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
Bulatovich was on the train again, in that stifling compartment.
Where was he going?
He needed sleep. Day after day he had been sitting up like this, eight people crowded into a space intended for six.
They had passed through European Russia, cross the Urals. They must be near Omsk.
Hadn't he been here before?
While inside all was crammed, outside was al the space a man could want. A vast sea of flat, empty, treeless land stretched to the horizon and beyond.
A man needed space to breathe, to rest, to sleep.
How many thousands and tens of thousands had come this way before? They wanted land. They wanted freedom from oppressive laws and taxes, freedom from serfdom. Even now, forty years after the end of serfdom, peasants still fled eastward to this open space. They didn't want to stay forever in the same place. They didn't want to be tied to the meager strips of land that had been farmed by their fathers and their fathers' fathers for centuries. They wanted to get away from the land where their ancestors were buried, away from their own past, to start fresh. A new life.
Religious men had passed this way, too, Orthodox monks and sectarians -- raskolniki -- people whose beliefs differed from the official doctrine of the day. Some sought solitude. Some sought religious freedom. Some were banished here. Some chose the frontier because of the very difficulties they would encounter there and deliberately pushed themselves to the limits of their endurance. Maybe they were trying to block out the world from their minds so they could find some peace within themselves. It was said that suffering helped purify the soul. They were mortifying the flesh in this life, perhaps to gain merit in the next. Perhaps they wanted to atone for some real or imagined sin.
Why was he here?
Now he was steaming through rich agricultural land. Now through huge forests of pine, fir, and silver birch. Now through vast coal fields. He passed a collection of wooden houses called "Irkutsk," ferried across Lake Baikal, that "Holy Sea of Siberia," into the virgin forests of Trans-Baikal, where the trunks of fir trees were as wide as peasants' huts.
He left the forests behind. Up ahead ... that little town... Did someone say that was Chita?
What was he doing here? After all his brilliant service, why was he being exiled to Siberia? What had he done?
He heard the train's clatter again in the distance... He wasn't on it. No, he was on the ground. In his tent. Sleeping. At last.
He slept restlessly, one dream following another at a dizzying pace. The warm sensuous hands of Asalafetch, the innocent smile of Sonya, his mother's frown, his father's grave. He'd open his eyes from one dream, or think he had opened his eyes, and see his mother standing there beside him in the moonlight, her thin lips pursed, her chin thrust out.
"You heard me, don't pretend you didn't. Look at me when I talk to you. and wipe that silly grin off your face. What are you trying to prove? I told you to be home by supper, and here you are asleep in the field in the middle of the night. You're a sinful disobedient little boy, Sasha, and a plague to your poor mother."
Bulatovich cringed, waiting to be beaten, hoping he would be beaten; but he never was, because there was no father to do the beating, because his mother was so helpless or pretended she was so helpless. If she had just beaten him, he could have gotten mad at her or felt self-righteous that the punishment was more severe than he merited. But no, she would just look at him, her lips pursed, her eyes full of disappointment and weariness, and the guilt would weigh on him. There would be no way to get rid of the guilt.
He awoke for a moment beneath the stifling heat of his odd little tent. He glimpsed the icon of Christ and the photo of the Tsar, then felt that he was waking again, not quite, still unable to move, waking perhaps into another dream.
Why do you pray?" he asked his mother. She was kneeling in front of an icon of Christ as she always did before going up to bed.
She glared up at him, then squeezed her eyes shut, trying to concentrate again on her prayer.
He had just taken and passed the final exam in geography, his worst subject. Proud of himself, he would soon be out on his own, away from this despotic mother of his. But despite himself, he would miss her. He would miss the simple pattern of rewards and punishments, the certainty of her disapproval when he broke her petty rules. Without knowing why, he had an urge to provoke her, to arouse her martyred wrath.
"Why do you pray?" he persisted.
She opened her eyes, pursed her lips, and heaved a sigh of disappointment. "Have I raised a little heathen? Don't you believe in God?"
"No," he surprised himself with his answer. He observed all the forms of religion, including prayer. But since the death of his sister Lilia, he had avoided thinking rationally about the subject.
He was fourteen when Lilia had died of typhoid. They had argued often. He teased her; she retaliated. Through their running battles they grew close, testing themselves against one another, anticipating one another's responses. Then there was silence, emptiness, no response. He had dreamed that he was standing in front of a mirror, showing off his strength, and suddenly the mirror was gone and he was standing before an endless dark chasm.
For days he had prayed to God to bring her back or to wake him, for he must be dreaming a terrible dream. Then he had asked for an explanation -- why her? why now? why? He had asked for a sign, any sign that there truly was a God. But silence was the only answer.
So he had cursed God and all of creation. He had cursed Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. He had cursed the Church and the priests and all believers. And he had dared God to strike him dead for such blasphemy, as he knelt, trembling, beside his bed, cursing God innocently, in the humble posture of prayer; saying he didn't believe in God, but fully expecting at any moment to be struck by a bolt of lightning.
There was no lightning. But he continued his childhood ritual of evening prayers, never asking himself, as he asked his mother now, "Why do you pray? Do you expect that God is going to give you something? that He's going to do something for you?"
"No," she answered. He was shocked by her seriousness. He had expected her to attack him verbally, as she had so often with far less provocation. But instead, she suddenly sank into self-reflection, as if the question had awakened old memories. For a moment, she looked old and defenseless. He had never thought of her as old before. He had never seen her with her guard down like this. He was used to her using her diminutive size and the presumed frailty of her sex as a weapon. He was sure she could make herself look even smaller and more frail than she actually as. She manipulated people by making them pity her. She was well practiced at assuming the look of a martyr, and she did so with finesse and authority. But now the muscles of her face were relaxed, hung more loosely than he had ever seen before. She was an active, dynamic woman in her early fifties. But for the moment, the energy was gone from her face. She just looked old.
"Then why do you pray?" he persisted.
"I suppose ... because I'm weak... because I'll die."
"But I remember when we were in Switzerland, at Father's grave." He didn't know why he kept up this line of questioning. She was clearly shaken. He didn't want to hurt her. At least he didn't think he did. "You were crying uncontrollably. You brought Meta and me back there to visit the grave, years after he died. You asked some Catholic priest to say a prayer at his grave, because Father had been Catholic and would have wanted it that way. And the priest refused. He said Father wasn't Catholic enough because he had married an Orthodox woman and let the children be raised Orthodox. You cried and told him that his prayers weren't worth anything, that prayers hadn't kept Father alive, that no prayers were worth anything. And yet every night you still pray. Can you tell me why?"
"I really don't know," she admitted, bewildered as he had never seen her before. "Whatever happens to me, I suppose I'll still want to pray...to talk to God... I can't imagine living without praying. I suppose even animals pray."
They were both silent for a while, and then she continued. "An old priest once told me, actually it was twice, I think; not the same words, but the same drift. When Anatole, the man I was betrothed to, died, just a week before the wedding, and then again when your father died, I went on a pilgrimage to a monastery outside Kharkov. I was numb, empty. My aunt forced me to go the first time.
The priest asked me what was wrong. I answered, 'Death.'
"'Is that all?' he asked.
"That caught my attention. I answered indignantly, 'Of course. That's certainly enough. More than enough. Far too much. The fact of death.'
"'Yes, it is just a fact.'
"He must have wanted me to understand, because he went on to explain:
"'Facts you find in the outside world. They can be proved and disproved. They can change. They can be changed.
"'Faith you find, if you find it at all, inside yourself, beyond change and so beyond proof, beyond reason. For reason sees only change and difference; it can only deal with distinctions -- separating, combining, shuffling to arrive at "understanding."
"'Of facts there are many. There is no end to their number. Of faith there is one.
"'The truth of facts we call pravda.
"'The truth of faith we call istina.
"'Reason cannot see one unless it changes; and then it is no longer one, but many different states.
"'To reason one is nothing. To faith one is everything.
"'To seek this one within yourself is to pray.'
"I didn't know what he meant then, and I don't think I do now either. But I did pray. I shut my eyes and shut out the world and repeated words not for what they meant but for how they helped me to shut out the world, helped me to stop thinking and reasoning.
"It was peaceful, I remember, when I finally got deep into prayer. And I remember the sensations of church -- the smell of incense, the feel of a priest's hands on my head as a child, the tones, not the words, of chanting. When I came out of it, Anatole was still dead, your father was still dead, and there were all the day-to-day things that had to be done, and I did them.
"Why do I pray? A non-believer might call it wishful thinking. I pray for strength or patience. I believe the Lord gives me strength or patience and so I act strong or patient; but then it's not just wishful anymore, because I've changed. Whether I've changed myself or the Lord had a hand in it doesn't much matter. The Lord helps those who help themselves. I do believe that. Maybe that reservoir of strength within ourselves we draw on at times of need is God's strength. Maybe prayer is like dropping a bucket into a deep well within ourselves, hoping to bring up some of the water of life."
In his sleep Bulatovich jumped, waking up on a horse that was rearing and neighing at the first signs of dawn. He was riding now across the desert. Genghis Khan was leading his Mongolian and Tartar hordes against Russia. Bulatovich was leading the last army of defense.
If he failed, all of Russia would be overrun. He stood for order; they, for the destruction of order.
At the head of the onrushing horde, seated on a white horse very like his own, with sword raised, racing at him, he saw ... himself.
He awoke with a start, with the dream still fresh in his mind, wondering what to make of it. He remembered his mother saying, "Yes, you have Polish blood in you, on your father's side. From Grodno Province. Polish gentry. The family of Bulatovich is entered in the ninth book of nobility. But you're Tartar, too, if you go back far enough. A Tartar prince, Bek Bulatovich Simeon, was adviser to Ivan the Terrible."
After he first heard of his Tartar blood, he had stood for an hour in front of a mirror, looking for Tartar traits. He had noticed that when he squinted defiantly, his face took on a slanty-eyed look. So he had decided that his defiant streak was "the Tartar in him." Whenever he stood up to his mother and defied her, before she had a chance to manipulate him with her martyred look and her disappointed sighs, he would squint like that -- it gave him strength to think of himself as a Tartar Bulatovich as opposed to a French Albrand, his mother's family.
"Squinting again?" she would say. "Have you been wearing your glasses like the doctor told you? You'll ruin your eyes if you don't. Even when you go riding and hunting, you have to wear those glasses. God gives you only one set of eyes, remember. Someday you'll think back and know your poor mother was right."
He awoke again. (He didn't remember having fallen back to sleep.) His eyes were sore, the corners of the eyes, near the bridge of the nose. He had an inflammation of the tear ducts or glands -- different specialists called it different names and gave him different drops that temporarily soothed the irritation. The problem would go away for years. Then it would come back mildly, like now, as a minor irritation, or severely, like some nine months before on this third trip to Ethiopia, who a jungle fever had aggravated the eye problem to the point that he was sure he was going blind. That time Asalafetch had nursed him while the disease ran its course.
For her, touch was far more important than sight. While she nursed him, she caressed him. Her hands learned his body, learned its rhythm. He became an extension of her and she of him. He loved her and hated her as he loved and hated himself.
Sight and reason had little to do with their relationship. She communicated to him at another level, awakening feelings, needs, and strengths in him that he had never known he had. To an eye of logic that coldly appreciates a Grecian harmony of curves and the charms of tightly corseted ladies, she was too fleshy -- her breasts too large, her waist too thick, her hips too broad. He would have difficulty recognizing her on a crowded street of Lekamte, Andrachi, or Addis Ababa.
But he knew her by touch and feel and hold. With her gentle groping touch, she opened him, like peeling back his skin and gently touching the bare exposed nerves; like peeling back her own skin and bringing her nerve ends into touch with his so that her sensations were his and his hers and neither of them knew where one ended and the other began, nor cared, sensed only, in the dark boundless realm of touch together.
His visual rational mind had quickly forgotten her individual features. He tried to reconstruct an image of her from general characteristics. She was in her mid-thirties, about five or six years older than he was. She was "Oromo," as they call themselves, or "Galla," as the ruling Amharas call them. Dark but not Negroid, with dark intricately braided hair. She was tall. His eyes were at the level of her lips. He had only to shut his eyes to recall her lips, her long tongue on his eyelids, soothing. Lying down in the dark even now, he could feel her absence -- as if she had been there but moments before, beside him, on top of him, beneath him, around him. He had an urge to reach out quickly and pull her back close to him. Often he woke up in the middle of the night, reaching, grabbing at nothing.
She would have laughed had she seen him reaching out for her in his tent here in Siberia. To her and her people, Ethiopia was the center of the world, just as to the Chinese China was the center and to the Europeans Europe. So the strange ways of the rest of the world were "quaint." She found professions of romantic love, the kinds of words that young Russian ladies expected from their suitors, from men who had never touched their naked flesh, "very quaint" and "amusing."
"Do your European women touch themselves often?" she had asked. He hadn't known how to answer. "All this talk of 'love.' All this sighing and dying and saving oneself for the one 'true love' -- so silly," she laughed. "And do men really go off and fight and kill one another over a woman -- not for her property, but for her 'love'?"
Her passion required no justification. It arose of its own accord, without excuses, without regrets, without limits. And her touch made him as abandoned as she was, drew him into her world of sensation. But at the climax, he would sigh sincerely, "I love you; I'll always love you." He couldn't help himself. He could no more stop himself from saying that than from doing anything that their mutual sensations dictated. She took him out of control of himself. And when he said it, she would laugh if she were already sliding down the hill; or if not, she would tell him to shut up and would hold him harder, concentrating on her sensations, giving a final push, hoping the next push would be the final one.
Sometimes she blamed him for disturbing her sensations by talking at such critical moments. She didn't lecture him, but sometimes she responded bitterly to his tender words and grew cold quickly, rolling aside to be alone. He would reach for her, needing her next to him, and she would push him off or, sometimes, she would relent.
One night -- he must have been drunk or very tired to be tricked like that -- as he said, "I love you; I'll always love you," she broke out laughing. It was her laugh, but from far behind him. Then another laugh, not hers, but from the person he was holding, from this person he was sure was she, whom he loved dearly and tenderly, and only for her could his body respond so completely.
Then he felt two sets of hands, two bodies -- her hands were on his back, then around him, grasping his chest, and her body pressed warmly against his back, but she was beneath him, too, and there were two of her laughing, but only one had her low-pitched voice, and they rolled together in the dark, all three of them, and he didn't know which of her was which or when, but all three of them were one in sensation, touch-groping through the night.
The other woman disappeared before dawn. He never saw her, and Asalafetch never told him her name. She just laughed whenever he asked and sighed softly in Russian, "I love you; I'll always love you." And she laughed again.
He had never let himself get this close to a woman before -- or was it that no woman had ever let him get this close to her? When they were alone together, she took him to a realm beyond shame and self-consciousness. But when he walked with her in daylight, in public, he was once again Alexander Xavierevich Bulatovich, on his third trip to Ethiopia, a Russian cavalry officer on special assignment to Ethiopia at the request of Emperor Menelik II. Bulatovich was a man with status and position to uphold, a man with a European, Victorian code of ethics. In that frame of mind, he couldn't help but wonder "what kind of woman" she was, how many other men she had been with, how many of the men they passed on the street while strolling together had been with her too. He wondered if there was any man for miles around she hadn't been with already or wouldn't be with if the fancy struck her. He felt foolish and small and laughable to be seen with such a woman in public. But he also felt ashamed for having such thoughts, for in her culture her behavior was acceptable, and she was a woman with social status of her own, though she seemed to pay little heed to it, wearing her role comfortably, like the loosely draped toga-like shamma that she could let drop to her feet with a slight shrug of the shoulder. She had what was considered a small fortune. She had been married and divorced four times to men of noble or near-noble rank. She was between husbands and in no particular hurry to find another.
Despite such rational consideration, if they were in public and her hand touched his, the sensation was disgusting, repulsive. He felt that all eyes were on him, unless he pressed his eyes shut, squeezed her hand, and squinting defiantly, strode up the street in self-made semi-darkness. Then he'd explain to her that his eyes were bothering him again, and she'd kiss his eyelids and touch them with her soothing tongue, standing there in public. For a moment at least, it would be as if they were alone in the dark.
He rarely wore glasses when he was with her -- that was partly why his visual memory of her was hazy. "Why do you need to see?" she would ask. She preferred the darkness. Sight was distracting. Thoughts got in the way of sensation. Darkness seemed to liberate the potential for touch and taste and smell and feel.
His first memory of her was of touch -- at a welcoming dinner at the provincial residence of Ras (Prince) Tasamma. That was on his third trip when he already knew and loved her country. He had first arrived in Ethiopia about three years before. At that time the only wars in the offing were in Africa, in China and perhaps in the Balkans -- in relatively backward nations and in colonies. Russia, which had no colonies, had been at peace for over twenty years. Ethiopia offered an otherwise idle Russian cavalry officer a unique field of action. Like Japan, Ethiopia was an exception to the general rule that rapid introduction of technology destroys native cultures. Menelik II, princeling ruler of the Little feudal state of Shoa, claiming descent from Menelik I, legendary son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, had effectively manipulated the Western Powers contending for dominance i Central Africa. He had bought arms from the French. When the Italians, entering the race for colonies rather late, declared that Ethiopia was in their "sphere of influence," Menelik negotiated with them, posed as their fried, signed agreements with them -- all in exchange for modern rifles and ammunition that he used effectively to intimidate other feudal lords to join forces with him, to coerce or defeat rivals, and to become Emperor of Ethiopia. He then turned on the Italians themselves and defeated them resoundingly at the Battle of Adowa in 1896.
When news of that battle reached Russia, there was a popular outpouring of sympathy and support for this ancient Christian nation set upon by modern imperialist Italy. Ethiopia was the only Christian nation in Black Africa, a nation with an ancient variety of Christianity, dating back to far before the split between Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, with reverence for the early traditions of the Church and none of the accretions and changes and philosophizing of the West. Perhaps the fact that Italy was a member of the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria and against Russia and France had something to do with those sentiments. But primarily, it was a feeling of a common bond of religion with this distant and little-known people.
Money was raised and volunteers were recruited for a Russian Red Cross medial mission to go to Ethiopia and care for the Ethiopian wounded. Bulatovich, wit the permission of his regiment, had been one of those volunteers.
On that he first trip, he had seen how readily the ruling ethnic group -- the Amharas -- assimilated Western technology and ideas and how they treated the peoples they had conquered with respect, allowing them to keep much of their culture, religion, and social forms intact. And by way of the Amharas the technology of the West was gradually filtering through to these previously isolated African tribes, with positive rather than disruptive effect. Or at least that was what Bulatovich believed -- that Ethiopia had a special role to play, softening the impact of railroads and technology on native cultures.
In 1897 Russia sent its first diplomatic mission to Ethiopia, sending Bulatovich, who was now considered an expert in the language and the country, ahead to prepare the way. That trip had provided him an opportunity to accompany an Ethiopian army on a expedition to conquer lands previously little known or never seen before by Europeans.
He had proven so helpful on that expedition that Menelik had personally requested that he come back to Ethiopia a third time. This time he was to inspect the recently conquered northwestern region of the country and advise on what measures should be taken to fortify the frontier and strengthen the allegiance of the tribes in the border area. The British might otherwise be tempted to expand into that area south and east from the Sudan, because it would be the most convenient route for a railway from Cairo in British Egypt to Mombasa in British East Africa.
Perhaps Menelik actually wanted the advice. Then again, perhaps all he really needed was the presence of a Russian "military adviser" in the area, to make an impression on British diplomats and perhaps on his own not always trustworthy princes and generals.
On this trip, wherever Bulatovich went, word was sent ahead by runners, and elaborate preparations were made for his arrival. At the residence of Ras Tasamma, Asalafetch, at her own request, had been given the honor of washing the feet of the distinguished foreign guest and feeding him, dropping tiny morsels of food into his mouth.
He had grown used to such lavishly sensual treatment in Ethiopia. The first time it had happened, on his first trip three years before, he had been shocked and had instinctively withdrawn his foot. But quick to sense and respect the customs of others, he had let the young woman proceed, despite the embarrassment of feeling sexually aroused in public. After a dozen such welcoming banquets around the country, he had grown accustomed to the sensations and had come to appreciate them. As his initial distaste for highly spiced food gradually developed into an appreciation (and his bouts with diarrhea became less frequent), he had found that after a long journey, the sensual touch of a young girl's hands on his bare feet was both soothing and invigorating, that it helped awaken his sense of taste and added to his enjoyment of the meal that followed, without arousing any specifically sexual expectations.
It was a common procedure, one that he enjoyed but took for grated, when Asalafetch's hand first stroked his feet. But his stomach tightened and as at first he instinctively withdrew his foot, losing his train of thought in mid-sentence. He looked down. There was nothing unusual about her looks, except that she was somewhat older and more confident than the women who had done this for him in the past. Nor was there anything unusual about what she had done. But it was as if no one had ever done this to him before. He cringed with shame for having insulted his host by such a reaction. He apologized profusely, and the meal began.
But he remained aroused, and the memory of her touch continued to arouse him. His mind wandered. He would lose the drift of the conversation, forget a word or phrase of Amharic that he knew.
Probably it was the first stage of the fever that made him react so strangely, he had told himself in retrospect. A few days later, the fever struck him down, leaving him weak and sweating, with his eyes, his tear ducts burning. She was sent to him as a nurse. In the darkness, he recognized her touch. In his fevered state, her hands were like fresh water from a deep well, bringing new strength.
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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