The Exile: A novel about Taras Shevchenko

by Zinaida Tulub

  And break your heavy chains

  And water with the tyrant’s blood

  The freedom you have gained.

  And in the great new family,

  The family of the free,

  With softly spoken, kindly word

  Remember also me.

  Some of the words he accentuated with chords, and so as to make Jaisak grasp and interpret the words the easier, he replaced the Ukrainian words with the Russian ones the young Kazakh knew.

  When Shevchenko finished, a whisper went through the crowd, but the Kazakhs did not dare express their fascination openly, so accustomed had they become to the green Russian uniforms being associated only with trouble. But the way they clacked their tongues, smiled, and beat their alms against their thighs meant for Shevchenko more than any words or thunderous applause. Abdrahman got up and raised his arms to the skies. “Praised be Allah that the Russians, too, have such people!”

  Djantemir considered himself a great connoisseur of singing, but now he sat morose and angry; only the fear of Lavrentiev’s vengeance made him smile occasionally and clack his tongue in pretense of being fascinated by Shevchenko’s verse. He was mad at Abdrahman for the song about Srym, and in Shevchenko’s Testament he indistinctly sensed similar motifs about the people’s wrath and desire for revenge. For him, Shevchenko’s voice was akin to the hostile voice of Istai Taijanov, the leader of the poor, the defender of the very people whom Djantemir worked so ruthlessly.

  Both akyns sensed his mood.

  “It’s time I went back to the fortress,” Shevchenko said, rising to his feet. “I don’t know what to do with him, though.”

  He tried to jolt Lavrentiev out of his drunken sleep, but the clerk mumbled something incoherently in reply and continued snoring loudly.

  “Let him stay here for the night,” Iskhak suggested. “We’ll take him to his home in the morning.”

  “All right,” Shevchenko agreed and thanked his hosts for their hospitality.

  Djantemir forced himself to put on a broad smile, politely shook the poet’s hand, and ordered Jaisak to chase the dogs away and see the guest off.

  “Where have you learned to speak Russian so well?” Shevchenko asked when they had walked some distance rom the aul.

  “When I was a teenager, the bai drove his herd to Omsk for sale and had Iskhak sent to study at a madrasah. A merchant, Ovchinnikov by name, bought the horses, and the bai left me at the merchant’s home for the winter. There I learned your tongue,” Jaisak explained eagerly.

  “Who were the people who gathered by the yurt when we were singing?”

  Jaisak’s face clouded.

  “Those were the jataks, or as you would say, the bai’s servants and all sorts of poor people, distant relatives, me­nials and tyulenguts,” he said with a sigh. “All of us are poor. Extremely poor. For old rags and offal from the bai’s board we work for him from sunrise to sunset. Did you notice Shauken gathering sheep bones into a bowl? That was the meal for those poor people. The Russians are much better off than we: your muzhik is clothed, has a warm house, a plot of land, garden, and some cattle. We can only dream of such a life!”

  Shevchenko stopped in his tracks from bewilderment. Did there really exist such hapless souls who envied the serfs? They should have tasted then the serf’s bread brined with the tears and blood of the muzhik.

  15

  The Soul of the Steppe

  For a number of days Shevchenko lived under the vivid impression of his visit to the aul. The Kazakhs had fasci­nated him, as had their slender figures, their unrestrained movements and their artless open-heartedness. They worked strenuously for Djantemir day and night but had preserved the proud bearing and light gait of a free people.

  On parting, Jaisak asked Shevchenko to visit his yurt, and the poet promised to do so during the next holiday.

  Shevchenko prepared himself for that visit with pent-up excitement for he had an unconquerable desire to draw some of the Kazakhs. He had no oil colors, but Lidia Andreievna had presented him with some drawing pencils, a bar of sepia, and an album of Whatman paper.

  1 am forging my own shackles, Shevchenko thought, pre­paring to go to the aul, but he could not force himself to leave the album and pencils behind.

  Jaisak’s yurt looked cramped and poor compared with Djantemir’s yurts, but still a white piece of felt was pro­duced for the guest and he was seated in the place of honor opposite the entrance: the poet immediately noticed the young eagle on the tugir.

  On hearing human voices, the eagle roused himself from sleep and gave a shrill shriek as if he were greeting the guest. In three months the half-naked eaglet had grown into a mighty, formidable looking bird, and Jaisak was proud of him. Kumish brought in a samovar and treated Shevchenko to tea, while Jaisak told him about the akyn Abdrahman.

  “Our bai quarreled with Abdrahman. When you left, Djantemir reproached him for having sung about rebels, which made Abdrahman call him a vampire and drunkard, and then and there he composed a humorous song about the bai and sang it to the whole aul. Djantemir got so mad he chased Abdrahman out of the yurt and told him never to show up again.”

  Shevchenko burst into hearty laughter; then he opened his album.

  “What are you going to do?” Jaisak asked. On seeing that it was neither a flute nor any other instrument but a large notebook of thick white paper, he added: “You are going to write….I thought it would be some music.”

  This was uttered with such unhappy disappointment that Shevchenko could not help but smile.

  “I want .to draw your aul, yurts, the people near them, and all of this,” he swept his hand across the scenery and the sky. “You, too, sit down, Jaisak, beyond the threshold by the fire,” Shevchenko added. “I want to draw you too.”

  But Jaisak shook his head.

  “No! I will sit behind you. I want to see how you do it: I’ve never seen it.”

  “All right, sit down and watch,” the poet agreed. “But give me a little board to put under the album.”

  Jaisak hurried off to look for a board. He did not find one in the end. So he pushed his mother’s trunk to the middle of the yurt, and Shevchenko put his album on top of the lid.

  What Jaisak saw made him regard Shevchenko as a ma­gician: his pencil created a different, motionless life on the paper. And when there appeared the figure of Kumish with pails near the smoking samovar, Jaisak gasped and frightenedly grasped Shevchenko by the hand.

  “Oi boi! But that’s apa! Don’t make a little apa on the paper! I’m afraid: apa might fall ill.”

  “Don’t be afraid,” Shevchenko laughed. “Would I be doing anything bad to you? We’re friends, aren’t we?”

  “Yes, we are, big friends,” Jaisak got excited, misusing Russian words. “But won’t that be dangerous for apa?” he asked seriously, still alarmed.

  “No, it won’t. Upon my word it won’t. I’ve drawn my­self a lot of times by looking into a mirror,” Shevchenko put his mind at ease. “If you want, I can draw you, too, and when I’m dead, you can look at yourself and remem­ber me. Do you want a picture of yourself?”

  “No!” Jaisak almost shouted. “Don’t die. You must live long! Long! Like Abdrahman and twice as much! Let Allah grant you a great life, Taras Agal”

  Presently they heard a young female voice, ringing and clear like the spring, coming from behind the wall of the yurt. It was Kuljan singing, as she delighted in the beauti­ful pattern she had managed to reproduce on the carpet she was weaving. Shevchenko carefully lifted the flap and looked outside. Illuminated by the sun, Kuljan stood several paces away from him, and Shevchenko froze, afraid to alarm her. He quickly took the album and pencils, but to draw her he’d have to go outside, which could have scared the girl.

  “Oh damn it!” he muttered. “If there were only a tiny window or hole…”

  “You’ll have one right away,” Jaisak said with determi­nation, and before Shevchenko could stop him, he thrust his razor-sharp knife into the felt w
all of the yurt and cut a hole in it.

  “Sit down on the trunk, Taras Aga! Draw on the paper a little Kuljan,” Jaisak said, choking with excitement. Then he recalled that Kumish had a board after all — a board she was kneading dough on — and brought it to Shev­chenko.

  Shevchenko did not hear nor see anything going on around him. He had not noticed how Kumish entered and clasped her hands in horror and despair on seeing a hole cut in the yurt, their only refuge from the terrible snowstorms. Jaisak took his old apa by the arm and told her something so seriously and kindly that it set her mind at ease imme­diately; she fell silent, gave a submissive and quiet smile, and disappeared somewhere.

  His pencil had already sketched a young girl as slender as a cypress when Kuljan suddenly sat down, turning her back on him to cut out appliqués for the carpet.

  “Oh-h! Shevchenko moaned. “Tell her, Jaisak, that she stay on her feet for a quarter of an hour at least. Just a little bit. I beg of you!”

  “All right, I’ll do it right away. You just go on drawing the little girl on the paper. I’ll go and tell her.”

  “But don’t scare her off. Be careful!” Shevchenko said, trembling with excitement.

  Jaisak gave a nod and darted out of the yurt. What the two young people were talking about then Shevchenko did not hear, but he guessed that Jaisak asked the girl to show him the finer points of her work. The conversation by the carpet lasted for a long time. Kumish looked into the yurt several times, but Jaisak was not there yet; she tiptoed outside lest she interrupt Shevchenko’s pursuit and did not even dare to steal a glance at his drawing.

  “Well, that’s enough for today,” Shevchenko said at length. “I’ll work on the details in the settlement or come here another time.”

  He hid the pencils in his pocket, looked out of the yurt and waved to Jaisak to come in. After inspecting the sketch, Jaisak said with a sigh:

  “At the home of the merchant I told you about I saw the picture of a god in the corner, but I did not know how he was made. The way you did it is much better. You do things like Allah Himself.”

  Kumish brought in a bowl of airan to treat Shevchenko, but he was in a hurry to get back to Orsk. Jaisak apolo­gized lengthily and with evident embarrassment for not hav­ing slaughtered a sheep for such an honorable guest. Shev­chenko put his mind at rest by saying that he’d be very much saddened to know that Jaisak had wasted his prop­erty so carelessly.

  “You are young and have an entire life ahead of you,” he said. “It’s time you got married, and for that you have to have money, or sheep as is your custom.”

  “That’s true,” Jaisak agreed. “Yon say, ‘This costs thirty kopecks,’ but we say, ‘This is worth half or a quarter of a sheep.’ Our bais have money because they sell wool and cattle, but we are poor people as you see yourself. Come and visit us on the Bairam holiday. That’s when we al­ways slaughter sheep for the occasion.”

  “That’s just what I won’t do,” Shevchenko said in jest. “I’ll come on a usual day on purpose. Looking at you and that girl, I thought that you’d make a good pair. Both of you are slender, young and handsome. Don’t you really take a fancy for her?”

  “Oi boi, I do! She’s like a houri from the gardens of paradise,” Jaisak sighed, excited. “I would chop my hand off for a wife like her! I’d take out one eye just to admire her with the other! And what a kind heart she has! How she pitied my father and mother. But she isn’t mine: she’s engaged already.”

  Jaisak told him everything about Kuljan. Shevchenko listened attentively, occasionally interrupting him with a question. He realized that a great and pure love reigned in the heart of the young herder, and he had to help him somehow to achieve his happiness. But how could he help, if he himself was a poor exile deprived of the opportunity and right to earn a kopeck?

  “I am sure you will achieve happiness,” he said after some thought. “That betrothed of hers will hardly get well. I have seen a lot of such sick people: they lie in a plaster cast for five or six years and only one out of ten gets on his feet. He’ll die and that’ll be the end of the engage­ment.”

  “Still, Djantemir won’t give her in marriage to a poor man. He loves money much more than his daughter,” Jaisak said sadly. “Besides, her stepmother, Shauken, hates her. She’s glued her lips now and does not dare chase Kuljan to do hard work, but her heart is that of a snake. She derives joy from our grief and waits for our separation like a big holiday.”

  “You must fight for your happiness,” Shevchenko said sternly. “So you want to hunt with an eagle you say? That’s a wonderful idea. If you get enough fox furs, I’ll help you sell them to the general’s daughters: they’ll pay a good price.”

  Although they did not come up with any new ideas during the long conversation that followed, Jaisak’s heart lightened and he looked on in awe as the artist was finish­ing drawing the landscape, because Kuljan was now sit­ting with her back to the yurt and sewing varicolored appliqués on her carpet.

  A large caravan track, along which goods from Bukhara and Persia were carried to Russia, ran through the wild steppe near Orsk. Some five versts from the fortress a cara­vanserai, much smaller and poorer than its counterpart in Orenburg, was built for the merchants. It surrounded a bartering yard which occasionally turned into a real fair ground. But mostly the caravans did not stop there for long.

  When a caravan appeared on a holiday, Shevchenko took his pencils and a piece of bread and left the fortress to wander through the bartering yard and admire the lush colors of Oriental dresses, camels, asses, and the wares. Or when the caravan passed by, he sat down in the tumble-weed or tall thistles somewhere in the steppe and sketched either a camel or the figure of the most colorful man he could find.

  He had to sketch stealthily, because Muslim law prohibit­ed the representation of animals and people, and if he had been caught at his work by some Bukharan fanatics, he might have been struck by a dagger or strangled. There was yet another danger he had to beware of — being caught by his superiors or the boon companions of Kozlovsky and Belobrovov, soldiers who were capable of denunciation or blackmail. Shevchenko kept out of harm’s way so carefully that for a long time nobody at the fortress suspected that he had been violating the czar’s order.

  There was only one time he could not hold himself in check — when he came across the drunken sergeant-major Laptev and the noncom Zlintsev staggering down the road. He picked up a little piece of charcoal lying on the ground and drew such a lifelike caricature of the two cha­racters on the white wall of the nearest house that passersby held their sides from laughter. General Isaiev was informed of the incident. He went to inspect the caricature himself, which drew his boisterous laughter as well.

  “And you call that a painting?” he said to Globa then. “It’s just a joke to teach our drunkards, so they keep off the streets at least in such an indecent state. He’s been forbidden to paint or to draw, of course, but this is no more than a trifle.”

  “And what if he draws your Excellency like that or, God forbid, some illustrious person?”

  “He’s got enough common sense not to do such a foolish thing, and if he does, he’ll be punished severely,” the gen­eral said. However, when the general met Shevchenko, he warned him of the denunciation by the vengeful sergeant-major and got the poet’s promise not to “play with fire” anymore.

  16

  The Ups and Downs of Life

  While waiting for the occasional mail to arrive at Orsk, Shevchenko continued writing letters.

  In vain did he persuade himself that it was not his friends who had faintheartedly forsaken him, but the post which had not delivered his first letters to the addressees — the bitterness of the insult he felt, and his disappointment in people, became ever deeper, and more and more often there recurred a sense of despair at the thought that he had been rejected by the whole world to the end of his days, and was doomed to the hopeless vegetation of a garrison soldier.

  At times a withering c
ontempt grew in his heart — contempt for people who in word seemed to hate czarism as well, but who had not the courage, even secretly expressed in a private letter, to show at least a little bit of sympathy with a fighter against czarism.

  Clenching his teeth, he tried to think of something else — this contempt for his contemporaries stifled him, but after a moment of anger he would be overcome by fatigue. Ev­erything became meaningless, infinitely remote for him. Later, however, the pain in his soul would recur, the un­conquerable love of life and a keen yearning to save him­self would flare up again.

  Then Shevchenko would address his letters “to freedom” once more — to knock at the doors of people’s hearts.

  He also wrote to the painter Chernishov whom he had met briefly in Orenburg. On learning that Chernishov was preparing to leave for St. Petersburg in the autumn, Shev­chenko had given him a number of letters which he had promised to pass on to the poet’s friends in the capital. Now Shevchenko asked him about the fate of those letters and described the stupid drill and the stenchy barracks, the offi­cer’s fisticuffs, knocked out teeth, caning, and ceaseless abuse — everything that could harry him to his grave.

  His letters to Lizohub were worded in a warmer and softer manner. He asked him to send books and paints “just to have a look at them and recall the past,” complained of intellectual hunger, and described his adventures in an ironic vein. Lizohub, however, would not be able to read them without tears welling up in his eyes.

  After sealing up the last letter, Shevchenko fell to think­ing. He realized well enough that his friends were afraid of losing their offices for corresponding with a “state crim­inal,” but what about his lady friends? When the shack­led Decembrists were exiled to Siberia for penal servitude, Princess Volkonskaya and Princess Trubetskaya launched a challenge against the czar by forsaking high society, their habitual comforts and merry careless life in order to share their husbands’ fates. And following them, a common French woman who was no more than the mistress of one of the convicts, enjoying no civil rights whatsoever, pre­pared to go on the distant journey to Siberia as well.