The Exile: A novel about Taras Shevchenko

by Zinaida Tulub

  “Let me present my condolences to you once more and see you home.”

  She leaned on his arm without saying a word, and after staying at her father’s grave for some minutes more, crossed herself and slowly walked away.

  Globa quickly approached Natalia.

  “Allow me, Mademoiselle… Natalia… Andreievna,” he said and rudely shouldered Shevchenko aside.

  Natalia was so smitten with grief that she only raised her eyes on Globa and remained standing by the grave, unaware that her sister had already left.

  “Allow me,” Globa repeated, and without waiting for a response, hooked her dejectedly drooping arm.

  She walked off like a sleepwalker, totally indifferent to everything around her.

  Shevchenko stood for a while among the dispersing crowd which commented in lively tones on the priest’s graveside oration, on every movement of the orphaned sisters, and on the singing of the church chorus during the service. Then he walked silently to his quarters.

  In the evening Lavrentiev brought him word of the commander’s order “to confine Private Shevchenko for one day in the guardhouse for appearing on the street and in church in white gloves instead of the regulation mittens.”

  The night in the guardhouse refreshened and invigorated him after the three sleepless nights he had stayed at the bedside of the dying man. He instantly sunk into the deep, restful sleep of an utterly exhausted man and was roused when the noncom on duty Zlintsev rattled the bolt of the cell door and opened it in the morning.

  “Go to the Isaievs right away,” the noncom said. “The lady asked the major to have you for a week to help her pack. Of all the people to ask help of,” he added malicious­ly, letting Shevchenko through the door. He could not for­give the poet the caricature he had drawn of him and of the sergeant-major.

  The week passed like one day. From morning till night Shevchenko sawed and planed, knocked together crates or else packed and sewed up the sisters’ belongings in bast mats. Meshkov, as temporary commandant of the fortress, provided the Isaiev sisters with horses. The luggage was loaded onto several paired sleighs, and the grand piano was put on a large sleigh hitched to a team of four. When the luggage sleighs left, the late general’s covered wagon with sleigh runners on its wheels drew up to the porch. The first person to appear on the porch was Petya wearing a white sheepskin coat and fur hat. Then the two sisters came out. They took a last look around, shook hands with Shevchenko, and blushing with embarrassment, persuaded him to accept as a memento a clean sketch book with some ruble bills stuck in between the pages. The wagon moved off, its runners crunching through the deep snow.

  Shevchenko remained standing on the porch, watching the retreating vehicle for a long time. Now he had no one to unburden his soul to and listen to music with.

  Life is a continuance of endless partings with someone or something, he thought. You part with your parents when they pass away, with childhood, with your childhood play­mates, and then with youth, with your first love, with shat­tered dreams and the dear places where you dwelled, with the graves of parents, with freedom, and, finally, even with I the hope of ever being a free man again.

  Back home, he met a sad and agitated Lavrentiev.

  “Things are going badly for you, Grigorievich,” he said as soon as Shevchenko crossed the threshold and started taking off his sheepskin coat. “You’re in a nasty mess. The major, you see, ordered you back to the barracks. I begged and pleaded: ‘Permit him, your Excellency, to stay at my home some more. He’s a quiet man, doesn’t stir up any trouble, and he’s taught my children the ABC and is now teaching them ‘rithmetic’ Well, I vouched for you, you see, saying you weren’t a drunkard or a troublemaker, but he just hissed back at me: ‘That rebel went against the em­peror; he’s an enemy who must be destroyed, so don’t you dare stand up for him. If the general — God rest his soul — treated him with indulgence, he’d have to answer for the consequences himself, but I do not want to be kept respon­sible for the man’s crimes. That’s the whole story of it. Get your things ready, old chap, and I’ll take you back to the barracks. Don’t you be sad, though: by the grace of God we’ll have another general assigned and I can ask him to let you stay in my house again.”

  The barracks met Shevchenko with the familiar stench and groans.

  “After the feast comes the reckoning,” the downgraded ensign Belobrovov laughed spitefully, rocking back and forth on a bench near the table. “We thought you’d fallen in with the general’s daughter and made a break for Orenburg.”

  Shevchenko clenched his fists.

  “The less you touch them, the less they’ll stink,” Kuzmich told him quietly. “They’ll wag their tongues some more and stop. It’s unhappiness that’s turned them into such brutes.”

  “That’s true,” Shevchenko said, pulling himself together, and looked with respect at the old soldier.

  His bunk was unoccupied, because in winter all the men sought the welcome proximity of the stove.

  Taxing days of gloomy life in the barracks followed. Twi­light descended early. The endless night brought him noth­ing but gray sorrow. Sleep had fled from him. He lay on the bunk and gazed into the darkness; he felt as if he had gone blind, and perpetual darkness gave him no hope for a glimmer of light.

  In his thoughts, he wandered around Kirilivka, the vil­lage of his childhood, or through the streets of Kiev, clearly seeing every building in it, among them the dark-red uni­versity with its high pediments and the black Ionic capi­tals crowning its columns. He entered its long, resounding corridors with vaulted ceilings and gleaming pig-iron floor plates. From the university his memories carried him to the neat-looking Finishing School, where he had been with Professor Kostomarov at a commencement ball the previous spring. He admired the wonderful creations of Ukrainian baroque — the Raphail Zaborovsky Gate on the grounds of the Saint Sophia Cathedral and the matchless form of St. Andrew’s Church which the inspired Bartolomeo Rastrelli had put like a toy on the crest of Old Kiev Hill overlooking the Podil district lying below. He also delighted in the ex­traordinary beauty of Johann Schädel’s bell tower at the Cave Monastery and the snow-white St. Nicholas’ Cathedral, an outstanding monument of Ukrainian baroque. Then he visited the unobtrusive St. George’s Church, because in it was buried Ypsilanti, the leader of the Greeks who rose against the Ottoman oppression; under Ypsilanti’s colors had fought Byron, a man who had reigned over human thought for two generations.

  In his imagination, he also wandered along the Dnieper bluffs during those sleepless nights, and visited the homes of his Kiev friends who had betrayed him in his greatest grief.

  At times he recalled Vilnius where he lived a year and a half when he was a youth. The city buzzed with excite­ment then, as it prepared for the insurrection of 1830. Ev­ery night anonymous hands left bold appeals for struggle on the walls, pasted up proclamations to peasants and townspeople, and drew cartoons of the czar and his officials. People made ardent speeches against censorship, calling for freedom of the press and equality of men and women be­fore the law.

  “Why aren’t you sleeping, brother?” Kuzmich asked him once; the old soldier’s foot had been frostbitten and now, with his sole operated on, he was temporarily relieved of garrison duty. “However much you’ll be thinking, there’ll be no end to it. If you’ve tramped around all day, better have a good sleep. It’s good that the bed bugs have been done away with by the general, God rest his soul in His Kingdom for that. Life is a little more bearable now: they haven’t returned yet.”

  “And why don’t you sleep yourself?” Shevchenko re­sponded quietly.

  “I? While you’re marching on the parade ground throughout the day, I stay alone in the barracks and sleep, and then I can’t seal up my eyes at night, much as I try. Besides, the past always comes to my mind and troubles my heart.”

  Shevchenko looked closely at the old man, but with the dim light from the one and only wick lamp in the barracks he could not see his eyes.

>   “Still, I cannot understand, Kuzmich, how you came to be in this place. You’re a quiet, God-fearing man. It seems strange.”

  “Oh, brother, don’t touch my old wounds or else they’ll hurt. There is only one thing I can say: woe to the peasant who rouses his lord’s wrath, but he’s worse off if the lord takes a liking to him. That liking brought me to a soldier’s fate.”

  Shevchenko kept silent, understanding how the man felt.

  Kuzmich became thoughtful, and then, groaning in his old man’s way, he sat down at Shevchenko’s side, and said:

  “I come from around the town of Orsha, and was a serf of the landlord Kazanovich. When the French attacked our land, my father perished. Shortly after, my mother died too, and I was left a helpless child. I. was picked up by an old woman, and when I grew up, the lords took me into the manor and made me an assistant to the gardener. He taught me to grow trees and flowers and all kinds of shrubs. I gave him a hand in the greenhouses and hothouses. They also had a conservatory where lemons and peaches grew. The lords lived mostly abroad or in St. Petersburg, visiting the manor for a month or two and then leaving again.

  “My lord was sick for a long time. People said that his bones were rotting in him — consumption they call it. At first he limped in one leg, then in the other, and in the end was laid up for good. They took him around all sorts of places for treatment, spent their money on it and even sold their house in the capital for his treatment. He died, and his wife came back to the manor. She was getting on in years, had a student son, and was quite good looking. Before the lord died he gave me permission to marry. I loved my wife Dunya dearly. She bore me a fine healthy boy. While I worked in the garden, I was in the habit of singing. Well, those songs of mine were the cause of my troubles. I caught the eye of the lady and she appointed me her valet. Now and then she treated me to a drink or gave me a new livery. I hadn’t the slightest idea why she was so kind to me. Sometimes she let the girls have evenings off, called me to her study, ordered me to kindle the wood in the fireplace, and asked me this and that about my life. At first she spoke so kindly, and then suddenly fumed with rage: ‘Go away, you fool, if you don’t see hap­piness coming your way!’ I went to my quarters under the stairway, and when she went to sleep, 1 ran off to the village to see my family. She had me tracked, and blazed with anger then: ‘Where have you so-and-so been traipsing all night long?’ ‘I’ve only been to my home, see­ing my lawful wife and baby son.’ She didn’t say anything, pressed her lips tightly, and went to her boudoir with black looks, for three days she didn’t speak to me and then sud­denly ordered Dunya to leave for a remote manorial farm some forty versts away. Dunya was to be sort of a steward­ess there. She was given three girls to help her take care of the house, orchard, garden, to rear chickens and ducks and, generally, look after the whole farm. Well, being a stewardess is much better than reaping in a field, but our separation… One week passed, then another. On a holiday I asked the lady to give me leave for one day. She refused. Another week passed. She let all the servants go to a fair, and I was the only one left in the manor house. In the eve­ning she rang for me to come to her bedroom. I went up­stairs, knocked on the door as is proper, and entered. She was in bed. ‘Come closer,’ she said. ‘I want to tell you some­thing!’ 1 went up closer, and she said: ‘You’re a fool not to see your happiness. I’ll give you freedom, a plot of land, and build you a house. You’ll be a human instead of a serf, but leave your Dunya. I’ll set her free, too, and I won’t forget your child either.’ I was struck dumb, standing as if 1 were rooted to the ground. I just did not know what to say. Then she threw the blanket aside, and there she was lying in her birthday suit and beckoning to me. ‘Lady, but I’ve got a lawful wife and was wed in church,’ I said. ‘The priest read us from the Scriptures that whoever God has united, man cannot separate.’ Oh my…” Kuzmich start­ed suddenly. “To cut a long story short, I was forced into the army, and my poor Dunya is now set to the hardest of work.”

  Kuzmich gritted his teeth and retreated into his corner.

  After Shevchenko returned to the barracks, his illness recurred. His legs ached from rheumatism; however much medicine the medical attendant gave him it did not bring relief; nor did iodine, which he daubed on his joints. No other medicine was known to either the attendant or the phy­sician Alexandriysky, and Shevchenko found it ever more difficult to march on the parade ground. He became short-winded and swellings appeared on his body.

  When he had been a student at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, Shevchenko contracted pleurisy, and a phy­sician examining him also found him to have an organic heart disease. Now his heart gave him trouble with increasing frequency: when Shevchenko had to run or go through usual drill, he became short-winded. Globa, however, would not make things easier for the “state criminal.”

  Besides, scurvy attacked him again. The entire body became covered with sores and bruises. Now there were no Isaevs to provide him with vegetables, and only occasionally, when he was temporarily relieved of drill because of this illness, did the cook give him a turnip or onion.

  One day Alexandriysky visited him and stealthily passed on a letter.

  Breathless for joy and impatience, Shevchenko retired to the farthest corner of the hospital and tore the letter open with trembling hands. The letter was from Lizohub — warm-hearted, cordial lines that were filled with love and moved the poet deeply. It was the reply to Shevchenko’s first letter. Although it warmed his heart, a sad thought still haunt­ed him: why did Repnina not reply? Shevchenko knew her all too well to doubt her courage. What if she had left Yahotin for somewhere else or if the letter had not been passed on to her?

  In preparation for the next occasional carriers who might be passing through Orsk, Shevchenko wrote a long letter to Lizohub, in which he sympathized profoundly for the death of Lizohub’s little daughter, inquired about Repnina, and unable to restrain himself, wrote the following: “I wish my cruelest enemy would not be made to suffer as much as I am now.”

  “I have yet another request,” he wrote. “Send me your little casket which has everything I need, a clean album, and at least one Charion brush to look at once in a while — it’ll make me feel better.”

  In this way, by means of a transparent allusion, Shev­chenko again asked Lizohub to send him oil paints, and then shedding all allegories, he asked for Homer’s Odyssey in Zhukovsky’s translation and Ketcher’s translations of Shakespeare.

  Shevchenko almost never left the barracks. In strict compliance with the garrison duty regulations, Meshkov did not permit the soldiers to go beyond the bounds of the for­tress without a leave pass which was issued only once a week and for some three hours. Shevchenko’s bootleg notebooks therefore had almost no new verse in them: in the barracks, he could have been denounced for violating the czar’s prohibition; in the steppe, snowstorms raged all the time; and it was only occasionally that he visited his Polish friends and Alexandriysky’s home, the only place where he could write poetry.

  17

  Kozlovsky’s Advice

  The winter persisted unbearably long. Blizzard followed blizzard, and even during the brief spells of what oldtimers considered calm weather, there was such a gusty ground wind lashing across the steppe it buffeted against people’s backs and made them move at a trot.

  Shevchenko’s illness made him ever weaker. He could barely bend his swollen joints and was racked by pain. When the medical attendant reported to Globa on the poet’s condition, the company commander pounded his desk madly with his fist, and shouted:

  “That’s a lie, you bastard! I know those tricks! He must have given you a ruble for vodka, and here you stick up for him! One word about the lazybones from you — and I’ll throw you into the guardhouse!”

  “But, your Excellency, let the doctor have a look at him. You can do whatever you will to me, but the man is sick and that’s all there is to it.”

  “Go to hell!”

  The attendant fell silent, and Shevc
henko was again chased to the parade ground for drill.

  Every Sunday and holiday the soldiers were marched off to church.

  Once Shevchenko bumped into Meshkov in church. As it was proper for a soldier, Shevchenko gave way to the commander and rapidly took his cap off.

  “Three days in the guardhouse!” Meshkov’s voice lashed Shevchenko like a whip. “It’s time you knew, Shevchenko, that a cap is taken off a soldier’s head with his left hand, not with his right.”

  Meshkov disappeared into the depths of the church, but Shevchenko remained standing in place, clutching his cap. The beggars around him snickered quietly, and a legless soldier, long past his retirement age, boomed in a didactic way:

  “Got yourself into a guardhouse, eh? Next time you’ll know that a soldier has no right to look with only half an eye.” On seeing several women in woolen kerchiefs coming out of the church just then, the cripple went off into a twangy lament:

  “For the sake of God give a kopeck to a crippled soldier who’s suffered for the faith, the czar and country… Give an old soldier for the repose of your parents’ souls.”

  That is how I might end my days, begging, Shevchenko thought, and with a heavy heart went to report at the guard­house.

  Christmas was approaching. In Ukraine this holiday was associated with a multitude of customs, legends and rites which ran back to the pre-Christianity past.

  On Christmas Eve the soldiers, instead of being marched out to drill, were ordered to clean and mop the barracks. Everyone, except for the noblemen Kozlovsky and Belobrovov, got down to work. The men refused to take the day meal, because they were fasting “up to the morning star.” In the afternoon the company was led to the bathhouse where the barber diligently cropped and shaved the men and the quartermaster-sergeant issued them new underwear, uniforms and caps.

  After the Christmas Eve supper in the unusually clean and aired barracks, the men refrained from singing drunken songs or cursing. Their faces became solemnly concentrat­ed. Kozlovsky let his eyes wander along the bunks, made a wry face and shook his head.