Precursor

1. The First Net-2

“Gee-up, gee-up, my falcons!” Old Nychypir spurred on his ashen steeds. He wasn’t old in years, but in appearance he seemed to be almost a grandfather. Sweat ran down his brown neck. His soiled shirt was stirred by the wind, which spurred on the train of carts and carried the dust somewhere toward Kyiv, where a black cloud hung on the distant horizon. What a strange wind – it was blowing toward the cloud, rather than from it...

Slowly his thoughts returned to St. Petersburg and Kyiv. Temptation was always seductive... Palaces were more easily spotted than poor hovels... However, happiness was not contained in palaces, but in freedom! The Cossack was like the wind, he could fly across the steppe in whichever direction he pleased... Besides, whom would he teach in the capital? The sons of courtiers? To whom would he impart his painstakingly acquired knowledge, which he had gathered like a bee in the boundless field of human wisdom? The empress? The nobility? And let the buckwheat sowers, that is, the peasants, obediently place their tufted heads in yokes like oxen, not even guessing that apart from the furrow, this world also had steppes, and liberty, sharp sabres, and philosophy?!

Oh, steed, my fair steed,

With mane of gold indeed...

Nychypir launched into song once more, for it was just as necessary to him as the air he breathed.

Skovoroda closed his eyes and his childhood came flooding back...

...The air was fragrant with pears, birds, and clouds. Ripe dulia pears12 hung from branches like golden droplets. Fluffy baby birds screamed joyously for the whole world to hear and flitted from bush to bush. And way above there in the sky sailed those shaggy white ricks of hay...

Small Hryhoriy placed a flute to his lips and it sang, laughed and wept. It sang about his father who had returned from an expedition to the mountains. It laughed at his brother Stepan, who had the day before climbed onto father’s horse and had fallen off after making the Cossack yelp “Poohoo, poohoo!” And it wept after his grandfather, who had told him interesting and scary tales about the Swedish attack, how Chornukhy had been defended from the enemy, and how its last brave defenders had perished in flames...

Young Hryhoriy turned in the direction of the village and seemed to see the church crackling in flames, inside which the barely living, wounded, but not yet defeated Cossacks had locked themselves. He could see his grandfather’s grave, the cross on it, and the periwinkle flowers...

“Look, look!” Stepan yelled and dashed past on his jet black horse. He had learned to ride it, after all! His shirt was billowing in the wind, happiness sparkled in his eyes.

Watching his brother ride off, the small boy lay face down and began to daydream…

The grass was tall and thick. When you looked through it at the steppe, toward the Mnoha River glistening here and there among the reeds, it was not at all hard to imagine that you were grown up and on horseback, wielding a sabre or riding with a bandura…13 Riding slowly through the fields, playing and playing, with the Zaporozhian Cossacks listening to you and the feather grass lapping like a river in flood... The horse under you was not jet black, or grey, but golden, the same horse which had once drowned in the river when it had been deep, clear, and navigated by Cossack boats...

“Hrytsko-oh! Hrytsko-oh!” Mother called from the yard. “Come and have some lunch!”

Hryts turned his head, but did not see his mother, spying only the roof and the stork in the nest atop the house. The bird spread out its wings and chattered something with its red bill, as if also summoning Hryts. It was very, very wise, this stork... But Hryts had no desire to head home. He had already eaten so many sweet pears that he could do without food for a whole week.

Beetles and ants crawled sedately over the grass; here and there green grasshoppers leapt nimbly. The speckled ladybirds made their way to the tips of stalks, and suddenly took off, flying into obscurity. Or perhaps it only seemed that they disappeared into boundless space...

Geese screeched on the river. Hryts strained his ears and suddenly heard the drawn-out, resounding neighing of the golden-maned horse. It was over there near the river, in the marshes!

Hiding the flute down his shirt front, the small boy jumped up and ran in a beeline through the gardens down to where the gentle Mnoha River lurked in the reeds and willows.

His heart beat madly. The thorny stubble cut into his feet, but he kept running, feeling nothing. His ears heard only the neighing, which died away, then rang out again over the river, like a taut string.

The reeds rose in a wall, a forest. In a minute the sky, the sun and everything in the world had disappeared, except for their knobbly stalks, narrow leaves and fluffy panicles. All around there was serenity and silence. Not even a mosquito let out a squeak...

A breeze sprung up out of nowhere and suddenly the reeds became like flutes, enough music for the whole world to hear!

Someone struck a tambourine. Then silence again. In the depths something was snorting hollowly, sighing, groaning...

It was the horse!

Hryts ran out of the marshes, found the path to the reach where their boat was moored, and raced for all he was worth along the narrow cutting in the reeds. His soles were pleasantly pampered by the cold, damp, springy earth. Gallinules and mallards rose fearfully and, like the ladybirds, immediately disappeared into the vast spaces of the world. His grandfather had said that there was no end to the world, in the same way as stars could not be counted.

The boats were tied up like tethered horses.

“Gee-up, gee-up, my falcons!” Nychypir called out merrily, waving the whip handle about, and turned to Hryhoriy: “Why are you so deep in thought?”

“I was recalling the past…”

“Good for him who has something to recall!” Nychypir sighed sadly, pulled his hat down over his forehead and launched into a new song:

A plane tree by the water’s edge,

Leans out over the shady sedge;

Pained by injustice in his land,

The Cossack stands head bowed...

Hryhoriy made himself more comfortable on the cart and again slipped into reminiscences of the distant past…

Lord Almighty, how long the winter nights had been in St. Petersburg! As soon as dusk fell, the choirmaster’s attendant appeared and passed on the order to hurry to rehearsals or to the gallery of one of the palaces, where a court ball was to take place. Toward dawn the boys returned to their choir dormitory, tipsy and merry, collapsing fully clothed onto their rough-and-ready beds and fell asleep. They awoke sometime toward evening, dined hastily and again ran off to please the nobles with a Franco-German musical mish-mash, so loved by the empress, the frauleins, and the choirmaster – a Holstein German.

Hryhoriy had had a real battle with this diehard German. He had fallen ill one day and did not turn up for rehearsals. The choirmaster sent the music to him and ordered him to learn the wunderbare kleine Pastorale14 for that evening. Hryhoriy ran his eyes over the pages and hurled them onto the table. What liars – no shame or conscience! Where had they seen such shepherdesses and shepherds, loveable cherubs who frolicked like baby doves in the colourful meadows? What about the rain, the cold, the knee-deep mud! There were times when you suffered, clothed in an old sack, like a chained pup. Or when the biting wind of autumn dashed about the steppe, carrying dust, straw and leaves...

Taking the bandura down off the wall, he ran his fingers over the strings and grieved after the fields, the forest, and his native Mnoha River.

Oh, do not blossom, lush blooms,

Of green sea-kale.

So heavy and hard feels my heart,

When evening’s dark descends...

There followed a second and a third song... He sang and wept, and soared over his native steppe as a strong-winged falcon, unable to delight enough in its beauty, unable to drink his fill of its healing fragrances...

“Now that’s our song!”

Hryhoriy covered the strings with his hand and turned around at the voice. Heads bowed, lackeys, cooks and coachmen stood silently in the doorway. His neighbour from Chornukhy, Nychypir Dolia, was heading toward him, arms spread out.

“What winds bring you here, uncle?!” Hryhoriy rejoiced at the sight of his visitor.

“An ill wind, Hrytsko,” Nychypir said. They kissed three times. “Whatever blows for us now, it’s always from the wrong direction!”

“Oh, how true, how true.” He was supported by the wretches who did not dare enter the room of the court choristers. The spark of freedom still glowed in their souls, weak, faint, like a death scream, and equally eternal, like the evening star...

“Come in, good people!” Hryhoriy invited them. “Why are you standing there in the doorway?”

Exchanging glances, they moved inside and again became silent near the door.

“Well, how are our people back there? Alive and well?” Hryhoriy asked.

“I haven’t been home for three years,” Dolia said sullenly. “I’ll probably be a vagabond until the day I die…”

“You should marry.”

“What for, Hrytsko? To breed more serfs?!”

Nychypir sat downcast, the lackeys, cooks, and coachmen sighed in silence, knowing they would never see their children free...

“Play for us, Hrytsko!” Dolia handed him the bandura. “But a merry one!”

“Which one do you want to hear?” Hryhoriy asked softly, for his entire soul was one big wound. Without waiting for an answer, he began the one his grandfather had loved to sing:

The lass stood in the doorway,

Winking at the Cossack lad...

Nychypir straightened up and joined in:

Come here, my dear Cossack,

Come here and love me truly.

Joy of my life,

Joy of my life!

Suddenly the choirmaster appeared in the doorway. The court staff scattered, as if blown away by a wind. Only Nychypir remained standing there.

“Bist du denn krank?”15 the German raised his lorgnette. “Instead of high French you rehearse deine barbarischen Lieden!”16

Tearing the bandura from his hands, he took a swing and smashed it against the bed end. Nychypir rushed toward the choirmaster, but Hryhoriy immediately barred his way.

“A bandura can be smashed,” he said with restraint, “but a song – never!”

“Ha-ha!” The choirmaster pulled a sour face. “What song is he, him primitive!”

“Part the seas – a frog is coming!” Nychypir snorted.

“Was sagst du?17 I frog, I?” The haughty German bristled. “Hey, who there?” he called out, rushing up to the door.

This began to smell of trouble. Running up to the choirmaster, Hryhoriy lightly slipped his hand through the fellow’s arm.

“My brother is with the Third Section of his Excellency Rozumovsky,” he whispered, nodding in Nychypir’s direction.

The diehard German took a deep breath, mumbled something in fright, and bowing before Dolia, dashed out the door...

“Why are you guffawing?” Nychypir asked, holding onto his lambskin hat, which the raging wind tried to snatch away.

“I remembered the time we duped that German.”

“In St. Petersburg?”

“Aha.”

“Did that powdered mongrel ever run!” Nychypir called out. Meanwhile the wind tore off his shabby hat and rolled it off into the fields. “Whoa, whoa!”

He dropped the reins, jumped off the cart, and gave chase to his hat.

“Go on, bark, bark!”

“Strewth!”

They were laughing on all the carts. Vyshnevsky’s long-legged wolfhound had shot out of the coach and, joining in the chase, pounced on the ill-fated hat, tearing it to shreds.

“Don’t worry, his lordship the colonel will have a new one made for you,” Skovoroda tried to comfort Nychypir after he had settled back on the cart and grabbed the reins.

“God willing, he won’t have time,” Dolia grumbled sullenly and yelled: “Gee-up, gee-up, my falcons!”