This chapter is an excerpt from a novel in progress entitled The Name of Man, a sequel to The Name of Hero. Comments and suggestions welcome. You can contact the author directly: Richard Seltzer, 33 Gould St., West Roxbury, MA 02132. seltzer@samizdat.com
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim electronic copies of this novel for non-commercial purposes provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. This novel has not yet been published in paper form.
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.
The Name of Hero was published by Tarcher/Houghton Mifflin in 1981. You can buy the hard cover edition of that book:
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 the full text of The Name of Hero and related material at www.samizdat.com/readers.html#name and www.samizdat.com/readers.html#ethiopia
St. Petersburg, Russia, Saturday, March 1 (February 16 old style), 1902
[draft of April 8, 1989, revised March 1998]
Evgeniya Bulatovicha -- Jenny, the mother of Alex -- lived just beyond the Tauride Palace and the barracks of the Preobrazhensky Guard Regiment. She always complained about the cost of spending winters in Petersburg. Each year she threatened she would stay at Lutsikovka, the family estate in the Ukraine, and live out her last days there. But each winter she returned to Petersburg, like everyone else.
She ws far more vigorous and wealthy than she led people to believe. Still under sixty, she had many years of life left in her; and with the income from the estate and the pension she received as a general's widow -- a "generalsha" -- she always seemed to have enough money for the things that she really wanted to do.
But she was careful and cautious. After thirty years of raising a family and managing an estate by herself, seeing bumper crops but also crop failures and declining grain prices, she didn't want to give away any more than she had to, so there would always be something left, just in case.
Alex tried to imagine what it must be like for Vaska to live with her. She was so hard on those she loved.
She and the governess she had hired had succeeded in teaching Vaska to speak proper Russian and had drilled him in good manners and the catechism and elements of religious doctrine they felt it was their duty to bestow on him.
Vaska was nearly eight years old now. But Alex remembered him best as he was four years ago at the temporary camp of the Ethiopian army near Lake Rudolph. Vaska had looke dup at him with big brown eyes as he stopped the bleeding and cleaned and bandaged his wound. Vaska must have been inagony, but he didn't cry, just bit his lower lip and looked up with those big curious eyes.
Alex remembered the photograph he had used in his second book about Ethiopia -- the little boy wrapped in a white sheet, holding a big heavy bottle of water to his lips; his back bent backward, bow-shaped; his belly pushed forward as he balanced himself. A happy boy, at ease among strangers whose language he didn't understand. Unafraid.
Tadika, the leader of the native servants that had accompanied Alex on this Expedition, had asked in Amharic, "What are you doing, sir?"
"Obviously, I'm trying to save him."
"But why, sir?"
"He's just a boy," Alex had answered, annoyed by such ridiculous questions.
"But they took his manhood, sir. He'll never be a man. Better for him that he die."
Alex continued to wrap the bandages, more concerned about the life of this brave little boy than about local attitudes regarding the importance of sex organs.
"He is alone, sir," Tadika persisted. "Even if he finds his own people, they will despise him and cast him out. Better that he die."
"Never mind what they think. I'm taking him with me," replied Alex, looking up, seeing the surprise on Tadika's face, and realizing forhte first time what his words meant and that that was indeed his intention.
"You mean you will sell him as a eunuch?" asked Tadika, trying to fathom the strange logic of this foreigner. "You know, sir, the demand for them for harems is quite high. They sell for four times as much as ordinary slaves. Or, perhaps you will give him as a gift to the Emperor Menelik?"
"No, Tadika, I will take him with me to Russia. I will raise him. He will be like a son to me."
"Son" -- it had seemed like the right word that day in that sweltering tent in the barren wasteland. it had made the point clearly for Tadika's benefit and ended any further quesiton of what he intended to do with Vaska.
As Alex was on his way from Mayling's hospital to his mother's house, Vaska was getting his daily Bible lesson. Vaska sat perfectly still, on the edge of a mahogany dining-room chair,feet dangling not quite as far as the floor. Across the room from him in her favorite stuffed chair, with rose-petal embroidery, sat the general's widow, Bulatovich's mother, Jenny. Leaning back, she read aloud in harsh abrupt tones.
"The Wisdom of Solomon, chapter three," she intoned. "'And happy is the eunuch who has not transgressed the Law with his hand, nor imagined wicked things against the Lord, for special favor shall be shown him for his faith, and a more delightful share in the Lord's sanctuary.'"
Vaska wondered about the word "eunuch." He had heard it before, but no one had ever explained it to him. Back in Addis Ababa, at the court of the Emperor Menelik, there were creatures called "eunuchs," he remembered. Bulatovich had brought him there before taking him to Russia.
"Look carefully, " Bulatovich had said, with the help of an interpreter. "Look so that when you are far from here you will never forget the face of your emperor, the glory of his court, and the pride of your native land."
He remembered the clamor and chaos as tens of thousands of troops greeted the emperor. But what he remembered most were the creatures with puffy faces and shrill voices waddling about the courtroom. Vaska had asked, pointing, "What are they?"
"Eunuchs," Bulatovich had answered in Russian.
"Eunuchs," Vaska had repeated and smiled. Names gave power. Once he knew the name, he need no longer fear these creatures. But now he wondered about the meaning of the word.
Listening to the Generalsha, he felt an uncomfortable pressure in the vicinity of his bladder, but dared not move, dared not disturb her while she read the Holy Bible. He prayed quietly, sincerely, for self-control. The Generalsha got so angry when he had his accidents. She made him feel so sinful that he dreaded going to bed at night for fear that he would wake up again to that hideous ammonia smell and that "filth" as she called it.
Masha, the maid who had to clean up such messes, didn't get anywhere near as upset. To Masha, it was just a nuisance, just more work to be done. But to the Generalsha, it was a great moral battle that was being lost.
It was Masha who was in charge of bathing him and dressing him. The Generalsha insisted that he never show himself naked in her presence. But despite that insistence, she was ever so curious about his physical state. One of his earliest memories of life with her was overhearing the Generalsha ask Masha to describe the nature of his wound in great detail, and the expression of pity and horror on her face as she heard.
"Why should it be so horrible?" he had wondered. After all, it wasn't something important he had lost, like an arm or a leg. And the scar wasn't something ugly and wasn't readily visible like a disfigurement of the nose or lip.
"Isaiah, chapter 56," she continued, "'Let not the eunuch say, "Behold I am a dray tree." For thus says the Lord: "To the eunuchs who keep the sabaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name which sall not be cut off."'"
As the pressure grew in Vaska's bladder, he prayed with deeper concentration. The Generalsha said that merit derived from the conflict with oneself, the self-control that one learned, like muscle-building. In her view, the world was a stage for a vast battle between good and evil that was waged within the mind and body and soul of each man and woman. To be a true human being, one had to achieve, through struggle, a certain moral level. She sometimes spoke as if bladder control were the first rung of the ladder of moral advancement. She impled that if he couldn't go that high, he was no better than a beast. But sometimes -- and that hurt him more than her harshness -- she forgave him for his accidents, implying that his wound made that kind of control more difficult for him than for other boys, that he was a hopeless case and nothing should be expected of him.
The wound seemed very important to her. In public she introduced him as "that poor boy hat my son rescued form the savages at Lake Rudolph." Then she added, in a whisper that penetrated deeper than a shout, "He was mutilated, you know." She pronounced that word "mutilated" with a special pitying grimace that made him cower with embarrassment.
Why couldn't she simply forget it? No one would notice if she didn't bring it up. Why all this pity for something so unimportant?
Sometimes, too, she would add a few cryptic words that would make him wonder if maybe there were something more he didn't know about, such as, "They do it to their enemies to make sure there won't be any future generations to contend with."
"Acts, chapter eight," the Generalsha continued her reading. "And behold, an Ethiopian, a eunuch, a minister of Candace the queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of all her treasure, had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning; seated in his chariot, and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. And the Spirit said to Philip, 'Go up and join this chariot.'"
The bladder pressure was simply too great. He had to speak upnow or it would be too late. Quickly, he blurted out, to his own surprise, "What is a eunuch?"
She turned red and white and red. She stared at him and said, "My God! No one's ever told you?"
"Told me what, ma'am?" he tried to contain his rising fear.
"Your wound, boy, your wound!" Her embarrassment made her abrupt and to the point. "Your manhood, boy. They cut off your manhood. You are not a man. No, you'll never become a man. You are a eunuch. A eunuch is what you are."
At that, she slammed the Bible shut. The noise seemed to startle her. The normally harsh expression on her face softened to a look fo pity. Tears appeared in her eyes. She reached out her hands to hold him, to hug him, to comfort hi.
This sudden show of tenderness frightened him more than any reprimand or threatened punishment. he fled out of the room and up the stairs and found Masha, who was making the beds. "What am I? What am I?" he asked her hurriedly.
"Well, you're a young boy, of course, and a very good one at that," she smiled.
"But... but... am I a eunuch?"
She hesitated, "Well, I suppose you could say so. But I wouldn't trouble my head much about that. What's done is done. And Lord only knows, maybe it's for the best."
"Thank God, it's you," Jenny greeted Alex at the front door. "You couldn't have come at a better time. Vaska's been asking the most embarrassing questions. 'What's a eunuch?' he pops out with in the middle of our Bible session.
"How could you do this to me? How could you have never explained his condition to him? It was your responsibility. He is yours."
Alex ran upstairs and then down, looking for Vaska. Finally, as he approached the library, Vaska saw him first and ran up to him gleefully to give him a hug.
"Father, you've come! It's been so long. Can I ride on your shoulders? Will you take me now to see the regiment, like you promised?"
"Yes, yes," Alex quickly replied, and with one easy motion lifted Vaska to his shoulder.
"Forward charge!" shouted the boy, with delight, as Alex raced round and round the room, finally collapsing in the big chair by the desk.
"What's this you've been reading?" Alex asked, in apparent innocence.
"Just the dictionary," Vaska answered evasively.
"Oh, and what in particular were you so curious about? Anything I can help with?"
"Well," Vaska admitted, "first I looked up "eunuch," then "puberty," then... I don't remember them all, father. They use long words to tell about long words, and I was just going round in circles."
"What do you want to know?" Alex asked seriously, holding VAska on his lap and looking the boy straight in the eye.
"The Generalsha says that I'm a eunuch. But I don't want to grow up like those creatures at the Emperor's court."
"What creatures do you mean?"
"In Ethiopia. Before you brought me here. They were puffy people with high shrill voices, and everybody despised them. I don't want to be like that. Don't let me be like that," the boy pleaded.
Alex hugged him and held him close.
"What is puberty?" the boy asked anxiously.
"Why is that so important?"
"That's when it happens, they say. Or that's what I think they say. I'll be like other boys until puberty; then I'll be a freak. What is this puberty? When is it? What can you do to make me a real boy? I want to be a real boy, not a eunuch."
"It's your wound, son. Nothing can be done. What you lost cannot be replaced."
"But it can! It can! I know it can. It's just not fair if it can't." Vaska pounded with his fists on Alex' chest.
"Sometimes life isn't fair," Alex answered, troubled by the hollowness of his own words, wishing there were at least some hope he could give the boy. Then he hugged Vaska hard again. "Sometimes it just seems unfair because we don't see and know everything. God has a way of balancing things. He takes and then He gives."
"God did this to me?"
"No, I didn't mean it that way. But I've seen a man lose a hand in battle and his other hand grew far stronger. And a man who lost an eye and his other eye become so keen he could see farther..."
"But, father, they had two hands, two yes and lost only one of htem. What do I have that could grow strong?"
"I don't know," admitted Alex. "Some talent, some gift of yours maybe it's too early yet to know exactly what it is." He groped for inspiration, some hope the boy could cling to and work toward. "We'll have to try you at everything, simply everything, to find that special geius of yours," he affirmed. "Art, music, riding, yes riding -- today I'm going to take you to the regiment and let you ride..."
"Your horse? Your very own Medusa?" Vaska asked excitedly.
"No, even better than that -- a motorized bicycle."
"Honest?" asked the wide-eyed boy.
"I swear by my sword," Alex answered solemnly.
Jenny appeared at the doorway, "You seem to have done quite a job of cheering the lad up. What did you promise him? Ten pounds of chocolate?"
"Mother, how long do you think it will take to get his things together?" Alex asked. "I'd like to take him back with me to Tsarskoye Selo in the morning."
"In the morning?" she asked.
"Yes. I'd like to catch the 8:30 train."
"Well, what's the hurry to pack? For a day trip, all he needs is his coat."
"But I mean for him to stay with me for good. Staring in a few days, I'll be living in Petersburg and going to officers school. There's no reason why I shouldn't take total charge of him now."
He lifted Vaska off his lap and told him, "Why don't you get Masha to help you pack? I'll join you in a few minutes." The boy hesitated so Alex added, "You do want to come live with me, don't you?"
"Oh, yes, father. I've always dreamed..."
"Well, hop to it. Pack up and get to bed. You'll have a chance to watch the squadron drill in the morning."
Vaska dashed out of the room.
"But this is so sudden... We had... I had intended... I've grown..." she started to say "attached," but fumbled about, trying to find the best way to discourage him. "Remember, there's the governess, and all the other expenses. How could you possibly manage?"
"He won't need a governess. I'll teach him and use men from my squadron to teach him as well. He'll get the best education possible. As for the expense, I agree that will be difficult. From what you've told me about the cost of things, I certainly don't underestimate how much it will take. But he is my responsibility. So I've come to the conclusion that hte only logical solution is for me to take the boy and for you to provide me with the money that you normally pay forhis upkeep and education."
The words were unpremeditated. Just a short while ago he hd made a generous gesture to help pay for Mayling's expenses -- even though, with his income, there was no way he could afford it. Now he was delighted with the spontaneous inspiration. if his mother paid for Vaska's upkeep, with economy he could have enough left over to take care of Mayling as well.
Sensing her reluctance, he quickly added, "That way we can be sure that he is well card for and yet you will not have to face these embarrassing moments when a young boy in his condition starts asking about intimate physical matters which are sure to concern him more as he approaches puberty."
"Puberty?" she asked. "But he's still just a child. Perhaps I should keep him a little longer, to avoid any sudden disruption in his education. Perhaps a year or two or three..."
"And what will you say the next time he asks about eunuchs?" he replied. "Mother, I can tell how much these matters upset you. Why, you're still shaking, and that was just the first question. One question leads to another, inevitably. Soon he'll start getting his own answers form books and from other children. It will be very difficult to give him the right advice, to help him to accept his lot without shame."
Jenny buried her face in her hands, then blurted out, "It's so incredibly difficult. YOu can't understand how difficult it is. What are the moral implications of his condition? What does it mean for his immortal soul? I've worried over it so often, reading the Bible over and over, looking for some clue of God's plan.
"I was reading some of the passages to him today, passages about eunuchs, not realizing he didn't even udnertand the word, hoping tha the words of the Bible, unadorned by my humble thouthts, would hlep provide him with some guidance inlife. But the Bible is so far from clear.
She picked up the Bible from the table where she had left it. "Just listen. Deuteronomy, chapter 23, verse 1: 'He whose testicles are crushed or whose male member is cut off shall not enter the assembly fothe Lord.' Such harsh judgment.
"Then there are those passages in the New Testament that say just the opposite, that make it sound holy not only to be a eunuch, but to deliberately make yourself one.
"how am I to understand, much less teach the meaning of all this? Origen, the early church father, the theologian whose writings we revere, took Matthew and Paul literally and castrated himself. In the third century, a sect called the 'Valesi' castrated themselves and forcibly castrated their guests as well, in the belief that they were doing God's bidding. In our own days, in our own Russian villages, the Skoptsy do likewise.
"I'm lost in all this, son. Didn't God make us male and female? Didn't he intend for us to perpetuate the race? Isn't it an imperfection, a defect of nature if one of us is unable to multiply and fill the earth? What of The Wisdom of Solomon, here in chapter three: 'You love all things that exist, and abhor none of the things that You have made; for You would never have formed anything if You hated it. And how could anything hve endured, if You had not willed it, or what had not been called forth by You have been preserved? But You spare all, because you are Yours, Lord, lover of life, for Your iperishable spirit is in all things.'
"Oh, son, these years have been difficult for me. Don't you see, he is a walking, talking question mark. He questions by his very existenc ehte foundations of my faith and morality, my notion of what it means to be a human being.
"He's so good -- except that cursed bladder problem of his -- good. If you could onl understand how frustrating that can be. When you and your sister Meta were growing up, I believed that morality was a matter of struggling against temptation. I believed that by controlling yourself, by learning to rein your natural urges, you built the moral fortitude you'd need to last you through life. When you disobeyed to do something else, I was angry,b ut proud as well -- because your natural urges were strong, and I could sense that gradually you were learning to control them, and at the end of it all I sensed you would arrive at a moral strength that we could indeed be proud of.
"But how do you go about the moral education of someone who has no such urges, who seems immune to temptation?
"Of course, I'm gratified that he learns his catechism so well, and that he obeys me so readily. But I find I resent him for being so docile and tractable. Maybe I'm too aware of what his condition will lead to, and I read too much into his acts.
"I know he won't be subject to sexual temptation, and I see that defective innocence in what he does now. I would so much like to see him rebel. I mean, rebellion would be a sign of manhood or raw energy to be harnessed for the cause of God, a worthy challenge for religious education.
"When he just does my bidding, time and again, however foolish or distasteful it is to him, I feel repelled, like there's something wrong, something not entirely human about him. It's like he's domed to be neither moral nor immoral, but amoral, like he's asexual. How can anyone be truly innocent or moral without temptation? It's simply luck that he is the way he is and acts the way he acts. He deserves none of the merit that comes from effort and achievement."
At that moment, they both realized that Vaska was standing in the doorway, watching and listening to them. There was no telling how long he had been there, but his crotch was soaking wet and there was a puddle at his feet.
Jenny threw her arms around Alex and sobbed, "Please be good to him I love him. I do. Almost as much as I love you."
To correspond with the author, send email to seltzer@samizdat.com
Related material, such as books by Bulatovich about Ethiopia
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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