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 remembered Petersburg as gray stone buildings casting long gray shadows on gray snow.
The snow was white, dead white when it fell. It soon turned gray with the coming and going of carriages and people bundled up in brown and black and gray coats, hurrying to get out of the cold.
From early November to May it snowed. The Neva froze solid, gray, and became a roadway for carriages, sleighs, and pedestrians.
The sun stayed low on the horizon. For a month or more its rays would never reach many of the side streets and little alleys. Even the open parks near the cluster of gray palaces along the banks of the Neva got only a few hours of sunlight, on the rare days when the sun did shine.
Usually, if it didn't snow, it was dull, gray, and overcast; and cold gales blew in from the Gulf of Finland.
In the fall it rained. In the spring it rained.
It was even worse in the summer, when for a month or so there was hardly any night at all, when midnight was more like twilight, when those gray buildings and gray streets became unbearably hot. As soon as the heat came, epidemics of cholera struck the crowded tenements of the working-class districts and threatened to spread through the city. it wasn't unusual for several hundred people to die of it in a summer.
In the fall, winter, and spring, people died of pneumonia, lung diseases of all kinds, and typhoid. It was an unhealthy city any time of year. You had to boil the water before drinking it.
Back at Lutsikovka, the samovar had been the center of the house on cold winter days. The tea was warm and fragrant, but it was also part of the traditional family scene. When you came home cold and weary from a snowball fight, the uplift it gave you was almost religious.
Here in Petersburg, the samovar had no joy to it, or so it seemed to him. Here it was just a handy device for boiling filthy water, and the tea leaves were just a way to kill the taste of the water.
What could you expect of a city built on a swamp? Peter the Great had built his nightmare of a capital in the eighteenth century on land he had conquered from the Swedes. Peter believed in Europe, in European technology and European culture, and he would force those beliefs on the Russian people regardless of the cost in money and lives. Regardless of the resistance of the Russian people, regardless of the resistance of nature, he would change the "facts" to match his dream. he would force Russia to look West through this new window of his, rather than East to its origins. He would make this a European nation, despite all obstacles. Whatever the project, obstacles seemed to strengthen rather than discourage his interest.
The ponderous gray structures of bureaucracy rose high on pilings along the swampy Neva. People came to settle there because they had no choice, because they needed work of any kind, or because they dreamed of a better life than their ancestors had had in their little peasant villages. And despite the recurrent floods and disease, they stayed and multiplied.
In the summer, the Tsar, the nobles, and everyone else who could afford it evacuated the city and headed for their country estates. The Tsar usually went to his summer palaces at Tsarskoye Selo or Peterhof, ten or twenty miles away.
Others, like Sonya's family, went to estates in the nearby Baltic provinces. Bulatovich's family returned to Lutsikovka in the Ukraine.
His mother had inherited the property form her aunt. But while Aunt Elizaveta had always been considered a wealthy woman, there never seemed to be any money after Jenny took over. There was one summer when she rented the estate for a good price, and they gook a trip to Germany, France, and Switzerland. That was when they had visited his father's grave. But most years she just complained about crops, prices, weather, the way her tenants and overseer cheated her. She claimed she got nothing from the estate, especially after a trade treaty with Germany lowered the price of grain. In addition, she had a substantial pension as the widow of a general, with extra sums for each of the major medals he had earned. But she always talked about how expensive everything was in Petersburg. If there was any money (and Sasha always thought there was), his mother kept it close.
He felt like a pauper and a country bumpkin at the fancy school she sent him to. Everyone at the Alexandrovsky Lycee was from the gentry. The poet Pushkin had graduate from there, as had numerous important government officials and diplomats.
On the one hand, his mother was very conscious of social status. She forever reminded him that he mustn't fraternize with coachmen and servants and their children as he always had at Lutsikovka. She sounded so impressed about the dinners she went to with princess so-and-so and colonel such-and-such. She kept telling him that success in this world depends on who you know, not what you know. But on the other hand, she held tight to her money, giving him just a few kopecks now and then to spend.
To save himself embarrassment, Sasha avoided his classmates with their often-expensive pastimes. He was always a loner.
His sharpest memory of school days was when he was at the preparatory school, right after they arrived in Petersburg, right after his sister Lilia died of typhoid. His grief had lasted for months. He had kept to himself, quietly, then somehow found himself in a running battle with the teacher Lemm, a strict German disciplinarian. The battle were a relief, a distraction. He defied Lemm again and again, and Lemm, unlike God, punished him predictably, beating him and confining him in a small dark coffin-like closet. He suffered, but there was a pattern to the suffering, a justice or an injustice that could be assigned to this man Lemm. Lemm came to expect defiance and disobedience and punished Sasha often without case. Sasha forgot the injustice of God and vented his anger on this, His mortal counterpart.
That year of lonely rebellion in a strange school in a strange city, more than the lack of money, made him a loner. The other students called him "the Ukrainian boy." He hadn't a drop of Ukrainian blood in him; he had a mixture of Polish, Russian, French, and Georgian ancestry. But he acted like an outsider, and all were quick to label him one.
He studied French, German, English, history, geography, and law while his mother politicked in the background to get him started in a career in government. With money tight, he would have to fend for himself. She wanted him to have a respectable position in a reasonably prestigious department, with a steady, secure income and opportunities for advancement.
On graduation in 1891, he was duly awarded the rank of "titular councilor," the lowest civil rank in Tsarist Russia, the starting point even for nobility in their climb for prominence in the government bureaucracy. He was offered a job in the offices of the Educational and Charitable Institutions of the Empress Mariya.
Where would he be now had he followed that path of least resistance? If he had been an extraordinary success, he could be head of some department. Perhaps he would have married Sonya or someone like her, and he would have a big house and a dozen children. Perhaps he would ride about town in a horseless carriage, smoking imported cigars. And in the evening, he would read novels and travel books, imagining himself in far-off places.
Instead, he had insisted on joining the army, and not just any regiment -- His Majesty's Life-Guard Hussar Regiment.
In the Russian army, the true status of an officer often depended more on his regiment than on his rank. In particular, the two dozen Guards regiments headquartered near the Tsar's palaces in Petersburg and at nearby Tsarskoye Selo and Peterhof were like exclusive clubs that only a member of the gentry could join and only on the recommendation of influential friends and relatives. Bulatovich, fresh out of a lycee, never having attended a military academy, had been accepted into one of these ultra-exclusive regiments, and after a year's training as an enlisted man, had been promoted to the lowest officer rank -- kornet. Then, in relatively rapid success, he had risen to lieutenant and staff-rotmister.
His decision to join had come as a shock not only to his mother but also to himself.
"Are you out of your mind?" she had exclaimed when he first mentioned the possibility. "Do you realize the expenses? Why the cost of the uniforms alone -- the beaver hats and collars and trim and all the gold embroidery. The pay is next to nothing. They're all independently wealthy. There's no way you'd be able to keep up with the other officers. You'd be living beyond your means, cultivating expensive tastes, gambling, drinking -- all he vices of the idle rich. And who would have to pay for it all? Who would come to the rescue when you got over your head in debt? Don't expect me to. We're not rich, you know. And the sooner you accept your lot in life, the better off you'll be."
"I told you that I'm going to join the regiment. That's all there is to it," he squinted to emphasize his point. But at the same time he was surprised to hear himself speak with such certainty. A few moments before, the regiment had been but one of several possibilities he was toying with. But now he had taken a stand like a hero in a play, like he had in his obstinate battles with Lemm in the preparatory school.
"And who do you think you are, young man, to speak to your mother like that?"
"I'm twenty-one. I can do what I want with my life. And I will."
"Will indeed. Do you think you can just decide you want to be an officer in a regiment as exclusive as that and that's all there is to it? There are hundreds of young men out there begging to get in, young men who have been preparing themselves since early childhood for just such an opportunity. And you, out of nowhere, decide that you're just going to jump in and beat them?"
"I've always wanted to be a soldier. Like Father." Once again he was surprised to hear his own words. But he was proud of them: they helped strength his resolve.
His mother heaved a little sigh of disappointment, her eyes blank and weary, her lips pursed. "I never thought I'd raised such a rude and ungrateful son."
Sasha had to smile. His mother had played her trump card -- the role of martyr -- but she had played it too soon and with too little conviction. He had the upper hand. He really could join the regiment if he wanted to. And having won his point, how could he change his mind like a whimsical child? He must be a man now -- firm, unbending, master of his own mind.
Recognizing defeat, Jenny struck out bitterly, "Go then. Join your regiment. We have relatives. Maybe I can twist a few arms and get you in. Maybe just to show you what a fool you are, I'll get you in. Even with those bad eyes of yours. Exceptions can be made for things like that. But getting in is the least of it. Staying in is the tough part. How well do you think you'll stack up against those cadets fresh out of military school? You don't even know how to salute properly. They could take you on only as a private, with the enlisted men. You'd have to learn all the rudiments with them and prove yourself before they would even think of making you an officer."
"Do it," Sasha smiled firmly. The obstacles seemed to make the object more worthy of attainment. "You get me in. I'll do the rest."
His mother was clearly impressed with his resolve. He had never stood up to her like this before. And he was proud to see that he had impressed her.
Thinking back now, Bulatovich couldn't help but wonder what he would have done with his life if his mother hadn't objected so strongly to his idle thoughts on a possible military career, if the conversation hadn't taken just that turn. How fragile the fabric of our lives; how arbitrary our "wants" and "needs"; how much depends on the pushes and pulls of others -- especially when we suddenly decide to take a stand and determine our own destiny.
With his jockey-like build and the ability as a horseman he had developed as a boy in the Ukraine, it was only natural that Bulatovich join a Hussar regiment. By definition a Hussar regiment consisted of the very best lightweight cavalrymen matched with the best light horses and trained to work closely together as a team; for only as a closely coordinated team all charging at the same speed and with uniform excellence could a cavalry regiment have maximum impact on the battlefield.
In all of Russia there were only two light cavalry regiments trained and maintained at the level of uniform excellence that earned the designation "Hussar." One was the Grodno Life-Guard Hussar Regiment, associated with Bulatovich's father's native province, near Poland. He chose instead His Majesty's Life-Guard Hussar Regiment.
His father had been a major general, but it was relatives on his mother's side who got him into that regiment. Jenny's father the colonel of engineers who was killed in the Caucasus, had a brother Lev, who was also killed there on a separate occasion. In a skirmish with mountain rebels, he had lost his left arm and continued fighting with his right until he died. He had served in this very regiment, and his portrait hung in the reception hall of the regiment. Bulatovich had considered him a great hero, an inspiring example. Starodubov would have asked, "And what was he trying to prove?" Bulatovich wondered, "What was the point of such 'heroism'? Why did he do it? And why would I do the same if given la chance?"
The boy from the Ukraine was impressed with all the glitter and with himself for being part of it. He'd always thought of himself as a bit of an outcast. His learning to ride so well had been an act of rebellion. Rather than put up with his mother and deal with matters of petty household friction, more often than not he had run off alone with the huntsman Old Hrisko and the coachman Mihailovo, hunting or riding. When his mother made him feel guilty for riding off on his own without permission, he all the more felt the need to get away -- to the woods, to the fields, to push himself and his horse to their limits, testing his endurance, proving his ability as a horseman.
Here that determination and those abilities, which had been a plague to his mother, had earned him a position of status and honor, with traditions and responsibilities closely related to the imperial throne -- for not only was he a Hussar, but also he belonged to one of the two dozen imperial Guards regiments.
The enlisted men in these regiments were selected from regular army units around the Empire and proud of their elite status. Their officers drilled them day after day to improve the precision and uniformity of their difficult, highly disciplined maneuvers.
In peacetime, the official function of the Guards regiments stationed near Petersburg was largely ceremonial, parading on state occasions and standing guard at the Tsar's various palaces. The changing of the guard at the Winter Palace in Petersburg was a regular item on every tourist's itinerary.
The traditional ceremonial aspect of their duties was part of the military-religious trappings of an imperial family that ruled by "divine right," with no legislature to curb its power. The Tsar was held in "holy" awe and revered by many -- gentry as well as peasants. The Fundamental Laws of the Empire defined him as God's representative on earth. Allegiance to the Tsar was a matter of religious faith. "to the Emperor of all the Russians belongs supreme autocratic power. Submission to this power, not only from fear, but also as a matter of conscience, is commanded by God Himself."
A parade of the Guards was also a reminder of the might, splendor, and magnificence of the Russian Empire and its Tsar. That aura of greatness and divine invincibility was an important factor in holding together the vas assemblage of people called the "Russian Empire" -- after centuries of conquest in Europe and Asia.
Such a reminder was particularly necessary in and around Petersburg, where there were far too many unskilled laborers and rootless displaced peasants, and far too many students and foreigners with radical notions, anxious to stir up trouble. When mobs gathered in the streets, like the year Bulatovich joined up, when widespread crop failures led to soaring food prices and famine, the Guards were used as an effective "show of force."
The barracks of His Majesty's Life-Guard Hussar Regiment were at Tsarskoye Selo, a town about fifteen miles from Petersburg that was the site of two imperial palaces, which served as the summer home of Tsar Alexander III. Mounted Guardsmen rode around and around the high iron fence of the park, day and night. Detachments of Guards infantry were posted at all the palace gates and inside the Imperial Park. Guardsmen were posted as sentries throughout the palaces themselves. And at the entrance to the private wing where the Tsar and Tsarina resided, four gigantic Blacks, called "Ethiopians," stood guard and opened and closed the doors for Their Majesties.
In the summer of 1892, just a year after graduating from the lycee, he was promoted to kornet, and Prince Vassilchikov, the colonel in command of his regiment, invited him to visit during the summer furlough at this estate at Kovno in the Baltic Provinces, near Poland.
Bulatovich was reluctant to accept. He had looked forward to returning to Lutsikovka and perhaps visiting his cousin Sophia Sboromirsky in nearby Sumy. But his mother broke out in exasperation, "You fool. Don't you realize that you get ahead in this world not by the things you do but by the people you know? The colonel's shown a liking to you -- you, a newcomer, a nobody. That's an opportunity you can't afford to pass up."
When he didn't respond to logic, she sighed deeply and her chin quivered. "After all I've done for you. I thought you had learned. I was proud of you -- my boy, the officer. And I spent the last bit of our savings to outfit you. This was your career, and you were serious about it. This was what you had chosen to do with your life. With that determination of yours, I knew you would be a success at it, and you would soon be able to pay your own way instead of depending on your poor widowed mother. But here you are, throwing away an opportunity like this. It's stubborn, that's what it is; it's your father in you, God rest his soul. Polish pride. He was just as stubbornly foolish, or he wouldn't have ended up as he did: just a regimental commander, relegated to the provinces..."
On and on she went, wearing down his resolve. It was too small an issue to make a stand on. Besides, he was curious to see the estate at Kovno, to see how Colonel Vassilchikov lived. Yet his mother's words added an element of guilt to the venture. He felt uneasy. What if Colonel Vassilchikov interpreted his acceptance as politicking?
Riding up to the estate, he was teasing the ends of his new-grown mustache and trying to make up his mind just what tone to take to demonstrate to himself, and perhaps to the colonel as well, that he was coming out f a sense of obligation and good will, that he was not just trying to get on the good side of his commanding officer, that he fully expected to rise in the ranks through merit and hard work and not through favoritism. Then he spotted a young girl in a white dress with a pink ribbon racing after a little black dog.
He pulled up short as she ran in front of his horse. She was stumbling through the muddy grass, running awkwardly.
Sonya, the colonel's daughter, had just turned fifteen, and her mother had decided that it was time for her to dress and act like a lady and stop running about with the servant children. Sonya found it difficult to maneuver in her tight new shoes and her new, all-to-fragile dress.
Her dog jumped into a mud puddle and started splashing about playfully. Sonya started to take off her shoes and go in after him, but they were so tight that she had trouble getting them off.
Then suddenly, this young Guards officer ran past her, scooped up the muddy little dog, "helped" her back to the dry ground of the roadway, lifted her up sidesaddle onto his horse, and gallantly led her home. She almost burst out laughing. But she restrained herself, just barely.
She found him strong, decisive, and attractive, even if he was just a bit shorter than she. She could see that he was proud of himself for "rescuing" her, for getting himself dirty to save her from getting dirty. So she acted helpless and grateful and thoroughly enjoyed her performance.
On succeeding days, Bulatovich and the colonel's daughter were together often, not riding and hunting as he would have preferred and as she would have, too, had she been willing to admit it, but sitting sedately on the porch or walking about the garden.
Her eyes seemed to hover between blue and green. When she was at her most coy and cautious with her long lashes partly shielding her pupils, they tended toward green. But at moments of excitement, enthusiasm, or bold playfulness, when she opened wide, they could flash bright blue. Her light brown hair hung straight and long, turning out a bit at the ends and gently framing her round face.
"Will you compete in the steeplechase?" she once asked, idly twirling a daisy near her turned-up nose.
Bulatovich hesitated. He hadn't even considered the possibility.
"It's always such a glorious event," she rambled on, delighted to have found another topic to fill out their pleasant and very "grown-up-like" conversation. She held her shoulders and her back straight and wouldn't let herself squirm about nervously. She was proud of the little snippets of information she knew about the regiment and Petersburg society. "I wouldn't miss the steeplechase myself, not for the world. Father takes me every year. There's the excitement of the race itself, and everyone's dressed in their very finest, with the Tsar himself and the royal family in attendance. If I were a man..." She caught herself up short, brushed her hair with the back of her hand, and continued, "It must be very dangerous for the riders. Very few who start the race ever finish. There were quite a few broken legs and arms this year. One man nearly died, I hear. I don't remember seeing you there," she raced ahead, hardly pausing for breath. "And if I had seen you, I'm sure I would have remembered." She hesitated a moment, not sure how flattering she wanted to sound. "You look so distinguished, so impressive on horseback. Have you ever been photographed on horseback?"
"No," replied Bulatovich, still thinking about the steeplechase.
"Well, you should be. You should make a point of it."
"Who can enter?"
"Enter what?"
"The steeplechase."
"Why everyone, everyone who is anyone; that is, all the officers in the Guards regiments."
"Then I will compete next year," he said with determination.
"How very nice," remarked Sonya, racing on to other topics, proud that she was such an accomplished conversationalist, that she could hold the attention of this handsome officer. "And do you fence?"
From that visit on, Sonya got along far better with her mother, listening carefully to all her mother's advice on how a young lady should dress and fix her hair and comport herself. But her girlish energy an spontaneity didn't go away. They'd surface now and again at unexpected moments, maybe even amplified by the forced restraint. Sometimes, breaking into a sprint, she would race up the stairs at record speed, then suddenly remember, pull up short, quickly straighten her dress, brush back her hair with the back of her hand, then start up again with a more dignified gait.
Her father laughed, "Look at our little lady. She's learned so well, I'm sure if the house were on fire, she'd descend the stairs at that same dignified ladylike pace."
"Yes, isn't she charming," replied her proud mother, missing her husband's point, absorbed at the sight of her just-now-blossoming daughter. "A blue ribbon, I think," she added.
"A winner?" asked the colonel, not following her drift.
"Yes, she should definitely wear a blue ribbon. It would go better with her eyes. Remind me to tell her."
For Bulatovich it was a pleasant two week. Sonya was charming. But he thought nothing more of her until he described his visit to his mother. She insisted on a detailed account of his every moment. And he obliged, naively, answering her every question, with no idea that he should have anything to conceal.
"And on these long walks," she asked, "did you take any liberties?"
"Liberties? What do you mean?"
"Ah, from your look, you didn't. Fine. What a fine boy you are. She's probably pining for you now. In another year or two it will all develop naturally. Yes," she sighed, "young love. And the colonel's daughter, no less."
Bulatovich cringed, imagining tales his mother would tell her friends, imagining that his fellow officers at the regiment would interpret his visit in the same light.
"Yes. When I first met Anatole..." Jenny trailed off into memories of her youth.
He wondered what Sonya must be thinking, what indignities she must be suffering for a few simple innocent conversations. He thought of writing her a letter of apology, then thought better of it.
She considered writing letters, too, but of a different kind. At night she hugged her pillow tightly, thinking of him. She'd obey him; she'd love to obey, if only he would command. She would run off with him to the far corners of the world. By night she wrote him letters telling of her undying love. And by day she tore the letters up. She didn't want to seem too anxious, too easy. She had learned that tactic from her reading -- mainly French and English romantic novels and poetry. She would make him prove his devotion to her as she looked on. And she would act prim and proper and ladylike as she never had before.
The reaction he got at the regiment was unexpected. He had resolved not to say anything to arouse suspicions that there was anything between him and the colonel's daughter. He had rehearsed hiss lines silently to himself, over and over again, expecting he would have trouble quelling the curiosity of his fellow officers.
But no one showed the least interest in his visit to the colonel's estate. Some bragged of casual conquests; other were the subject of gossip. But Bulatovich remained an outsider -- excluded, as he had been at school. He had made it into their regiment; he had become an officer. But he hadn't gone to a military academy, and he had spent a year training and fraternizing with the enlisted men. He was technically the officers' equal, but he wasn't one of them.
He found himself wishing they would prod him with questions. He gave them clues, but no one bothered to follow up on them. They ignored him.
Most of the social life of the regiment revolved around women. But at parties, both respectable and disreputable, he felt uncomfortable and self-conscious and tended to stand off to the side and watch while others danced or caroused.
All the junior officers seemed to deal with women simply as objects for a man's pleasure. Their talk made him fell like a child. He was ashamed to admit his relative innocence. At the same time, he felt morally indignant -- sensing that there was something shallow and cruel in the attitudes they expressed.
Physically well-developed for his height, Bulatovich was the match of any man in the regiment as a horseman or a fencer. Others in his position would have talked and laughed their way into comradeship with the other junior officers. Bulatovich immersed himself in his duties, using his free time to practice for the fencing team and for the steeplechase. In the refectory, he tended to sit apart. But the more separate he made himself, the more he felt the need to belong to the crowd. And whether he sat apart or tagged along seemed to make no difference to anyone but him.
Once he found himself following along with half a dozen others on their way to a house of prostitution. One of them, a couple years younger than Bulatovich, was going to be "initiated" at the expense of the rest. Curious, yet ashamed of his innocence in this company, Bulatovich tried to disguise his own inexperience. No one paid enough attention to his awkward and inappropriate remarks to suspect him. He felt a need to prove himself to himself. He drank heavily and eventually found himself alone with a naked woman. He put his hand on her breast, and she started unbuttoning him mechanically, with a hollow drunken smile on her face.
Her hair was red, but the roots were black. Naked she looked young, vulnerable and beautiful. He was frightened and attracted, but he wasn't sure what was expected of him. She touched him and he lunged at her in what he thought was a show of manly passion, knocking her down on the floor, pulling his pants down, jumping on her.
Then suddenly, he strength and desire evaporated. He felt a cold moisture on his leg. He lay on her like so much dead weight. With difficulty, she pushed him aside. Only then did he notice that she was crying.
"Did I hurt you?" he asked.
She cried still more, lying there, naked, helpless, shameless -- now he noticed that she was shameless, that she made no effort to cover her nakedness. He looked away and quickly, clumsily pulled on his pants, then rushed for the door, opened it, started out, then turned back quickly to throw money on the floor and ran out.
That night he couldn't sleep. He needed to talk to someone. So for the first time, he sat down and wrote a letter to Sonya. He wrote quickly, and the flow of his ideas was conversational, as if he were once again sitting with her on the porch back in Kovno. After apologies for not writing sooner and other friendly banalities, he wrote:
You'll probably think I'm terrible, and you'll be right. I wouldn't blame you if you never spoke to me again, but I need to tell someone because it weighs on my conscience. Tonight I went to a house of ill repute. I'd be drinking with some friends -- but that's no excuse. I wanted to take advantage of a poor young girl who had probably been forced by poverty into a life of sin. She was probably no older than you. And there's no telling how long she had been living that way. I certainly wasn't the first. She went about everything like she had done it many times before.
I know you must be shocked that I would do such a thing, that I have such evil impulses. And I must admit that I often have these dreams and desires. I feel ashamed when I think that a man such as I dared to become the friend of someone so sweet and innocent as you.
I pray the Lord to preserve me from such temptation. And this time, this one time, He was most kind to me and stopped me before it was too late. So instead of cruelly using the girl, I spoke to her at length and made her recognize the error of her ways. When I left her, she was weeping in repentance. I gave her what little money I had with me. I intend to send her more when I can, to help free her from her shameful bondage.
That very night, just before dawn, he dropped the letter into a mailbox. Then and only then could he sleep soundly, at ease for having confessed and in full expectation that he would never again hear from, never again see Sonya. She would now know what a hateful person he was. But losing her (and he thought in terms of "losing" her, as if she had in some sense been "his" until now) was a necessary penance he must endure.
Much to his surprise, she replied by return mail, acknowledging receipt of his letter but saying nothing about the contents. She just rambled on in friendly, one might say "delightful," fashion about her everyday life. It was an animated, exuberant letter. Even he could sense the overflowing emotion around and between the words.
When his letter had arrived, Sonya had scanned it quickly in her mother's presence. She blushed when she got to the part about the prostitute and went running off to read it in private.
She had expected and hoped for polite expressions of affection from her dashing officer. But his confession about the prostitute excited her imagination. She had read surreptitiously about such things in novels. But to have a firsthand account from the man she loved -- she was so curious that it never occurred to her to be jealous or distressed. She wanted to ask him for more details. What did the room look like? What color were the curtains? What was she wearing before she stripped?
Sonya slept naked that night, and with her hands she explored her own nakedness while she imagined herself totally at the mercy of a confident, experienced, and handsome older man like Bulatovich.
As the excitement and glitter of the regiment gradually wore off, leaving the monotonous routine of a peacetime soldier, Bulatovich busied himself learning the circus-like riding tricks of the Cossacks, then trained for and entered races and riding competitions of all kinds and made enough in prize money to make up partly for the tightfistedness of his mother.
He kept in touch with Sonya; and when he saw his mother, which was rarely now, he no longer minded her prying and pumping about Sonya. He made no secret of the fact that they were "in correspondence." At the regiment, he let it be known as well. But still no one there seemed particularly interested.
As Sonya had suggested, he entered the annual steeplechase at Krasnoye Selo. The first year he came in third, then two years in a row he won it. Sonya was so proud, seeing him photographed on horseback in the winner's circle in front of the Tsar.
For a year and a half, Bulatovich had been assigned to the fencing team of another regiment. By the time he returned to his own regiment, he was so accomplished a cavalryman that he was made assistant director and then director of the regimental training detachment.
"They call me Mazeppa," he bragged to Sonya.
"Are you some kind of rebel?" she asked.
"A rebel? No, I never thought of it that way. I think they call me that because I'm strict -- I demand and get obedience."
"And what would you have me do, master?" she asked playfully, dropping to her knees and coyly bowing her head. She was nineteen now and far more confident in her ability to play the games of respectable flirtation and courtship. But she was impulsive and would sometimes assert herself and act unexpectedly, even against he own best interests, even if for no other reason than to prove that she could if she wanted to. When Bulatovich had first met her, her hair had hung straight and long, turning out a bit at the ends and gently framing her round face. But she never seemed satisfied with that natural beauty. She was forever changing her hair style, cutting it, curling it, teasing it, or tying it. She was very aware of her appearance and very imaginative at altering it. Sometimes, like now, when she had her hair tied back in a bun, she seemed to look her worst deliberately; yet with her eyes, her voice, and her gestures, she made herself seem all the more willful and sensuous.
Bulatovich laughed, as he usually did when he didn't know how else to react to her. This was one of his rare official visits at her parents' house just outside Petersburg. She only let him come here once or twice a year. Usually, they met secretly, in the summer riding in the woods, and in the winter rendezvousing at the house of a married friend of hers in Petersburg. She insisted that such secrecy was necessary so her parents wouldn't think that they were serious and take steps to keep them apart.
He didn't inquire too deeply into the question of why her parents should object. He presumed it had something to do with money. Unfamiliar with the ways of society and the subtle distinctions of status near the top, he simply took her word for it and did as she advised.
She often had him at a disadvantage, pretending that her knowledge of the sensitivities of society was beyond his comprehension.
When he laughed just now, she sensed his discomfort, jumped to her feet, took his hand, and led him on a walk through the garden. For early March, it was quite warm outside. And there was nowhere else they could be alone without the danger that someone would come walking in.
As they walked among the high hedges, well sheltered from probing eyes, she squeezed his hand warmly, then touched his palm and wrist lightly, sensuously, leaning gently against his arm and shoulder. "And now that you are such a brilliant success -- director of the training detachment, finest horseman and finest fencer in the regiment -- what new challenge will you take on?"
Bulatovich laughed again, nervously. What did she expect of him? Sometimes in their playful times in the woods she had made him pretend that they were running off together to be vagabonds in France or Italy. She seemed to love to fantasize. Did she want him to talk fantasy now?
She was hard to figure out. There had been moments, riding with her, when she thrilled him with her recklessness, jumping over high hedges and fences at full gallop. There had been moments too when she suddenly kissed him, even inserting her tongue deep into his mouth. Other times in public, even at the dinner table at her own house, when it appeared that no one was looking, she slyly slid her hand onto his lap and rubbed him high on the thigh. Once when he had shown her his Cossack riding tricks, djigitovka -- doing handstands on the horse's back, then hanging low off the side of the horse and touching the ground with his palms, all while the horse was galloping -- she had hugged him tight with one hand and with the other had fondled his crotch, just for a moment, then pushed off with her elbows before he had a chance to respond. Then she was instantly a very proper young lady, who had never been anything but a very proper young lady.
Once when they had arranged to meet by a pond on a hot summer day, she, incredible as it seemed was swimming in the nude when he arrived. She had smiled seductively, let him get a quick glimpse of her full figure, then acted horrified that he should dare to try to look at her "in such a state." She had dressed quickly, while, at her insistence, his back was turned, and then had ridden off without saying a word, and without ever again alluding to or allowing him to allude to the incident.
Such behavior reminded him of the way Sonya played the piano. Like Lilia, her problem was one of rhythm, but Sonya didn't come to abrupt hunting halts; rather she sometimes got carried away. Her fingers would race ahead far faster than the established tempo, till they stumbled over themselves. Then after a false note or two, she would quickly and smoothly, as if nothing had gone wrong, return to a measured ladylike beat.
Bulatovich could remember numerous other occasions when she had unexpectedly taken the initiative and given him some physically provocative sign of endearment, only to fend him off when he responded and adroitly return their encounter to a calmer, more respectable tempo. Unwittingly, she had trained him to be cautious and slow to respond to her bold affectionate gestures.
But this time, when she sensed his hesitation, she dropped his hand, went walking on ahead, then turned abruptly. "Well, what are you going to do? Play soldier boy on a training field for the rest of your life? Or will you become a horse trader instead?"
Bulatovich flinched. He had wanted to turn Lutsikovka into a horse-breeding farm, to raise and train thoroughbred racehorses. He had thought it could be a lucrative business, that he would soon earn enough to afford to get married. As it turned out, his mother had refused to relinquish control of the estate.
"Well, don't just stand there with your mouth open," Sonya lashed out suddenly. "What do you intend to do?"
Did she want him to try to kiss her? Or tell her some wild improbable tale of their future together/ Instead he said what was uppermost on his mind. "I was thinking about Ethiopia."
"Ethiopia?" she grimaced.
He explained the situation, as best he knew it then, while she looked on, incredulous.
"A Red Cross mission is being organized to help the wounded from the Battle of Adowa. I was thinking of volunteering, with the permission of my regiment, of course."
"Adowa? What is Adowa?"
"Ethiopia, you see, is the only Christian nation in Black Africa. It became Christian back in the fourth century, long before Russia or even Italy. Ethiopia was an extraordinary place, from what little I know. Not far from the equator, it's a land of jungles, elephants, deserts, and high, forbidding mountains. There are vast territories near there that have never been seen by any European."
"But what is Adowa?"
"A town, a battle, a turning point in history, perhaps," he was beginning to get carried away with enthusiasm. "The Ethiopian Emperor, Menelik, has been competing with the Western Powers for dominance in Central Africa. First he bought arms from the French. You may have heard of the French poet Rimbaud?"
"Yes, of course," she answered, beginning to show signs of interest.
"He gave up writing poetry in his early twenties and became a gunrunner in Ethiopia, supplying Menelik. Later, when the Italians declared that Ethiopia was in their 'sphere of influence,' Menelik negotiated with them, posed as their friend, signed agreements with them -- all in exchange for more modern rifles and ammunition. He then turned on the Italians and defeated them resoundingly at the Battle of Adowa.
"If you read the papers, you would know about the outpouring of sympathy here in Russia for these Ethiopians. The papers show them as poor helpless Christians armed only with spears."
"Rimbaud, you say? That vagabond bohemian, with his 'Drunken Boat' poem?" she asked.
"Yes, that's the one."
"And Pushkin's great-grandfather was an Ethiopian, wasn't he? There's something intriguing about the place," she admitted. "It think of it as somehow romantic, exotic, Oriental even." She cuddled up to his shoulder and looked deep into his yes, with a helpless pleading look. He expected her to say, "You aren't going to go, are you? You wouldn't leave me, would you?" Instead, she stroked him firmly with both hands and whispered, "I'll wait for you."
After several months, he hated Ethiopia, the recurring fever, the climatic extremes -- the heat of the jungle, the unexpected cold at night on the plateaux, the thinness of the air at eight thousand feet above sea level, and the perpetual steaming fog by the low banks of a jungle river. He hated the constant nervous tension -- having to stay alert, to watch what he said, to read motives into the gracious phrases of all the semi-feudal princelings and governors and the Emperor himself. There were times when he longed to return to Petersburg and Sonya.
But when he got back, Sonya awakened his imagination, and he saw Ethiopia quite differently in the light of her words.
While he was gone on his first trip, she had made herself a student of Ethiopia, reading everything she could find about it, even going so far as to visit Professor Bolotov, an expert on Eastern languages Bulatovich had consulted, for advice and books that could help in learning Amharic. After his return, she was Bulatovich's helpmate, listening attentively and bringing out the moral or romantic, nearly allegorical implications of the bare facts he reported; as his mother would put it, she had a knack for finding a trace of essential truth in mere facts. She encouraged him to write a book about his experiences, particularly what he had observed during his brief excursions into the hinterland after the medical mission had left.
Geographically, his main interest was the Omo River and the puzzle of its true course, whether it became a tributary of the Nile or ended in some lake to the south. But she was far more interested in what he could tell her about the Little Abay (the Blue Nile) and the Awash, two rivers that started quite near one another but had very different destinies.
The Little Abay begins at Lake Tana, gently meanders to the east and south before it runs west and north, gradually gaining strength and becoming the main tributary of the mighty Nile, the Blue Nile, contributing two thirds of the water of the Nile and carrying millions of tons of fertile soil to Egypt every year. Not far from the source of the Little abay rises the powerful Awash River, which rushes dramatically in a torrent north and east to the desert, where it dries up and ends, never reaching the sea. Sonya found a sort of irony and tragedy in the fate of that powerful river with all its energy and potential leading nowhere, ending unfulfilled, unimportant, unnoticed.
He described to her the geological oddities known as ambas -- flat-topped, cliff-sided mountains. But it wasn't the geology she was interested in. She wanted to hear of the monasteries perched inaccessibly on top of those ambas and also of the princes, younger brothers of emperors, who reportedly had been kept confined all their lives in pleasure prisons on such ambas to avoid any conflict over dynastic succession. She imagined Samuel Johnson's Rasselas, translated from a "happy valley" to the top of an amba, thousands of feet above sea level.
He told her of the changes that were taking place, how Menelik's Amharas were conquering one tribe after another and helping introduce Western civilization to Central Africa. He saw Ethiopia as having a special destiny as a conduit for introducing the benefits of Western medicine, science, and technology to these people without totally destroying their native cultures. He saw change as inevitable, but wanted it to be positive rather than destructive, as was all too often the case in European colonies.
Sonya, however, couldn't accept the notion that hte world must change. She wanted some romantic, unchanging ideal. And she seemed to find that ideal in the details he provided her about the Galla or Oromo people. Before being conquered by the Amharas, they had ruled themselves in a number of separate states, many of which had what Sonya called a "republican" form of government. Once every forty years the head of each family had a five-year term as a member of the lube or ruling council and judicial court. It was with her notions in mind that he wrote in his book that "the peaceful, free way of life that could have become the ideal for philosophers and writers of the eighteenth century, if they had known of it, was completely changed" by the recent conquest by the Amharas.
She wanted to find out more about such cultures. She wanted to help him record details of these unique social structures before they totally disappeared. She felt an urgency. It was important to gather information quickly so some record of this aspect of human potential and diversity would be preserved, to save a few little pieces of the gigantic puzzle of mankind's nature and destiny.
For her there was an urgency about everything. Their meetings, with few exceptions, were still secret and hurried. She made it appear that it must be that way. maybe she actually believed so herself. The hurried words, the sudden kiss and departure -- their innocent moments together had the intensity of a romantic intrigue.
When he was ordered to return to Ethiopia, selected to go ahead to prepare the way for Russia's first diplomatic mission to that country, he was primed and prepared to take full advantage of this fresh opportunity to record every precious detail he could of those unique and disappearing cultures in the hinterland. He left just a week before his book was published.
On this second trip, he accompanied the army of Ras Wolde Georgis on its expedition of conquest, south-southwest from Addis Ababa to Lake Rudolph. Bulatovich was the first European to traverse Kaffa, a little despotic kingdom that prior to its recent conquest by the Amharas had been completely closed to all outsiders for several centuries. Beyond Kaffa he passed through lands unknown even to Ethiopians. His ability to chart their course with compass and surveying gear had been essential to the mission's success. A few hundred out of their sixteen thousand men died along the way in skirmishes with natives and of disease and sunstroke. But the expedition established Ethiopia's claim to vast stretches of territory that might otherwise have been claimed by England or France in their insatiable quest for colonies.
Along the way, he named a newly discovered mountain range in honor of Tsar Nicholas II and rescued a little three-year-old boy, who had been emasculated and left for dead probably by some of the more vicious and trophy-hungry irregular volunteers who accompanied Wolde Georgis' army.
Bulatovich brought the boy, Vaska, back to Russia with him, and overcoming his mother's initial reluctance, left the boy with her at Lutsikovka.
Bulatovich had walked in the door at Lutsikovka carrying a solid gold saber and shield -- a gift to him from Wolde Georgis. Georgis had himself received them from Emperor Menelik two years before as a reward for having conquered the kingdom of Kaffa.
In fact, Bulatovich had returned in such glory that it was hard for his mother to object to anything, even paying his bills, which were astronomical. In just 211 days he had spent over 5000 rubles out of his own pocket -- five times his annual salary.
Back in Petersburg, Bulatovich received medals from both the Russian and Ethiopian governments. He was promoted to staff-rotmister. the Foreign Minister, Muraviev, was so impressed with his report on the military strength, political situation, and special destiny of Ethiopia that he had copies of it sent to Russian embassies in Paris, London, and Constantinople, and to their diplomatic agent in Cairo.
Bulatovich was asked to deliver a paper at a meeting of the Russian Geographical Society, and his friend Colonel Molchanov set to work with him immediately, helping him prepare his notes and diary for publication as another book. While the first book had been an overview of Ethiopia and its people based on a relatively sort visit, this was to be a work of scientific importance, recording ethnographic information about peoples never before observed by Europeans and other peoples who because of the incursions of the Amharas were now in a state of flux, their old customs and social forms eroding away.
He had hoped that Sonya would help him. But things didn't work out that way. The married friend whose house they used to meet hat had moved to Moscow, and there was always one reason or another why meetings set up through surreptitious correspondence were canceled or he was left waiting for her. He heard rumors that while he was gone she had received several proposals, that she had acquired a reputation for intelligence as well as good looks and was very popular and sought after at parties.
He was he at a dinner at her parents' house and at a special reception arranged for him by the regiment, and she seemed to be beaming with pride and joy for him. But there was never any opportunity for them to talk in private. Before they had a chance to get reacquainted and to establish any kind of mutual understanding, the request came through from Menelik himself for Bulatovich to return again to Ethiopia and provide advice on defensive military measures in newly conquered territories that seemed threatened by the British.
That was the trip when he met Asalafetch -- an experience he still couldn't deal with rationally, not now. Better that he look ahead, to the east, to Hailar, and get on with the business at hand.
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.
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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:
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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.
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