The Great Alone

by Janet Dailey

  “Go and leave me,” he said.

  Tasha tried not to show how much his reply distressed her, and instead chided him. “What would you eat? How would you live?”

  “Maybe it is better if I die.”

  Although she had guessed that was his wish, hearing him say it snapped something inside. “No!” she protested. All those days and nights she had spent looking after him, all that she had endured would be for nothing. She deserved something in return. “I need you. He needs you!” The sweeping gesture of her hand indicated her son. “Who will take care of us? Who will teach Zachar how to hunt? It is fine for you to die and have no more pain or hunger, but what will happen to us? You are his uncle!” Abruptly she turned away from him, trembling with the fear that had given rise to her anger.

  For a long time the only sound in the cave was Zachar’s babbling, but it prompted Tasha to pick up a root and start chewing on it, even though it seemed tasteless. For the sake of her son, she had to eat.

  “I will go with you,” Walks Straight said at last, speaking in an emotionless voice.

  Tasha didn’t react. She felt too drained.

  During the course of the next several days, he made an effort to get back on his feet and be useful. Tasha could see he was just going through the motions of resuming life, but she was past caring about his lack of will. She went to the village and reclaimed the few personal belongings she’d left there and obtained an old parka for her brother.

  The northern village welcomed them back. Once again they could sleep in a warm barabara with their bellies full. Over the long winter, Tasha watched her son grow chubby again and her brother regain more of his strength. He started hunting again, always alone, and kept to himself, never mingling with the men with whom he had plotted the revolt against the Cossacks. He played with Zachar, making a game of the exercises that developed the muscles he would need as a hunter, yet Tasha never saw her brother smile. Nor did he take part in any of the singing, dancing, or storytelling.

  Everyone on the island knew about what the Cossacks had done. Those survivors with relatives in the other villages had been taken in by their families. Tasha was certain her brother must have heard about the extreme suffering there, but he never spoke of it. And whatever outrage this barbarism had engendered among the natives was smothered by fear that too loud a protest would incur the Cossacks’ wrath again. A few villages had even made peace with Solovey.

  The time of the long nights passed, and the sun began to linger in the sky. One day a storm forced a hunter from another village to take refuge in their camp. That night, while the wind and rain blew outside, everyone gathered around the visitor to learn the latest news from other parts of the island.

  While Zachar slept in the cradle suspended from a cross beam of the sleeping partition, Tasha sat close to the light of the stone lamp and sewed together the intestinal skins of the sea lion to make a waterproof parka for her brother. Walks Straight sat beside her whittling a piece of bone into a properly sized shank for a fish hook.

  Someone asked the hunter about the conditions at the devastated village. “They have little food. Many have grown weak and died.” Tasha glanced apprehensively at her brother, but he gave no sign he had heard the question or the answer. “The Cossacks have suffered this winter, too. Their teeth fall out and their mouths bleed. Eleven have died. Many are weak. Some cannot even stand.”

  “Now would be the time to attack them.” It was a tentatively issued statement, a half-hopeful suggestion waiting to be seconded.

  Walks Straight halted his whittling. As hesitant murmurs swept the room, testing the phrases of revolt, he rose to his feet and slunk into his sleeping cubicle, unnoticed by everyone but Tasha. He unfastened the rolled matting and let it fall to shut himself off from the communal area.

  Tasha looked around to be sure no one was watching, then followed after him. When she lifted aside the woven curtain, she saw him lying on his side facing the wall. She knelt beside him.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  The silence lasted so long Tasha didn’t think he intended to answer her. “We will never be free of the Cossacks,” he said finally.

  “Why? Our warriors were victorious against them before. Five vessels were destroyed and the Cossacks aboard them killed. Why can it not be done again?” she argued, trying to instill some resistance in him. “They won a single battle. Does that mean we should give up the struggle?”

  “They are too strong for us.”

  “Because they have muskets?”

  “Because they have the power of fear,” he replied flatly. Tasha drew back, realizing he was right. Fear was their strongest weapon. Look at what it had done to him.

  The island turned green and the female fur seals swam through the passes on their annual migration to a destination in the north known only to them. And six more scurvy-stricken Cossacks died in Unalaska. Some emboldened natives urged their fellow villagers to unite in another uprising and encountered considerable reluctance, especially from those who had suffered such great deprivation. But there were others who listened. Each time such talk started around Walks Straight, he walked away. He wanted to have no knowledge of their plans, possess no information that might be tortured from him.

  Although there were a few isolated skirmishes with the Cossacks, the natives mounted no genuine offensive. But the growing threat of one was enough to prompt Solovey to march his Cossacks on the villages. Most of the natives fled before him without a fight, then returned to find their dwellings ransacked, their furs stolen, their bidarkas demolished, and their weapons smashed. With relatively little bloodshed, Solovey succeeded in crushing all resistance.

  Tasha gazed at the brown-turning grass. A cold wind from the northwest stung her face and pushed the clouds against the mountain peak. There were no more berries to be picked, no more edible roots to be dug, no more eggs to be stolen from the cliff nests of birds. The dried salmon from the summer’s runs was all gone.

  Tasha looked at the skinny legs of her son, now four summers old. Food was becoming scarcer as more Aleuts were forced to seek their food from the barren land instead of the sea. Items that had previously supplemented their diet of fish and the meat of sea mammals had become their staples. Now they, too, were gone. Soon Zachar’s belly would become distended.

  She turned to her brother. “You were right. The Cossacks are stronger. By the time winter is over, hundreds will die of hunger. The old and the sick will go first, then the very young.” She paused to study Zachar. “If we are to live, we must leave the village.”

  “Where can we go?” They were trapped on the island, with no means to leave it.

  “To the camp of the Cossacks,” she stated. “They have food. They have bidarkas and weapons for hunting. We will live with them.”

  “They will not let us.”

  “They will.” Tasha had to believe it, and she had to convince herself that she knew the way to approach them. After living with Andrei, she knew of only one thing these Cossacks respected, one thing they feared—the Creator of All Things, whom they called God.

  Once she had made her decision, Tasha wasted no time carrying it out. Walks Straight seemed to have lost the capacity to feel strongly about anything and offered no objection to her plan. They had packed their personal possessions, gathered up Zachar, and set out for the Cossack camp.

  As they approached the hut, five Cossacks armed with muskets came out to greet them. Tasha recognized Solovey among them and quelled the rising uneasiness that accompanied the gruesome images the sight of him evoked. She wasn’t worried that he would remember her brother. The hunched, white-haired man walking beside her bore little resemblance to the man Walks Straight had been.

  “What do you want?” Solovey challenged.

  “We wish to be baptized,” Tasha stated. She observed the stunned look that came into his eyes, and felt her confidence grow. “We have learned the power of your God. We wish to be baptized and allowed to live with you.�
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  “You speak very well.” Solovey continued to stare at her.

  “My father was a Cossack. I am called Tasha. This is my son, Zachar.” She indicated the blue-eyed boy in her brother’s arms. She didn’t mention her son’s previous baptism, since she didn’t think it would hurt him to be baptized again.

  “Who is this man?” Solovey pointed to Walks Straight.

  “He is my brother. He will need a Cossack name when you baptize him, too.”

  The ceremonial conversion was hastily arranged. All of them were given the surname of Tarakanov, after one of the Cossacks present. And Walks Straight acquired the Cossack name Pavel Ivanovich Tarakanov.

  The newly converted family was allowed to build a small barabara alongside the Cossacks’ hut. Tasha Lukyevena Tarakanova was enlisted to cook for them while Pavel Ivanovich agreed to hunt sea otter for them.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Autumn 1778

  Although there had been sporadic resistance by some of the Aleut natives for several more years, the punitive actions taken by Solovey and others had ended the mass revolt. Nearly half the Aleuts had died, some in battle but most from starvation and disease. Again the Aleuts and the Cossacks co-existed on the islands, the Aleuts hunting the fur-bearing sea mammals, exchanging them for food and goods, and paying their tribute in furs. There were still incidents of cruelty practiced by the Cossacks, but the Aleuts had learned from others of their tribe who had been taken to the Cossack land across the waters that the ones who committed these acts were eventually punished by Cossack leaders in their faraway villages. It was their only consolation.

  Walks Straight, called Pavel Tarakanov by the Cossacks, had accepted that things could never be any different. It had taken the heart from him, as it had from so many others.

  As an incoming wave raced onto the beach, Walks Straight finished his repair of a small tear in his hide-covered bidarka and looked across the keel of his upturned craft at his nephew, Zachar. He watched while the boy of sixteen summers continued his inspection of his own bidarka, one he’d built himself, checking its seaworthiness in preparation for his first extended sea hunt.

  The first whiskers of manhood grew thinly on his face. Like the straight hair on his head, they did not possess the black color of the raven; instead they were the muddy-brown color of the tundra. His eyes were blue—quick and far-seeing, a hunter’s eyes. He wore Cossack trousers beneath his bird-skin parka. Walks Straight still clung to the old way, the way of his father. But Zachar knew nothing of it. He was used to the Cossacks coming in ships, staying for a while, lying with Aleut women like his mother, fathering children like his little brother Mikhail, then eventually leaving, only to be replaced by more Cossacks on other ships.

  A large skin-boat carrying several Cossacks approached the beach, attracting Walks Straight’s attention. As soon as it touched the shore, the men scrambled out of it and hurriedly dragged the boat onto the sand. Walks Straight observed their great agitation as they immediately set out toward the hut of their leader, and he followed them to learn the cause of it.

  Zachar was quickly at his side. “What has excited them?”

  “Maybe they have seen a whale.” A whale would provide enough food for an entire winter. Although it was late in the season, it was possible that a stray whale, perhaps even dead or wounded, was still in the vicinity.

  The one called Gerasim Grigorovich Ismailov, leader of all the Cossacks on the island and master of the sailing vessel Sv Pavel, anchored in the bay, came out of his hut. He was a stern, commanding figure in his uniform and heavy coat, and he possessed a navigator’s arrogance, looking down on anyone not of his rank.

  “For what reason have you disturbed me?” he demanded of the shaggy, ill-kempt promyshleniki before him.

  “The two British ships, the same ones that were seen off the island in early summer, anchored two days ago in a bay at the northern end of the island.”

  Ismailov stiffened slightly at the news. The last time the two British vessels had been reported sailing in the area, he had sent a letter to their commanders, delivered by one of the Creoles, and had received no reply.

  “What is their purpose? Have you learned?” Ismailov knew the British commanders had to be aware these islands were occupied by the Russians, and he also knew the British were heavily engaged in the fur trade on the North American continent with extensive operations in the Hudson Bay area.

  “According to reports from natives in the area, they are making repairs on their vessels and replenishing their freshwater supply ashore. They have landed some cargo,” one promyshlenik added cautiously, uncertain whether the intentions of the British were as innocent as they appeared.

  Up to this time, the fur wealth of this long chain of islands was known only to the Russians. When the Russian merchants sold their valuable pelts on the European or Chinese markets, they never disclosed where they had obtained them. The only rivalry was among themselves, so far. Therefore, it was important that Ismailov ascertain the reason British ships were in these waters. But Ismailov was not a man who looked into shadows.

  “We shall have to try again to make contact with our foreign visitors,” he stated, then dismissed the promyshleniki, and went back inside his private quarters, sparsely furnished, mainly with items from his ship’s cabin.

  His glance skipped over the two-year-old bastard offspring of his concubine, the boy child a product of another man’s seed and not his own, then it lingered briefly on his concubine. As far as Ismailov was concerned, the native woman and his private distillery were the only things that made these wretched islands bearable. At the moment, however, there were more pressing matters that claimed him.

  He unfastened his heavy coat and anticipated the touch of the hands that helped him off with it. His concubine, Tasha, served him well, catering to more than his sexual needs, whether it was preparing palatable meals, properly fixing tea in the samovar, or mending his clothes. She was intelligent, almost civilized.

  “Bring me my writing papers and implements,” he instructed, then walked to the wooden table and sat down in the chair. After she had set the pewter inkstand and parchment paper before him, Ismailov picked up the fine Russian quill, then paused before dipping it in the inkwell. “I want you to fix a salmon pie, baked with rye meal.” Presenting new arrivals in town with a gift of bread and salt was an ancient Russian custom, symbolizing a wish that the newcomers would never want for life’s necessities. If his notes failed to draw any response from the British captains, Ismailov hoped the accompanying gift would.

  After writing notes to both of the ships’ captains, he sealed them with wax and pressed his signet ring onto the warm wax to stamp it with the imprint of the double-headed eagle, the symbol of the Romanov Empire. The following day he dispatched one of his Cossack officers to deliver his messages and the gift of salmon pie to the British.

  A different matter required Ismailov’s attention on another part of Unalaska Island. While he was gone, his Cossack messenger returned with one of the officers from the British ship. Tasha saw the strange-speaking man several times during his short stay at the settlement. No one could understand what he said and they had to rely on hand signs to communicate. Tasha noticed how cheerful and inquisitive he was, curious about everything. His nature seemed very different from the Cossacks’.

  Bad weather kept the stranger in camp a day longer and forced Walks Straight and Zachar to delay their departure on the long sea hunt they’d planned. Although Tasha knew her son was impatient to leave on his first adventure, she was relieved that her brother had postponed it. She trusted that Walks Straight would look after him, yet she worried. Zachar was proving to be a skilled hunter, but his experience was limited to the offshore waters of the island. Venturing into the open sea would be a test of all his skill and knowledge. So many things could happen. Perhaps most of all, Tasha recognized that her son would come back a man.

  Then the weather improved, the stranger left to go back to his sh
ip, accompanied by the peredovchik and two Cossacks; but Walks Straight continued to delay their leaving, insisting they wait until the bad weather had passed beyond their intended route. Tasha was grateful for the few more days’ reprieve, but she didn’t have time to enjoy it. When Ismailov returned from his journey and learned of the invitation extended by the British to visit their ships and exchange map information of the area, an invitation accompanied by several bottles of fine liquor, everyone including Tasha was involved in the preparations. The sloop Sv Pavel had to be readied for sail, the decks swabbed from bow to stern, the sails patched, additional provisions stowed aboard, and all the furnishings returned to Ismailov’s cabin, not to mention all the minor tasks like hauling water to the structure on shore housing the steam bath, gathering driftwood for the fire to heat it, and cutting grass to cushion the floor. Never did Ismailov even consider making the half a day’s trek overland to the bay where the British ships were anchored. He was a navigator, the master of his vessel, and he would meet with the British as such.

  On the day the sloop sailed for the north side of the island, Walks Straight and Zachar also set out on their journey. Tasha stood on the beach while little Mikhail trotted after the seagulls wheeling overhead. She wished she had checked Zachar’s kamleika one more time to make certain there was no break in the waterproof garment. Now it was too late. She watched the two kayaks grow smaller and smaller as they headed toward the mouth of the bay and the open sea beyond. Soon she could no longer distinguish her brother from her son, but she remained on the beach, watching until they were completely out of sight.

  For a long time, Zachar had waited to embark on this extended voyage, confident of his skill and certain he was ready for it. After anticipating it for so long, the excitement of actually going carried him for a considerable distance in the open water. The sea stretched from horizon to horizon, an endless undulation of dark gray waters. The expanse of it seemed to grow greater and greater. Slowly a sense of aloneness began to creep through him. Looking across the trackless sea, he suddenly felt very small. He realized how little his home island was, how big the ocean was, and how easily a hunter could become lost.