The Name of Hero was published by Tarcher/Houghton Mifflin in 1981. The rights have reverted to the author, Richard Seltzer. He grants permission to make and distribute verbatim electronic copies for non-commercial purposes provided that the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.
This historical novel is based on the life of Alexander Bulatovich, a Russian who was an explorer in Ethiopia, a cavalry officer during Russia's conquest of Manchuria in 1900, and later, as a monk at Mount Athos, led a group of "heretics" who challenged the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church, asserting the divinity of the Name of God.
You can buy this book in hardcover:
The
Name of Hero by Richard Seltzer. an historical novel based
on the life of Alexander Bulatovich, a Russian who was an explorer in Ethiopia,
and a cavalry officer during Russia's conquest of Manchuria in 1900. Later,
as a monk at Mount Athos, he led a group of "heretics" who challenged the
hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church, asserting the divinity of the
Name of God.
You can also buy it on CD ROM with the author's other works:
Everything
But the Internet gathers the complete non-Internet
works of Richard Seltzer on CD, in plain text, with software that lets
you listen as well as read. It includes: The Name of Hero, Ethiopia Through
Russian Eyes, The Lizard of Oz, Without a Myth, Spit and Polish, Mercy,
Rights Crossing, short stories, articles, book reviews, and poems.
You'll find related materials at www.samizdat.com/readers.html#ethiopia
He now prayed, as he had then, with the fervor of a young boy who believes implicitly in the power of prayer. He was careful to name every name, to name them in the right order and with the right solemnity.
First he repeated the Lord's Payer and the Creed. Then he prayed for his father in Heaven, for Lilia and Meta, for his mother, for his great-aunt Elizaveta, for the Tsar, the royal family, the Holy Synod; for his companions Old Hrisko the huntsman and Mihailovo the coachman; for his dogs Usman and Ryabchik. He prayed for everyone he knew and cared for, and for all the people of Russia and of the world. He prayed to God the Father, to Jesus Christ His Only Son, to the Holy Virgin, to St. John, to St. Anthony, to St. Alexander Nevsky...
His child's ritual had evolved night after night from imitation of the prayers his mother had the children say each morning by the bed of their great-aunt. The evening ritual, his ritual, had become a private series of acts and words, with all the rigidity of a holy ceremony handed down through the centuries. And he prayed with the fervor that comes from the belief that any deviation from his self-set rules, any omission, especially the omission of a name, could bring harm instead of blessing to the person forgotten or slighted.
He prayed to confess his sins, to ask forgiveness. Each night he confessed the day's tally of petty crimes, of which there was always an abundance, for he was an independent boy, forever disobeying his mother, treating her with insufficient respect, running off to hunt with the coachman and the huntsman when his mother had said he shouldn't, always bickering and arguing with his sister Lilia. He was an evil little boy. His mother had convinced him of that. He vaguely sensed in the matriarchal household that he was guilty of the primordial sin of being born a boy and becoming a man. He sensed that some women are self-sacrificing and saintly and other women are evil; but that all men are basically evil, however they may act, for they have evil thoughts and evil secret wishes, even when they outwardly behave.
It was confusing, because certainly his father, who was now in heaven, was not evil. And he thought of God and God's only Son Jesus Christ as men, not to mention St. Anthony, and a multitude of other saints. Even soldiers, men like Alexander Nevsky, for whom he was named, could be saints.
By night, he prayed for strength against evil thoughts, for understanding, and for forgiveness. By day, he disobeyed his mother and hid from his governess; he went hunting and riding and played soldier and fought and enjoyed himself. Sometimes, with Old Hrisko and Mihailovo, he'd disappear for weeks at a time; then after he returned to the interminable scolding of his mother, his prayers would last long into the night.
He couldn't say why he was praying now in Manchuria. He simply had to, repeating all the childhood phrases, all the names of those he had wanted blessed, so many of them dead now -- Lilia, Elizaveta, Mihailovo, Old Hrisko, Usman, and Ryabchik. Prayer hadn't saved them, nor had it brought them back, not his prayer. Maybe his soul wasn't strong enough, hadn't been tested enough for his prayer to have power. Just because his prayer didn't work at that time didn't mean that all prayer was useless. Just because God didn't listen to him didn't mean that there was no God. He felt so small, insignificant, powerless.
He prayed, "They kingdom come, They will be done on earth as it is in heaven..." But he didn't want God's will to be done, whatever it was. He wanted his own will done. That was the point; that was why he prayed. What was the point in praying for things to happen as they would anyway? He prayed for things to change or to stay the same. He prayed for what he hoped for. He wasn't just going to suspend judgment, step back, and accept whatever life threw his way. If it was God's will that these people should die, there was something wrong with God's will. And as he lay there on the ground in his tent, he cursed God as he had when Lilia died.
He was tied and weak and the ground was hard and unyielding. His back could not blend with the ground as Smolyannikov's had. He derived no strength from the earth as Smolyannikov had. Reality was an obstacle to be overcome by will or by prayer. He prayed for strength of will, for the strength to believe that death was not final, that life had some meaning.
He needed strength. He needed Asalafetch. Sonya had given him dreams, but Asalafetch had given him strength.
Sonya had stimulated his imagination -- the way she saw the world and the way she made him see it -- as romantic, exciting, exotic, full of interest and adventure. She was largely responsible for his going to Ethiopia in the first place and for his wanting to return there. She made him believe that there was or could be some special destiny for Ethiopia, that in all the world it was unique and important. He had found the facts that fit the belief, but she had made him want to believe it even before he had ever been there.
By the time he met Asalafetch he was ready for her. Sonya had stirred yearnings and expectations of some almost mystical and sensuous relationship. She had primed the well of his imagination to the brink. It took but a touch from Asalafetch to make the water flow.
When Asalafetch held him and touched him, she gave him new strength. She made him forget his individual weakness, insignificance, and mortality. She made him feel like the power of nature was his power -- that he was in fact a god who could do anything.
No need to fear blindness or death. She touched him, and their life force joined. They lay on the earth -- that potent black jungle earth -- and the strength of the earth was their strength.
One night she said, "Possess me, I am the earth and the jungle, and you are my king." He would have answered, but she silenced him with her tongue.
That night they reached new heights of sensation, for she had ventured beyond the realm of touch. Now she was arousing not just his body, as she had before, and not just his imagination, as Sonya had before, but both at once. He should have realized that she was using him or hoping to use him. But even now he couldn't blame her; he needed her now, as he had needed her then, to reach those heights.
After that night, she no longer mocked him as she had before; she no longer stopped him from telling her he loved her. He felt that they had passed some barrier, that now she accepted him as he was, that they were closer than ever before. Little did he suspect that she had begun to recognize his possible usefulness, or that she felt the time was ripe, that she had to capitalize on her investment before duty required him to leave her.
After that night, word play became part of their foreplay, and it was she, who had always preferred silence, who initiated it. She called herself his "thigh maid," his servant, his sexual slave. She would say, "you are my King. What is your kingdom, O my King?"
And he'd pick a country at random. "I am the King of France."
"And I am the thigh maid of the King of France. I take away his cares and heighten his joys. I am proud to be the woman of the King of France."
One night he picked "Ethiopia," and her hands tensed, anxiously. "Would my lord and master like to be a king in
Ethiopia?"
He laughed, "Why not?"
"Be serious," she insisted. Her touch was deliberate. "The Emperor Menelik trusts you. Whatever you ask of him, he will give you. Ask for a domain of your won. He has given as much to far less useful men than you."
"Are you serious?"
She reverted to the one of their foreplay. "My lord and master is a great man. He is a king in Ethiopia. He is a great warrior. He has killed many elephants. He wears the earring of a great hunter. He has placed his residence at Lake Tana near the source of the Blue Nile. He rules firmly and wisely and is loved by his people. In all of Ethiopia, there is no finer kingdom than his, and I, Asalafetch, am honored to be his thigh maid. I take away his cares and heighten his joys. I am proud to be his woman."
He knew that Menelik had the power to dispose of his territories as he saw fit, to create new rases or princes, and dadyazmaches or governors-general, that he had and would give such honors to foreigners, if he saw fit.
On his first journey to Ethiopia, Bulatovich had met such a man, an adventurer named Leontiev, formerly a lieutenant in the Russian army, who had gained favor with Menelik and been granted the title of dadyazmach. Bulatovich and Leontiev had met under most peculiar circumstances.
Bulatovich as riding ahead on camelback with native guides to get permission form Menelik for the Russian Red Cross mission to proceed to the capital. Without word directly from Menelik, local governors were reluctant to allow the mission to proceed, never having encountered Russians before and suspecting their motives. While crossing the Danakil Desert, Bulatovich and his guides were set upon by bandits and left without any animals or supplies -- as good as dead. then who should chance upon them there in the desert but this Leontiev -- probably the only other Russian in the country at that time. It was the sort of incredible luck that is enough to make a man believe in divine providence, to believe that he has some special destiny he is being saved for. That destiny might well be to rule a piece of this ancient country and to make his land a model for the rest of Ethiopia, or the rest of Africa, to follow.
After that day, Asalafetch returned again and again to the idea of a kingdom of his won, while guiding him through their mutual fantasies and sensations.
"My king is a great man," she would say. "He sits high on his throne and dares to say to man and to God, 'Mine is the kingdom and the power and the glory.' And I and all our people worship him as a god."
It was fantasy hovering dangerously close to reality. Sonya fantasized, too. She liked to see people and places in a romantic, exotic light. But for Asalafetch fantasy was a tool, a means to an end. She wanted not the fantasy itself and its accompanying sensations, but the practical results that could come from it.
Basically, she was as she first told him, anti-romantic. She preferred to keep things on strictly a physical basis -- pure sensation, unsullied by thought. Her sensations were strong -- he could feel how she trembled -- but she insisted that she felt no emotion, nothing like what he called "love." When he was incredulous that not just she, but, as she insisted, her whole people were unromantic, she jokingly attributed it to circumcision. As was customary, her inner labia had been trimmed seven days after birth. She told Bulatovich that, in some outlying districts, it was the clitoris that was removed. Both operations were supposedly done to control a woman's sexual appetites. But Bulatovich found it hard to believe that anyone's appetite could be greater than hers.
Later, when she began her subtle manipulation of his imagination, she denied her previous denials. He was different from any other man she had known. She pretended that now she was beginning to understand what he meant by emotion and love.
She began hinting that he needn't return to Russia, at least not for years. He could obtain some official position in Ethiopia, as Leontiev had. He could become a dadyazmach, a governor of a province, and she could continue to be his woman. Marriage and divorce were simple matters in Ethiopia. They could go through a civil ceremony that would make them legally married but that could be dissolved at any time simply by saying a few words ins front of two witnesses. That was the nature of most marriages in her country -- nothing final and binding; just a convenient arrangement that could be set aside when, eventually, he decided to return to Russia.
He was ready to believe her. He wanted to believe her. By now, Ethiopia was a part of him. If he left, he had to return. He couldn't imagine leaving permanently. This was his land. These were his people.
He had seen enough of unnecessary waste and misery. He wanted to take charge, as Asalafetch suggested, of some small part of the country where he could set an example so powerful that it would change all of Ethiopia. He wanted a domain in the northwestern sector, near the source of the Little Abay for an initial period of ten years. In that time, he would undertake to establish discipline, build a series of forts to protect the region from incursions by the British, train a local army for self-defense, make of this newly conquered and dubiously loyal border territory a strong, efficient, and productive province.
He went so far as to submit a proposal to Vlasov, the Russian special envoy in Addis Ababa, trying to get official Russian approval before approaching Menelik. Vlasov replied that the idea was preposterous. He refused to forward the request to Minister of War Kuropatkin or to Foreign Minister Muraviev and ordered Bulatovich not to write them directly.
Bulatovich hadn't expected such resistance. He reported to Vlasov only occasionally, as a matter of form. Vlasov was only an intermediary, an official route for reports to Muraviev.
Bulatovich was largely on his own on this expedition. Menelik had heard of a buildup of British troops in the Sudan, and said he wanted military advice. Bulatovich's proposal was a direct result of that assignment, or so he claimed. The British threat appeared imminent and he wanted to take direct action to deter it rather than simply advise.
As for Asalafetch, he hadn't told her about his request. He wanted to surprise her.
Now he had to decide whether he wanted to defy Vlasov, his titular superior, and take the matter directly to Muraviev and Menelik, both of whom, he suspected, would welcome the suggestion.
The night after he received Vlasov's refusal, Asalafetch and he again played their game, ad again he was a king in Ethiopia. And it felt good to be king.
"Tell me your wish, O King. I am your slave."
"My wish..." he paused and reflected. "You shall be the mother of my children, the mother of kings."
"I am not enough?" she laughed. "You want children, too?"
"It seems fitting and necessary. This flow of the force of nature must continue. Old generations flow to me and through me to new generations. New kings must come."
She caressed him urgently as she did when she had had enough of talking. Her hands aroused him quickly, but he insisted on an answer. "Will you have my child?"
She rolled aside angrily.
"Will you or won't you?" he persisted.
"No."
"You mean you aren't pregnant yet," he tried to interpret. "It may take time. But you will have my child."
"No. Never!" she yelled back. "Many men have planted their seed in this ground, and nothing has grown. You are no different. It's best. If I thought I could have babies I would do something to stop them. I'm here on this earth for having pleasure and for giving pleasure -- here and now. If you want to grow babies, spread your seed in other soil."
They did not make love that night. He dreamed the dream of the elephant hunt and of returning to the scene of the hunt. Only this time nothing had grown. Everything was dead and all was desert, as if some enemy had carefully sown the soil with salt. In his dream, Bulatovich tilled the soil and planted seeds and carried buckets of water from the stream and returned day after day and year after year to do likewise, but nothing grew, not even a weed.
It was an agonizing dream that he continually drifted into and out of through the night. When free of it, he knew it was still there waiting to haunt him yet again. When he woke up in the morning, he first drowsy thought was to blame Asalafetch for having given him that dream. He wanted to hurt her, to make her regret having done that to him. So he said, "I'm going to request permission to return to Russia."
She looked up at him with dull daytime eyes. It was one of the few times he could remember looking into her eyes -- and he saw nothing. They reflected nothing. They revealed nothing. She was so common, so uninspiring when looked at calmly and analyzed in the daylight.
She didn't say a word. he repeated himself, an still she didn't answer. Somehow he had expected that she would plead with him to stay, that she would sound so hurt and helpless, that, of course, he'd change his mind and stay and defy Vlasov and become a king. But she simply got up and left. By the next day, she had attached herself to a French soldier of fortune.
He put in his request to return to Petersburg. He had had enough of Ethiopia. Menelik, the Emperor, who listened so intently to his advice, listened just as intently to the English and the French, played the one nation against the other, and kept his own counsel. Back in Russia, Muraviev favored involvement in Africa, but Kuropatkin was opposed to all foreign entanglements; and it was Kuropatkin, not Muraviev, who had the ear of Tsar Nicholas. Russia would do nothing of significance to help Ethiopia. Bulatovich's presence there was superfluous. All
his work there had been futile. He requested permission to pass through the Sudan, Egypt, Jerusalem, Kurdistan, and Persia on his return trip, so he could quickly survey the political and military situation in those areas. Muraviev sponsored the request, but Kuropatkin vetoed this attempt by an upstart junior officer to meddle in foreign affairs. When Kuropatkin's answer arrived, Bulatovich immediately wrote back asking for assignment elsewhere in the world, anywhere but Ethiopia, wherever he was needed, somewhere where his actions could make some difference, where his efforts would be supported, away form this total futility.
Even then, he had expected to return to Ethiopia. He had expected and hoped that he would be patted on the back and told how indispensable he was, how important his work was, how much he was appreciated. Kuropatkin would get into a stormy argument with the Tsar and fall into disgrace. Menelik would personally request the return of Bulatovich and would give him whatever he wanted. Asalafetch would come running to his side.
Half awake, he heard himself praying, "My kingdom come, my will be done..." He realized what he was saying, shook himself, slapped himself in the face, and started praying rapidly and fervently, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, poor sinner that I am."
After that third trip, on his way back to Petersburg he stopped off at Lutsikovka to see Vaska. Masha, married now and mother of six, was taking care of him. How matronly and obese Masha looked, sitting there with the little black boy on her lap.
He was in no hurry to see Sonya again. He had been gone for nearly a year, and it had been two and a half years now since they had had a chance to be alone together. Correspondence was difficult. It took a month or more for a letter to travel form Addis Ababa to Petersburg. And after meeting Asalafetch he had stopped writing altogether.
After the experience of Asalafetch, it was difficult to think seriously of Sonya. Besides at twenty-three, Sonya was a woman with social connections and charms, ripe for marriage to some eligible young man with prospects far greater than his. But he felt obliged to meet with her, to make it official that they were going their separate ways.
He didn't recognize her when she got off the train. His eyes were tilted up, aiming a few inches higher than her eyes. He was so used to being with Asalafetch. In fact, he was straining to look over her head looking for her as she walked right up to him and introduced herself.
She was in town supposedly for a shopping trip with friends. They walked up and down Nevsky Prospekt together, looking through shop windows, stopping now and then to buy a hat or gloves so she'd have something to show when she returned. She was very much in control self-possessed, decisive. This was her world, just as Ethiopia had been his.
She asked him about his latest trip. He was vague in reply, avoiding any reference to Asalafetch.
He carried her packages and she talked about the lectures she was attending at the free university. Despite her parents' objections that it wasn't ladylike, she was pursuing her interest in African languages and cultures, not for a degree but gathering whatever information she could from the few sources that were available to her.
"I don't expect I'll ever be returning to Ethiopia," he told her as they came out of their third hat shop.
She looked at him somewhat puzzled, then once again led the way down the street saying, "You always say that when you first come back."
"Never!" he yelled at her, as Asalafetch had yelled at him under different circumstances. People turned and stared at them.
She looked at him seriously. "But I had hoped that we might... You have changed, haven't you?" She stared at him inquisitively, then turned decisively, and once again led the way -- this time at a hurried pace, as if she really did have a lot of shopping she had to do. At times he had to rush to keep up with her, feeling rather foolish dodging the other shoppers and strollers and balancing his stack of parcels. But she just plunged ahead absorbed in her own business, as if she were content to have him accompany her but if he should choose not to, she would still do what she wanted to do the way she wanted to do it.
That evening back at Tsarskoye Selo, he immediately went to see the colonel, her father.
"Sir," he asked as calmly as he could, "I have a request to make."
The colonel smiled. "Does it have to do with my daughter?"
"No," replied Bulatovich, somewhat disconcerted. "Manchuria."
"Manchuria?"
"As you know, sir, hostilities have broken out. I believe I could prove useful there."
"So soon? You just got back from Africa. Did you have some argument with Sonya? Some little lover's squabble?"
"No, sir," he looked at the floor, the desk, the quill pen.
"Strange. Most strange. I was under the impression that you and she were quite close. Not that you had given me that impression yourself. But my wife. She certainly took a fancy to you from the start. And maybe it was wishful thinking on our part; but we, I must confess, always rather hoped that you two would get together."
Bulatovich looked up in surprise. He hadn't realized that it would have been so easy, so perfect.
"I'm sorry, sir, if I ever led you to believe that. I certainly hope that I haven't led Sonya to believe that. I do care for her. She's a lovely girl. We are close friends. But I don't think either of us ever seriously thought of marriage. You see, sir, I grow restless in the city. I need action. I need a challenge. I hope to put this peculiar bent of mine to good use in service to the Tsar. I want to go wherever I can be of most use, in the most active capacity. I understand from the newspapers that there's a shortage of officers in Manchuria."
"All right, my boy, all right. I had wished to be able to call you 'son.' But that's an old man's foolishness. Whatever I can do for you, consider it done."
This site is published by B&R Samizdat Express, 33 Gould St., West Roxbury, MA 02132. 617-469-2269 seltzer@samizdat.com
Links to the complete novel, The Name of Hero.
To contact Richard Seltzer send email to seltzer@samizdat.com
Sample chapters from The Name of Man
Complete text of From Entotto to the River Baro
Complete text of With the Armies of Menelik II
Return to Readers' Room and Writers' Showcase.
You can buy this book in hardcover:
The
Name of Hero by Richard Seltzer. an historical novel based
on the life of Alexander Bulatovich, a Russian who was an explorer in Ethiopia,
and a cavalry officer during Russia's conquest of Manchuria in 1900. Later,
as a monk at Mount Athos, he led a group of "heretics" who challenged the
hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church, asserting the divinity of the
Name of God.
You can also buy it on CD ROM with the author's other works:
Everything
But the Internet gathers the complete non-Internet
works of Richard Seltzer on CD, in plain text, with software that lets
you listen as well as read. It includes: The Name of Hero, Ethiopia Through
Russian Eyes, The Lizard of Oz, Without a Myth, Spit and Polish, Mercy,
Rights Crossing, short stories, articles, book reviews, and poems.
A
library for the price of a book.
Return to B&R Samizdat Express.
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