Shevchenko

by Zinaida Tulub

  “What baseness,” Gern said through set teeth. “But what scoundrel stands behind it? Could it be the doing of Perovsky’s people?”

  Gern went up the inner spiral stairway to the first floor to see Obruchev in his private apartments.

  “Now, here you are at last, my dear fellow!” the general greeted him. “Would you please inquire whether the invi­tations for the post-Lent banquet have been sent out to everyone?”

  “Yes, sir!” Gern replied mechanically. “But permit me first of all to present this sample of unparalleled villainy,” Gern added, putting Isaiev’s delation on the desk.

  Obruchev shot a surprised glance at Gern, put on his glasses and started reading. With every line he read his face turned alternately pale, brick-red, covered with blotches and profuse beads of sweat.

  “What a scoundrel! Oh my God, what an out-and-out blackguard!” the general muttered again and again. “What a dirty, base soul. But I cannot leave the delation without considering it.”

  “No, you cannot,” Gern confirmed. “The question has been put all too dangerously and basely.”

  “You believe so, too? So what do you think must be done then?”

  “First of all, a search must be made at Shevchenko’s quarters, but he must be warned to destroy or hide his manuscripts, if he has any correspondence and drawings. If the search does not produce anything and Isaiev hasn’t written to the Third Department, the matter might be hushed up somehow. But the tenor of the delation is too brazen and malicious. It is fraught with serious consequences. So maybe… It’s a pity the post office is closed, for I could have found out… The matter must he postponed for consideration after the holidays.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Obruchev said, agitated. “Please make the proper arrangements, dear Karl Ivanovich. One more thing: send that villain an invitation to the banquet. Of all the things I had to live to see! I’d have spit at him, and here I must shake his hand and invite him.”

  And suddenly, his voice breaking into a thin falsetto, he cried out:

  “Oh no, I won’t endure it! In this case you have to be a rock, without pity or respect for anyone or anything de­cent! Poor wretch Shevchenko! What a bitter fate for such a talent!”

  “Calm down, for God’s sake! If the search does not pro­duce anything, it will neutralize the delation by half.”

  “Yes, yes! You are right! Act and do it in a hurry. Call other officers for help.”

  “No, I’ll do it myself,” Gern said with determination and quickly left the study. Back in his office, he locked the mail in a drawer and made for the door.

  “Get me a horse!” he called to the orderly on duty.

  A saddled horse stood always at the ready in the head­quarters stable for urgent occasions. The orderly arrived at a run, leading the horse, and Gern galloped off to his home.

  A padlock hung on the door of the outhouse.

  “Where’s Shevchenko?” Gern asked Guriy.

  “I don’t know. He hasn’t returned since he left yester­day,” Guriy replied, looking at “his captain” with alarm and pity. “You should eat something, your Excellency. Otherwise you’ll get weak and catch some illness in no time. I’ll have a meal served at once.”

  It was only now Gern felt how hungry he really was. He took off his greatcoat, greedily gulped down the thought­fully served cutlet and a cup of strong coffee with cream, and made to leave immediately.

  “If Taras Grigorievich shows up, tell him not to go anywhere, and serve his meal at his studio. Tell him I need him on urgent and extraordinarily important business. I’ll be back soon,” he added and mounted his horse.

  At the headquarters Gern wrote a letter to the gendarm­erie colonel, requesting that the order of a search at the quarters of Private Shevchenko be issued to clear up wheth­er the latter was writing poetry and painting in defiance of the “Most August” will, and then ho called the clerk on duty.

  “When are you relieved, dear chap?” Gern asked him.

  “At nine in the evening, your Excellency.”

  “Well, after you are relieved deliver this letter to the gendarmerie colonel and make him sign for it,” Gern or­dered, went outdoors, called a coach, and made off to Lazarevsky’s.

  The venom of Isaiev’s delation did not go to Obruchov’s entire system at once.

  At first he flung snatches of abuse and contempt against the scandalmonger Isaiev, pitying Shevchenko in the process, but when Gern had left and he read through the delation a second time, he realized with full clarity that the edge of the delation’s message was directed not against the artist, but against himself.

  “Oh, what an abhorrent snake!” he cried out shrilly. Slightly opening the door of the large banquet hall, where, under the management of Mathilda Petrovna, four lackeys were laying the huge tables for the banquet to break the fast, he called her in a voice he himself did not recognize:

  “Mathilda, come here! Quickly!”

  “What is the matter?” she asked on entering. “Why are you shouting like that! People might think God knows what.”

  “It’s horrible! Simply incredible!” Obruchev exclaimed, not listening to her. “That scoundrel Isaiev informed on us that we permitted Shevchenko to write and to paint in defiance of the emperor’s will. Do you understand what that smacks of? Even your portrait was dragged into the dela­tion!”

  “What delation?” she asked, surprised. “And what has my portrait to do with it?”

  “I told Butakov that Shevchenko was forbidden to write and to paint, but the captain insisted and kept persuading me: ‘For the needs of the state and for science even con­victs, let alone exiles, can be used.’ So I went and took pity on the poor wretch, and now it spells my destruction! You know how rancorous our sovereign is! It’s just enough for a report to reach Orlov — and that will be the end of my career! Everything will go to rack and ruin. And there is no one to stand up for me!” Obruchev cried hysterically, clutching his head.

  “God forbid, Voldemar!” Mathilda Petrovna tried to calm him down. “Everything will work itself out somehow.”

  But it only made Obruchev the more agitated.

  “I have no protectors among the higher-ups!” he shouted. “I am a little man who’s paved his own way in life! I’m not an aristocrat with influential aunts or noble relatives! That’s what being kind and pitying people can lead to! Enough of that. I’ll bring him back to the barracks! Into prison with him! I’ve got children, a family! I just can’t play with their future!”

  “Hush! Hush! For God’s sake, hush!” Mathilda Petrovna implored him.

  She gave him tincture of valerian to drink, offered him smelling salts, but Obruchev would not calm down for a long time and kept repeating with a ring of despair in his voice:

  “In our day it’s impossible to be a human being! You have to be a rock! An animal! An executioner! Oh my God, whatever will happen to me now? What will happen?”

  By midday all the offices were closed, and the clerks had left. Lazarevsky, too, hurried to his quarters. After the midday meal Shevchenko took to painting again. The work progressed easily and quickly — he sensed with joy that the portrait was coming out well, not only because it represent­ed the sitter’s likeness so well; it was painted with feeling and emanated the warmth of his relationship with his young friend.

  After working for over an hour, he made a last daub, and put the palette on the windowsill.

  “Enough,” he said to Lazarevsky. “Otherwise I might spoil it unexpectedly. In the twilight of your life you’ll look at the portrait, recall our friendship and say a kindly word about your Kobzar.”

  Lazarevsky silently put his arm around Shevchenko’s shoulder.

  The friends started to prepare for matins and the solemn breaking of the fast. Lazarevsky was invited to the Obruchevs, and Shevchenko to Madame Kutina, the landlady. A look in the mirror prompted him to visit the barber’s in the neighborhood. Lazarevsky was changing when a coach stopped at the porch and Gern entered
his room almost at a run.

  “Where is Shevchenko?” he asked, without greeting.

  “He’s preparing to go on a visit and went to the barber’s around the corner,” Lazarevsky replied sensing something ominous.

  “For God’s sake, call him quickly and tell him to go to my home on the double. He’s been denounced to Obruchev, and there’ll be a search at his studio today. Burn every­thing that might bring him any harm: destroy all traces of poetry, drawings, letters, and hide the most valuable things in a reliable place. And I beg of you to make it really fast: every minute is precious.”

  “Be seated please, and I’ll call him right away,” Laza­revsky said, going off into a hustle.

  But Gern was in a hurry himself and, after saying goodbye, he added to the confused young man:

  “Tell him to use my coach. Every minute is precious.”

  Lazarevsky ran off to the barber’s, looked inside, but Shevchenko was already gone. He returned homo at a trot, entered the kitchen and called Shevchenko who was press­ing the trousers of his new frock coat just then.

  “We’ve got to go to your studio: it’ll be searched to­night. You’ve been denounced to Obruchev.”

  “The vermin’s seeking revenge,” the poet remarked with a smile, and went outdoors.

  Shevchenko and Lazarevsky reached his studio by coach in fifteen minutes. He dumped a suitcase of various papers onto the table, and asked ironically:

  “Well, what do we burn of this lot?”

  In the meantime, Guriy had brought firewood and kindled the stove, Lazarevsky started looking through the mail.

  “I don’t know myself. Gern mentioned drawings and manuscripts. Well, and what about the rest?”

  “Burn Varvara Repnina’s letters. Orlov threatened her with arrest for corresponding with me,” Shevchenko said with determination and tossed a bundle of her letters he cherished so much into the stove.

  Following Repnina’s letters, the portraits of Gern and his wife were consigned to the flames, as were dozens of sketches of the Aral Sea and its coastal cliffs, and Lizohub’s letters.

  “Maybe we should leave something?” Lazarevsky asked once again.

  To which Shevchenko replied one and the same thing: “Burn!”

  “Listen, Taras,” Lazarevsky stopped him at last. “If we burn everything, they’ll realize that you’ve been warned of the search and the suspicion will fall on Karl Ivanovich. He’s the only person who could have known about the search at all. Something has to be left behind as bait for the gendarmes.”

  “You’re right,” Shevchenko agreed. “Enough of the burn­ing. Let’s go to your quarters now. We’ll have to destroy something there, too.”

  They checked once more to see whether any rough copy of a poem or a drawing was left, and were about to leave when Shevchenko decided to stay at the last moment.

  “Go home yourself. Hide your portrait, and everything you’ve got in your writing desk throw into the flames to the last scrap. Here, take my bootleg books. Keep them as the apple of your eye until better times. I have to meet my ‘guests’ openly. Besides. I’ll have to clean up: look what a mess we left. It’s the eve of Easter Day, after all, and every home has been cleaned for the occasion.”

  Lazarevsky did not argue. Shevchenko saw him to the coach, embraced him strongly, and the coach rolled away.

  At the Sakmar Gate a coach with the chief of police, the parade-ground aide Martinov, and a gendarme colonel came driving on their way.

  They’re after Taras, Lazarevsky thought and a chill ran down his spine.

  Shevchenko put the suitcase under the table, arranged his personal belongings in order, glad to have left his oil paints at Lazarevsky’s quarters, swept up the floor, quickly pulled on a new shirt, dressed in his holiday frock coat, put on a tie and cuff links as if he were really prepared to go to a party, and that moment he heard the coach rolling up, heavy footfalls, and the jangle of spurs. Someone pulled the unlocked door open, thumped in the little entrance hall with heavy boots and the gendarme colonel entered the room, followed by the chief of police and the parade-ground aide. Two policemen took up position at either side of the door.

  “You’re under arrest!” the colonel said rudely to Shev­chenko, and ordered the policemen: “Search the quarters!”

  One of them rushed to the other room, where a candle was also burning, and started rummaging in the bed. The other lit a candle and went into the kitchen, while the colo­nel and the chief of police dumped onto the table the contents of the suitcase which held only one quarter of what had been in it before, and started reading the letters that had been left as bait for the searchers. They leafed through the books and old newspapers in search or marginal marks. Martinov did not take any part in the search. Wearing a full dress uniform he sat in an armchair by the window. His face had an expression of contemptuous boredom, as he lazily pulled on a cigarette and glanced quizzically at Shevchenko.

  The poet stood silently near the table; he was outwardly calm, though his face was a little paler than usual and his blue eyes seemed to have turned completely black. He had expected an ordinary search of the type practiced in the barracks in the presence of the battalion officers of the day and two noncoms, but the appearance of a gendarme colonel overwhelmed him and told him everything. Here was a much more complicated case. It was not simply the consequence of a delation written by a vengeful ensign whose information could be easily turned against him, since he had been the first to have his portrait painted and recommended others to avail themselves of the artist’s services. Either something had happened with the Polish circle or Isaiev had sent his delation to the capital. That would bring Shevchenko back to Orsk to the barracks and drill.

  His thoughts thrashed like mice in a trap, as in his mind he chose the proper replied to the possible interrogation. The desire to evade a new blow of fate and not tumble into the trou-de-loup along his path to freedom grew with mounting force from the bottom of his heart.

  The searched lasted a long time. It became unbearably hot in the room. A cloud of cigarette smoke hung under the ceiling. The stove gave off a stifling heat that made the corpulent colonel busy wiping the sweat off his clean-shaved head with a handkerchief. He unbuttoned the collar of his uniform, and then Martinov went over to the window and flung it open.

  The room was invaded by the fragrant cool of the spring night, mixed with the fragrance of resinous aspen buds and blooming bide cherry. A young nightingale was timidly trying to burst into song under a pitch-black sky studded with flickering stars.

  And suddenly this fragrance-laden, fresh silence was rent by the boisterous, dissonant toll of Easter bells. Shevchenko straightened up, while the colonel rose to his feet.

  “We’ve been here too long. Griniuk! Sevastianov! Put all the papers into a sack. We’ll look into them back at the station,” he added, selecting two or three letters from the bundle and shoving them into his pocket. “Don’t be late for the banquet, gentlemen. They say the Obruchevs are serving some special pâté of duck liver.”

  Then he stepped up to Martinov and threw out his arms to embrace and kiss him by Greek Orthodox custom

  “Christ has risen. Accept my best wishes!”

  The gesture made Martinov recoil, and he looked in Shevchenko’s direction.

  “Aprés! Et pas ici, ” the muttered through set teeth and withdrew to the window, through which he flicked his glowing cigarette butt into the night.

  The chief of police and the colonel were hurriedly buttoning up their greatcoats when a weird sound made them turn round abruptly: Shevchenko was gazing into the night and shaking all over in a fit of angry and wild laughter.

  February 1959 — October 1962

  Glossary Of Kazakh Words Used In The Book

  A

  Aga, lit. elder brother; form of respectable address to an elderly person

  Agach, tree

  Airan, a drink prepared from fermented milk

  Ait (n.), religious festival;
(exel.) Sick him!

  Ak, white

  Akyn, folk singer, poet-improviser

  A man (interj.), Help! Have mercy!

  Amengerka, wife or bride-to-be which after the death of her husband or fiancé passes on to his brothers or next of kin as inheritance Apa, mother

  Aral, island.

  Aral Teniz (sea with islands), Aral Sea

  Argamak, thoroughbred horse

  Askar, soldier (infantryman)

  Ata, father

  Aul, village or nomad camp

  Aulia, saint, holy man

  Axakal, white-bearded, old man. The Muslims are permitted to wear beards from 60 year’s on; those with black beards are called karasakals, with white beards, axakals

  Azan, call for prayer cried out by a muezzin from the minaret

  of a mosque

  B

  Bai, rich landowner who, apart from servants, herds and cattle, had at times his own armed guard or retinue

  Baibishe, senior wife in a polygamous marriage

  Baiga, horse race

  Baigash, beggar

  Batyr, a brave, hero

  Barimta, armed raid on a cattle herd or aul for plunder

  Bishbarmak, cooked mutton

  C

  Chapan, a man’s or woman’s ankle-length coat like garment with long sleeves, mostly of wool, sometimes of silk ‘or velvet

  D

  Djelomiyka (jolim ul)t light summer yurt

  J

  Jailiaou, summer alpine pasture

  Jamba, bar of silver or gold used as a target in archery competi­tions during a toi

  Jalak, a hopelessly poor nomad who owned no cattle

  Jigit, a young man, brave warrior

  Joktau, funeral lament, dirge

  Jut, glazed frost

  K

  Kade, a bridegroom’s wedding present for his bride

  Kal bopali, words used to call tamed eagles