The Exile: A novel about Taras Shevchenko

by Zinaida Tulub

  Zeineb, who performed the role of the bride’s mother, threw the flaps of the yurt wide open and the men turned back the patterned white koshma bounding the yurt on all sides so that the guests and aul dwellers could see Kuljan through the lattice framework, while the young people sang in chorus a song lauding her beauty, kind heart and virtue, and praising her parents for having reared and brought up such a wonderful girl.

  As the night was drawing on, the aul blossomed out with golden bushes of campfires. The sumptuous wedding party continued, and with the advent of night there also came the time for other ancient rituals, dating from the times when there had not been either marriages by contract or by buying and selling women, but rather the girls had been abducted to outlying auls never to see the homes of their parents again.

  In Taijan’s yurt a party for girls was in preparation; it had to be attended by the bride as well, while the bride­groom was to stay in his yurt beyond the aul.

  When everything was ready, one of the girls, Marjan, went to invite the bride.

  “Come to us, Kuljan Djan,” she said.

  “Why should I leave my parents’ nest? Let me stay the last night in my yurt,” Kuljan said, following the ancient custom.

  “Wipe off your tears, bride! We will have a merry party. Dispel your sorrow among true friends.”

  But Kuljan only shook her head in response to the invi­tation.

  “Bring her to us. We’ll have a jolly time,” the girl turned to the bridesmaids, but they, too, refused to take Kuljan to the inviting yurt of Taijan. Marjan left the yurt for a moment, cried out something into the darkness — and sud­denly she came running into Djantemir’s yurt with her girl friends to take Kuljan out by force.

  “Help!” Kuljan cried according to custom, as she tried to break loose.

  The bridesmaids surrounded her in a tight circle and start­ed defending her, while Marjan’s girl friends gradually became hot-tempered. What was initially a make-believe pushing and shoving started to take on a nature of a real scuffle. The girls fought with pillows and everything else they could lay their hands on. Someone caught on the oil lamp hanging on the shangarak and knocked it to the ground. Someone else ripped a cloth apart, a drinking bowl went flying to the ground, and another bowl was trampled under the shuffling feet. The women tore at each other’s hair and broke crockery in the darkness. The kerege snapped. Still, the bridesmaids got the upper hand, and Marjan had to retreat. The oil lamp was relit, the pieces of broken crockery were swept up, but the girls had not yet cleaned up when Marjan broke into the yurt again — this time with the men. They fell on the girls who defended themselves with shrieks and laughter. Kuljan shouted at the top of her voice, calling her brothers for help, but the men tied her hands behind her back, wrapped her up in a carpet, and carried her off to Taijan.

  In Taijan’s yurt she was unwrapped and seated in the place of honor, after which followed a merry party. The bride, however, as was the custom, did not dance or joke but sat there silently and even tried not to laugh when all the young people almost rocked with laughter at a partic­ularly witty or pert joke.

  The young people made merry till midnight. After mid­night the bride got to her feet, threw her fur chapan on her shoulders and made for her parents’ yurt. Her bridesmaids, along with Marjan and her friends, accompanied her in a crowd. Suddenly they were attacked by a band of jigits. The excitement of it all turned the noisy scuffle into an outright fight, for which some paid with a blue eye, others with a. scratched face. Chapans and veils were ripped, some of the girls had several gold and silver coins on their sleeve­less jackets missing in the morning, still others did not know how to conceal the bruises and scratches on their faces. Getting the better of Kuljan, the men wrapped her up in a carpet and carried her off in an indefinite direction, but they, too, were intercepted by another group of guests who recaptured the bride. This group was rewarded with a sizable ransom, and at long last the bride was escorted to her parents’ yurt.

  Exhausted, Kuljan lay down on a heap of quilted rugs and pillows. The two days of the unceasing wedding party had drained her strength. The noisy goings-on in the aul overwhelmed her with a lot of new impressions. She dozed off but started some minutes later when the elder female matchmaker entered with Jaisak, and immediately disap­peared again.

  Without uttering a word, Jaisak pressed Kuljan’s fingers in his hand and settled at her side. They did not want to say anything, for words would have sounded awkward any­way in describing what they felt in their hearts. They looked at each other, their eyes conveying greater meaning than spoken words.

  Kuljan and Jaisak did not notice how the black-blue sky in the tunduk flooded with a blue glow that had swallowed up the stars. The night passed like a fleeting moment.

  Jaisak raised his head.

  “Till we meet tomorrow, my rainbow,” he said and left the yurt.

  The following day the aul throbbed with merriment. Jaisak remained under the watchful eyes of the women as before. They replaced one another frequently, each being eager to dance, partake of the rich food and have some fun, or else cloud the reason of some of the visiting jigits.

  The noise of the party died away toward midnight, and this time the elder matchmaker brought Kuljan to Jaisak.

  Again the two of them sat alone till dawn, exchanging only a few words, happy at the thought of the approaching moment, after which nothing but implacable death would separate them.

  Kuljan left one hour before dawn. Jaisak could barely wait for his female guard; he paid her a ransom in order to be free, jumped into the saddle of the horse Taijan had brought him, and galloped off to the herders’ camp.

  While Jaisak was away to fetch the presents for his father-in-law and bride, the aul dwellers started building a white yurt which rich parents customarily gave as a dowry to their daughters. To the yurt they brought also Kuljan’s hopechest with her clothes and some of the things her mother had left her.

  Jaisak and his friends arrived on horseback in the latter half of the day. He presented Djantemir with a dagger and five luxurious silver-fox furs, Kuljan received two necklaces and a length of velvet for a dress, Zeineb, a Per­sian shawl, and four of Kuljan’s brothers, a wolfhound pup and a pistol each. After staying for some time with his future father-in- law and discussing various household mat­ters, Jaisak, as custom demanded, returned to his lonely steppe dwelling to stay there under the strict eyes of his female guards.

  In the evening Marjan came again to invite the bride to the party, and as the day before the bride was carried away after a brief scuffle.

  At midnight Taijan’s yurt was visited by all the relatives of the bride and the groom’s only kin — his mother Kumish, who for the first time in many years, instead of her beg­gar’s rags, wore a decent dress which Kuljan had made for her in secret.

  The mullah from Irghiz-Kala had also been invited to the aul for the wedding, and when the bai ordered the young people, “Call the mullah so that he bestow the bless­ing of Allah on our children!” the mullah promptly ap­peared in Taijan’s yurt.

  At this point in the ritual, Iskhak and Taijan enacted a merry comedy: one of them played the part of the groom’s father, and the other the bride’s father. They haggled over the bride money, interspersing their bargaining with jokes, witticisms, proverbs and hints which sent the guests into roars of laughter.

  “No, I can’t agree the sheep having their tails bobbed off!” cried Iskhak who played the part of Djantemir. “They’re not sheep, but sheep skins with bones and meat inside.”

  “But I can’t have it otherwise, because all the nails on the fingers and toes of the bride were bobbed off yesterday. That’s no girl anymore if she hasn’t any long nails. So I’m asking the sheep tails for the nails.”

  The guests roared from the fun, while the two “actors” emulated each other in thinking up ever new reasons to pursue the argument. In the end, the mullah stopped them with an imperious gesture: “Enough! Now ask the bride whether she agr
ees to be wed to Jaisak, the son of Shakir?”

  Taijan and Iskhak got to their feet and went over to Kuljan.

  “Tell us, Kuljan: do you agree to become the wife of Jaisak, the son of Shakir?”

  Kuljan remembered the instructions of the elder women and pretended not to have heard the question. The young men waited for another minute, and then repeated the same question. This time, too, she kept silent, although she want­ed to shout for the whole world to hear: “Yes! I agree!” But custom bade her to keep silent, for a Muslim woman had no say in deciding her own destiny. Taijan and Iskhak asked her the third time. Only now was a woman permitted either to utter the cherished yes or remain silent again. By that time Kuljan was so excited she only moved her lips, unable to utter the cherished word. So the bridesmaid sit­ting at her side said:

  “Yes, she agrees.”

  “And now go and ask the groom whether he agrees,” the mullah said.

  Jaisak had by then left his temporary dwelling and was standing near the entrance to Taijan’s yurt. Iskhak and Taijan returned and informed the mullah about the positive reply of the bridegroom.

  The mullah placed in front of him a bowlful of water, blessed it, took a drink of the water, handed the bowl to the bride and groom for them to take a sip and pass it on to all those present. Then he went out of the yurt with the men. If there had been a mosque in the aul, the mullah would have offered a wedding prayer in it. He made for the guest yurt of Djantemir, while the women fell on the bride and carried her off to one of her father’s yurt, despite all the attempts of her bridesmaids to defend her.

  From there the elder female matchmaker, who had prepared the bed for the newlyweds in the white yurt, took the bride to her new home and then went to bring Jaisak.

  Only now did Jaisak and Kuljan feel that all barriers had been overcome at last and they would belong to each other to their deaths.

  In the morning the young couple went to Djantemir for the customary blessing. After he had blessed them and treated them to a sumptuous meal, he immediately started discussing with Jaisak the forthcoming toi and baiga at Irghiz, for which his son-in-law had to prepare several racers.

  The aul emptied as the merry guests left for their homes. In the kitchen yurt the women were still busy preparing the farewell meal for the guests. The conversation of the axakals and jigits revolved around the imminent departure to the summer pastures.

  31

  The Sailors’ Song

  In early May the Constantine and Nicholas put to sea. In parting, the Nicholas saluted Butakov’s broad pennant with seven gun shots. The Constantine responded with the same salute — and the ships passed clear of each other, the Nicholas heading along the eastern coast to chart it in detail, and the Constantine to the north, skirting from the west the numerous islands stretching off the eastern coast.

  Though difficult and dangerous, the voyage was in other respects boring and monotonous. The eastern shores offered no colorful islands, cliffs or inlets whatsoever. The islands were low and sandy, at times only slightly showing above the water. Extremely dangerous sandbanks surrounded them on all sides and stretched far out into the sea in long treacherous tongues barely covered by water.

  “What am I to paint here?” Shevchenko complained. “How the sun is reflected in the sea? Or the reeds? People simply won’t believe that this is the Aral Sea and not Lake Ladoga. There is nothing marine about it! Or am I to paint those dunes? I did only one watercolor on Chikanaral Island.”

  “Don’t be upset,” Butakov comforted him. “There will be some interesting landscapes yet. We won’t be sailing through these tiny sounds forever. Once we are in the open sea, you will be missing those dunes and sandbanks.”

  “An open sea is all right with me: I don’t know what sea sickness is,” Shevchenko said with a laugh.

  “He who hasn’t been out at sea, doesn’t know what fear is,” Butakov replied with an old proverb.

  The day was sunny and utterly quiet. While the topog­rapher Rybin was finishing his survey, Shevchenko closed his album and went for a walk around the island together with Werner to add new plants to his botanical collection.

  The schooner rode at anchor off Chikanaral Island through­out the night. In the morning a boat was sent with to­pographers to the island when suddenly a high wind rose. Butakov ordered the boat turn back with a gun shot, but the waves had already become so rugged the sailors could not come alongside the ship. The boat was hauled ashore, while the Constantine had to cast a second anchor, since the wind had reached gale force.

  The sea in this place being shallow, the furious waves raked up the water right down to the bottom in long frothy rollers. Every time the Constantine flew up a crest, a roller threw her down a deep gulch between two watery hills and was about to smash her against the bared bottom.

  During one of the strongest gusts the rope of the heavy bow anchor snapped and the schooner whirled the more helplessly at her smaller anchor.

  “All hands on deck!” Butakov ordered from the captain’s bridge.

  Shevchenko and Istomin scrambled out on deck together with the entire crew.

  “Bend the kedge!” Butakov ordered. Everyone rushed to the ropes. “Drop the kedge!”

  The deck roared, turning into a steep slope which the sailors hung on to by some miracle. Foam, spray, and sometimes a roller covered the men. During one of the heaviest lists a sail boom from the mainmast was torn away and started swinging with destructive force over the deck. Every of its swing could knock off the head of anyone in its path. No sooner had Butakov issued orders than Shevchenko rushed toward the boom, took hold of it, and hung onto it, pushing it to the side to secure it with a boom sheet.

  “Secure the boom!” Butakov shouted.

  A sailor ran to the daredevil to give him a helping hand.

  The white-crested waves lashed the tiny ship with u roar, threatening to destroy her any minute like a toy. The wind howled and scourged the men with cold rain and a no less cold briny spray. It whipped the manes off the waves and swept them over the savage sea like a thin mist which rained on the dreadfully chilled sailors.

  “Dog down the hatches!” Butakov ordered.

  He realized that every roller, every gust could spell doom to his ship. But he had to keep the crew’s spirits high — so without a single twitch on his facial muscles, he issued loud, terse orders to inspire confidence in the crew.

  The shore was no more than half a mile away. The booming surf broke against the low dunes. After deluging a sandbank, the waves rolled back, their frothy paws rak­ing up gravel and sand. The schooner had to be kept head to sea, while the wind tried strenuously to push her to one side all the time.

  “Two points over the starboard bow!” the captain’s voice rang out.

  Their tooth clenched, the crew carried out the orders with faultless precision, realizing that survival depended on their efficiency.

  After midnight the wind started to shift, and by ten o’clock in the morning had spent its force to an extent which enabled Butakov to send orders to the topographers to return to the schooner. An hour later he ordered all hands, except for the watch, to take a rest; he himself went into the wardroom and asked Tikhon to give him dry clothes and a cup of hot tea.

  “You did a good job,” he said to Shevchenko who was worriedly looking through his albums to see whether the sea waves had ruined them. “I see you managed to learn handling the wheel as well. Honest to God, you really did a good job,” Butakov repeated, wearily sitting down on his bunk.

  The Constantine had been at sea for seventeen days. Her supply of fresh water had dwindled alarmingly and had to be replenished at once. The schooner was sailing south­ward all the time, and soon Butakov made a new geograph­ical discovery: two little islands. The first of them he named for Mcnshikov, and the second for Tolmachov. Rybin chart­ed them on a map, and the sailors took to digging wells, but the water on both islands proved to be bitterly salty and unfit for drinking. Instead they came across s
ome won­derful snow water that had gathered in a depression, but managed to take only six pails of it, because a strong wind got up suddenly and the schooner had to run to the safety of the opposite shore to evade another gale. The Constantine sailed further south, and soon approached the eastern estuary of the Amu Darya in the Djalpak Inlet. Butakov and Rybin went down in a boat and entered an arm of the river, but found to their great surprise that the water in the arm was salty.

  A fresh wind kept the schooner hugging the Khivan shore for several days, and only a week later did it spend its force and Butakov was able to start sounding the Djalpak Inlet and continue looking for fresh water.

  The schooner’s water supply had run out completely by then. There was an unbearable heat wave. The desert all around was baked by the sun so much that the waters of the Aral Sea could neither relieve the heat nor moisten the air. People suffered from the blistering heat and from thirst, and the suffering could not be alleviated by bathing or ablutions. They drank the sea water with disgust; an hour later an unbearable pain would rack their stomachs and result in diarrhea. However, the crew did not complain, and only torment and pleading showed in the eyes of the sick. Utterly sick himself, Butakov realized that he had to put all matters aside and seek water as fast as he could.

  He and Rybin had waded around the entire Djalpak Inlet and found out that the river had previously spilled freely into the sea, but the northern head winds and the sea current had gradually filled the estuary with sand which the Amu Darya was carrying out to sea, and during a great spring flood the river must have breached itself another out­let into the sea.