The Exile: A novel about Taras Shevchenko

by Zinaida Tulub

  The Constantine lay in a bay shielded from the eastern wind by Cape Izendiaral. The cape was high and white all over, and in some places, fallow pale from the limestone and clay strata of the Mesozoic. Washed out at its foot by the surf, the cape hung dangerously over the seething waves in a broad vault which seemed about to hurtle into the sea any moment. In quiet weather a boat could skim under that vault.

  The barometer had dropped in the meantime. The wind changed direction, and a storm broke out toward the eve­ning. Now the bay, instead of being a refuge from the wind and waves, became a trap for the schooner. Sailing out of it along the chain of submerged cliffs enclosing three quar­ters of the bay was out of the question. The churning water and savage wind rebounding from the cliffs chased the waves into the sea. They hurtled against the cliffs, reared in boiling geysers, and rumbled like a hundred cannons. The Constantine shuddered from bow to stern, and with ev­ery blow of a wave everything droned in the cabins and the hold.

  Butakov ordered a second anchor to be dropped and to pay out 70 sazhens of one anchor rope and 45 of the other. The schooner jerked helplessly and every minute she could break adrift and smash against the cliffs.

  Butakov realized that the Constantine was on the verge of destruction. Gritting his teeth, he stood on the bridge, snapping terse orders. The hungry, soaked and frozen sail­ors wordlessly complied with the orders with automatic precision. They were aware of the danger, but trusting in their captain, his experience and knowledge, they worked fast and effectually.

  The night dragged on unbearably long. The schooner was alternately tossed upward, then she topsided, or dipped into the frothy abyss, throwing her stern high up. The waves rolled over the deck, and the sailors clung to the life­lines lest they be washed overboard. The yards stripped of running rigging swayed frenziedly over the men’s heads as if they were intent on wiping out the background of cliffs and the ragged clouds racing across the sky from the northwest.

  Despair settled in Butakov’s heart.

  “They’ll die of hunger,” he repeated again and again, thinking about the topographers he had left on Barsakelmes; he was completely oblivious of the immediate danger staring into his own eyes at that moment. There was noth­ing more he could do to save the schooner, but he had to hide his presentiment from the crew. So passing command on to navigator Pospelov, Butakov retired to his cabin, sat down at his desk, and clutched his head.

  They’ll die of hunger on the island, the thought haunted him. The island had an ill-omened name: the Kirghiz ex­plained the meaning of Barsakelmes as “once you go there, you won’t return.”

  When the sun rose, the storm started to wear out a lit­tle, but the sea still raged in wild abandon the whole day through; only toward the evening did the waves become flat and wide, without the flaring, frothy manes on their sharp crests, and the ship rolled much more smoothly than before.

  Butakov had a glassful of vodka issued to each member of the crew, except for the watch, and ordered everyone to have a rest. Tacking slowly, the Constantine sailed out of the treacherous bay.

  The topographers met the schooner with exultant joy. They, too, had lived through a sleepless and alarming night after the storm had toppled their tent. Drenched and exhaust­ed, they spent the rest of the day collecting the equipment and gear the wind had scattered, which prevented them from completing the survey. Butakov left Akishev and three sailors behind on the island, and Maksheiev and the others were taken on board. The Constantine replenished her supply of fresh water and, joined by the fishing schoon­er Mikhail exploring the fish shoals, returned to the Kulandy Peninsula to plot its position to the end, after which Butakov sailed to the south along the western coast of Kosaral.

  Now the weather was really calm and sunny. The sea rippled like blue satin and silvery trails scattered across its expanse as far as the eye could see. Since the calm endured, the wardroom again became a gathering point for conversations and arguments.

  Shevchenko gave a talk to the sailors and topographers about the painting, architecture and sculpture of the Ital­ian Renaissance, as well as on his favorite sculptor and carver Verrocchio, on the master of the three arts Leonar­do da Vinci, and on the tender representation and beauty of Murillo and Rafael’s madonnas. Since there was not a single book plate of their paintings or engravings on board, Shevchenko either drew a rough sketch, such as of Leonardo’s Last Supper, or described the works of art as vividly as possible so that his listeners would get a much deeper idea than a bad reproduction could have communi­cated to them.

  For his part, he asked Butakov to read a lecture on sea­faring.

  Butakov eagerly devoted an entire evening to the subject.

  Shevchenko’s friendship with Butakov grew stronger with the days. After the poet became keen on botany, he helped Butakov collect plants for the herbarium and learned to use a field guide in determining the family, genus and species of every flower, grass and shrub twig he dried. They also prepared fish, crabs, snakes and lizzards, made collections of butterflies, beetles, scolopendra, even poison­ous tarantulas and black widows, but Butakov categor­ically forbade the taking of live samples on board the ship. Geography, however, remained Shevchenko’s favorite science. He had learned Humboldt’s books almost by heart. By and by he identified himself with the members of the expedition, shared their interests, rejoiced at their successes, and often caught himself thinking that he had started to delight in the beauty of the Aral Sea and to like it, although initially he had called it a good-for-nothing pond. Now he was equally curious about its greatest depth, its fish resources, and the remarkable blueness of its crystal clear waves, and when a depth of 68 sazhens was sounded half a mile off Cape Bai Gubek, he was next to being happy.

  As the Constantine sailed farther south, the crew noticed that the water was becoming sweeter and more turbid, and occasional shoals and tufts of reed appeared along the schooner’s course. Butakov realized that the Constantine was approaching the delta of the Amu Darya. He had a boat lowered to sound the depth which proved to be no more than one sazhen in some places. When the boat re­turned, Butakov headed east and dropped anchor off Tokmak Ata Island.

  And here he had to do some serious thinking.

  In the instructions he had received from the war minis­try, there was a separate clause added on the insistence of Karl Nesselrode, Minister for Foreign Affairs: the expedi­tion was specifically forbidden to approach the southern Khiva shore, let alone enter Khiva’s territorial waters. Vio­lating that clause would mean inducing international com­plications, exchange of diplomatic notes and the like. But being so close and not conducting the exploration to the end… The energetic lieutenant was not used to going off on another tack once he had set his mind on something.

  From the top of the main mast he scanned the island covered with sandy knolls and dense shrubbery. It was a wonderful place for building a fort or trading station. On the island he also saw yurts, camels, cattle, and clusters of people who were curiously gawking at the ship they were seeing for the first time in their lives. But there were no boats in sight.

  The wind died down, and by evening a dead calm set in. The sea spread in a rippleless mirror of blue, reflecting the coastal stands of reed and the cumulus clouds resembling a huge snow-clad mountain range rising over the horizon; from the north a deep swell was building up as if the sea were drawing its breath from the depths as it softly and evenly swayed the undulating surface of its shimmering expanse. The schooner drifted toward the northern shore, her sails drooping helplessly from the yards. Even the broad pennant, always fluttering in the faintest whiff of air, hung limply down the main mast like a dead bird.

  “Wonderful,” Butakov said, rubbing his hands with glee. “In such a dead calm, I have a legal enough reason to be here: without a steam engine I cannot make the schooner budge an inch.”

  The Constantine stayed in the bay with drooping sails the whole day through, and in the night Butakov sent En­sign Akishev with navigator Pospelov i
n a boat to sound the depth to the north off Tokmak Ala Island. He gave them a dark lantern, enough fire arms and cold steel, and ordered the sailors to bind rags round the oarlocks.

  When it became completely dark, the boat pulled off the Jacob’s ladder. Butakov stayed behind on the schooner, which he ordered to remain on the alert. The guns were charged with grapeshot, and carbines, hunting rifles, offi­cer’s pistols, cutlasses, pikes and dirks were brought on deck to be ready at hand. The crew slipped into their ham­mocks without undressing, while the schooner, her lights doused, melted into the heavy mist of the moonless, cloud-hung night.

  Maksheiev and Butakov sat on deck, listening alertly to every sound, while the rest of the crew, except for the watch, were below deck lest they break the silence by any chance.

  Time trickled away slowly. Half an hour before dawn, the boat slipped lightly and quietly like a bat alongside the schooner and pulled up to the ladder.

  Pospelov reported that after rounding the island from the south, he came across water that was no more than two to three feet deep at half a verst off the mainland.

  Butakov realized that Tokmak Ata was thus linked to the mainland by a sand bar, to the west of which there was no estuary. No wonder the sea water there was much clearer and saltier than to the east to the island.

  The dead calm persisted. On the third day a faint breeze wafted from the northwest, making first the broad pen­nant flutter, then the canvas, and the schooner started to beat with effort. However, the breeze soon died, as on the days before, a long swell came from the north, making the craft drift to the Khiva shore again.

  Butakov scaled to the top of the main mast and saw through his telescope a huge river spilling into the sea in several branches to the east, while Akishev established the compass points between which spread the fan-shaped plain of the delta.

  At midday Butakov plotted the schooner’s position by the Greenwich meridian, then calculated the precise place of the Amu Darya delta. In the evening they ordered the boat to be ready again.

  The depth of the river’s mouth had to be sounded to establish whether it was navigable.

  In view of the risks involved, Butakov decided to do everything himself. He took along Ensign Pospelov and picked for the mission the strongest oarsmen who could swim well. Butakov and Pospelov were also wonderful swimmers. The oarlocks were wrapped in rags again, the schooner was placed on the alert, and the two daredevils equipped with a compass and dark lantern climbed down the Jacob’s ladder into the boat. The lights on the schooner were doused. The thin crescent of the moon had dipped into the sea a long time ago, the sky was overcast with dense clouds, and a black velvety night enveloped sky and land with a profound murk and silence.

  Shevchenko sat on the deck among the sailors, who did not dare so much as light a cigarette. Everyone was silent and listened intently, but not even the sound of drops fall­ing off the oars reached their ears. The watch stood stock still at their posts. Their tense figures were charged with alarm. The topman scanned the horizon, but he could not detect any movement or a glimmer of light anywhere. As before, the long swell slowly rocked the schooner.

  A barely perceptible chill was penetrating the soft warmth of the night. The watch, their ears pricked up to every rustle, glanced alarmingly at the stars: Butakov should have been back a long time ago.

  Suddenly a quiet, familiar voice sounded by the board:

  “The Constantine, ahoy!”

  Moments later Butakov, followed by Pospelov, came up the ladder.

  “How did it go?” Maksheiev asked.

  “Wonderful! But let me get to the cabin first: I’m as wet as a muskrat.”

  In the cabin Butakov quickly changed his clothes, leav­ing a big puddle on the floor. He rubbed himself with a towel and put on a dry uniform.

  “It’d be good to have a cup of hot tea or a shot of vodka now. I’m drenched like a stray dog.”

  “Come on, pour out the story!” Maksheiev said impa­tiently. “Where did you get so wet?”

  “On our way back we had completed the soundings. The boat was going along the reeds, our sounding rods got caught in them and were pulled into the water. The current there is very swift. Another moment and the rods would have disappeared in the impenetrable darkness. So I dived into the water in my clothes, because we could not leave the Khivans such material evidence: all the markings on the sounding rods are in Russian.”

  “Did you really manage to take all soundings?” Akishev exclaimed with enthusiasm.

  “Of course! We went round Tokmak Ata and headed for the nearest arm of the Syr Darya. It’s where we stripped and waded across the arm with those ill-fated sounding rods. The current there is slow, but now and then we came across springs with ice-cold water; the depth is a foot or two everywhere. Then, with­out getting out of the water, we waded round the island between the first and second channel and continued the soundings. They had to be recorded later on in the boat to the light of the dark lantern. We also waded round the second island. The third arm is much deeper and has such a strong current you cannot stop for a single moment, be­cause it sweeps you off your feet; here and there the water is ice-cold and froze us to the marrow. Then we had to grope for our boat. But now the job is done. When the wind gets up, we can quietly sail out of here and not annoy the Khiv­ans, and Nesselrode for that matter. Though low on food supplies, we are prohibited from trading with the natives: that would be a conscious violation of instructions,” Butakov added, sitting down at the table on which a samovar was already boiling.

  The dead calm endured for several days more.

  All this time Shevchenko painted. When he was put ashore, he first of all sought picturesque landscapes and immediately took up his brushes. Each such outing lasted two or three hours. So he just sketched the outlines, marked the shades, and took to brushing on the paints to cap­ture the distinctions of the landscape’s color scheme and natural lighting, leaving all the details for later.

  At that time his heart also gave birth to poetry. He fin­ished writing his poem The Kings, in which he pictured the monarchs from the Old Testament with withering sarcasm. He could have added to this gallery the predators of later vintage, but other themes and other images fired his vision.

  … The young village girl Marina glowed with loveliness. But one day a licentious landlord had her fiancé impressed into the army, took the girl into his chambers at the manor-house, and locked her in to crush her resistance to his advances all the faster. The girl could not stand the humil­iation, went out of her mind, and set fire to the manor, where she herself perished in the flames. How many such stories had he heard during his childhood and, later on, in the barracks!

  A host of characters, grief-ridden, horrible or moving, haunted his mind. And all of them from real life. They passed before his mind’s eye in an endless line, shedding heartbroken tears, with deep and festering wounds in their hearts — all their dreams shattered, their hopes betrayed. And what about him? Had he ever experienced the simple happiness of shared love or the warmth of a family nest?

  He did not know where his Oxana — his first pure love — had disappeared to. For a fleeting moment the tender and sensitive Polish girl surfaced in his memory. Then there was the beauty Hanna, a married woman he met when he, already a famous artist and poet, returned to his homeland. She had not responded to his letter which he wrote with blood dripping from his heart. Had she forgot­ten him? She must have never loved him, while her ardent words and kisses had been nothing but a game. And still her charming image haunted the poet as she seemed to look at him with eyes as blue as this sea, this strange and hostile but wonderful Aral Sea which had helped him es­cape the barracks and saved him from the abominable drill and horrible mental starvation.

  Would she have recognized him if they were to meet again? he asked himself. During those days he dedicated his second poem to the treacherous but still dear Hanna.

  The Constantine rode at anchor in Taldy Kultuk Bay for another week, a
nd then sailed eastward. But a choppy sea kept pressing her to the southern shore all the time; only on the second of September a fresh breeze made it possible for her to move away from the Khiva shore.

  The sailors welcomed the wind, because the schooner’s supply of water and food was running low. When she sailed out of the mouth of the Syr Darya, the crew switched over to naval rations and it turned out that the rye rusks had become green with mould, the groats had molded as well, becoming musty and bitter to the taste, and the but­ter was so salty it could not be added to the porridge. Only the peas had remained fresh and tasty, but their supply was meager and so had to be cooked only twice a week. During anchorage the men angled for fish. But the sea was not always generous, because the fish sought deeper waters during storms and even during a fresh breeze.

  For all that, Butakov did not hear a single word of com­plaint. The men understood that he was not to blame, the more so since he and the officers ate from the same mess as the crew and he never permitted a single piece of better food to be served for himself. The medical attendant Istomin watched strictly that the rusks and groats he roasted well, and there was not a single recorded incidence of illness on board.

  But then the rations dwindled alarmingly and had to be cut to last to the end of the navigation, that is, to the first of October.

  The schooner moved slowly along her course, and on the seventh of September she came upon an unknown low island overgrown with reeds, avens and saxaul. In recog­nition and gratitude for the effort the military governor of Orenburg had put into organizing the caravan, Butakov named the island in his honor.

  Then a storm raged for a week. The waves tossed the schooner from crest to crest like a splinter of wood, and the crew went out of its way to keep her seaworthy. Buta­kov had to postpone the survey of the eastern, newly dis­covered island till spring. Heading then to the north east, he decided to cross the sea diagonally.