Precursor

1. The First Net-3

Hryhoriy did not ask what such words were meant to imply. He could see for himself, could sense with his soul that a decisiveness was maturing in his compatriot, a new kind of unknown essence, a sullen force. On the eve of great changes and great upheavals, people always seemed to be reborn, blossoming wantonly with all that was best and loftiest in their hearts. Nychypir Dolia had neither beauty nor money, nor liberty. He only had his enchanting voice, which he had inherited from his parents, from the Chornukhy nightingales, whose singing and twittering had imbued them with a craving for love. And he sang. He had sung yesterday, and the day before, but today a flood of melodies, sorrow, grief, and joy flowed from his bosom. Even now he was sitting, eyes closed, quivering all over like a skylark:

Oh, a slender stalk upon the field

Trembles in the breeze...

Vyshnevsky had mentioned that the Holsteiner German was now himself lauding Little Russian songs and ballads, and fussing over bandura players, as if they were made of porcelain. Small wonder! The empress had awarded one of them for his virtuoso playing with nothing short of a noble title.

She was somewhat strange, this omnipotent woman... She would make one man a noble, and then turn hundreds into serfs, livestock. She said that she fervently loved Little Russia, its songs, culture, and soul, and yet the famous Lavra printing shop in Kyiv had been forbidden to print anything for so many years now, save for those books which had already appeared in print in St. Petersburg or Moscow... Words and deeds. How far apart they stood! And the more power, the more might a person had, the less truth, the less sincerity there was in their words. Everyone played a role, but quite often it wasn’t the one for which they were born. Temptation, the greed for wealth and fame, a privileged existence, led people astray, into the territory of others, where they themselves suffered and tormented those close to them.

Lord, what happiness it was to return to one’s path after straying!

It had been a golden autumn back then. Rain was already falling on St. Petersburg, while the sun still shone in Ukraine, the sumptuous shoots of winter wheat were like green velvet and on the meadows and flooded fields the birdlife gathered for its sad autumnal games. Here and there the maples were already burning with cold flames and Indian summer hung out its silvery cobwebs on the dry broom grass by the roadside...

The carts of the court servants stretched behind her majesty’s coach like the train of a gown. For so many days now, she had sat by the window admiring the landscape of woods and meadows, the tidy houses and streets of Cossack villages smothered in cherry orchards. Each evening, when they stopped for the night, she bid the court choristers and bandura players be summoned, and for a long time she listened to the songs born on this land by this proud though genial, sonorous people. And once, right near Kyiv, a local Cossack officer, after arguing with a tsarist minister, assembled lasses and lads from the nearest houses in place of the court choristers, and gave such a concert that the sovereign willed that they all be taken into her choir. And only after the officer had pleaded with her did she let them go, giving each a gold coin.

They had entered Kyiv on a sunny Sunday morning. Bells announced their arrival. Priests, townsfolk and subjects stood in crowds near the bridge and along the ramp. A detachment of cavalrymen dressed in bright green tunics embroidered in gold met the distinguished guest near the Dnipro River and pompously accompanied her to the Lavra church, where Elizabeth18 was staying.

Back at the ramp Hryhoriy had jumped off the choristers’ wagon, turned right and made his way toward the suburb of Podil through the golden forest along the Dnipro. Above him the old oaks and maples spread out their mighty arms and carpeted the path with fiery yellow leaves. They rumbled, rustled, tried to tell him something, but the bells gave them no opportunity, tolling throughout the city. He embraced the trees, patted them, told them about the longing which had gnawed away at his heart; he spoke to them without words, with his soul, and the thick-barked giants understood everything. They too had their aches and pains, but they had grown deep into the ground and feared neither storms nor landslides.

Under a wildling tree he gathered some ripe pears, stuffed them into his pockets and relished them, enjoying them all the way to the Academy.

And in the Academy, he had been immediately mobbed by students and instructors alike, who hadn’t forgotten him yet, and inspected his sumptuous clothing from the capital, asking how things were there. Hryhoriy became so emotional that he could barely answer their questions, telling them about his life in the royal court, complaining about his fate, which had spurned him and had taken him along a foreign path. Slipping their arms through Skovoroda’s, the zealous brethren immediately set off to find the rector.

“Gee-up, gee-up, my falcons!” Nychypir sang to the horses and flicked their wet backs with the reins.

“For some reason you’re very cheerful today, uncle,” Hryhoriy called out.

“Because I’m celebrating today! Gee-up, gee-up, there are no wolves to spur you on!”

“Is it maybe your name-day?”

“God no... Oh well, maybe yes! I’m newly born!” Nychypir guffawed. And he sang about the steppe, about liberty, which was like that firebird, attracting people, but not allowing itself to be caught...

The sacred truth! How much had been said of this firebird at the Academy... When the boys got going in the dormitory, the dispute would last until morning. Some shouted that everyone should go off to the Sich, the Cossack fortress, as they had done under Khmelnytsky, join the army and achieve freedom in battles fought with sabres, while others maintained that one could achieve destiny for the commoner and the Cossack peacefully, quietly, through knowledge and the education of the nobility in a spirit of brotherhood. Hrytsko Kozytsky had been the loudest among them. Pale, terribly thin, with a high forehead, he stood atop his bed and yelled resolutely into the excited crowd of students:

“All evil in the world stems from ignorance! Where knowledge and wisdom reign supreme, the whole of society benefits, from the elite to the commoner!”

“Nonsense!”

“Lies!”

“Such a miracle cannot be!”

“What about Yaroslav?19 And Julius Caesar?!” Motonis shouted, flushed. There hadn’t been an instance yet when his buddy hadn’t supported him, refusing to contradict even a single word. Castor and Pollux! Though not brothers, these two were Dioscuri, of which there was a dearth in this long-suffering land of the Polianians.

“Knowledge and scholarship are the best weapons!” Kozytsky proclaimed passionately. “And our duty is to serve scholarship, humanity, and thus fight for a better lot for our land.”

“Our brethren have opened schools from Chernihiv to Tobolsk, but it hasn’t made the nobility any better!”

“They’ve even harnessed the Cossacks into yokes!”

“Made nearly all of them bonded people!”

“Offer the nobles a finger and they’ll bite your arm off!”

There were shouts, a tumult, until someone called out that it was dawning. The Dioscuri were the first to go to bed and fell asleep quickly, as if on cue. Every student could sleep through lessons in class with a light heart, but not these possessed two, who took in knowledge the way sand absorbed ink.

They had been sent off to study in Leipzig, as if it was in the far-flung reaches of the world. Having earned some money through vertep20 puppet shows, the philosophy students organised such a merry send-off for them that the whole of Podil marvelled.

The Hudovych brothers, in whose retinue the boys intended to travel, were to leave early on the Saturday morning. On the Friday, sometime around noon, the full Academy choir assembled in the dormitory and thundered with a hymn. And then kegs of mead and spirits did the rounds. Soon the already tipsy brethren rolled out of the monastery in a crowd and, arms around Hrytsko and Mykola, burst into the nearest tavern, tossed out the drunks, downed some mead and launched into a doleful song. Having obtained a fiddle, a dulcimer and a flute from the tavern-keeper’s wife, they launched into a metelytsia21 dance with such gusto that bottles fell off the bar. And then they proceeded to a second, a third, and a fourth tavern.

Sometime toward morning, having kissed everyone goodbye, Hrytsko and Mykola bowed before the Brotherhood Monastery and the Academy, and went up Borychiv Rise to the Upper City, where the counts Hudovych were staying. And they seemed to melt into thin air after that. For six years people said they were supposed to be studying at the university in Leipzig...

“Whoa, whoa!” Nychypir yelled and pulled on the reins. Carried away with his singing, he had nearly run his horses into the cart ahead.

The waggon train stopped. The cloud still loomed black up ahead, but the wind had died down. In the distance the deep-red sun was diving into a blue expanse of forest. Chafers buzzed. In the pinkish sky mallards flew in impetuous pairs.

The footman galloped up and gave the order to stop for the night.

They camped near a tavern some ten miles from Kyiv. Putting the horses to pasture, they had dinner and went to sleep: some slept on the carts, some on the grass under the lindens. Nychypir hobbled the horses, took a horse blanket and his grey German coat bought for him in winter by the lord, and went off into the night. But before Hryhoriy had made himself comfortable on the cart, he returned – now without the horse blanket and the coat – strained his ears and asked softly:

“Going to St. Petersburg or staying in Ukraine?”

“I still haven’t decided,” Skovoroda said, jumping down off the cart.

“Well, think, think hard then,” Nychypir said. “If you happen to be in Chornukhy,” he added after a short silence, “then visit my sister in Kyzlivka. She’s the only family I have left...”

“I’ll drop by to see her.”

“Tell her I’ve gone off to find grandfather...”

“What’s the matter, have you decided to die?” Hryhoriy took a step forward.

“Many a loaf of bread will perish before then!” Dolia laughed somehow fiercely. “Well, good health to you,” he whispered and slipped off. But he returned straight away, hugged Hryhoriy, pressed him close, kissed him on the cheek and disappeared again into the darkness.

With sinking heart Hryhoriy watched him go: his compatriot would pull some fine stunt on this night. He felt alarmed and a little saddened that Nychypir hadn’t opened his heart to him, hadn’t asked for advice or help. He didn’t trust him, considered Hryhoriy to be only partly on his side, or perhaps even a nobleman... He wanted so badly, so painfully to call out to Nychypir, to talk openly, sincerely with him, brother to brother, Cossack to Cossack. But was it worth meddling in the current of life, forcing one’s friendship upon others? Perhaps everything should be allowed to continue along its natural path and the gods should not interfere, as the Romans had said?

He lay on his back atop the cart, cupping his hands under his head, and listened to the night. The horses smacked their lips in the damp meadow. In the willows which swirled near the pond way past the tavern, a nightingale was cheering its small lover, and in the village on the far side of the lake musicians kept playing the holubets, the horlytsia and the metelytsia.22

Once again, he recalled the boisterous send-off for Hrytsko and Mykola. To tell the truth, it had pained him then that he himself was not venturing off to foreign lands, where there were probably so many interesting, new, fresh things to do. Perhaps it was because of this that he found himself in Lord Vyshnevsky’s mission, which had gone off to study the Tokay vineyards and winemaking. He had seen Vienna and Offen, spoken with people renowned for their scholarship. But throughout these three years he had never forgotten his own land: blood-soaked, drenched in sweat and torn apart, its steppes, ravines, cities and villages, and commoners, who strove to attain liberty and, like a chained Prometheus, were unable to do so. He had thought much about them, impatient to see them again, to breathe his native air and sleep under a Ukrainian sky, just like now – with a nightingale’s song, the whisper of a breeze redolent of blossom, ploughed fields, and grasses... One needed to have a stone for a heart to live unfettered among foreigners in a foreign land!

The musicians grew silent. Countless sheep ran out onto a boundless velvet field and only the shepherd was late: he had caroused somewhere or had fallen asleep in the clouds, which had spread out on the horizon like a black spectre...

Finally, the fields became fields, and the sheep became sheep... He recalled Okip Outcrop near Chornukhy, the meadow beside it, and their forest, which was called Sava’s. And Sava, his father, sharpened his scythe and, spitting on his rough muscular hands, began mowing his strip. The scythe swished, sighed, rang, and the juicy, lush grasses fell merrily at the edge of the strip, still not suspecting that this was their end, their demise...

A lark hovered above in the loftiness of the sky. It could not be seen, only its song was audible...

“Hey you, philosopher! Come on, wake up there!” someone shook him angrily.

Hryhoriy sat up, opened his eyes. The furious red mug of the footman seemed to float out of a mist.

“Where’s your countryman Nychypir?!” the footman grabbed him by the clothes on his chest and drew him up.

Hryhoriy grasped the impudent hand and yanked at it so hard that the nobleman’s henchman fell to the ground.

“A-ah, so that’s your game!” the footman strained through his teeth and, getting up, drew his pistol.

Hryhoriy jumped down to the far side of the cart.

Who knows how this would have ended, had the boys not come running and defended him?

“You’re all rogues!” the footman shouted. “It isn’t enough to hang you all!”

“What’s with him?” Hryhoriy asked when the footman headed back toward his master, still cursing. The colonel was already awake and, covering himself with a coat against the cold wind, watched the uproar from his coach.

“Nychypir’s run off. Took a horse, a saddle, and a sabre, and took to his heels without leaving a trace!” the freckled coachman carting the wine explained. “Made off for the lower reaches of the Dnipro River, probably to join the Zaporozhian Cossacks.”

“Went off wherever he pleased,” another muttered sullenly.

Slipping his feet into his shoes and throwing a coat over his shoulders, Skovoroda went off into the fields; he wanted to be alone for a while. It had long since grown light, but it was still grey, for the black cloud seemed to have broken its tethers and was flying, spreading its wings across half the sky. The wind was growing stronger, bending trees, tousling their branches, carpeting the pond with pinkish-white blossom.

“A fine wind,” he recalled Nychypir’s words. “If he’s off to the Sich, he’d be quite some distance away by now.”

He envied Dolia. He too wanted to fly across the steppe on a jet-black steed, to breathe in the freshness of the wind and sense freedom with his whole body.

Oh steed, my fair steed,

With long mane of gold...

The first drops fell. Lightning flashed. A ploughman standing in a field nearby crossed himself hastily, glanced at the cloud, and again pressed down on the plough grips. The oxen moved along leisurely behind a small boy who walked on ahead, his white shirt billowing in the wind, his pants pasted against his legs. He took no notice of the wind or the rain, which was beginning to come down. He looked gloomily, heavily somewhere into the distance and measured the earth step by step, sagene by sagene.

“Socrates,” Hryhoriy said quietly and stood under a linden tree, for the downpour had begun in earnest. The ramous lightning ripped through the sky more and more often, the thunderclaps became ever louder.

“Hryhoriy, hurry into the tavern!” voices called out from the road. “Hryhoriy!”

He did not answer. The meeting with his native land, the nice memories and Dolia’s escape, the ploughman, and the clatter of thunder – everything had combined, merging into a single whole, which expanded his chest and filled him with strength. As if alive, the spreading linden trembled from the lightning and the wind. Its thin spring crown was no protection against the rain. And the rain came down in a wall, obscuring the horizon, the tavern, and the villager and the little boy with their oxen. It seemed there was nothing in the world except for the linden tree, the thunder, and the lightning. The burgeoning solitude was frightening, but his soul was cheered by that philosophical unseen unity between him and the world, which he had just fathomed.

Forsooth, perceive yourself and you will perceive everything! He did not remember whose bit of wisdom this was, but he was certain of its verity. The trembling of the linden was his trepidation, the claps of thunder echoed in his soul as if in a heavenly dome, the rain imparted a ticklish foreboding of rebirth, as if he, Hryhoriy, was that tiny seed which contained the future of humanity, forests, birds, and everything else which would perish, only to be reborn in the same image...

The rain stopped suddenly. The sun flashed and the earth glistened with spangles, seething with fragrances, everything strained upward. The ploughman stood in the field waiting for the land to drain, the oxen ruminated, and the boy watched the swallows which were already scraping the sky like black lightning. Steam hung over the fields drenched in sunshine. Coming to their senses after the rain and thunder, birds began to resume their chatter. The hoopoe piped away and the oriole played its flute...

“Hryhoriy! Come along, we’re leaving!”

He heard them, and yet he didn’t. He looked, listened to nature blossoming after the rain, and his heart moved ever further away from the bustle, the haughty notions and the weal with which Vyshnevsky tried to lure him to St. Petersburg. What was all this compared to freedom, to the life he strove for, and the right to reason?!

He threw back a wet lock of hair off his forehead, hung his coat over his arm and headed toward the train of carts.