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'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, Sunday, March 9 (February 24 old style), 1902
[draft of April 8, 1989, revised March 1998]
As the train to Oranienbaum followed the coast, winding past the lunatic asylum and the Monastery of St. Sergius, Sonya tried to concentrate on her reading. But Dottie and Father Gapon kept chattering away. Why had she suggested that they come along? Or who had suggested it? Wasn't it Dottie who had reminded her that Father Gapon's orphanage depended on the charity of Father John of Kronstadt?
Father John had a large and enthusiastic following and received donations from Russians of all walks of life. These donations far exceeded even the fabulous income of the Alexander Nevsky Lavra. But Father John chose to use that money not to embellish a monastery, but rather to care for the poor and the needy, feeding over a thousand destitute persons a day, and giving support to numerous charitable institutions, like Father Gapon's.
It would have been awkward for Sonya to go to Kronstadt alone. Sonya wasn't known for her religious fervor, and she couldn't explain to her husband that it was his impotence and her desire for children, and her unsatisfied lust as well, that had led to her moral quandary and her need for spiritual comfort. So here was Father Gapon, who had to make a trip to Kronstadt anyway, and exuberant, kind-hearted Dottie.
Dottie had stayed at Sonya's for several days after the party, helping with Katya and Katya's baby. Then she had visited other friends in Petersburg for a few weeks, after her husband returned to Finland.
Perhaps it was just as well that Dottie was along on this trip, listening to Father Gapon's pronouncements on the deplorable housing conditions of factory workers and to his boasting about his friends in "high places," and what General Kleigels or Vladimir Sabler thought about his various proposals.
He was a good sort. Sonya sympathized with his intents, but cringed at his vanity. She wished him well, but, above all, wished him quiet.
As the train passed the Imperial Palace at Peterhof, where Nicholas and Alexandra had spent the first summer of their marriage, Sonya concentrated on reading the passages on marriage and love in First Corinthians. The thirteenth chapter had long been a comfort and inspiration to her. "Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things. Love never ends..."
That pure enduring love was the ideal toward which she strove.
But Paul's ascetic precepts clouded that pure vision. Why this perverse distinction between spiritual and sexual love? How could someone who wrote so eloquently of love have so little sympathy for and understanding of sex?
As she understood it, true love had to be more than physical, but it couldn't be just spiritual either. If God's creation was holy, so was reproduction. If God revealed His will through evolution and history and human progress, then it must be His will that we be fruitful and multiply. If God created us with these appetites, if He gave us these bodies that seek to be joined, how could it be wrong to join them?
Paul reluctantly conceded that most people did have sexual desires and recommended that those who could not control such desires should get married and confine that distasteful behavior to the marriage bed. "The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights..."
But what if the husband could not perform? Wasn't love without sex between a husband and a wife, or any man and woman who truly loved one another, as unnatural and degrading as sex without love?
"Do not refuse one another," said Paul, "except perhaps by agreement for a season, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again; lest Satan tempt you through lack of self-control."
The train screeched to a halt just beyond Peterhof. Conductors raced back and forth, explaining to first class passengers that a snowdrift was blocking the track, and it would take a few minutes for workmen to clear the way.
Father Gapon kept talking, and Dottie kept listening as if nothing had happened. But Sonya grew restless. Would she arrive at Kronstadt in time for the service? She got up and walked to the end of the now-empty corridor, trying to get a better view of what was going on. Then, on her way back, she came to an abrupt halt.
An enormously tall, gray-haired peasant was standing in front of her compartment. With his head bent down to avoid hitting the ceiling, he seemed to glare down at her, threateningly.
"Help!" she screamed.
Frightened, the giant awkwardly tried to get by her.
Knocked off balance, she grabbed for a railing that wasn't there, caught hold of the end of his tunic, and, barely staying on her feet, was yanked down the corridor and into the next compartment.
"You brute! You thief!" she hollered, as she pummeled him from behind with her small fists and the pointed toes of her fur-lined boots.
Father Gapon came running out, "What's the meaning..." A back-swipe of the giant's forearm, sent him sprawling on the floor.
"Help!" screamed Sonya and Dottie, too, who had come running, wildly whacking at him with her handbag.
The peasant took Sonya in one arm and Dottie in the other, muffling their cries with his palms. "It's all right, ma'am. It's all right," he whispered anxiously. "I've done nothing like you say, ma'am." He held them close and restrained them, but gently, as if he were comforting a child in distress.
He let Sonya go first. She looked up at him and saw a kindly, weather-beaten face, with a long white beard. His blue eyes, so light they seemed transparent, drew her in, compelling trust, like the eyes of a saint on an icon.
Then she saw Father Gapon coming up behind him, wielding a metal bar. "Stop!" she hollered. "It's all right."
Gapon dropped the bar and crossed himself. "Thank God," he sighed.
"Who are you?" Sonya asked softly.
"Starodubov," the peasant replied, setting Dottie down cautiously, with a hand at the ready, to ward off new swings of the handbag. "Old Oak, if you will," he continued. "Some call me Old Blockhead or Old Thief."
"Then you are a thief," Dottie blurted out in surprise.
"No. Not now ma'am. I have no need to be stealing now," he reassured her, with an anxious, humble tone to his voice.
Sonya smiled. He smiled back. And Dottie and Father Gapon laughed in relief.
Just then, Sonya heard a voice from the next car, a familiar voice, though she couldn't place it. Footsteps came their way and the voice called, "Hey! Old Blockhead, haven't you found a better compartment by now? The whole car seems empty."
"Here, sir," the peasant replied, and stepped forward to meet him.
At the door appeared Staff-Rotmister Alexander Bulatovich, in full dress uniform.
To her surprise, Sonya felt as excited and self-conscious as she would have been in the presence of a celebrity or of the Tsar himself. She backed away quietly and quickly, taking a seat in a corner, hoping he hadn't seen her; watching his reflection in the window.
"What trouble have you gotten yourself into now?" he asked the peasant, seeing the priest with a metal bar at his feet and Dottie, her dress and hair all askew from the tussle. When there was no immediate answer, he quickly explained, "This is my orderly, Starodubov. Our compartment was drafty. I sent him looking for a new one. I hope he didn't frighten you. That's been known to happen before. I should have known better. He's rather large and inclined to be awkward in dealing with strangers."
Alex's beard wasn't as full and long as Sonya remembered it. He must have shaved it off, and it had not yet fully grown back. She liked him better with this short beard. It left intact the strong line of his jaw and chin, the natural harmony of his face.
He was wearing his red hussar's cap with the visor unusually low, covering the top of his wire-rimmed glasses and shading his eyes. His coat, draped about his shoulders, was open in front, displaying the full splendor of his dress uniform -- the scarlet tunic with gold braid, the gold sash about his waist, blue trousers and well-polished knee-high boots. He looked magnificent -- his muscular body pressing tightly against the clothes that contained it.
Sonya herself was wearing a brown cloth coat and a loose-fitting dress borrowed from her maid. In the cathedral, she would be shoulder-to-shoulder with peasants and working-class people. Dressing like them had helped put her in a penitent, receptive, Lenten frame of mind. But now she wished she had at least worn a simple gold cross on a chain or a white sash about the waist -- anything to make herself more presentable.
Reflected in the window she saw that Old Oak had stepped aside, and Alex was staring at her. She turned to face him.
"Sonya!" he exclaimed joyfully, taking her hands in his. "And beautiful, as always."
Blushing, she introduced him to the others. "Dottie, Father Gapon, I'd like you to meet Staff-Rotmister Alexander Xavierevich Bulatovich, of His Majesty's Hussar Guards, my father's old regiment. These are my friends Dottie Azbotkina and Father Georgii Apollonovich Gapon, who you may have heard of for his social work in the port districts."
Alex clicked his heels, military-style, bowed at the waist and kissed Dottie's hand. She smiled and beamed, but didn't say a word, awed by his presence.
"Ah, Dottie, it's been years," he said. "I had heard that you had married an officer. And how are Stepan and Mariya?" he turned to Sonya to explain, "Her parents and I were close friends before all my travelling, even before I met you. I seem to have lost touch with everyone."
As he paid his respects to Father Gapon, Sonya noted the sharp contrast in their clothes -- the priest's plain black against the bright colors of a Hussar Guards officer. But aside from their clothes, the two men were remarkably similar -- the same age, dark complexion, dark hair, black beard. They were the same height -- below average, but a good height for light cavalry. Sasha looked far more robust and stronger, but if Father Gapon had cut his hair short and trimmed his beard they looked enough alike to be from the same Guards regiment. They could have even been brothers.
It was traditional that each of the Guards regiments pick horses that matched and men that matched -- to give a totally uniform and impressive appearance. The Hussar Guards, including Alex and Sonya's father, were all short and dark. She had grown up with that as her masculine ideal.
Now, everyone, including Starodubov, took seats in Sonya's compartment.
"You have a Ukrainian accent," noted Alex.
"Yes," admitted Father Gapon, "I'm from a humble village in Poltava Province."
"Then we're countrymen. I come from Kharkov Province, near Sumy, next to the border with Poltava."
"And for a time you were both in the same business," added Sonya.
"And what was that?" asked Alex.
"Why charity, of course." She turned toward Gapon and explained, "When he graduated from the Lycee, Sasha here was offered a job in the offices of the Educational and Charitable Institutions of the Empress Mariya. But he decided it would be more fun to parade about in a pretty uniform."
"And a good thing, too," noted Alex with smile. "You'd have never looked at me twice if it weren't for the uniform."
"On the contrary," she joshed him, "you have the most handsome... glasses." She plucked them from his nose, looked at them closely, then put them on herself. "Why knowing you changed my whole outlook on life... made everything so bright and big and blurry." She looked at him over the tops of the rims. "Yes, being in love with you was an unforgettable experience."
"You were in love?" asked Father Gapon, in surprise.
"That's what we called it," confirmed Sonya. "To me, he was like a storybook hero. He was the finest horseman in Russia -- quite literally. He won the steeplechase year after year."
"Only twice," he interrupted, with an embarrassed grin.
"And then he went dashing off to Ethiopia. That was another charity case, wasn't it?" she asked Alex rhetorically, then turned toward Father Gapon. "You remember when the Ethiopians were battling the Italians. A poor little Christian country with nothing but spears to defend themselves; they were set upon by a modern European army -- and won. Everyone felt so badly for them and proud of them at once. Remember the Red Cross expedition to help the Ethiopian wounded? Alex volunteered. I was so proud of him."
"How long ago was that?" asked Father Gapon.
"Centuries, wasn't it, Sasha?"
"At least," Alex replied in the same light-hearted vein. "Perhaps a millenium."
"And he brought home a souvenir," Sonya continued. "Not that time, but another. He kept going back and forth. You see, I loved him, and he loved Ethiopia. It was a beautiful relationship." Both Alex and Sonya laughed.
"What kind of a souvenir?" asked Father Gapon.
"A child," replied Sonya.
"Oh!" exclaimed Father Gapon, scandalized.
"No, not his own," Sonya kept laughing. "An orphan. That's another way you're both in the same business, Father. You both take care of orphans? How is he, Sasha? How is your Vaska? I miss him."
"Oranienbaum!" called the conductor.
Sonya looked out the window in disbelief. She hadn't realized that the train had started, and now they had arrived already.
Outside, a dozen drivers awaited customers for the long sledge ride across the ice to Kronstadt. Led by Sonya, who was in a playful mood, the four of them dashed ahead, like children, to get to the first one. Starodubov came lumbering after them.
Sonya and Dottie sat in back facing forward; Alex and Gapon sat facing them and Starodubov up front with the driver. They bundled up tight with bearskins and wool blankets.
Soon the whip cracked, and the horses started trotting down the street. Then, with little perceptible change, the metal runners slid out onto the frozen Gulf of Finland.
Patches of greenish ice showed through the windswept snow. It was a long flat, otherworldly wasteland. Tall signal posts and pine trees, set in a row like Christmas trees for sale, marked the way through this otherwise featureless expanse.
Sonya shivered, pulling the blankets tight over her, wishing she had worn her fox or beaver instead of this cloth coat. Besides, her mood had changed since Bulatovich had appeared. This was more of a holiday excursion now, not a penitential pilgrimage.
At Kronstadt, Alex was the first to jump out of the sledge. Immediately, he was at her side, offering his arm, with the exaggerated smile and gestures of a child playing at being a gentleman.
She curtsied and took his arm, with similar mock seriousness.
The cathedral was packed, but all five of them managed to squeeze forward and find room toward the front. Everyone stood, as is proper in an Orthodox church.
It was dark inside the huge stone structure, except for hundreds of candles -- most of them up front where three aging priests conducted the service near a high gilded icon screen. Other candles were suspended in front of other icons and relics scattered in little niches and corners of the cathedral, where individuals from all walks of life prayed privately and kissed the icons and kissed the relics.
Kneeling by a wall, one old workman, who reeked of fish, repeated over and over with the fervor of a monk, "Gospodi pomiloy. Lord have mercy."
From a balcony at the rear, a choir of deep male voices boomed forth, in harmony with the voices of young boys, the responses to the faint but solemn liturgical chanting of the priests. The air was heavy with the smell and smoke of incense.
As one of the three gray-bearded priests walked toward the lectern, a nearby woman pointed him out to her son as "Father John himself." The boy crossed himself and knelt in awe.
The priest's gray eyes sparkled in the candle light as he stood by the Bible, not reading, rather looking upward toward the choir and beyond, toward heaven, speaking rapidly, but softly and gently, speaking the words of the Bible naturally, as if they were important thoughts that had just now occurred to him, as if he were talking to an old friend. Now and then he paused, as if expecting and as if receiving, in the silence, a reply.
As Father John finished the "reading," scattered murmurs were heard. Then gathering, wave upon wave, the congregation chanted, "Gospodi pomiloy," over and over, ever louder and confused with its own echoes off the cold stone walls, but compelling, catching in its rhythm even newcomers like Sonya, who first joined in softly and then with full voice.
Slowly, the chant changed to cacaphony as, one by one, people began to pray aloud, individually.
The old workman from the docks fell to the floor sobbing, much to the embarrassment of Sonya, who was unaccustomed to witnessing such public displays of emotion. "I killed her, Lord," the workman confessed aloud. "As if I had done it with my own hands, I killed her. Forgive me, Lord. Have mercy. Gospodi pomiloy!"
Others confessed publicly -- some softly, some loudly, speaking directly to God, oblivious of the people around them, who kept up the rhythmic chant of "Gospodi pomiloy."
Although Sonya had heard of such things happening here, it was an extraordinary experience not to be encountered anywhere else in the Orthodox Church. Despite the compelling rhythm of the chant and the emotion-packed atmosphere, she felt scandalized to be hearing snatches of intimate confessions shouted and echoed all about her.
"Have they no shame?" she said aloud, then realized she was alone, that the shifting crowd had separated her from the others. They couldn't be far, but she felt awkward and self-conscious among all these strangers who were acting so irrationally and emotionally.
"Before God we have shame," she heard behind her. She looked up to see a tall toothless middle-aged worker, with a scar that zigzagged from his left eye to his shoulder. "We are not ashamed before man," he went on, beginning to shake all over, "but before our Creator, before Christ his Only Begotten Son, who died for our sins, our shame is great. He knows we have sinned, and He will forgive, if only we have the strength to admit our guilt before him and beg for mercy. Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy upon me, sinner that I am." He fell in a quivering heap on the floor beside Sonya, loudly confessing his sins.
Sonya backed away from him and from others who like him were bowing, kneeling, praying, groveling, and even banging their heads on the floor. She was frightened -- as if these were live electric cables with insulation worn and sparks flying.
Then she spotted Old Oak, behind her about ten feet away, towering high above the crowd, like a signal post. She squeezed her way toward him, but the press of the crowd was in the opposite direction, toward Father John in the hope of forgiveness and blessing and healing. Trapped, she pleaded and struggled, but the workers and old ladies blocking her way either didn't understand her or were blocked themselves.
She began to sob, collapsing on the floor. Those standing near her smiled at her comfortingly, making the sign of the cross above her. They assumed that she, too, was having a holy fit of guilt and confession. She sobbed even louder from embarrassment, then was plucked from the ground, lifted high above the crowd and held tight against a strong shoulder.
She tensed, kicked, scratched, then recognized the huge, rough and gentle hands that were soothing her. Starodubov. Old Oak. Old Thief. She hugged him joyfully, and he eased her down to the ground beside Alex, Dottie, and Father Gapon.
Here, too, several worshippers seemed to have taken leave of their senses. So in the press of the crowd, she cuddled close to Alex, resting her head on his shoulder and wrapping her arms around him his waist, as if she were afraid to let go. With one hand firmly planted in the small of her back, he held her tightly. With the other, he caressed her cheek, then rubbed and scratched her back to soothe her.
Before he had always been awkward and self-conscious around her, unable to express his emotions with either gesture or word. She had been attracted by his adolescent innocence and his total devotion to honor and duty. He was her Launcelot. And the great hero was so adorably helpless in her presence.
When he was half way around the world, she would write him wildly passionate letters. And when he returned -- this great all-conquering hero, who never flinched in the face of Ethiopian spears or Boxer rifles -- he was totally at her mercy. When he, in his own stumbling, inarticulate way was his most passionate, she had toyed with him and teased him, time and again. Then circumstances intervened. Too much time passed between visits. Too much happened to both of them. They drifted apart, never having officially become engaged, and never having been physically intimate.
This man who held her now so confident and tender, was both familiar and strange.
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.
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