Alexander Ypsilanti was personally courageous, but he did not possess the qualities necessary for the role he had assumed so ardently and so imprudently. He was unable to get along with the men he had to lead. They neither respected nor trusted him. After the unfortunate battle in which the flower of Greek youth perished, Iordaki Olymbioti advised him to retire and took his place himself. Ypsilanti galloped off to the Austrian border and from there sent his curses upon the men, whom he called rebels, cowards, and blackguards. Most of these cowards and blackguards perished within the walls of the Seku monastery or on the banks of the Prut, desperately defending themselves against a ten times stronger adversary.
Kirdjali was in the detachment of Georgi Kantakuzin,2 of whom the same thing might be repeated as was said of Ypsilanti. On the eve of the battle of Skulyani, Kantakuzin asked the Russian authorities for permission to join our border post. The detachment remained without a leader; but Kirdjali, Saphianos, Kantagoni, and the others found no need for a leader.
It seems that no one has described the battle of Skulyani in all its touching truth. Picture to yourself seven hundred men—Arnauts, Albanians, Greeks, Bulgarians, and all sorts of riffraff—with no notion of the art of war, retreating in the face of fifteen thousand Turkish cavalry. This detachment huddled against the bank of the Prut and set up two small cannon found in the gospodar’s*2 courtyard in Jassy, used for firing salutes during birthday parties. The Turks would have been glad to use grapeshot, but did not dare to without permission from the Russian authorities: the shot was bound to fly over to our bank. The commander of the border post (by now deceased), who had been in military service for forty years, had never in his life heard the whistle of bullets, but this time God granted him the chance. A few whizzed past his ears. The dear old fellow got very angry and sharply scolded the major of the Okhotsky infantry regiment attached to the post. The major, not knowing what to do, went running to the river and shook his finger at the delibash,*3 who were prancing on the opposite bank. The delibash, seeing that, turned and galloped off, and the whole Turkish detachment followed them. The major who shook his finger was called Khorchevsky. I do not know what became of him.
The next day, however, the Turks attacked the Hetairists. Not daring to use either grapeshot or cannonballs, they ventured, contrary to their custom, to use cold steel. It was a stiff battle. They wielded yatagans.*4 Lances were noticed for the first time on the Turkish side; these lances were Russian: Nekrasovists3 were fighting in their ranks. The Hetairists were permitted by our sovereign to cross the Prut and take refuge in our border post. They began to cross. Kantagoni and Saphianos were the last ones left on the Turkish side. Kirdjali, wounded the day before, already lay in the border post. Saphianos was killed. Kantagoni, a very fat man, was wounded in the belly by a lance. He raised his saber with one hand, took hold of the enemy’s lance with the other, drove it deeper into himself, and was thus able to reach his killer with the saber and fall together with him.
It was all over. The Turks came out victorious. Moldavia was cleared. Some six hundred Arnauts scattered over Bessarabia; they had no idea how to feed themselves, but were still grateful to Russia for her protection. The life they led was idle, but not dissipated. They were always to be seen in the coffeehouses of half-Turkish Bessarabia, with long chibouks in their mouths, sipping coffee grounds from little cups. Their embroidered jackets and pointed red slippers had already begun to wear out, but they still wore their tasseled caps cocked, and yatagans and pistols still stuck from behind their wide belts. No one complained of them. It was impossible to imagine that these poor, peaceable fellows were the notorious Klephtes4 of Moldavia, comrades of the terrible Kirdjali, and that he himself was among them.
The pasha in command of Jassy learned of it and, on the basis of peace treaties, demanded that the Russian authorities turn the bandit over.
The police began to investigate. They found out that Kirdjali was indeed in Kishinev. He was caught in the house of a fugitive monk, in the evening, when he was having supper, sitting in the dark with seven comrades.
Kirdjali was put under guard. He did not try to conceal the truth and admitted that he was Kirdjali.
“But,” he added, “since I crossed the Prut, I haven’t touched even a hair of anyone’s property, I haven’t harmed the least Gypsy. For the Turks, the Moldavians, the Wallachians, I am, of course, a bandit, but for the Russians I am a guest. When Saphianos, having spent all his grapeshot, came to us in the border post, to take buttons, nails, chains, and yatagan handles from the wounded men for his last shots, I gave him twenty beshliks*5 and was left without money. As God is my witness, I, Kirdjali, lived by begging! Why do the Russians now turn me over to my enemies?”
After that, Kirdjali fell silent and calmly began to wait for the deciding of his fate.
He did not wait long. The authorities, not being obliged to look at bandits from their romantic side, and convinced of the justice of the demand, ordered Kirdjali sent to Jassy.
A man of intelligence and heart, then an unknown young official, now occupying an important post,5 gave me a vivid description of his departure:
At the gates of the jail stood a postal karutsa…(Perhaps you do not know what a karutsa is. It is a low wicker cart, to which until recently six or eight little nags would be hitched. A Moldavian in moustaches and a lambskin hat rode on one of them, constantly shouting and cracking his whip, and his nags went at a rather swift trot. If one of them began to falter, he would unhitch it with terrible curses and abandon it by the roadside, unconcerned for its fate. On his way back he was sure to find it in the same place, calmly grazing on the green steppe. It was not infrequent that a traveler, leaving one station with eight horses, would arrive at the next with a pair. That was fifteen years ago. Nowadays, in Russified Bessarabia, they have adopted the Russian way of harnessing and the Russian cart.)
Such a karutsa stood by the gates of the jail in 1821, on one of the last days of September. Jewesses, their sleeves hanging and their slippers dragging, Arnauts in their ragged and picturesque attire, slender Moldavian women with black-eyed children in their arms, surrounded the karutsa. The men kept silent, the women excitedly awaited something.
The gates opened and several police officers came out; after them two soldiers led out the fettered Kirdjali.
He seemed to be about thirty years old. The features of his swarthy face were regular and stern. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and gave a general impression of extraordinary physical strength. A multicolored turban covered his head at an angle, a broad belt girded his slender waist; a dolman of thick blue broadcloth, the wide folds of a shirt falling to his knees, and beautiful shoes completed his attire. His look was proud and calm.
One of the officers, a red-faced little old man in a faded uniform with three buttons dangling from it, pinched a pair of tin-rimmed spectacles to the purple bump that served him as a nose, unfolded a document, and, with a nasal twang, began to read in Moldavian. From time to time he glanced haughtily at the fettered Kirdjali, to whom the document apparently referred. Kirdjali listened to him attentively. The official finished his reading, folded the document, shouted menacingly at the people, commanded them to make way, and ordered the karutsa brought. Then Kirdjali turned to him and spoke a few words in Moldavian; his voice trembled, his face changed; he wept and fell at the feet of the police officer, clanking his chains. The police officer, frightened, jumped back; the soldiers were about to pick Kirdjali up, but he got up by himself, gathered his shackles, stepped into the karutsa, and shouted “Haida!”*6 A gendarme sat beside him, the Moldavian cracked his whip, and the karutsa rolled off.
“What did Kirdjali say to you?” the young official asked the policeman.
“You see, sir,” the policeman replied, laughing, “he begged me to take care of his wife and child, who live in a Bulgarian village not far from Kilia. He’s afraid they may suffer on account of him. Stupid folk, sir.”
The young official’s account moved me dee
ply. I felt sorry for poor Kirdjali. For a long time I knew nothing of his fate. It was several years later that I ran into that young official. We got to talking of past times.
“And what about your friend Kirdjali?” I asked. “Do you know what’s become of him?”
“That I do,” he replied, and told me the following:
Kirdjali, having been brought to Jassy, was presented to the pasha, who condemned him to be impaled. The execution was put off until some holiday or other. Meanwhile he was locked up in prison.
The prisoner was guarded by seven Turks (simple people and at heart just as much bandits as Kirdjali); they respected him and listened to his wondrous tales with an eagerness common to the whole of the East.
Close relations developed between the guards and the prisoner. One day Kirdjali said to them: “Brothers, my hour is near! No one can escape his fate. Soon I shall part with you. I would like to leave you something to remember me by.”
The Turks were all ears.
“Brothers,” Kirdjali went on, “three years ago, when the late Mikhailaki and I were bandits, we buried a pot of galbeni*7 on the steppe not far from Jassy. It looks like neither of us is going to have that pot. So be it: take it yourselves and divide it up amicably.”
The Turks nearly lost their minds. A discussion went on about how to find the secret spot. They thought and thought, and decided that Kirdjali himself should take them there.
Night came. The Turks removed the fetters from the captive’s feet, tied his hands with a rope, and set off with him from town to the steppe.
Kirdjali led them, keeping to the same direction, from one burial mound to another. They walked for a long time. Finally, Kirdjali stopped by a wide stone, counted off twenty paces to the south, stamped his foot, and said: “Here.”
The Turks arranged themselves. Four drew their yatagans and began to dig. Three remained on guard. Kirdjali sat down on a stone and watched them work.
“Well, so? Soon now?” he asked. “Have you found it?”
“Not yet,” replied the Turks, working so hard that the sweat poured off them.
Kirdjali began to show impatience.
“What people,” he said. “You don’t even know how to dig. I’d have done it in two minutes. Untie my hands, boys, give me a yatagan.”
The Turks pondered and started talking it over.
“Why not?” they decided. “Let’s untie his hands and give him a yatagan. Where’s the harm? There’s one of him and seven of us.”
And the Turks untied his hands and gave him a yatagan.
At last Kirdjali was free and armed. What he must have felt!…He promptly started digging, the guards were helping him…Suddenly he stabbed one of them with his yatagan and, leaving the steel in his chest, snatched two pistols from behind his belt.
The remaining six, seeing Kirdjali armed with two pistols, took to their heels.
Nowadays Kirdjali does his banditry around Jassy. He recently wrote to the gospodar, demanding five thousand levi*8 from him and threatening, in case of failure to pay, to set fire to Jassy and get as far as the gospodar himself. The five thousand levi were conveyed to him.
That’s Kirdjali!
* * *
*1 Albanian (Turkish)
*2 governor’s
*3 cavalrymen of the Turkish army
*4 long, curved Turkish sabers
*5 Turkish silver coins
*6 “Let’s go!” (Tatar)
*7 Romanian gold coins
*8 Bulgarian currency, from the word for lion (lev)
Egyptian Nights
CHAPTER ONE
–Quel est cet homme?
–Ha, c’est un bien grand talent, il fait de sa voix tout ce qu’il veut.
–Il devrait bien, madame, s’en faire une culotte.*1
Charsky was a native of Petersburg. He was not yet thirty; he was not married; he was not burdened by government service. His late uncle, who had been a vice-governor in better days, had left him a decent inheritance. His life could have been very pleasant; but he had the misfortune to write and publish verses. In the magazines he was called a poet, and in the servants’ quarters a penman.
Despite the enormous privileges enjoyed by verse writers (to tell the truth, apart from the right to use the accusative case instead of the genitive, and some other so-called poetic licenses, no special privileges of Russian verse writers are known to us)—be that as it may, despite all their possible privileges, these people are subject to great disadvantages and discomforts. The most bitter, most unbearable ill for a poet is his title and label, with which he is branded and which never wears off. The public look at him as their property; in their opinion, he was born for their benefit and pleasure. If he comes back from the country, the first person he meets asks him: “Have you brought us some new little thing?” If he starts thinking about his disorderly affairs, about the illness of someone dear to him, at once a trite smile accompanies a trite exclamation: “You must be composing something!” If he falls in love?—his beauty buys an album1 in the English shop and is already waiting for an elegy. If he comes to someone he barely knows to discuss important business, the man at once calls his little boy and makes him recite some verses by so-and-so; and the boy treats the poet to a distortion of his own verses. And these are still the flowers of the trade! What about the adversities? Charsky confessed he was so sick of greetings, requests, albums, and little boys that he had constantly to refrain from some sort of rudeness.
Charsky made every possible effort to rid himself of the intolerable label. He avoided the company of his fellow litterateurs and preferred society people, even the most vapid of them. His conversation was the most banal and never touched on literature. In his dress he always observed the latest fashion with the shyness and superstition of a young Muscovite arriving in Petersburg for the first time in his life. In his study, decorated like a lady’s bedroom, there was nothing reminiscent of a writer; no books were scattered over and under the tables; the sofa was not spattered with ink; there was no disorder betraying the presence of the muse and the absence of a broom and brush. Charsky was in despair if one of his society friends found him with pen in hand. It was hard to believe what trifles a man could sink to, one who was, incidentally, endowed with talent and soul. He pretended to be now a passionate fancier of horses, now a desperate gambler, now a refined gastronome; though he was unable to tell a mountain breed from an Arabian, could never remember trumps, and secretly preferred baked potatoes to all possible concoctions of French cuisine. He led a most dissipated life; hung around at all the balls, overate at all the diplomatic dinners, and was as unavoidable at every soirée as Rezanov’s ice cream.
And yet he was a poet, and his passion was insuperable: when such rubbish (as he called inspiration) came over him, Charsky shut himself up in his study and wrote from morning till late at night. He confessed to his close friends that only then did he know true happiness. The rest of the time he strolled about, posturing and shamming and constantly hearing the famous question: “Have you written some new little thing?”
One morning Charsky felt that blessed state of mind when dreams are clearly outlined before you and you find vivid, unexpected words to embody your visions, when verses lie down easily under your pen and sonorous rhymes rush to meet harmonious thoughts. Charsky’s soul was plunged in sweet oblivion…and society, and society’s opinion, and his own caprices did not exist for him. He was writing verses.
Suddenly the door of his study creaked and a stranger’s head appeared. Charsky gave a start and frowned.
“Who’s there?” he asked with vexation, cursing his servants to himself for never staying put in the front hall.
The stranger came in.
He was tall, lean, and seemed about thirty years old. The features of his swarthy face were expressive: the pale, high forehead overhung by black locks of hair, the dark, flashing eyes, the aquiline nose, and the thick beard surrounding the sunken, swarthy yellow cheeks, betrayed him as a for
eigner. He was wearing a black tailcoat, already discolored at the seams; summer trousers (though outside it was already deep autumn); a false diamond gleamed under a shabby black cravat over his yellowed shirtfront; his rough felt hat seemed to have seen both fair weather and foul. Meeting such a man in the forest, you would have taken him for a robber; in society, for a political conspirator; in the front hall, for a quack peddling elixirs and arsenic.
“What do you want?” Charsky asked him in French.
“Signor,” the foreigner replied with low bows, “Lei voglia perdonarmi se…”*2
Charsky did not offer him a chair and stood up himself; the conversation went on in Italian.
“I am a Neapolitan artist,” said the stranger. “Circumstances have forced me to leave my fatherland. I came to Russia with hopes for my talent.”
Charsky thought that the Neapolitan was preparing to give some cello concerts and was selling tickets door to door. He was about to hand him his twenty-five roubles, the sooner to be rid of him, but the stranger added:
“I hope, signor, that you will be of friendly assistance to your confrere and introduce me in the houses to which you yourself have access.”
It would have been impossible to deliver a more painful blow to Charsky’s vanity. He glanced haughtily at the man who called himself his confrere.
“Allow me to ask, who are you and whom do you take me for?” he asked, barely controlling his indignation.
The Neapolitan noticed his vexation.
“Signor,” he replied, faltering…“ho creduto…ho sentito…la vostra Eccelenza mi perdonera…”*3
“What do you want?” Charsky repeated drily.
“I have heard much about your astonishing talent; I am sure that the local gentry consider it an honor to offer all possible patronage to so excellent a poet,” replied the Italian, “and I therefore made so bold as to come to you…”
Novels, Tales, Journeys: The Complete Prose of Alexander Pushkin Page 28
