The Exile: A novel about Taras Shevchenko

by Zinaida Tulub

  “We were under the rule of Sultan Bukei then. He plead­ed with the czar to permit us to settle for good on the lands between the Ural and the Volga. The czar agreed, and we were happy at the news. Five thousand yurts moved across the Ural ‘to the rich lands.’ But our joy did not last long. As we learned, the shores of the Caspian with their fishing grounds and reeds had long belonged to Prince Yusupov and Count Bezborodko, and the lands be­tween the Uzen and the Ural was the domain of the Yayïk Cassacks. Bukei died then, but his son Jangoz and his father-in-law Karaul Hodja were people without either a sense of honesty or honor, or a heart. Apart from the czar’s usual taxes and zakat, he burdened us with a heap of other taxes. But we never had money, and traded just like we do now — for sheep, but not for money. Karaul Hodja came to an agreement with Yusupov, by which we were permit­ted to graze our herds on his lands for money. Whereas Yusupov’s price was two rubles, Karaul Hodja demanded that we pay five. We suffered from hunger, while he grew rich on our tears. Besides, aul after aul came pushing from the Great Steppe across the Ural to winter in our parts. Then came a terrible winter when snowstorms raged with­out end, followed by such glazed frost that no horse could smash the ice crust with its hoof. Day and night we were breaking the crust with ketmens and shovels, but half of our sheep flock still died. The rest could have been saved it we had been allowed to graze in the reeds, but the Yayïk Cossacks refused flatly. And we had no money to pay them…”

  Shakir broke into a heavy cough and could not regain his breath for a long time. Then he continued his story, trying to vent his grief, which had been such a heavy bur­den for him to bear all his life.

  “Our animals perished to the last lamb. Death from hunger stared us in the face. My older wives died that winter. Only Kumish, your mother, stayed alive. Just then a caravan arrived from Bukhara, with rice and flour for which we had neither sheep nor money to pay. Seeing our woe, the Bukharans started selling flour in return for children. Kumish and I went and did a horrible thing: we sold the elder children to save them from starvation and preserve the youngest child. They traded three bowlfuls of flour for a child. So we got nine bowlfuls. The boys sur­vived, but your sister died a day after she was sold. The Bukharans visited us with abuse, demanding that we give you away in her place. And so we decided to flee to our homeland — here, to the Great Steppe. The Russians did not let anyone across the Ural at that time. We had to cross it in the dead of night. But we had neither boat nor raft to do so. We cut dried reeds, covered our heads with hay, and waded into the water. You were put on a sheaf of reeds and covered with hay, too. In this way we were not spotted, because a lot of hay and brushwood washed off the wet meadows by the flood was drifting down the river then. We came to this place, to Djantemir’s aul. His father Undasin had once been a friend of mine, but he was dead by then. Djantemir received us well, like friends: he had a ram butchered, treated us to a meal, but when he learned that we were beggars… Oh well, you know yourself how we have been faring here —” Shakir stopped short.

  Jaisak kept silent, but his tightly compressed lips showed clearly enough what intense bitterness and irrepressible hatred blazed in his heart.

  “Listen to me, son,” Shakir spoke again, spitting a clot of blood out of his mouth. “If you ever come across a Bukharan caravan or get to Margelan, look for the mer­chant Habibula Omer there. He bought your brothers Kasim and Tyulenbai. And if fortune ever smiles on you, redeem them.”

  “All right, ata, I will. I swear I will,” Jaisak said quietly, but firmly. “I’ll get myself a royal eagle for hunting. They say the Russians pay big money for furs. I’ll work hard. Don’t you worry, ata. I won’t let you die of hunger.”

  “There is one more thing I want to tell you, son,” Shakir said quietly after a while. “Take care of our colt as you would of the apple of your eye. He’s born of Karligach, the light-footed mare, and” — he dropped his voice to a barely audible whisper — “of Blizzard, the very same Blizzard that wins every baiga. The colt is priceless, but he has to be fed better, brought up and broken in really well. You know how to handle a horse and teach it so it responds to your voice and understands you without a whip. A horse, mind you, is a reliable, trusty friend: both in trouble and at a baiga it’ll come to the help of its master. In it you will find your luck. I called the colt Abkozad, because when he’s grown up he’ll turn white as airan, and will be prized more than pure gold.”

  Jaisak listened, without saying a word.

  “Do you hear me, son? Will you do what I ask you?” Shakir said and feebly lowered himself onto the piece of felt.

  “I hear you, ata! I’ll do everything you say, and my word is firm as an inscription on rock,” Jaisak replied.

  The old man sighed with relief, as if he had thrown an overheavy burden off his chest, but then he recalled some­thing else and raised his head again.

  “Djantemir, as you know, gives me ten sheep for a year’s work. In thirty years that could have made a whole flock, but he deducts from my earnings for every sheep and ewe lamb a wolf pack tears down. Now I’ve got forty-five sheep and seventy ewe lambs. Remember that and don’t let your memory grow rusty when he’s paying off the poor,” he finished, smiling with bitter irony.

  Both lapsed into silence — Shakir, because the long talk had made him tired, Jaisak, because just then he was trying to stir his maimed fingers, and he sensed with joy that they were bending slightly, although a sharp pain stabbed him above the elbow or somewhere near the shoul­der blades.

  “Allah be praised, I can stir my fingers a bit now,” he said to comfort his father.

  A wane smile lit up Shakir’s face, but his eyes, gazing into emptiness, were illuminated by an inward light that appears with people after some terrible suffering or when they approach the threshold of oblivion.

  Kumish entered with a sack of dung, raked aside the ashes in the fire, and was about to lower the flap of the yurt when Shakir stopped her.

  “Please don’t! I want to breathe some fresh air. It makes me feel better.”

  “But the sun is setting, Shakir dear,” she remarked tim­idly. “There’s still snow in the steppe; you’ll get cold.”

  “I’ll die tomorrow,” the old man said in a stern and mat­ter-of-fact manner. “Let me admire the sun for the last time… and the land… It’s so beautiful,” he added quietly. “Tell the people to come and bid me farewell.”

  Kumish glanced at him with pain and horror, hung down her head, and started to move something by the fire with trembling fingers.

  “I want to see everyone and bid them farewell,” Shakir repeated with effort.

  Suddenly both Jaisak and Kumish realized what a hor­rible truth stood behind these words. Wincing with pain, Jaisak made an attempt to rise.

  “Apa, help me! I shall go,” he said, but could not check the moan escaping his lips.

  Frightened, Kumish rushed to her son.

  “Lie down! I’ll go myself! At once!” she mumbled, and quickly putting on a kerchief, slipped out of the yurt.

  When she was back, a few men were already sitting in the yurt. White-bearded old men wearing soft boots, felt stockings, and warm chapans, made their salaams before the sick man on entering, then they nodded to Jaisak in a friendly way, and unhurriedly, as was proper for the occasion, settled solemnly around Shakir.

  “How do you do, Shakir Ata,” they said, calling him respectfully as they had never done before. “What is the matter with you? You must fight death like your batyr fought the wolves, but not yield to it. It is still early for you to say farewell to life.”

  “It has got the better of me, axakals,” Shakir breathed out with effort, and a fit of coughing attacked him.

  “Axakals, be like fathers to my son. He still needs advice from wise people at an evil hour. Good advice is dearer than a fat ram.”

  “Rightly so! We shall advise and help him!” the axakals responded, interrupting one another.

  Jaisak’s friend, the sinewy tanner Taijan, rum
bled in his low voice:

  “Neither his father nor mother have done him out of his share of a good mind. He himself can give good advice to others.”

  On saying that, he slapped Jaisak’s shoulder in a friendly manner, making the latter wince with pain.

  “Oi boi! I forgot about your wounds!” Taijan said. “For­give me! How’s your arm?”

  “It feels a bit better,” Jaisak replied. “I could stir my fingers today.”

  Shakir lay silent for a while, his eyes shut tight against the glittering snow. Then he raised his head again with an effort and looked around. “Where is Djantemir? What did he say?”

  The drinking bowl slipped out of Kumish’s hand. “But how can you trouble the bai! I just didn’t dare to…” Suddenly Shakir said severely and loudly, with an unex­pected force:

  “Go and tell him: I want to see the son of my friend Undasin, and Rahmatulli’s grandson. Tell him that Shakir is dying.”

  Kumish was so confused that neither her feet nor tongue would obey her.

  Then Jaisak extended his sound hand to Taijan, and said:

  “Help me get up; I will go to see him myself.”

  Clenching his teeth in pain, he got on his weak feet. Somebody threw a sheepskin coat on his shoulders, girded it with a belt, and helped him walk out of the yurt. The sun was already rolling along the distant horizon, slowly slipping down the other, unseen side of the earth. Cold air wafted from the steppe. Kumish lowered the flap of the yurt silently, raked the ashes aside, picked up some embers to light an earthenware wick lamp with sheep fat, and hung it by the shangarak. Then she put dry dung onto the embers, puffed at it, and a thin wisp of smoke curled up to the tunduk. That instant somebody obligingly threw hack the flap, and Djantemir entered.

  “Salaam to you, Shakir, and to you, axakals,” he said and settled in the place of honor where Kumish had hurriedly put the family’s only piece of white felt with trembling hands. “What did you want to tell me?”

  Shakir raised his fading eyes, and suddenly the glow of life was in them again.

  “I want you to confirm the truth of what I shall say now,” he said, gasping. “I am dying, Djantemir. To lie before death means to condemn my soul to eternal torment. Tell me, have I worked well throughout all these years since I returned lo my native steppe from beyond the Ural?”

  Djantemir kept silent for a minute, thinking over whether an answer in the negative would bring him any loss or harm, but unable to hold the fixed gaze of the old herder, he nodded reluctantly.

  “That I confirm. You have worked honestly and well. Kumish, too, has worked well, and your son has done a good job and fought the wolves like a real jigit.”

  “Yes, like a batyr,” the axakals, silent until then, said of one accord. “He hacked to death six wolves — and that is no joke.”

  “He also wounded two she-wolves so badly they were breathing their last when our jigits arrived.”

  “Whenever a snowstorm broke, I rescued your flock as if it were my own property,” Shakir went on in a barely audible voice. “And now I’ll explain why all of us have worked like we did. Our honor did not allow us to work badly. So confirm now, Djantemir, what kin we come from, and that your father Undasin was my best friend and you visited our aul as a boy and were a guest in our yurt — in a white yurt like yours.”

  “Well, I did visit your home,” Djantemir confirmed, this time irritated. “But you, too, Shakir Ata, had been my father’s guest for weeks. We’re quits on that point and nobody owes anybody anything.”

  “And nobody is asking anything,” Jaisak flared up.

  Djantemir only shot him a sidelong glance with the nar­row slits of his eyes, and turned to Shakir.

  “So what can I do for you, Shakir? I have a guest, the akyn Abdrahman, waiting for me now. I want to hear his songs. You’re holding me up.”

  “I don’t need anything,” Shakir said hoarsely. “But Jaisak was mauled by wolves, because your son ran away to a toi with his friends and left my son alone. To award him — that is the debt of honor you owe me,” he concluded, touching the most sensitive point of the bai’s code of honor.

  Blood rushed to Djantemir’s head. He was about to let bad language escape his lips, but his ear caught a whisper of indignation and a stir among the axakals. To make things worse, here were the elders of the entire kin with whom he had to reckon. The words of Shakir, who had never told anyone in the aul about his past, had produced a tre­mendous impression on them. So restraining his tongue which was ready to roll off abuse, Djantemir managed a forced smile and spoke out, lending his voice unusual warmth.

  “I have not forgotten anything, Shakir Ata. I remember how you taught me to ride on horseback and told me old tales about Koblanda Batyr. I know very well the meaning of honor, and I shall reward Jaisak. You, too, I shall not forget. So do not worry and get well.”

  Picking up the ends of his sheepskin coat, the heavy-set and haughty bai went out of the yurt, without granting anyone a parting look.

  The men listened intently as the slightly frozen snow crunched under his receding tread. After his footfalls had died away, everyone started to speak at once.

  “But why have you kept silent?” old Faizullah said, slap­ping one palm against the other. “We didn’t have the slight­est idea of what he had done to you!”

  The tanner Taijan grated his teeth and spit out angrily.

  “What a tight-fisted sort our bai is! He’ll think ten times before he makes up his mind whether to give you two sheep.”

  “Two sheep won’t save him,” the thick-set Baimagambet threw in. “That scum’s turned his father’s friend into a servant.”

  “He’s disgraced our entire kin,” the bone-setter Abdullah droned away. “I wouldn’t keep silent; I’d tell the people the whole truth. We’d force him to be human!”

  A warm wave of sympathy seemed to have made the yurt a warmer, cozier and dearer place to live in. Kumish looked at the people and did not recognize them. It seemed that suddenly some secret recess of goodness had opened in their souls which she had not suspected before. In the meantime, the angered and excited men kept on talking, interrupting one another, and no one noticed that Shakir’s head had fallen back and a heavy rattle came from his chest.

  “Tea! Give him hot tea!” Jaisak suddenly cried out, rush­ing to his father’s side. “He’s dying!”

  The next instant everyone went into a sudden bustle, trying to allay the suffering of the dying man in whatever way they could. Someone ran to a neighboring yurt where a samovar was aboil, and instead of a bowl of tea brought the samovar for the dying Shakir. Someone else produced drinking bowls from a trunk, filled them with fresh tea leaves, and moments later Kumish, swallowing her tears, was giving Shakir hot tea with camel’s milk which Kuljan had brought promptly. Faizullah fed the fire with some additional dung which sent a sharp smell throughout the yurt and made the dying man cough heavily.

  Taijan rushed out of the yurt and returned with some blazing hot bricks on a shovel; he put them on the fire and threw the smoking dung out of the yurt.

  When the blue cloud of smoke dispersed, he went out­side and carefully closed the tunduk. It became warmer in the yurt immediately.

  But Shakir could not recover consciousness any more. He had spent all his effort for the last talk with Djantemir and was drained of strength now, his hair, grown longer throughout his illness, sticking to his sweaty forehead. His chest rose and fell heavily and spasmodically. The axakals were leaving the yurt one by one, after having said to Shakir warm words of parting. Only Taijan stayed behind to help the utterly exhausted Kumish and Jaisak who was still bedridden, his teeth firmly clenched lest he moan for the pain his wounds caused.

  Shakir gasped for breath and thrashed the whole night through; one hour before dawn his last breath gave way to the serenity of death.

  When the sun rose, eight old men came to the black yurt to wash and prepare the deceased for his last road in accordance with ancient custom, whi
le Taijan and two jigits galloped off to the cemetery to dig a grave.

  Kumish, as a woman, could not be present during the washing of the deceased. She did not leave his side to the last moment, because once he was covered with a shroud, she would never see his face again.

  Shortly after, several women came for her and took her to one of the neighboring yurts where she was settled on a piece of felt, surrounded in a tight circle, and made to join a mournful joktau, a dirge with which every Kazakh woman accompanied her husband to the grave.

  While the women sang the joktau, intoxicated by its somber beauty, the axakals washed Shakir, shaved his head, trimmed his beard and mustache, and dressed him in a shroud — a long piece of white cloth sewn together only on two sides, with an opening for the head. Then they wrapped him up in three long pieces of thin white cloth from head to toe, and tied his feet, hips, and body below the shoulders with three white kerchiefs. After that he was put down on his right side in the place of honor facing the entrance, and curtained off with a clean cloth screen.

  Shakir’s words must have hit Djantemir’s pride painfully, because this time he did not sting himself and had sent the broad long pieces of cloth, kerchiefs and a luxurious Persian rug in which Shakir was wrapped before being carried out of the yurt, and had three fattened sheep slaugh­tered for the funeral repast.

  The mullah intoned the prayers long and solemnly in the yurt, while Kumish, not daring to break the law, stayed outside, her face buried in the snow she was lying on. When at last the body of Shakir was put on a camel and the sick Jaisak placed in Djantemir’s sleigh and almost all the men of the aul left to see Shakir off on his last journey, she got to her feet submissively and returned into the yurt where the women were already preparing the funeral repast.