Precursor

1. The First Net-1

The First Net

The world pursued me, but failed to catch me.

Hryhoriy Skovoroda

For ten days now Hryhoriy had been imbibing the thick air and could not slake his thirst. Back there, beyond the Carpathian Mountains, it had been more delicate, more benign, but it had not borne the smell of the steppe, it had not refreshed his soul. For ten days he had lain on the cart and not taken his eyes off the poplars, the birches, and the cherry orchards which swathed the bright palaces and peasant houses with tiny windows in a greenish-white froth. For three long years while in the parks of Tokay and Vienna he had dreamed of his native cherry blossom, warm southeasterly winds, a sky filled with the spring songs of larks and the evening warble of young girls. There were times the boys would sit down, sigh, grieve a little and sing softly: “Oh, heigh-ho, mother, oh heigh-ho, mother...” while he stood and wept. Surrounded by paradise, he nevertheless flew on the wings of the song to his native Chornukhy, to Kyiv.

The wheels creaked, the horses ran tardily, and a pink wisp of dust meandered behind the carts. Not yet like the dust of summer, when one could not see the world, but more like the smoke emerging from a pipe.

“It’s humid, there’ll probably be a shower,” Nychypir piped up, pulling his hat onto his forehead, and spurred on the horses to catch up to the train of carts: “Gee-up, gee-up, my little falcons!”

Bending over, propping up his head with his hand, he began to croon a song. Without any words, barely audible. He was like a sack of songs. And what a voice he had! How well the lads had sung in the seminary or the bishop’s choir, and yet next to this peasant from Chornukhy those famous choristers were simply billy goats, laughing stocks.

Oh, a fire burns upon the hill,

In the vale a Cossack lies still...

Hryhoriy could not work out whether it was Nychypir singing or whether the song had surfaced from his own heart.

Cover’d his eyes with nankeen cloth,

’Tis a young Cossack’s just desert...

Horsemen appeared out of the blue. They checked their fiery steeds and pranced alongside the cart. Zaporozhian Cossacks1 – formidable men with moustaches, tanned by the elements.

“Where might you be travelling?” the oldest grey-haired fellow asked, rising in his saddle.

“To St. Petersburg, from Hungary!” Nychypir replied cheerfully. He pushed his shabby hat to one side.

“A-ah, little foster children! Little gentlemen hetmans2 who wash the feet of chickens!” the horsemen guffawed.

“And you don’t wash them?” Nychypir half-closed one eye.

“After we’ve washed them, the chickens can’t find all their feet!”

“Eagles, eagles!” Nychypir continued to gush.

“And how is His Illustrious Majesty Rozum?3 Still at the skirt, or is he already separated?”

“Don’t get too carried away, boys, we’ve got Vyshnevsky in the coach up ahead there – his majesty’s colonel.”

“You don’t say!” The grey-haired Cossack raised his hands. “And is he thick with thalers?” he asked, exchanging glances with his lads.

“We haven’t counted them... Weren’t graced with the honour.”

“P’raps we should shake this little colonel, my dear children?” The old Cossack turned up his moustache dipped in milk.

“Let’s shake him, father!” the ‘children’ called out amiably and made their horses rear, prepared to attack the coach.

The Cossack leader raised his hand, checking the hotheaded young men.

“Auri sacra fumes!”4 he said in Latin. Then, adjusting his sabre, he looked at the aristocrat’s sleeping coach and sighed sorrowfully: “These grapes are too green for us, brothers.”

Hryhoriy wanted to ask the old otaman5 where and when he had studied, but was not quick enough.

The Zaporozhians set off into the fields and soon disappeared into a deep ravine overgrown with oaks.

Hardly had the dust kicked up by the Cossack horses settled, when a detachment of hussars appeared unexpectedly from a wood, which loomed a mile up the road. Stopping the train of carts, the Poles asked Vyshnevsky something, and half-leaning out of his coach, the fellow pointed a finger in the direction the Cossacks had just disappeared.

“What a bastard!” Nychypir muttered. “Small wonder they say a crow will never peck out another crow’s eyes.”

“Don’t worry, they won’t catch them,” Hryhoriy said, feeling an anxious concern in his heart for the falcons who were flying over the steppe somewhere toward their dear Cossack fortress – the Sich. “They won’t catch up... Nec deus intersit!”

“What did you say?” Nychypir wrinkled his forehead.

“May God not intervene!”

“Heigh-ho, His eyes have long been covered in cataracts. The things that are happening in the world today, and He won’t even lift a finger...”

“The Lord preserve you, uncle! What are you saying?!”

“Let Him listen,” Nychypir looked into the deep azure sky. “My grandfather and father were free men. And yet I’ve become a serf, a human draught horse to be traded! I’ve been bought and sold three times already...”

He grew silent, dropped his head onto his chest and did not spur on the horses, even though their cart was lagging behind the rest.

Skovoroda became pensive. He unbuttoned his blue camlet coat and bared his chest to the ever so slight breeze. They were entering the forest. The high pines strained their branches into the sky, fighting for every ray of sunshine. The weaker ones perished, and even those which victoriously straightened their shoulders lost those branches which remained in the dark shadows. The law of nature! People were like these trees too...

“Gee-up! Gee-up!” Nychypir called out, waving at the horses with an oak whip handle (he had purposely lost his whip, taking pity on his ashen steeds) and launched into a merry song. But soon he launched into one which made Hryhoriy’s heart ache.

The brethren they are a-grieving,

That heavy chains have bound their feet,

Oh now, dear brethren, surely we

Are lost until eternity...

“Eh, Hryshka, Hryshka!” Vyshnevsky’s footman hollered, as if summoning people to a fire. He turned his horse around behind the cart and, carelessly playing with his whip, ordered: “Off you run to the landlord!”

“Go and tell his nobleness that I’m no dog and make no habit of running after coaches,” Hryhoriy snapped back.

The footman blushed crimson, raised his whip... but did not lash out. Tugging at his reins, he squeezed the horse with his spurs and galloped off as if the devil was chasing him.

Nychypir let out an ululation and waved the whip handle over his head. The horses set off at a gallop.

Pines and pyramidal wild pears smothered in white blossom sailed past.

The forest rumbled, laughed, and filled with the clatter of wheels.

They stopped at noon. The horses were unharnessed, set free to graze in the forest clearing, along which crept a narrow little stream overgrown with dense leafy herbage, willow, and alder. Birds were singing everywhere. Motley hoopoes struck their kettledrums, an oriole screamed out and a nightingale’s warble filled the grove. Large black crows flew over the clearing like evil spirits and cawed hoarsely.

Having drunk from a spring bubbling out from the base of an ancient alder, Hryhoriy slowly made his way to the colonel.

“At last, you’ve come,” the fellow growled angrily. And scratching a Russian wolfhound behind the ears, said: “Doesn’t it seem to you, Hryhoriy, that dogs and servants are made of the same dough?”

“Just like lords and pigs. Everything is made of matter!”

Vyshnevsky stared goggle-eyed at him. Then he bawled angrily at the footman:

“Why are you prancing before my eyes?! Go and help with the meal!”

Having vented his anger, the colonel cheered up a little, half-closed his eyes, and said: “Inordinate pride does not become one...”

“Neither does the lack of it.”

“To a serf, let’s say, there’s not an ounce of good as a result of it, only harm.”

“A proud person cannot be a serf.”

“So that’s it! What will you order him to be then?”

“Either free or a nothing.”

“What about God? He created the slave and the lord...”

“God created man.”

“And divided him.”

“That was the work of the Pharisees, to please the nobility.”

Vyshnevsky groaned, fingered his moustache à la Peter6 and adjusted his staff sword. Fetching a handkerchief, he thunderously blew his nose.

“Such thoughts are worthy of shackles or cudgels,” he said icily and smiled: “However, I’m a good fellow and respect learned people...”

“These grapes are still green,” Hryhoriy interrupted him.

“What have grapes to do with it?” Vyshnevsky failed to understand.

“Those were the words of a fox unable to reach a bunch of grapes.”

The colonel shrugged his shoulders. He trampled the fiery-yellow flowers and young sorrel with his riding boots. Hryhoriy walked alongside him, eyeing his interlocutor sullenly, and listened to the forest. A titmouse twittered somewhere nearby, a woodpecker hammered at a tree, the water in the stream gurgled away…

“Actually, I didn’t call you to argue,” Vyshnevsky said. “Sometime tonight or in the morning we’ll reach Kyiv. What will you do, what business do you have to attend to?”

“I have no idea,” Skovoroda confessed frankly.

“Do you have land or cattle?”

“There is a little patrimony. In Chornukhy, in the Lubny Regiment. I’ve an older brother there.”

“Well, farming is a worthy, honest occupation...”

“But one not at all suited to my nature,” Hryhoriy added.

“And what is?”

“I’m still not sure...”

“Come with me to St. Petersburg. They badly need learned people there who know the language and have studied the sciences. You won’t regret it. You’ll earn a title, estates, money!”

“Omnia mea mecum porto.” 7

“What did you say?”

“That such riches are of no use to me.”

“Saints above! Who’s ever been harmed by wealth and titles?!”

“Those who intrinsically live in poverty, but are rich in spiritual peace.”

“They have the Academy there, famous scholars, great people!” Vyshnevsky said feverishly. “And what is there here? Thick-skulled peasants, priests and Cossack elders who pride themselves on the size of their backsides, but eat borsch8 from the same bowl as the peasant!”

“Each of us must get to know his people, Lord Vyshnevsky, and thus discover himself,” Skovoroda replied calmly.

“So, you won’t come along?!” he asked in disbelief.

Skovoroda smiled and spread out his hands.

“This is the first time I’ve seen a dolt who’s prepared to exchange a commander’s warder9 for a shepherd’s staff!” the colonel’s voice thundered through the clearing.

“As for me, it’s better to be a shepherd at home than a commander in foreign parts...”

Vyshnevsky groaned. He shattered a pyramidal ant’s nest with the toe of his riding boot.

“Your illustrious excellency, lunch is served,” the footman ran up and stood to attention.

“Coming!” the lord retorted angrily and turned to face Hryhoriy once more.

“Think about it. Don’t let good fortune slip through your fingers!”

“I’ve already heard that from the lips of the empress herself,” Skovoroda said firmly. “And yet, here I am... Alive and not regretting it.”

Vyshnevsky waved his hand and stepped toward the carpet on which the meal was laid out.

Hryhoriy threw off his coat, spread it out in the shade and laid down on his back. The sunlight was blinding through the sparse, still yellowy-green leaves. His ear caught the ring of a mosquito, or perhaps some other unknown God’s creature which was lurking somewhere in the undergrowth nearby – small, unseen, but alive, in a tiny droplet of the world, who knows why... True, everything in the world had a sense and a logic to it, but it was often hard to perceive its reason for existence, as it was with people... However, it was possible! Everything was subordinate to the human mind...

He smiled, recalling his dispute with the German, who had attempted to prove that the world was unfathomable. The essence of metaphysics...

“Hryhoriy, come and eat!” he heard from afar, as if from another dimension.

It was Nychypir calling. Presently his figure blotted out the sun and his face spread into a grin.

“You’re no angel, Hrytsko, you can’t survive on the breath of the Holy Spirit alone...”

After they had lunched and the train of carts set off again, doubts and vacillation began to beset Hryhoriy’s soul. Who in Kyiv was waiting for him? His old student friends were by now scattered throughout Ukraine or even the entire Russian Empire, from Zaporizhia to the White Sea... The instructors had disliked him for his harsh judgements and irreverence toward the letter and dogma before which they bowed their heads... St. Petersburg... Lomonosov was there. And in a few years, he would be joined by his former friends from Leipzig – Hrytsko Kozytsky10 and Mykolay Motonis11 – for where else would they go?