The Exile: A novel about Taras Shevchenko

by Zinaida Tulub

  The happy Djantemir ordered the slaughtering of six fat sheep and had the whole aul have its fill of bishbarmak and manty, then he treated each tyulengut and shepherd to a full bowl of kumiss, and gave orders to set off.

  During the heat of the departure, when the last jolini uyami were already loaded on the camels, a number of women and axakals came riding into the aul. They imme­diately made out who the bai was and all as one went after Djantemir with shouts and laments, imploring that he give them their sheep back.

  “We are Kazakhs just like you, bai,” a gray-haired woman with a proud face said, a tremor in her tearful voice. “Wasn’t it enough that the Khivans fell on us in winter, ransacked our aul and took away our men and sons into slavery — and then for you, one of our own people, to come along and finish us off? You’re dooming us to a death of hunger.”

  “Give us our sheep back! We are not to blame for Allah having punished you in the Karakum,” an old axakal with a sparse beard and a copper-bronze face said. “Give it to us as the law of Allah and his Prophet wills! We are not some giaours but true believers like you.”

  “There is no such law that permits people of our blood to rob each other!”

  “You murdered people!” the others shouted, interrupting one another.

  “So go to Allah with your complaints,” Djantemir snapped back, baring his teeth savagely. “There are no brands on the sheep to tell who they belong to. It could be my flock which had run away during the sandstorm. I don’t know anything and don’t want to know!” he shrugged his shoulders. Picking up the ends of his chapan, he walked up to his horse, jumped into the saddle with unexpected agility, and ordered:

  “Move on!”

  “So that’s the way you’re putting things.” The strangers rushed at him. “The sheep might not be branded, but your horses have your brand on them. When one of your jigits was killed and fell from his horse, our people captured the horse, and we’ll prove to every khan and sultan that you plundered us like a Khivan robber.”

  “Like a highwayman, and not a bai who enjoys respect!”

  “Give us our flock back, and we won’t complain to anyone!” the woman with the proud face implored Djan­temir again.

  “And Allah will reward you tenfold!” the other women joined her, weeping.

  “Move on!” Djantemir shouted at the top of his voice. “And you,” he turned to his tyulenguts, “turn them out neck and crop.”

  The jigits exchanged glances, wavering: young that they were, it was unfit for them to chase away gray-bearded men, let alone gray-haired women.

  To put an end to it all, Djantemir spurred his horse and intentionally rode up to the front, bypassing the camels. The people he had had plundered shook their fists and hurled shrieking curses at his back.

  Jaisak heard everything that had been going on. He was ashamed and it pained him to look at the plundered and unhappy people who were really doomed to death. A fierce hatred blazed in his heart, but he did not dare give the people back their sheep. Suddenly Taijan rode up to him.

  “Ride ahead, my friend, and I’ll give if not everything, then at least three hundred of the sheep to their true owners. Our skinflint won’t notice anything for the dust, and then we’ll find an explanation later on.”

  “All right!” Jaisak agreed with righteous rage and rode toward the dense cloud of dust hovering in the wake of the aul, behind which the heavy figure of Djantemir had disappeared a long time ago.

  When Jaisak left, Taijan whistled for the dogs, directed his horse into the flock, cutting from it some 250 to 300 sheep, and drove them back where the plundered people were still standing.

  “Here you are, axakals and mothers. It’s part of your flock for breeding. We can’t give you more, because, as it is, our shaitan will make the place too hot for us when he finds out,” Taijan said. “Don’t despair; better tell me your names and where you come from. If our Djantemir makes life unbearable for us, we’ll take our sheep and join your aul. Would you take us then?”

  “May Allah bless you, jigit,” the old woman with the proud face said. “We are wandering to the north of Bal­khash. We’ll accept you like one of our kin, give you the best girl in marriage, and put up a yurt for you,” the woman added with a tearful voice. “You tell us your name, too, jigit, so that we know whom to pray to Allah for.”

  “There are two of us: Jaisak and Taijan!” Taijan replied, and turning his horse round, galloped off to catch up with the aul which was disappearing in the gray cloud of dust.

  9

  Private 3rd Company

  After rattling across the trembling bridge spanning the river Ural, the tarantass rolled up a hill and drove into the Orsk Fortress.

  By the bridge another crew of convicts with ugly brands on their foreheads was repairing the road (probably in preparation for the reception of some bigshots), and on a large parade ground soldiers were going through drill.

  The parade ground was surrounded by barracks, head­quarters, offices, a prison, stacks of logs, stables, storehous­es with huge padlocks on their doors, and only the brick church painted dazzlingly white at the opposite end slightly enlivened the gloomily dully sight of the parade ground and the whole of Orsk which was devoid of any vegetation.

  All the public buildings were covered with tin roofs of a dark-reddish color, and behind them were scattered fifty or so log cabins of the Ural Cossacks. The scene resembled a tiny sad island in a boundless sea of a bleak steppe.

  Gloomy and depressed, Dolgov stepped off the tarantass. This was not the place he had dreamed of when receiving his first commission! Shevchenko was sadly silent as well. Here, perhaps, he would be fated to die a martyr of his cause.

  Dolgov gave the coachman a ruble to buy himself some vodka, ordered the soldier, who came running to meet them, to pick up his things, and went into the headquarters. The tarantass slowly rolled away from the porch, but Shev­chenko kept standing in one place, gripped by a depressing melancholy.

  Suddenly the very same soldier ran out onto the porch and called to him:

  “Hey you, Shevchenko! Come to the commander! He’s calling you!”

  Shevchenko silently picked up his things and went up the porch steps.

  “Halt! Where do you think you’re going! Put down your riggings! That’s no way of entering the chief’s of­fice!” the soldier cried out with what sounded like anger or mockery. “Where do the likes of you come from?!”

  Shevchenko put his things in a corner and entered the office. The company commander, Captain Globa, was sit­ting at his desk, looking through the papers Dolgov had brought with the parcel, and Shevchenko recognized the bluish stationary with the seal of the Third Department.

  “Shevchenko?” the captain raised his eyes to him.

  “Yes, sir!” the poet snapped to attention.

  “Did you get your uniform?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Why are you in civvies then? Change at once and hand all non-regulation items to the storehouse. And mind you, no civvies whatsoever will be tolerated around here. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sidorchuk! Take him to the company clerk Lavrentiev. Let him issue orders to have this man put on the allowance list and write out the proper record card.”

  He gave Sidorchuk all the papers from the packet and again turned to Dolgov, immediately dismissing the exile from his attention.

  “So you’ve come to serve in our battalion? Wonderful. But you’ll yawn yourself to death from horedom in this place. Every new man is like a heavenly grace for us. Believe me, there is no one you can exchange a sincere word with. Tomorrow morning you’ll be received by the general and assigned to one of the companies, and in the meantime — please be my guest for supper and stay the night at my home. We haven’t got any taverns or hotels around this place. But we can take a nip or two anyway.”

  “Thank you,” Dolgov said with a bow. “The sight of the fortress is really depressing, but with good people around it ca
n be fine anywhere.”

  “It depends. But good people are something you cannot order from a pharmacy by prescription.”

  “I am not such a pessimist as you,” Dolgov said with a forced smile, trying to be amiable. “I believe there are some interesting people among the soldiers as well.”

  “God forbid! There is nothing you can talk about with these swine. They have to be hold in check like this!” Globa clenched his hairy fist. “We don’t get the usual recruits, you know. The regiments send us offenders, and of the recruits we got mostly those who have been brought to book for rebellion or outrage: drunkards, thieves and villains of the highest order!”

  “It’s a pity! Now this Shevchenko — he’s an extraordi­narily interesting man. An artist who graduated from the St. Petersburg Imperial Academy of Fine Arts and was a professor at the St. Vladimir University of Kiev. Besides, he is a famous Little-Russian writer. An educated and tactful man, he was accepted in the highest circles,” Dolgov emphasized intentionally.

  “And still he landed in a penal line battalion to serve with inveterate rogues,” Globa guffawed. “Believe me, my dear ensign, they all are tarred with the same brush: both the criminals and the rebels, and all those various Voltairians and authors of libellous rhymes. But we’ll knock the nonsense out of their heads in no time. Theirs is a very simple job to do — marching left! right! — that’s all. A soldier is not supposed to think.”

  Suvorov looked at the soldier quite differently, Dolgov thought, but kept his peace.

  “Sidorchuk! Take the things of his Excellency to my homo!” Globa called again. “And mind that nothing disap­pears, you son of a bitch!”

  Taking Dolgov by the arm, Globa saw him to the door.

  In the meantime, the clerk Lavrentiev, with the as­sistance of the battalion medical attendant, was putting the novice on the staff. Shevchenko had to undress completely to have his weight, height and chest volume measured and his lungs and teeth examined. Then Lavrentiev wrote out the form, glancing now and again into the papers he had received from Captain Globa.

  This was a usual but at the same time a difficult job for him to do, because his knowledge of reading and writ­ing were imperfect.

  After Private Shevchenko was put on the allowance list, Lavrentiev took him to the cook and asked him to feed the man properly. On parting, he slapped Shevchenko ami­cably on his back.

  “Life is possible everywhere, old chap. You, too, will live your days in Orsk. Now if you’ll teach my boys to read and write and all the other subjects, I’ll be your friend and protector against our officers.”

  The barracks had been built for fifty men; inside, it was uncomfortable looking, dirty, big, and badly lit. Shevchen­ko stopped in indecision at the threshold and involuntarily recoiled at the stench that hit him; it was difficult to determine what was more nauseating — the smell of sour borshch, rotten cabbage, sweat, foul foot rags, shag smoke, or the stench of the latrine bucket. Shevchenko forced himself to cross the threshold, his eyes roving to find an orderly in the semi-darkness. The orderly motioned at a free bunk in a corner, told him to put his things in a separate wardrobe that had no lock or latch, and consider­ing his duties thus discharged, disappeared.

  Shevchenko looked round. Forty-five pairs of eyes fol­lowed his every movement with interest: some derisively, others malevolently, especially when he produced a handkerchief and put it to his nose to banish the intolerable stench somewhat at least.

  A minute later a bugle blared on the parade ground. The soldiers jumped to their feet, started to dress, did up all their buttons, and tightened their belts.

  “What’s that?” Shevchenko asked an elderly soldier who occupied the bunk next to his.

  “Roll call, brother. Then come evening prayers — and that ends the day,” he explained readily. “Is it any differ­ent in other garrisons?”

  “1 don’t know. This is my first day in the ranks,” Shev­chenko answered quietly and gave a sigh.

  “Never mind, old chap. You’ll get used to it. This is my twentieth year,” the soldier said, just as quietly, tightening his belt. “Just don’t clash with the commanders, and you’ll be all right anywhere.”

  Shevchenko was restless that evening. He kept running out of the barracks for a breath of fresh air, but on return­ing to his bunk, he could not fall asleep for the pande­monium of talking, laughter, swearing, and the screechy sounds of an accordion, and when the men quieted down, he was attacked by swarms of bed bugs that made his body burn like he had been stung by nettles.

  “Oh, my God! However can you sleep here?” Shevchenko whispered to his neighbor in horror. “The bed bugs are eating me alive.”

  “After you stomp around with us for a whole day, brother, no archangel’s trumpet, let alone our battalion bugle, will be loud enough to rouse you,” the old man said with a sigh. “On holidays the bed bugs are really a nasty plague, but on ordinary days they’re the last thing on your mind.” His steady voice betrayed the hopeless, submissive sadness of a man who was reconciled to everything in the world.

  “Listen, neighbor,” Shevchenko said in a whisper again, moving closer. “I was told back in Orenburg that you’ve got Polish exiles here. They were supposed to have been forced into the army just like me. So where are they?”

  “Are you a Pole?”

  “No. I’m from Kiev Province. A khokhol as you call us.”

  “I see. We have got some Poles around; not in our battalion, though. Most of them lodge in homes. Previously there were a lot of them, but now there’s no more than five in all.”

  After morning prayers and breakfast, the company was marched off to the parade ground for the soldiers’ basic science — drill.

  They marched in twos, fours or eights in a line. The company commander and a young officer stood at one end of the line and a corporal and a noncom at the other, watch­ing that all the men, lined up in order of height, raised their feet simultaneously to one and the same level, with toes stretched out, and brought them to the ground simul­taneously and with equal speed and force.

  From the first minute Shevchenko felt himself helpless in the line. The new Russian-leather boots did not fit his feet properly yet. They were tight at the instep, while the legs bent in the knees against his will, the toes sticking upward and upsetting the orderly alignment of the raised feet.

  “Hey you swag-bellied character! Come out of the line here!” the company commander shouted angrily. “How are you marching, you rogue?! Zlishchev! Let an old soldier take charge of this dolt and teach him to march properly. And you” — he turned to Shevchenko, — “mark my words: I’ll flog the daylights out of you, if you play the fool. Understand?!”

  “Yes, sir!” Shevchenko said and dropped his eyes lest their expression betray him.

  A ruddy-cheeked noncom ran up, called Shevchenko’s bunk neighbor Kuzmich out of the ranks, and said:

  “He’s going to drill you now. Listen to him and learn. If you won’t of your own free will, we’ll make you by force. This is no place where honey and cakes are handed out.”

  Kuzmich took Shevchenko aside, stood beside him and, leaning upon his left heel, raised his right leg with an ease that was remarkable for his age; he stretched out his toe like a ballerina and solidly brought the sole of his foot down to the ground, after which he raised his left leg with the same agility and made a second step.

  “When an ordinary man walks along,” Kuzmich explained, “he always puts his weight on his heel first. But as a soldier you have to hit the ground with your sole like you’re putting a brand or seal on the ground.”

  Shevchenko tired quickly from the drill. His entire being protested against the compulsion and senseless physical exertion, and his inward opposition unconsciously lent all his movements an awkward unwieldiness.

  “Left! Right! Left! Right!” Kuzmich called out bois­terously as the poet bathed in sweat. His shirt was dripping wet, his heart pounded wildly in his chest.

  The drill went on for
another two hours. During a five-minute break for a smoke, Dolgov was crossing the parade ground together with the battalion commander, Major Meshkov. On seeing that all the soldiers were having a smoke sitting on the grass and only Shevchenko was carrying on, Dolgov turned aside and made Meshkov follow him.

  “1 want to draw your attention to this man. He is a gifted poet and artist from St. Petersburg,” he said to Meshkov. “Today he is in disgrace, but tomorrow circum­stances might suddenly change and he will reappear in high society in the capital and ride the crest of popularity after creating a new book or a new painting. Who knows, but you and I might one day be asking favors of him. I was told in Orenburg that very influential and highly placed people had already interceded for him.”

  At the sight of the officers Kuzmich and Shevchenko stiffened to attention.

  “At ease!” Meshkov said with a wave of his hand and Dolgov walked up to Shevchenko.

  “Good morning, Taras Grigorievich!”

  “How do you do, your Excllency!”

  “So that’s what this artist and famous rhymer looks like,” Meshkov drawled as if thinking out loud. Then he ad­dressed the poet: “General Fedyaev, a man with the kindest of hearts, has written to me, asking me to help you. Since you’re here with the right to clemency you can receive an officer’s commission with time. I, for my part, will try to justify his Excellency’s trust in me and make a good combatant and exemplary soldier out of you,” he added.

  Struck to the quick by such a turn of Meshkov’s mind, Shevchenko could not find his tongue to respond with the conventional, “Glad to do my best, your ExclIency!”

  What a blockhead! Shevchenko thought in despair. Fe­dyaev could not have written to have me relieved of my daily exercise just like that, and here this churl got him all wrong. He’ll drill mo to my grave.