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
By noon the tightly shut little tent was an oven. Bulatovich shook and rolled as he had in the worst of his jungle fevers. He was on a train, racing through desolate wastelands -- in Ethiopia, no, east of the Urals, no. He had no idea where he was going or why. The terrain was unfamiliar. His train was on the wrong track, or he was on the wrong train. He wanted to get off, but he wasn't sure how to get off or what he could do once he succeeded.
Voices around him talked about a great hero, a Russian soldier.
"He raced across that desert faster than the native couriers ever had. And on camelback no less."
"Wasn't he the one who guided that Ethiopian prince beyond Kaffa through uncharted lands.?"
I hear he could subdue hostile natives just by the tone of his voice and the power of his eye."
He was the trusted adviser of the Emperor Menelik."
"They say that he spoke Amharic like a native and understood Oromo and many of the local dialects."
"He was a key figure in Russian involvement in Ethiopia."
"Russian involvement in Ethiopia?" someone laughed.
Bulatovich tried to interrupt them to let them know that he was the very man they had been talking about. But no one seemed to notice that he was there -- no matter how loud he screamed.
He woke up screaming. Old Hrisko the huntsman was kneeling beside him, putting a cool cloth on his forehead. "It'll be all right, sir. A bit feverish. It's hellish hot out here on the desert."
"What are you doing here?" asked Bulatovich, annoyed not to be alone. But he fell back to sleep again before Hrisko could answer.
He was alone in the wilderness. He had been walking for days. He was following the course of a mighty river.
He knew he had been given a choice. What stream would he follow to the end, mapping its course for the first time?
All the streams had looked the same near their source. He had chosen this one. And his spirits had risen as his stream was joined by many tributaries and rapidly grew to a mighty river. He would be known as a great explorer, a hero. Every schoolboy would know his name.
Then its twisting course led to a wasteland. No more tributaries appeared. It slowed. Little stagnant pools lay here and there.
Finally, exhausted, he collapse beside an insignificant lake in the middle of the desert. And he lay there, pounding his head against the hot sand. Which stream should he have chosen? Which way led to glory?
"Is there no justice?" Bulatovich screamed.
"It's hellish hot out here on the desert," he heard, and didn't know if he was hearing it for the first or the second time. Maybe the whole dream had taken place during the time it took him to hear that sentence. He knew he was dreaming and the wanted to wake up, he had to wake up before the recurrent dream began, the dream of blindness. His tear ducts were inflamed, his eyes burning. He was going blind. He was awake, but he could see nothing. And he woke up, relieved that it had only been a dream. A large man was kneeling at his side.
"Who are you?" he asked tentatively, touching himself, reassuring himself that he was awake this time.
"Alexei Starodubov, sir. At your service."
"Yes... yes... I must have been talking in my sleep. You can go now. I'll be all right. I want to be alone... No, wait. I'll walk with you." He wondered why he had changed his mind. It was unlike him to be indecisive. He wanted to lie down again, to be alone. But somehow he was ashamed to change his mind yet again, to be indecisive with this peasant giant. Somehow he instinctively cared what this man thought of him.
He had come out of his dream misanthropic and disillusioned. Reason told him that it didn't matter what people thought of you, that it was sheer foolhardiness to risk your life, to waste your life's energies for reputation and renown. People only cared about themselves, really. It was chance not merit, circumstances beyond a man's control that led to one man rather than another being called a "hero" or a "great man." And the people who did the talking didn't really know or care about the people whose reputations they made and destroyed. They were just trying to make their own reputations as reputation makers. Oromo warriors arguing over who deserved credit for killing an elephant, or reporters editorializing in the pages of a Petersburg newspaper -- it made no difference. "Heroes" were the stuff of stories. It was the stories people needed, not the heroes themselves. They needed the stories so they could imagine themselves as heroes, so they could dream and admire and emulate and strive. They wanted to believe in the importance of being a "great man," in the importance of praise. They envied, and they wanted to be envied.
"What do men call you, sir?"
Bulatovich started, nearly stumbled. He was walking. It was about noon. A peasant giant with a long white beard was walking at his side -- Starodubov, yes, the thief. Bulatovich must have been more tired than he had thought. The battle, yes. And the question. "What did you ask?"
"What do men call you?" repeated Starodubov.
"My full name is Alexander Xavierevich Bulatovich." He no more understood why he had answered than he understood why he was walking with the man through the Russian encampment.
"But your short name, sir. What do people call you?"
"My family calls me 'Sasha,'" he answered automatically.
"Yes, but you are a man of names, sir. I can see that at a glance. Tell me, you have a ring in your left ear. You are no Gypsy. Men in Petersburg do not wear earrings. Why would you wear one? And why only one?"
"In Ethiopia a gold earring is a sign of a great hunter. They gave me such an earring. It was a gift I could not refuse."
"And what did you hunt?"
Elephants."
"Yes, you see, you are a man of names. 'Great hunter,' they call you in Africa. And what do they call you in Petersburg? Not the officers -- officers know nothing of names. What do the common soldiers call you?"
"They call me 'Mazeppa.'"
"Mazeppa? What is this Mazeppa?"
"He was a Ukrainian."
"And you are from the Ukraine. But what manner of man was this Mazeppa?"
"He was a Cossack hetman, Prince of the Ukraine."
"And you are a hetman, a prince?"
"No. I suppose they think of me as someone who can control horses and men, a fighter like Mazeppa."
"And what became of this Mazeppa?"
"He rebelled against Tsar Peter the Great and lost at the Battle of Poltava."
"Are you a rebel, sir?"
"Not that I know of," replied Bulatovich, yawning and stretching.
"Yes, Mazeppa. Most strange this name. I must remember this Mazeppa."
Bulatovich laughed softly. He wished it could be that simple -- a single name to sum up a past and a future.
He actually liked this Old Cossack, and some of those others who rode with him last night -- the three brothers, the good horseman he had picked as a messenger, the one with the long roguish-looking face, the one who talked like a priest, even the one with the glasses. And the young boy with the locket who was wounded, who had screamed all night, but wasn't screaming now. He'd have to learn their names.
Meanwhile other officers were inundated with the paperwork and decision making that inevitably follows a victorious battle. Volzhaninov, as chief of staff, was processing a multitude of requests for medals and citations -- including one for Starodubov. The two staff adjutants, Sidorov and Kublitsky-Piottukh, were organizing a convoy to send the nineteen wounded, the prisoner, and the trophies back to Abagaitui on the Russian border. General Orlov and Colonel Kupferman visited the wounded as they were being transferred to two-wheeled ox-pulled carts.
"We have to do something about that Guards officer," insisted Kupferman.
"Would you suggest a medal?" offered Orlov, giving Kupferman a good-natured pat on the back. He was in an expansive fatherly mood. Victory felt so good.
"Good God, no!" exclaimed Kupferman, his puffy cheeks turning red in exasperation.
"Please watch your language, sir," replied Orlov, amused that it was so easy to aggravate this stuffed shirt.
Kupferman bit his upper lip, then continued, "Your Excellency, may I point out to you that this Guards officer went riding off recklessly into the midst of the enemy after the muster call was sounded. We had to send the whole regiment out to rescue him, and we were damned lucky that they weren't annihilated.
"He's a glory hunter, I tell you. A little self-appointed hero. It was my mistake to give him a troop to command. I should have known better. He's a troublemaker. He's dangerous.
"Just look at these wounded. Here's Grotten, a young lieutenant. He was in Bulatovich's troop. He got his toes shot off. He'll never ride again, not in this army. He'll be lucky to get a desk job.
"And that one over there, the one with his hand on a pendant. He was with Bulatovich. Got a bullet in the bladder. There was nothing the doctors could do.
"Bulatovich is an insatiable glory hunter, I repeat. Such disobedience should not, must not go unpunished, not when it leads to this -- brave Russian soldiers needlessly maimed and killed."
"Calm yourself, Colonel," ordered Orlov in an impatient whisper, his good mood rapidly evaporating. "These men can hear you. These brave and gallant men. They've sacrificed leg and eye and arm for God and Tsar. I'll not have you throwing doubts at them and tormenting their souls with notions that their suffering might be 'needless.' We've won a great victory, and they contributed to it. I hope that is some consolation for their personal loss.
"If you are ready to bring charges, to name names, then by all means do so, later, in private. But I'll not stand for another such public outburst.
"From what I can see, this Bulatovich is a brave soldier, an inspiration to his men and to the whole detachment. It's hard to assess the impact of that expedition of his last night, but it may well have put the fear of God into the enemy and may well save us many lives."
That afternoon, as Orlov and the other officers stood on a nearby hilltop, to the sound of bugles and drums, from all sides of the bivouac came stretchers with the eleven Russian dead. Followed by the rest of the troops, the stretcher bearers climbed the hill and placed the bodies around a wide rectangular pit, deep as a man is tall. There was no priest, so Orlov said a few appropriate words. A chorus of officers sang several hymns.
Because they didn't have enough material for making coffins, Orlov had decided that the bodies should be laid directly on the sand in the bottom of the pit and covered from above with a series of boards. One by one, the bodies were lowered into the pit and stretchers taken away, to be used again in future battles.
Orlov ordered a minute of silence and looked down at the dead. They almost looked like they were sleeping in the shady pit, sheltered from the one-hundred-degree desert sun. But pale. And here and there -- bloodstains. Brains protruded from the bandages around one man's shattered skull.
Orlov felt a bit queasy. He hadn't been prepared for that. He quickly glanced around to check the reactions of others.
Kupferman looked disgusted, as if someone had tried to serve him rancid meat.
Strakhov was unnaturally pale but seemed able to control himself.
Bulatovich had shut his eyes tightly, apparently in prayer.
Several of the younger officers backed away, involuntarily, as flies swarmed and feasted on the exposed brains.
Then Lieutenant Bloom fainted, nearly falling into the pit.
Officers clustered around to help him.
The tension and solemnity of the moment were broken.
Most of the enlisted men stayed at a distance, near enough to perform their duty, but not so close that they could see the bottom of the pit.
The men of Bulatovich's troop stayed near him, at the edge of the pit. Starodubov knelt so low his beard brushed the sand. He prayed softly for his lost sons. Shemelin nervously adjusted the bandage over his left brow. He had a deep gash just half an inch from his eye where a bullet had grazed him on the ride back from Urdingi with a message. Only now did he realize how close he had come to death. Last night he had been propelled by nervous excitement. Now it was over, and he shivered with fear.
Trofim crossed himself again and again with two fingers and silently repeated the Lord's Payer, using the Old Believe "Our Father" instead of the Orthodox "Our God," a few other prayers, some vivid passages from Revelation, whatever he could remember -- he had the will but not the memory of a priest.
Butorin smoked a pipe and grinned in amusement at the embarrassment of the fainting officer.
Laperdin took out a handkerchief, took off his glasses, and calmly polished the lenses.
Sofronov stationed himself near Bulatovich and prayed audibly, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon us." His head was bowed reverently, his whole bearing had the look of a priest.
Sofronov's father had wanted him to be a priest, parading him proudly to church each Sunday and introducing him as the "priest-to-be." His father thought of the priesthood in terms of social status. With intelligence, tact, and a little politics, his son might one day become a bishop.
But the son rebelled, not against religion, but against the established Church, the pomp and status. His mother entertained pilgrims, the flocks of pilgrims who were forever wandering across Russia from one holy place to another. She gave them food, shelter, and alms. Pilgrims were always hanging about the kitchen -- tired, hungry, in rags. The young boy was fascinated by their tales of far-off places and of feats of faith.
As he grew older, his sentiments took a reasoned form. At the Kazan Theological Academy, he studied Church history and found it an abomination that, from the time of Peter the Great, Russia had had no Patriarch. Since that time the Church had been controlled by a State-dominated "Holy Synod." The Church was little more than a department of the bureaucracy, an appendage of the government, a tool for controlling the masses. He disdained the Church hierarchy and bureaucracy -- the men who grew fat on other men's faith. He defended mysticism and meditation as forms of personal religion that required no bureaucracy. And he revered holy humble men, particularly pilgrims.
Failing at the theological academy was a form of rebellion against the established Church. But despite himself, he was ashamed he was failing. One day he left school, put on peasant's garb and a false name and set off for Siberia as a pilgrim. For discipline he tried repeating the Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Chris, Son of God, have mercy upon me." He repeated it continually, day and night, aloud and silently, until the rhythm of his breath seemed to say the payer for him.
After two months, he could no longer tolerate the life of a pilgrim. Not so much the hunger, the fatigue, or the physical pain of pushing himself beyond his endurance, but he rejection, the disdain that he met with all too frequently when he asked for alms. He felt not so much like a holy pilgrim, a man to be revered, as a petty beggar, a slouch, a fake, an able-bodied man too lazy to earn his daily bread.
Ashamed to return home, for ten years he went from one menial job to another, ten years of humiliation. Finally, with the outbreak of war he joined the army. It was a fresh start for him, and he intended to make the best of it.
He retained his respect for the simple mystical faith of mendicant pilgrims. He also realized that he was unsuited for that life. From deprivation he had acquired an appetite for the finer things and comforts of life that he had taken for granted as a child. He now had a keen awareness of and respect for social status and an appreciation for the physical advantages that came with an improvement in status. He immediately recognized that Bulatovich was an extraordinary individual and sensed that something might be gained by close association with him. As he prayed there, reverently by the graveside, he was thinking perhaps not so much of God as of Bulatovich, and hoping that he might be noticed and remembered.
Pyotr never noticed the officer fainting. He wept and couldn't take his eyes off Aksyonov, motionless down there with the other bodies. The two of them hadn't really spoken much to one another. It seemed natural that he and Aksyonov should become friends. They were both just seventeen. But making friends was a serious business, not to be entered into lightly. His brother Login often told him, "Choose your fiends carefully. That's one way you have to control you destiny." So Pyotr had held back. And now Aksyonov was dead, and, standing before his open grave, Pyotr rehearsed in his mind all the things he might have said and done had he been more free and natural.
There had been nothing heroic about Aksyonov's death. It was dark, and they were watering their horses at Urdingi Station when shots started coming from everywhere. A bullet ripped off Grotten's toes.
They dropped to their bellies in the sand, firing at the flashes of light that flickered from the Chinese rifles in the dark. They ran of ammunition, and lay there wondering how long it would take the Chinese to realize it and move in.
Then Aksyonov got hit, kneeling by the well -- a bullet in the bladder. He let loose a horrifying scream and the shooting stopped.
He kept screaming. Bulatovich picked him up and slung him across the back of his horse and ordered everyone to mount.
Aksyonov screamed hideously all the way back. They encountered no resistance from the Chinese.
Pyotr realized now -- Bulatovich had recognized immediately that the maddening screams of a dying man at night would hold at bay a superstitious enemy.
The men of the grave detail began to cover the bodies with boards, some of which were too long. Orlov quietly cursed. Someone had forgotten to make sure they were the right length. It was an awkward moment. There was no saw at hand. Without the boards properly in place, they would be throwing dirt right in the faces o the dead soldiers -- a sacrilege Orlov simply could not tolerate.
He glared at Chief of Staff Volzhaninov. Volzhaninov glared at Staff Adjutant Sidorov. Sidorov stared at his boottops.
A cough, then another cough. Feet began to shuffle nervously in the loose sand.
Then one of the soldiers near Bulatovich, a quiet, firm-looking man, pulled out a dagger, jumped into the pit, and quickly lopped off the ends of the boards. In this man's hands, the dagger was swifter than an ax. Orlov stared in awe, admiring the handiwork, relieved that the solution was so simple. He resolved then and there to promote the man to sergeant. Later he found out the man was Login Zabelin, from Bulatovich's troop.
After Login had finished his job and scrambled back among the living, the general threw in the first three shovelsful of dirt. Other officers added a shovelful apiece. The men on grave detail finished up the task.
Later Orlov ordered the whole battalion to bury the dead Chinese and horses. In the wilderness heat, the smell of rotting meat was already becoming unbearable.
When they had lowered the bodies into the pit, Aksyonov's pendant had come out of his shirt. The chain was broken, and the picture of his new bride lay exposed on his chest.
Pyotr had been tempted to jump down and put it back in place, but had hesitated to disturb the proceedings.
While chopping boards, Login, apparently sensing his brother's concern for Aksyonov, had quickly and unobtrusively pocketed the pendant. Later he gave it to Pyotr saying, "Remember. War is no game. It could just as well have been you lying there."
But looking at the pendant, all Pyotr could think about was the beautiful young girl whose face he saw. What was her name?
Bulatovich stayed, even after the grave detail and everyone else had left. He sat on a nearby rock and picked up a fistful of sand, sifting it carefully from one hand to the other, like a crude hourglass. Now and again his eyes wandered off to the east along the train tracks in the direction of Urdingi and Hailar. He found it hard to believe that he had acted so rashly and even harder to believe that his new troop had followed him blindly into danger even after the muster call. madness -- he couldn't rationally justify either his won behavior or the sudden devotion these men had shown to him. And luck -- they should all be dead now, that's what reason said, not just one of them.
Then he suspended thought and just let the images race back through his head. He felt again, though faintly, that same exhilaration; and he needed more of it, almost like an addiction. Even without glitter or glory, whether it was the end of the line of the beginning, whether his name became renowned or he was buried here in total obscurity, he needed the challenge and the danger, the feeling of being alive -- the overwhelming knowledge that he feared nothing, that he'd dare to do anything, that whether anyone knew it or not, he was a "her."
The train track caught his eye again, running back as well as forward, back through all the turns of chance or fate, through the moments of adolescent indecision and the sudden surges of self-confidence that had made him the man he was, back to Petersburg and Sonya.
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.
<
| Internet Business Showcase: | ||
Hair Restoration for Hair Loss Hair Restoration |
Plastic Surgery & Surgeons Used Cars Guide |
Homecoming & Prom Dresses |