The Exile: A novel about Taras Shevchenko

by Zinaida Tulub

  “Oi boi, woe is me!” he mumbled over and over again, his hands missing the sleeves of his holiday robe.

  Undasin, Baisali and Iskhak went out to meet the three horsemen and the mariners in the two tarantasses. A short-winded Djantemir hurried behind his sons.

  “Guests are a blessing of Allah,” Djantemir said, stretch­ing his lips in a sweet and adulatory smile. “A big holi­day, a big toi will be today because of your arrival at my modest aul. Be blessed the purpose of your visit,” he went on, shaking Butakov’s hand with both of his.

  “I pray to God that this visit really becomes a holiday for two people at least,” Butakov replied, trying to sustain the tenor of his host’s behavior.

  Djantemir shook hands with the other visitors just as solemnly and invited them to his home.

  “1 regretted so much for the unconquerable Russian mayirs having left before the end of the toi. I scolded my sons: they must have attended to the dear and respected guests badly if the most honorable of the guests go home so early,” the bai fawned upon the officers.

  “On the contrary,” they argued, interrupting one another. “We were very much pleased, and regretted deeply our early departure, but there was nothing we could do: orders are orders.”

  In the largest guest yurt, tea was already being prepared. Kumish whipped up the day’s first kumiss for the guests. While Djantemir’s face was all sweet smiles, Shauken wobbled over to the big trunk and produced bottles of cognac and rum which, she knew, the mayirs preferred drinking with hot tea.

  All this time Djantemir was breaking his head over the reason for the officers’ visit to his aul. He darted sidelong glances at their dress uniforms and glittering golden but­tons, orders and medals with colorful silk ribbons, and at the strange oval badges on the chest of Butakov and Eismont. These regalia lent the guests a particularly festive and solemn appearance, but it was a regular weekday when all the Russian chiefs should have been working. A mute alarm stole over the bai’s mind. He was also confused by Butakov’s mysterious remark about the happiness of two people.

  Djantemir invited the guests to be seated on the white piece of felt spread in the place of honor, while he settled to one side almost right near the kerege, where he dili­gently filled the drinking bowls with tea, cognac or rum. As the guests sipped their tea, Butakov exchanged glances with Damis, not knowing whether it was seemly to speak his mind right away or engage in small talk first and only then divulge the purpose of his visit. But neither Butakov nor Damis found any miscellaneous subjects to talk about with the bai.

  “So who of the akyns were the winners?” Shevchenko suddenly came to the rescue of his superiors, since he was really interested in the outcome of the balladeers’ competi­tion.

  Djantemir’s face broke into a sweet smile.

  “Now what akyn is better than Abdrahman?” Djantemir replied. “He captured the biggest prize: a horse and saddle inlaid with ivory.”

  “And what about Azat?”

  “He sang well, too. His prize was a robe of Bukhara silk, and Kok­lai won a carpet, a good, beautiful carpet my daugh­ter had woven.”

  “You have a beautiful daughter. It’s time to think about her happiness in earnest,” Butakov jumped at the chance to direct the conversation into the necessary channel.

  “I will think about it. She must be sold and a wedding celebrated,” Djantemir said, shaking his hand at a loss: did the officers really come just on an ordinary visit to talk and drink expensive wines or kumiss? “I’ll hold another toi then.”

  “That’s the reason why we have come to you today,” Damis said suddenly, reluctant to surrender the role of chief matchmaker to Butakov. “We have a suitable party for her. He’s an honest, industrious man, who will pay you good bride money and will be a true son to you.”

  “Who is that?” Djantemir asked warily. “Where does he wander?”

  “He is right here, sitting at your side. He even comes from a bai’s kin. Once he was poor, but now he is rich.”

  “We don’t want anyone poor,” Djantemir said, alarmed. “I’ll sell her to a rich man, so that she won’t go hungry. He has to have a big warm yurt, sheep, camels, and horses.”

  Seeing that the conversation was taking an undesirable turn, Butakov gave Damis a sign and interfered deter­minedly:

  “This man has done you quite a few services: he saved your flock during a snowstorm; he also saved Kuljan in the Karakum Desert. The wolves almost made him a crip­ple when they attacked your herd. He also caught a wonder­ful golden eagle for you. Don’t you appreciate such a man, and wouldn’t you want him to be your son and see your own sons as able and brave as Jaisak, the son of Shakir?”

  “My daughter is not intended for a baigush,” Djantemir said, blood flooding his face. “She’ll be wed to a rich man. We don’t want a beggar.”

  “How much do you ask for Kuljan?” Damis interrupted him abruptly.

  “She is engaged already,” Djantemir said with an irritat­ed shrug. “I made a down payment when she was that tall,” he stretched out his hand about an arshin from the ground.

  “Yes, but her intended is dead. According to the shariat, the down payment remains with the parents of the future bride when her intended dies, and nobody has the right to demand it back.”

  This was something Djantemir did not know. His eyes flashed with greed.

  “Oi, how does the chief know about that?” Djantemir asked, his suspicion aroused.

  “I know! I served in Orenburg where the would-be son-in-law of a Tatar I knew died. He turned to a mufti, and the latter explained to him the law in this manner.”

  “That’s a good law,” Djantemir said, clucking his tongue. “But lbrai’s uncle wants to wed her. He is very rich, and lives in a white yurt. And that means eating pilau every day, letting others do the work for you, and lounging on carpets.”

  “She is almost a child, whereas he could very well be your father. It’s a shame even to think about such an ugly arrangement!” Shevchenko blurted out.

  “For a bai it is a shame to give his daughter in marriage to a servant,” Djantemir snapped back, but immediately checked his tongue, remembering that the matchmakers were “big chiefs.”

  “He is not your servant, but the son of Shakir, who had been your father’s friend and a bai just like you,” an axakal suddenly cut in.

  The axakal had inconspicuously approached the yurt during the conversation and had been standing silently by the entrance.

  “On the night of Shakir’s death,” the old man continued, addressing the officers in rather good Russian, “he called all of us to his yurt. He also called Djantemir and told us how he had been friends with old Undasin, Djantemir’s father, and had turned from a rich bai into a beggar when there was jut. You yourself, Djantemir, swore in the presence of all the axakals of your kin that Shakir was telling the truth. You should be ashamed not so much of giving Kuljan to a man who is poorer than his father as of receiving the friend of your father and, instead of help­ing him, turning him almost into a slave. And to this day you make his decent widow, the hapless Kumish, do hard work for you!” he raised his voice in anger. “That is a shame indeed! That is a disgrace! It is a black spot on the honor of all your kin! And now, when Jaisak Aga has become the best herder and does not want to leave your aul but desires to be your loyal son for whom the big Rus­sian chiefs have come to intercede, you have the effrontery to offend a decent jigit, just for him being poorer than yourself.”

  “How much do you ask for your daughter?” Damis asked bluntly again, motioning the angry axakal to silence.

  “Zulkarnai had to give me one hundred rubles and three hundred sheep,” Djantemir mumbled reluctantly as he trem­bled from shame and anger, not daring, though, to assail the axakal with words in the presence of the Russian officers.

  He realized that if he were to offend the old man, the entire aul might go against their bai. His hand nervously clutched the whip handle, while blood flooded his face, and even his
neck, to the point of them turning blue.

  “And how much of the down payment did you receive?” Damis persisted relentlessly.

  “When Ibrai was alive, we received three red ten-ruble bills and a hundred sheep,” Zeineb said; she had been sit­ting silently to one side, and the bai only nodded his head in agreement to what she had said.

  “So how much do you want from Jaisak?”

  “He’s got no money, and I won’t give her to him for less than Zulkarnai offered,” Djantemir hissed through his teeth.

  “Have Jaisak and the girl called,” Damis ordered, realiz­ing that he had to avail himself of Djantemir’s temporary indecision.

  The sweethearts must have been close by, because they entered the yurt a moment later. Kuljan bashfully bowed to the mayirs and stopped by the threshold, feeling her legs were trembling. Although her face was of a waxen pallor, she looked remarkably beautiful in her best holiday dress. Jaisak, too, had changed into a new dark-red chapan of cloth and a large white malakhai with split brims. He held a glittering gown of golden brocade on which lay an unfold­ed one-hundred-ruble bill. Bowing low to Djantemir, he extended the money to him.

  “Accept from me, Djantemir Aga, the bride money and robe as a gift from your new son,” he said in a solemn way. “And have some­one accept three hundred of the choic­est sheep from me as well.”

  Djantemir kept silent, his eyes shifting back and forth from the Russians to Jaisak. His lips moved wordlessly — he was either gasping for air or trying to utter something, which in the end he failed to do. Rage, shame and greed struggled within him, depriving him of the ability to think, speak and even decide anything.

  “Tell me, beauty, do you want to be the wife of the old man Moldabai or do you wish to be wed to Jaisak?” Butakov asked with a kindly smile.

  Kuljan did not understand anything: she raised her dense lashes, and in the deep darkness of her eyes he discerned such sadness, torment of expectation, and such a tense inquiring alarm, that he instantly pulled at the hand of Rahim, who seemed to have grown out of the ground, and ordered him:

  “Interpret to your sister what I have said.”

  Her swarthy face flushed red, she pressed palm to palm, and gave a faint scream as she threw herself at her father’s feet: “Don’t bring me to ruin! Marry me to Jaisak! He is my happiness! He alone!”

  “Djantemir, if you really want us to be your friends, accept the bride money and set the date of the wedding; then send a messenger to Zulmoldai, or whatever his name is, to inform him that Kuljan is being married to another man, that is, to Jaisak.”

  “Who will be my chief herder then?” Djantemir suddenly uttered the first thing that came to his mind.

  “I don’t intend leaving you, Djantemir Aga. We will live and wander together, when Kuljan becomes ray wife,” Jaisak replied. “I will breed you such racers that will bring fame to your herd and kin throughout the entire Big Steppe. I give my word of a bai.”

  Djantemir’s eyes shifted alternately from the one-hund­red-ruble bill to the gown of brocade he had dreamed of for so long in order to be dressed like a Russian mullah during festive occasions. His anger was gradually subsiding, but he still did not dare make up his mind.

  “You will make a lot of money on your daughter,” Damis said. “From Zulkarnai’s kin you retain the thirty rubles and a hundred sheep, and here you have another one hundred rubles and not the remaining two hundred sheep as you might have received from Zulkarnai but three hundred, which makes it four hundred in all. I know of no girl who would have received so much money and cattle for her hand. Anyway, hers is a beauty no money should be spared for.”

  This argument swept away all of Djantemir’s doubts. he grabbed the one hundred-ruble bill, turned it in his fingers to see whether it was counterfeit, then he raised it against the light: the watermark portrait of Czarina Catherine smiled at him with all the dimples in her puffy cheeks and on her curly head was a little crown resembling a skull cap — everything was in order.

  “All right, I agree!” Djantemir waved down his hand with finality. “If it were not for the mayirs, you wouldn’t have my daughter to the end of your days!”

  Djantemir carefully folded the one-hundred-ruble bill, bosomed it, and then pushed Kuljan up with a foot: “Get up, and take your ‘happiness!’”

  She got to her feet as if she had woken after a horrible nightmare, and then swayed suddenly and her face turned ghastly pale. Jaisak and Shevchenko took her by her arms and sat her against the kerege; the happy Kumish offered her a bowlful of kumiss, while Zeineb moved up quietly to Djantemir and whispered something reproachfully and confusedly in his ear. He gave her a reluctant nod. Zeineb went out of the yurt for a while, and on returning with a bale, handed it to Djantemir. He unwrapped it and beckoned to Jaisak: “Kyuit! Take the kyuit! And thank Allah that everything has turned out that way.”

  It was a fine hunting rifle a father-in-law traditionally presented to his future son-in-law on the day of betrothal.

  Djantemir did not let the guests leave without a good treat.

  Next morning, after counting up what he had gained, he was wholly satisfied, and when Shauken tried to re­proach him for cringing to the mayirs, he laid the handle of his whip across her back without much ado.

  Kuljan was overwhelmingly happy, but her fear of the fickleness of fate kept her in a state of superstitious alarm. In the morning, Rahim and Taijan, accompanied by a band of well armed tyulenguts, rode off to the banks of Balkhash in order to break the news to Moldabai that his idea had been obliterated. Rahim decided to employ a boyish prank: instead of informing the old libertine about the refusal, he would extend to him a polite invitation to attend the wed­ding of his sister with a young and handsome herder she was passionately in love with. By such an unkind trick he would gain revenge on the old man for wanting to ruin Kuljan and causing her to weep so bitterly.

  Kumish, too, heaved a sigh of relief. The very next day Zeineb told her that she would not have to do any work around the bai’s household anymore. After her son’s wed­ding she would live in the white yurt of the newlyweds, and in the meantime, she could rest and prepare for the wedding.

  30

  Kuljan’s Wedding

  By the request of the mayirs, the wedding was set for the first day of Easter, when they could attend it without any detriment to their military duties.

  After the engagement Jaisak settled at the herders’ camp so as not to disturb the usual course of the wedding cere­mony which had to take place alternately at the bride’s and groom’s place of residence. The last, seventh part of the wedding ritual was to be performed at Djantemir’s aul, in the white yurt Kuljan had received with her dowry; in it the newlyweds would live from then on.

  The day before the neighbors started arriving at the aul to help with the preparations for the wedding. Jaisak, in the meantime, had left the herders’ camp with a retinue of friends, and according to custom made a halt half a verst from the aul to which he sent a jigit to announce to his betrothed about his arrival. The messenger was met, cheered merrily and immediately regaled with food while the young women and girls set off to meet Jaisak.

  Jaisak made three low bows to them, as custom demand­ed, and Baisali’s wife Zaruza proposed to build him a tent or yurt for the duration of the wedding party.

  “But you won’t get it just for nothing,” she warned, playing with her tinkling necklace of silver coins and pend­ants of heavy one-ruble pieces.

  “I have no money,” Jaisak replied by custom, without raising his eyes. “See Taijan on that matter — he will pay you.”

  On receiving the ransom of several silken kerchiefs, the girls and young women set to work. The bridegroom’s yurt was ready an hour later. In it he had to remain a captive of the women, almost unceasingly, to the end of the wed­ding ceremony. The women played tricks on him by sewing his chapan to the piece of felt or carpet he was sitting on without him noticing it, tried to soil his cleanly shaven head with charcoal or
gravy, or stuck a live frog or beetle behind his collar; but most of them defended him and kept running back and forth from the aul, bringing him hot tea, kumiss, nuts, or various sweets to make his life just as sweet as the delights served at the wedding party.

  Kuljan was sitting in her father’s yurt in the meantime. On learning of the bridegroom’s arrival, she, in conformity with an ancient custom, sat with her back to the entrance, her face turned to the kerege, and dropped the ends of her bridal veil on her breast while the bridesmaids around her started singing one of the main wedding songs called “Zhar-Zhar.” This word denoted a friend or a man. The girls struck up the first stanza and at the end of every line a chorus of jigits responded with the refrain “Zhar-Zhar.” This was to remind the bride that from now on her husband would replace her parents, relatives and girl friends, and she would have to rely on him alone.

  For thousands upon thousands of Kazakh girls this song had sounded like a funeral dirge, but for Kuljan it was an exulting hymn of love.

  The baiga that followed was noisy and full of excitement. But Jaisak still remained sitting outside the aul, in his temporary yurt under the watchful eyes of the women. Kuljan, too, stayed in her father’s semi-dark yurt as the girls sang her sad songs of her passing maidenhood.

  Rahim and Ismagul, however, felt themselves like heroes after they had won first and second place in two horse races.

  In a display of designing generosity, Djantemir an­nounced for all the bais and axakals to hear that he was surrendering the prize to Jaisak, since he had reared and trained not only the winning horses but also all of the bai’s racers, and accepting him for his son now, he considered him a participant in his victories. This cost Djantemir only twenty-eight of his sheep, but it gave an additional boost to his fame throughout the Great Steppe.

  While the guests competed in fencing and marksmanship, danced and sang, the bridesmaids led the bride outdoors so that she bid farewell to the aul. She entered every yurt, bowed low to its occupants, uttered sad words of farewell or accepted greetings and the best wishes as her eyes beamed with happiness. The ceremonial round of the brides­maids chanting sad songs of farewell lasted over two hours until they took her back to her father’s yurt.