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]
Sonya stood quiet, at the ar end of the main hall, away from the crush of the crowd, staring up at a candle-lit icon of Christ, one of the signs of Orthodoxy that the professor, not a religious man, had spread about the house for appearance sake. With a Jewish-sounding name, he had to be careful. If he were a practicing Jew or even suspected of being one, he could not hold his position as professor.
Butorin's words had affected Sonya strangely. She wanted to pray. She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. Instead, she shouted, "Avdotya! When did you arrive?" and lunged pst the intervening people to greet the only one of her old friends who had come tonight.
"No, Dottie," her friend replied. "Everybody calls me 'Dottie' now. I like the foreign sound of it."
"Did you hear that man?" she asked, leading Dottie toward the quiet corner with the icon.
"Of course," laughed Dottie, sociably tipsy from champagne. "Is he a hired entertainer? I've never seen anything like it. But then, I've never seen a party anything like this before. You must have invited half of Petersburg. Why I've been here for two hours, and this is the first time I've seen you. And I have no idea where Nicky has disappeared to. Yes, a party to remember. And the entertainer was quite good."
"He was talking about me," Sonya wanted to say. But instead, she took her friend's hands and stepped back to look her up and down. "Well, Avdotya Zinovieva..."
"Azbotkina."
"Of course. But I never knew Nicky that well. Your marriage was always a bit unreal to me."
"And far too real to me," Dottie laughed good-humoredly.
"How many years has it been since I last saw you? Five? Six?"
"And four new children."
"Goodness! That makes six altogether?"
"Yes. The oldest was seven last month."
"You have been busy, haven't you?"
"Have been? Am. Bearing them is the least of it, believe me."
Sonya smiled, "I so love children."
Dottie smiled back, "That's easy to say when you don't have any."
It had been so long since she last saw her childhood friend that Sonya wasn't sure how to take htat remark. "Seven years old, you say?" she asked tentatively, trying to remember Dottie as she had been when they were close friends. "We were no older than that when we first met at Tsarskoye Selo. Do you remember...?"
"How could I forget? It was the day my father died. Mother dropped me off at my aunt's, and she had you fetched to keep me company."
"Oh, yes," admitted Sonya. "How could I have forgotten the cirumstances..."
"Father ws no older than Nicky is now," she looked at her empty glass somewhat wistfully.
"Can I fill that for you?" Sonya quickly interjected.
"No, I suppose nothing can fill it."
"What?"
"Nothing. Nothing at all. Even after all these years... I t seems so close... Some wounds never heal... It's hard to lose a father."
"Don't say such things," Sonya insisted too loudly, then, on impulse, threw her arms around her friend and held her close.
"Forgive me, Sonya. What sorrow of yours have I touched so carelessly?"
"Nothing, really, nothing," she sighed, resting her head on her friend's shoulder. "It's just, you're the only one of all my old friends who came tonight. And here you've come all the way from Viborg in Finland, a full hundred miles..."
"Only eighty."
"My parents, my relatives -- I invited them all, but you're the only one who came."
"Surely, your father would have come if he knew it was important to you. I always envied you, you know, for having such a fine, handsome, indulgent father. Why he'd let you do anything, and he'd do anything for you."
"That's not it," she tried to explain her distress to herself as well as to Dottie. "You see, the Professor and I had a disagreement this morning. We were talking about hte party, rather heatedly, and he... You see, I fell and bruised my hip. It's irritated me all day -- that and this corset. It makes me short-tempered and emotional."
"And you were always so mild-mannered before," noted Dottie, with an ironic smile.
"Well, more than usual, I was abrupt today, and willful and headstrong. I went marching into my father's office, and when he didn't forgive me for neglecting him, when he didn't immediately throw his arms around me, I went dashing out of his office and invited to the party two of the filthiest pilgrims you've ever seen. They were sitting right there outside his office. I did it so he could see me do it, as a deliberate insult to him. If father wouldn't come, I'd pick the lowest of the low to take his place."
"You mean that man with the dance and his ravings wasn't a hired performer?"
"He's all too real. He's a friend of the ones I picked up, and a friend of Alexander Bulatovich, as well, it seems."
"That same Alex you were mooning over for years?"
"Yes, but that's not the point," insisted Sonya, shuffling about impatiently. "You see, the real problem is this hip and this infernal corset that keeps rubbing it."
"Well, why don't you take it off?"
Sonya laughed, "Of course. Why didn't I think of something so simple as that? Come with me, quickly. You can help. I can't stand this thing a minute longer. I simply must get out of it."
She took her friend by the hand, led her upstairs, where the crowds were also thick; pounded on the bathroom door, until the occupant vacated; then pulled her friend in; and locked the door behind her.
Together, they unbuttoned her dress and untied the stays of her corset.
"Good Lord, Sonya, why do you wear a corset at all? If I had your figure, your childless, girlish figure, I wouldn't subject myself to it."
"Vanity," Sonya smiled. "I supposed I'd do far worse than this to pull my waist in an extra inch or two. But this infernal bruise..."
"Yes, it does look bad. Tell me, dear, honestly, how did it happen?"
"It was an accident, like I said," Sonya replied hurriedly, sucking in her belly and starting to button up.
"An accident, you say?" Dottie urged her, sitting on the edge of the white porcelain bathtub and staring up inquiringly at her friend. "There's no need to pretend. We're both married now."
"What?"
"You don't have to play the innocent with me. When you've been married long enough to sport a bruise like that, you've been married long enough to think sensibly about men. Does he abuse you sexually?"
"Dottie! How much have you had to drink?"
"Enough to say what I think. And I think if he's that way, you should give him what he wants and more."
"But..."
"Listen. It's just common sense. If you want a man to think about food, don't feed him. And if you want to get his mind off it, make sure he's sated. If a man doesn't get his sex, then, like a monk, he gets obsessed with it. Do it with him as often as he wants, and soon he'll stop thinking about it and leave you alone."
"My God, Dottie, you sound so cynical," remarked Sonya, trying to maintain her composure while checking her hair in the gilt-framed mirror over the sink.
"I suppose I have changed," Dottie admitted.
"You used to be such a romantic." Sonya walked over to the window-seat, sat and stared out into the darkness and the snow. "Remember the way you snared your Nicky, with that hurried wedding, as if you were pregnant, and everyone was so scandalized over it. Then you announced that you weren't pregnant at all."
"But I lied, Sonya."
"To Nicky, of course, that's what we all understood. That's how hyou caught him."
"No, at first I thought I was telling the truth -- I actually believed I was pregnant. Nicky led me to believe that, playing on my frightful ignorance of matters relating to sex. Why we had never even done what it would take to get me pregnant. Afterwards, to save face, I lied to you and even to my parents, pretending that I had deliberately fooled Nicky.
"But Nicky was the devious one. He wanted to get me any way he could. My father, you know, is wealthy, and might have been reluctant to approve. Dear old Nicky, he had no doubt of my innocence. On our wedding night, he had a jolly time -- mocking me and giving me lessons in anatomy and biology. I've never been so humiliated in my life."
"But that sounds so unlike him."
"On the contrary, he'd do antyhing to get what he wants. Over the years, I've learned to give him what he wants even before he knows he wants it -- so he doesn't look elsewhere for it; so I can keep him -- the selfish lovable bastard... But the question remains, my dear."
"What?"
"How did you get the bruise?"
Sonya found herself looking into Dottie's eyes through the reflection in the window. "Like I said, we were talking about the party," she explained. "He'd give me those silent looks of disappointment -- he can be so irritating at times. I was teasing him, setting up a surprise for him. When he didn't react the way I wanted him to, I mentioned my old suitor, Alex."
"The brute! Did he hit you?"
"No. He didn't touch me. But he frightened me so badly that I fell over backwards and hurt my hip. Then he helped me to my feet and knelt in front of me and apologized. He blurted out something about his first wife. I couldn't understand it. I was too shocked. Do you have any idea what it's like to discover that the man you love has fits of temper, that he can suddenly become hateful?"
"A brute, like I said," Dottied affirmed with self-satisfaction. "But honestly, dear, is that all there was to it? One little flash of anger? Hardly anything to get upset about."
"But I'm not upset," Sonya insisted loudly. Just then someone knocked on the bathroom door. "Stop that pounding!" Sonya yelled, standing up and stomping angrily toward the door. "Don't bother us. We'll be out in good time. Someone's sick in here." Turning back to face Dottie, she accidentally knocked a glass off the sink, and dropped immediately to her knees, catching it in both hands, before it hit the floor. Then she picked up the glass, looked through it, tipsily, at her friend, and exclaimed, "Hell -- I hate that man!" She hurled the glass inot the corner, where it shattered on the tile floor. "Sometimes I don't know whether I should see a physician or a priest or a head doctor -- an alienist," she admitted, and lunged forward, sobbing, and buried her head in her friend's lap.
"It's all right, all right," her friend comforted her, stroking her long hair and rubbing the nape of her neck.
"You see, I have this little problem," Sonya tried to explain, "this problem that should be little, only I simply have to talk to somebody about it."
"It's all right..."
"I ought to be happy," Sonya tried to explain. "I love my husband, and he loves me. Normally, he's tender, kind, considerate; but... I'm still a virgin. Do you understand? Nearly six months married, and I'm still a virgin. Like that mad man said tonight -- I'm a wife who is not a wife, a woman who is not a woman. I want to be a woman, a wife. I want to have children -- maybe not right away, but I want to have them. Is that wrong?"
"Of course not, dear, of course not," insisted Dottie, taking her hand. "But what's the nature of the problem? Are you, is he... uninterested?"
" He's so handsome and brilliant, I feel drawn to him physically. I want to be with him physically. And he tries. He'd do anything for me, if he could. But it's limp, do you understand? And nothing I do makes any difference to it. He finds the situation amusing. He thinks I try so hard just for his pleasure. But it's for me I want it, for my pleasure. I need it, and I feel guilty for wanting it."
"Does he try in other ways to... please you?" asked Dottie, feeling awkward, but too curious to cut the conversation short.
"He does everything I dare to ask, but it must be very different, I'm sure, must be truly wonderful to be together the way God truly intended a man and wife to be together. I want the real thing. I want to feel the real sensations. And I want a child as well. Sometimes I feel like I'm married to a eunuch. I want a real man who can make a real woman of me. Is that so wrong of me?"
She hurried on without waiting for a response, "This gentle man, this world-renowned scholar is willing to demean himself to try to satisfy me. And I feel so base, so corrupt for wanting what he can't provide me, for wanting what I've never experienced."
"What can I say?" replied Dottie. "That's no paradise you're missing. Just friction, really -- skin against skin. Nothing to get all wrought up about.
"I suppose you could say that Nicky 'made me a woman.' And I make sure he does it regularly, knowing how he needs it. And it can be good, I admit. But mostly, it's a nuisance, believe me. It even gets quite sore down there sometimes, the way he does it... speaking as one married woman to another," she added quickly, finding it difficult to believe that she was talking about such intimate matters while sitting on a bathtub in the midst of an extraordinary party. "He jsut does his business, and that's that. I do it because it's a wife's duty, and he needs it. But I have none of that tenderness and closeness that you seem to have with your husband. I'd love for Nicky to do other things sometimes, but I'd never dare to ask him. Lord only knows what he'd do or say if I did. He'd think I was a whore or something... No, I didn't mean that. You should consider how fortunate you are."
"But you don't understand. That's not the half of it," insisted Sonya.
Just hten, someone starte dknocking loudly at the bathroom door.
"Stop that pounding!" Sonya yelled. "Do you hear me?"
"Open up!" returned shouts from the hall. "Someone's having a baby!"
Sonya opened the door, and a half dozen men started to carry Katya into the bathroom.
"No, not here," ordered Sonya. "The bedroom. My bedroom. Quickly. Chase everyone else out. Is there a doctor in the house?"
"Here, Sonya!" shouted the Professor from the stairway. A path through the crowd quickly opened for him as he marched briskly toward Sonya's bedroom, carrying Doctor Chernikov under his arm.
"Put me down this instant!" the Doctor shouted as he squired, his monocle dangling near the floor. "It's not my specialty. I am not an obstetrician."
"Well, baby doctor or not, I wager you know more about this birthing business than the rest of us," said the Professor, letting the Doctor down in front of the bedroom door. "Now get to it," he added with a seemingly gentle pat on the back that propelled the frail Doctor through the doorway.
Meanwhile, Tatiana, the banker's "cousin," pushed past Sonya into the bathroom, turned on the cold water, and splashed her face with it. Stained in wet streaks, her dress and petticoats clung to her legs in unseemly fashion. She was breathing hard and irregularly, gulping the air down.
"What happened?" asked Sonya, quickly forgetting her own troubles and coming to put her arm around Tatiana and to offer her aid and comfort.
"We were talking," Tatiana answered, absent-mindedly brushing at her dress. "This peasant girl was telling me how she became involved with that student of hers. Then I noticed a puddle at her feet. At first I thought... I don't know. I'm not used to dealing with that class of people. She had had quite a bit to drink, otherwise she wouldn't be telling me, a total stranger, such intimate things. When I saw this puddle, I thought, at first, that being pregnant and inebriated, she had lost control of her bladder. She must have seen the shock on my face. For a moment, she seemed more concerned about what I thought than about her own condition. 'It's just water ma'am, just water, honest ma'am,' she insisted. 'I'm so sorry ma'am,' she said. 'I shouldn't have come, me being in this state and all. And now I've wet all over your nice shoes and this nice rug. I'll clean it up, honest I will.' Then she dropped to her knees and started to wipe it up with the hem of her dress. But I got down on my knees and held her and started calling for help, because from the way she shook, she was having contractions. It really wasn't urine. Her water had broken. She was having a baby in the middle of a party, and she didn't even know it."
From the hall, they heard Doctor Chernikov stomp out of the bedroom, "It's nothing! She admits it herself. The slut just urinated on the floor. I've had enough of this mess," he added loudly.
Sonya and Dottie rushed past him into the bedroom. Sonya knelt by the bedside and took the girl's hand. The Doctor followed, with the aggravated look of a professional whose judgment has been challenged.
"It's true ma'am," sobbed Katya. "Lord have mercy, it's true. I'm so sorry, ma'am, for all this fuss. Lord forgive me, in my state and all, pissing all over your nice rug, and then lying too, just making it worse. I just want to crawl down into the ground."
Then she raised her legs up high and cringed.
The Doctor put one hand on her belly and with the other held his pocketwatch.
When the pain had passed, she blurted out, "Begging your pardon. Just my belly's a bit upset, what with the commotion and all"
"How often?" the Doctor asked Tatiana.
"That makes three I've seen. Maybe every four or five minutes."
"It looks like I was a bit too hasty. We'll need..." he started.
"Here's some hot towels," boomed the Professor as he came through the door with an armful. "The maids are chasing up more. What else do you need?"
Sonya smiled. She couldn't help but be pleased with him, despite the things she had just told her friend. "For now," she told him, "the best you can do is guard the doorway. keep everyone out. There's no telling how long this will take."
Katya shrieked.
"Not too long," noted the Doctor, after the sound had subsided, trying to redeem himself with a show of knowledge and confidence in front of the assembled audience. "It couldn't have been more than two minutes since the last one. Have you picked a name, dear?"
"If it's a boy, we're calling him Svoboda, because that means 'freedom.'"
"And if it's a girl?"
"Nayezhda -- 'hope.'"
"Excellent!" shouted the Professor from the doorway. "Freedom or Hope of Freedom. And on my name day at that. I'll root for the boy myself." He raised high his champagne glass. "May freedom reign!"
His words were repeated along the hall, down the stairs, and through the house. In the drawing room, the students at the piano responded by bursting into a loud rendition of Handel's Hallelujah Chorus, and the whole house seemed to join in on the refrain, repeating it in wave after wave, "And He shall reign forever and ever! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" No sooner did that subside than they started up again with the "Hymn of Joy."
The Professor had led his friends from the library into his bedroom, adjoining Sonya's, so they could be near at hand for the imminently expected birth.
Dottie's husband, Captain Azbotkin, who was joyfully drunk, stretched out on the bed, laughing now and then, too loudly or inappropriately, with an absurd, self-satisfied grin.
The elderly Decembrist sat quietly beside him. He was normally so relaxed, often closing his eyes to concentrate on what was being said, that it was impossible to tell if he was awake or asleep until he spoke up.
Professor Katkov nursed a reluctant pipe by the window-seat.
Fedya examined the magnificent collection of books that, as in the library, covered all four walls, from floor to ceiling.
Gavril shuffled about in a corner near the room where Katya was in labor.
Father Gapon was in a chair in the corner, drinking a glass of tea.
The Progressor himself sat, cross-legged, in the middle of the floor.
Tannenbaum observed, "It's not altogether rational why anarchists go around killing government figures and, more often than not, getting themselves killed in the act.
"I don't just mean that murder of any kind is to be deplored," he continued. "I mean even fromt he pragmatic viewpoint of a revolutionary -- if one could imagine what they must think and why. For if they kill government officials or even tsars, one by one, there's always someone to succeed them, who will act very much the same. All that sacrifice and nothing gained -- nothing practical that is.
"But sacrifice it is -- a pagan sacrifice. The underlying notion is that you must suffer and sacrifice now for some glowing future. The greater the sacrifice or the greater the self-sacrifice, the greater the reward of the gods -- for the future, for the next harvest, for the children."
"Pagan nonsense," Father Gapon affirmed, "brought on by this influx of western notions of progress and money and economics -- the all-mighty dollar and pound and franc. The people are filled with longing for a better life for themselves and for their children. When they become infected with western notions, they become anarchists. All that energy and passion of theirs must be channeled and tempered and russified. Let them strive for their present well-being, for immediate, attainable ends -- not some Marxist Jewish messianic future. That's so typical of the Jews -- sacrifice everything for the children."
"Not entirely," objected Tannenbaum. "You seem to forget the story of Abraham and Isaac."
"I've never been able to understand the point of that story," confessed Father Gapon.
"Nor I," the Professor replied, "except insofar as we are called upon to love God even more than our children."
"But Abraham was the father of them all," Father Gapon countered. "The whole significance of his life, as told int he Bible, is as father of his race."
"Yes, indeed," the Decembrist boomed in, with the loudness of a man who doesn't hear well. "Sons and grandsons and great-grandsons give a man a sense of purpose, a link with the future, with the world that will be left behind when you die."
A series of sharp screams from the next room interrupted the general conversation, then subsided. Then the screams came regularly, every five minutes. Talk shifted from future generations to the notion of historical progress and the negative vision of the future in H.G. Well's Time Machine; then to industrial progress and its antithesis in Samuel Butler's Erewhon. Soon they were discussing Napoleon and the industrial revolution in Western Europe.
"It's only in the last thirty or forty years that the industrial revolution has reached Germany and Italy," Fedya insisted, loud enough to be heard over the screams from the next room and the rushing about in the hallway. "And only in the last decade has it begun to play an important role in the Russian economy. So any talk about a cause and effect relationship with the Napoleonic Wars is nonsense."
"Yes, indeed," Tannenbaum affirmed. "Industrialization did not take place suddenly and uniformly throughout Europe. In fact, it was the unevenness of development that created the conditions for cataclysm. The economies of the nations of Europe are interdependent, like a set of motors and gears. If one part speeds up alone, it puts a strain on the others, forcing them to work faster than they were designed for. Eventually, the strain becomes so great that the whole system breaks down."
"Then you predict a new catastrophe?" asked Professor Katkov, poking about in the bowl fo his pipe, trying unsuccessfully to ignite the tobacco.
"Not necessarily. But I do see a cyclic pattern. About fifty years after Napoleon, we had the Crimean War and the emancipation of the serfs; the Americans had their Civil War and the emancipation of the slaves; France and Germany were embroiled in the war that led to the collapse of the Second Empire and to the Paris Commune. That was a world-wide wave of political and economic change like in the days of the first Napoleon. And it will happen again."
"No! No!" screamed Katya from the next room. "I can't stand the pain. Make it stop! Make it stop! Do anything!"
Gavril rushed through the door, into the hall, where he was stopped by Sonya.
"Take it easy," insisted Sonya. "These things take time." She gently guided him back into the Professor's room. "Now, how you were going to solve the world's problems before the next generation in there so rudely interrupted you?" she asked pleasantly.
After an uncomfortable pause while the moans subsided, Katkov replied, "Your husband maintains that hte world falls apart regularly, every fifty years of so."
"I'm sure we'd all distrust a pattern as simple as that," Tannenbaum laughed. "But when the world is out of join..."
"Indeed," Katkov hastened to agree. "Our greatest hope for long-lasting peace and prosperity is uniform development. If one part of the world advances faster than the rest, it risks triggering worldwide disaster."
"Then you lay the blame..." Tannenbaum began.
"On England and Germany," affirmed Katkov," and, yes, on the United States."
"You could just as easily blame the backward nations, like Russia," asserted Fedya. "The slowness of our development throws the whole system into disarray."
Tannenbaum interceded soothingly, "Blaming gets us nowhere. It will take a common effort to avert the next disaster. We in Russia must strive to lower the barriers that have slowed our economic development. And those in England, Germany, and America must recognize their responsibility to help promote development of other nations. There can be no single winner. We all win together, or we all lose together."
"That's rather ominous," intoned Katkov, chewing on the pipe that refused to work.
"You could call it a 'Declaration of Interdependence,'" noted Tannenbaum, pleased with this new turn of phrase. "National rivalry is obsolete and self-destructive. The movement of goods and money throughout hte world has become far too complex for juvenile flag-waving games."
"Yes," agreed Katkov, "even just considering modern weapons -- the devastation that could come form machine guns and modern ordnance, the awesome power of a dreadnought -- large-scale war is utterly unthinkable."
"Indeed," added Tannenbaum. "And if this power of destruction continues to grow, one day there might be no next generation, no more mankind."
"Gavril kept pacing, staring at the door as if looking for a way to get by Sonya, who stood guard there.
"Then I suppose we'll just have to eat, drink, and be merry," suggested Captain Azbotkin, laughing so hard he sook and the bed squeaked. "Live each day to its fullest..." he added, taking another swig form a champagne bottle.
Tannenbaum added, "More likely we'd all live like eunuchs... tapped in the present, with no sense of obligation to posterity."
"Yes... yes..." Azbotkin sobered up for a moment, feeling all eyes focused on him. "If businessmen make wars, there will certainly never be another. For they all stand to lose everything."
"Nationalism is a thing of the past," agreed Katkov.
"Tell that to the pan-slavists," jeered Fedya. "And to the Zionists as well."
"and to the German junkers," shouted the old Decembrist.
"And the Yankees and the Brits and..." Fedya continued, until he was interrupted.
"Nonsense," noted Sonya, deliberately dropping a stack of clean towels and putting her hands on her hips to emphasize her point. "Not that what you're saying is nonsense, but htat the way nations act is nonsense.
"The nations fo the world act like children -- only it takes decades and centuries for them to grow up," she continued. "I wish I knew how old these children are right now. Have they gone through the two- and three-year-old independence stage -- shouting 'no' and throwing temper tantrums?"
"That's hardly a flattering description of the American Revolution," Fedya commented.
Sonya added, "Maybe the new nationalism is the seven-year old stage. They like slogans. They're moody and changeable. They try on one role after another and aren't satisfied with any of them. They imagine they are the greatest at this and at that, but they know full well they are not. If that's the stage of development of the nations of Europe, then we're in trouble. For that's a time of boasting and battling, even with friends, just because they need to prove themselves."
"That's a pessimistic view of the world," noted Katkov. "Rather like your husband's notion of fifty-year cycles of catastrophe."
"On the contrary," she objected. "I hope that in fifty or a hundred years, the nations of the world will reach maturity; and war will become a thing of the past."
"But children only play at war," Tannenbaum was quick to correct her. "It's adults who fight real wars. May the Lord preserve us from a world of 'mature' nations."
"All metaphors break down at some point," Sonya defended herself.
"As do all civilizations," her husband concluded.
As the labor continued, hour after hour, Katya's screams and sobs became monotonous, weary, and desperate. The exhilaration and curiosity that had given the party new life and new unity subsided. Guests started leaving in twos and threes. Downstairs, the remaining guests whispered among themselves, listening nervously for ht enext scream and hoping that hte waiting and the tension would soon end.
Katya was cared for by the indefatiguable Doctor Chernikov, assisted by Sonya, Dottie, Beth, and the maid Matryona.
Int he drawing room, Dottie's husband Captain Azbotkin was asleep on one sofa; and Tatiana's cousin, the banker Solovyov was asleep on the other. In the Professor's room, all the guests had left except Fedya, who was asleep on the bed, and Gavril, who continued to pace, smoking cigarettes, one after another, even though he had never smoked before. Professor Tannenbaum himself, weary and inebriated, talked on and on to distract Gavril, eventually talking of personal matters that he had never told anyone before.
"My father's brother, Avram, came to me and said, 'You will say kaddish. I will say it with you.'
"I had never heard of kaddish. I only knew this uncle by name, by the hateful things father had said of him and his superstitious religion. Now father was dead. I was ten years old and frightened. This was my father's enemy. I said, 'No.' Now I wish I hadn't."
"Why?" asked Gavril, crushing one half-smoked cigarette and lighting another.
"I feel a tightness in my stomach. It's a fear of death, I suppose, or a fear that life -- not just my life, but all of life -- has no direction and no meaning. Like Sonya would say, an adolescent needs to feel he's one with a group of his contemporaries. I suppose I'm at another stage -- that now I need to belong to mankind, to tell a link with past and future generations, to feel that the world won't end when I end, anymore than it ended when my father died. It's not a matter of religion. I'm not about to convert Judaism. Rather it's a biological need to maintain a sense of purpose, a reason to live when you simply don't have much longer to live. Have you ever heard Kaddish."
"No."
"Nor have I. It wouldn't do for a professor to be seen in a synagogue. But a scholar is free to read what he will. Kaddish is a prayer, to be said on the death of a father by a son. It is to be said three times a day for eleven months. The son has to be accompanied by other men -- at least ten, I believe. He prays not alone, but as part of a community.
"It is not a prayer of mourning. It's a joyful celebration, an affirmation of the community of mankind -- past, present, and future. At a time of anguish, when despondence and despair threaten to end the useful lives of loved ones left behind, the son and those who join him in prayer reaffirm over and over again that there is a God, that He has a plan for us, that mankind has a destiny to fulfill, a joyous destiny, and that this moment of grief is but nothing in the face of this vast effort of all the generations of man combined. It is an affirmation, too, that a man is responsible not just for his deeds, but for the consequences of his deeds as well -- and as long as his good deeds and the good deeds of his sons and son's sons continue to bear fruit, he is still, in some sense, alive. Sons, I say. Thank God, Beth can't hear me. She's sensitive to these archaic prejudices. And you could never ask for a finer, more brilliant, more devoted daughter. But despite all logic, I have this tightness in my stomach. The older I get, the more I regret that I was not more of a son to my father, and that I have no son of my own."
"So you got yourself a young wife," noted Gavril, with an ironic smile.
"Yes, I suppose that's one reason for my remarrying now. I'm not yet so old as Abraham. But even when I was younger, sometimes I felt this tightness; and there were opportunities -- intelligent, attractive women who were more than willing -- yet I stayed a widower for fifteen years.
"Sonya is a very special woman, not just fertile ground to sow seed in. She is a friend, a companion, an inspiration -- as well as a delight to the eye. I only wish..."
"What more could you wish?" Gavril asked, grimacing as he heard Katya moan again.
"It's me. She wants children, I know she does, though she doesn't talk of it for fear of hurting me, of making me feel inadequate. She is so understanding, so tender, so gentle. But I can't -- not with her. It doesn't happen. Do you understand how maddening that is?
"My first wife, Elena, was cold on the outside and warm underneath. You had to fight to break through that barrier. We'd have fiery disputes an then make up with fiery love. I loved her and hated her. Sometimes I forced her, and I think she loved me for forcing her. Once she got started she wanted it as much as me -- we had that in common, though, sometimes, she'd blame me after. Then, at the end, she became bitter. Pregnant with our second child -- it would have been a son -- she turned gravely ill. One specialist after another tried his hocus-pocus; but none of them really knew what was wrong. She grew weaker every day, and cursed me for having made her pregnant against her will. She said she was dying because of my personal vanity of wanting a son.
"Sonya is so totally different -- so loving and lovable. Just thinking of her I feel a stirring. But when she's in my arms -- nothing; no matter how much I logically want it, I can't do anything. I try to laugh it off. She's so totally innocent, she has no idea what she's missing. I only hope that this too will pass, that, in time, I will be able to perform for her and give her the fulfillment she deserves as a woman and a wife."
Suddenly, a new scream was heard form the next room.
"It's a boy," shouted Sonya, even louder than Katya's groaning.
"Good God!" exclaimed Dottie, still louder.
The Doctor, holding the baby close, ran out of the bedroom and into the bathroom. Gavril and Tannenbaum quickly followed him.
Sonya knelt at Katya's side, and Matryona, the maid, stood at the foot of the bed. Beth, who had done much of the fetching and running about, was asleep on a chair in the corner.
"it's all right, I'm sure," Sonya rushed to explain, trying to calm the mother and to mask her own surprise and uncertainty at what she had seen. "You heard him cry yourself. It's a boy. A fine boy. They're just going to clean him up. You know, babies are always so..." She laughed nervously. "You know, I've never really seen one born before." Then she noticed that Katya wasn't paying any attention to her, that she was undergoing another wave of pain.
"The afterbirth, ma'am," explained Matryona, who, holding the umbilical cord, helped ease it out.
Katya's weary, sweaty face relaxed somewhat. "It's over?" she asked Sonya, hopefully.
"Yes, the child... they'll be bringing... you'll soon have a chance to hold..." Sonya kept stumbling anxiously over her words, but Katya didn't seem to notice.
"Thank the Lord!" exclaimed Katya in relief, then cringed and tensed again.
"That last pain was nothing to be worrying about, ma'am; nothing next to the others," Matryona explained. "And now it'll all be settling down inside there, all the pieces of her slipping back to where they ought to be."
Katya had a look of weary, drunken satisfaction.
Dottie and the Professor appeared at the door. Then came Shemelin, Sofronov, and Butorin, drunkenly singing "Hallelujh!" and carrying lighted candles. Soon Gavril hurried into the room and took Sonya's place on the floor beside Katya. He kissed Katya's hand and asked softly, "What would you say if I told you there was a little problem?"
"What kind of problem?" she asked, smiling groggily.
"Say, a problem with the baby."
"Baby? Yes, where is the baby? It's a boy, you know; they told me. Where is Svoboda? Let me hold him."
"Soon, dear, soon. I just want you to know that I love you, and love him -- that it's only the skin, mere appearance... It's the spirit, whatever that is, that makes a person..."
"What's wrong?" she asked, sitting up, despite the pain. Suddenly, she screamed, louder than she had in the worst pangs of childbirth. The Doctor was standing at the door with the baby in his arms. In the middle of the baby's face, between the mouth and the nose, instead of an upper lip, there was a gaping hole.
"You ahve a fine son," the Doctor began, his face flushed, his voice shaking, trying to be calm, professional, and reassuring, but not succeeding at it. "There's just this one minor defect -- this cleft in the lip. It's only cosmetic. Only his looks are affected. He's a fine, healthy boy."
Katya stared at the Doctor and at the baby, bewildered and frightened.
Gavril quickly got up, took hold of his son, and brought him over to the bed, "He's a fine boy," he echoed. "Just this one minor defect."
"Take him away!" she shrieked, backing away and nearly falling off the other side of the bed.
"If only I could make you believe..." Gavril pleaded.
"He's cursed! I'm cursed for my sins, and he with me. Lord have mercy!"
"Silence!" came a command from the doorway. Butorin smiled, pleased to have an audience once again. Then he hesitated. The candle in his hand trembled. He grasped it with both hands, but it trembled still more. He stared at it, puzzled, then frightened. The candle and his hands swung left, then right. It was as if the candle were moving by itself and he were trying to restrain it.
He moved forward as if pulled by the candle, and held it tight while it made the sign of the cross in front of Gavril, in front of Katya, and then in front of the squirming new-born.
Everyone was silent until Butorin himself, sweating profusely from the struggle of holding the candle, solemnly intoned, "He is bless!" Then he heaved a sigh of relief that this was right, that he had done what he should, and that the candle was once again an ordinary candle. Pleased, he repeated loudly, "Blessed!"
Then he took a drop of hot wax and placed it in the gap below the boy's nose. "Blessed," he whispered again.
And Gavril repeated it, and Sonya, and the Professor.
Then Katya reached out to take hold of her son, and bared her breast for him to suck.
"Just hold him for now," the Doctor reacted quickly and sympathetically. "He can't suck with that lip. No need to worry. There are other ways to feed him. But he doesn't need food right now -- just love, and lots of it."
A few hours later, Butorin, Shemelin, and Sofronov were already on a train to Tsarskoye Selo. Still supercharged with excitement, Butorin talked endlessly, while his friends, curled up on nearby seats, tried to sleep. With the fine clothes and coats and boots that Sonya and Beth had provided, they all had been able to buy first class tickets. All three of them, nostalgic with memories of Manchuria, were anxious to find Bulatovich, and, if possible, join his squadron.
Too tired to sleep, Sonya and her friend Dottie sat by the dining room table. Dottie's husband, Captain Azbotkin, lay in a drunken stupor on a nearby couch. Occasionally, they heard the baby cry upstairs.
All the servants except Matryona had long since gone to bed or returned home.
"Sonya," Dottie began, "you know that problem of yours? I've been thinking about it. I think you just have to pray for the wisdom to accept the things that you cannot change. When a man reaches a certain age, and some reach it before others..."
"But that's not the problem," Sonya started to reply, then stopped short.
"What was that?" Dottie asked wearily.
Sonya almost tried to explain. But she was so tired, and it was so much easier to let her friend believe what she wanted to believe. After all, what could she tell her? Yesterday morning, when the Professor was angry and looked like he was about to hit her, he had this bulge in his trousers. She hadn't paid much attention to that detail before. But now, remembering the scene, she could see it clearly, right near her face as she lay on the floor. He wasn't limp then. He had the capacity. But what could she do about it? Was it anger that aroused him, the desire to hur her? Or was it the thought of his first wife? He had called her "Elena... Lena.. darling..." as he sank to his knees and started babbling apologies. Somehow the anger and the thoughts of his first wife had accomplished what she, with all her beauty and wiles and tenderness, had failed to do. How could she ever forgive him for making her feel so inadequate?
Suddenly, she realized that Dottie was talking to her and maybe had been for some time.
"When we're young and inexperienced, we get these exalted notions of men and love, of what physical love will be like. And I suppose there's still a touch of the romantic in me. I need to dream. I suppose the older we get and the more certain we get that romance is a sham, the more we need to dream. I read lots of those kinds of novels now. We can enjoy dreams, but at the same time, we must remember that we are adults, and not confuse dream with reality, not go moping about because reality doesn't live up to our naive expectations of it. We must be mature enough to accept our lot and thank God for it.
"When I heard you had maried an older man, I thought you had come to that conclusion, too; that you were through chasing after mad heroes, like that Bulatovich of yours, and had found a stable, substantial, caring man with whom you could be comfortable and content."
"But the Professor isn't old," Sonya replied emphatically. "His mind is so vigorous and strong. And I love him -- truly I do." She felt tears dripping down her face as she realized that she meant what she was saying. "It's just this minor physical problem -- or rather, this problem of mine, needing and thinking I need this kind of physical closeness. It's me, really, I'm sure, not him. I just have to learn. I do love him. Love is more than just physical things -- it has to be or I don't know who I am anymore."
"Then there isn't another man -- a 'real' man, as you put it?"
"No, of course not. How could you think..."
"Enough. I believe I get the picture, and I believe I have the advice, too. That's what you want, isn't it? Advice from an experienced old married woman like myself?
"Go to Kronstadt on the Island of Kotlin, to the Cathedral of St. Andrew, to the Piest, Father Ioann Sergiev -- 'Father John' most call him. You probably won't be able to speak to him in person. The cathedral is always full to capacity. Go early so you can find a place to kneel, close enough so you can see his face and hear his voice. Just take the train to Oranienbaum, and then a sledge across the ice to Kronstadt -- it's quite easy this time of year. You won't regret it. It's said that he has a way of moving the soul, purging it of guilt and inner troubles. People come thousands of miles to unburden themseles of their sins and troubles, seeking peace of mind and of body, as well -- for it's reputed that he has made miraculous cures of physical ailments."
"I can see you sending me to a priest, but hwy to him in particular?"
"Because there is no one else like him in the Orthodox Church. Because just to be there is an unforgettable, moving expdserience that can restore you faith -- to be one with over five thousand people, all confessing aloud, many sobbing sincerely, praying to the Lord of forgiveness. Also, because you and he may have some special affinity. He's married. As you know, all priests who are not monks, who minister to the public, are required to marry before they can be ordained. He wanted to devote his life to the poor and the hungry and the downtrodden; so he married and became a priest. But it's reputed that after nearly fifty years of marriage, he and his wife are both still virgins -- not from any physical defect, but form choice, a choice that is an expression of their respect for one another and their love of God. Go and see him, and sense in his presence what true Christian love can be."
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.
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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
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