The Exile

2. Arrival in Orenburg-3

In the meantime, the two suspicious characters squatting at the oven had stealthily moved up closer and, pretending to be looking for something in their tattered greatcoats, overtly eavesdropped on their new neighbor and the lanky bright-haired official. Shevchenko noticed them and chose his words with extraordinary caution, trying to speak quietly and vaguely.

Lazarevsky, however, did not see anything and was sud­denly carried away.

“But how did they dare? Who, and why?” he almost cried out, throwing up his arms.

Shevchenko winced at such a display of emotion, and replied with deliberate clarity, sternly and dryly:

“By the supreme command of His Imperial Highness I, being of strong physical constitution, have been sentenced to military service as a soldier.”

“Where are you being sent to serve?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been assigned to the Fifth Line Bat­talion and will be shortly sent to my place of service,” Shevchenko repeated, in an even voice, what he had been told by the commandant that morning.

“1 wish they’d let you stay here,” Lazarevsky said with a sigh. “Life is easier in a town anyway. I’ll intercede for you and achieve my purpose. We have good, honest people here,” he said, burning with a desire to act immediately. “You tell me what you wish and what I can do for you, and I, for my part…”

“Thank you, but I do not need any help,” Shevchenko said, shaking his head. “I will help myself, and earn some­thing for my livelihood. Even today the warden of the deportation prison asked me to teach his children. I’ll man­age somehow…”

Lazarevsky hung his head in confusion and embarrass­ment.

“And still… I am so inextricably indebted to you for all the beautiful things I have thought, reading your Kobzar! I see the common people and even the Kirghiz absolutely differently now. You yourself do not know what light and truth emanates from every one of your words!”

Emotion took his breath away, and his lips quivered.

“All right,” Shevchenko said softly. “If I need anything, 1 will let you know, and you will help me.”

“Yes, yes! Certainly!”

Lazarevsky clasped Shevchenko’s hand and pressed it with both of his.

“Do not lose courage. It’s just a temporary affair! Every­thing will pass! It cannot but pass. So hold out!”

Shevchenko looked round. The two suspicious characters in tattered greatcoats had come still closer and eavesdropped openly. Somehow he had to warn this trusting and exalted young man. Recalling nothing better than a phrase he had frequently heard in the aristocratic homes when the nobles warned one another not to speak without reserve in the presence of the servants, he said:

“Prenez garde: les gens!”

Shevchenko got up, letting Lazarevsky understand that it was time to terminate the conversation. Lazarevsky turned red in the face and jumped to his feet.

“Yes, yes. You are quite right, Taras…”

“…Grigorievich,” the poet prompted, seeing off his new friend; and this time he shook his hand in a warm and strong manner.

Lazarevsky rushed out of the fortress as though he took wing, passionately determined to plead for Shevchenko, regardless of whether the poet wanted it or not. Without knocking on the door, he flew into the office of the man­ager of the border commission, General Ladizhensky, which he usually entered only on official business and timidly at that.

“Your Excellency!” he cried out from the threshold. “Shevchenko has been brought here. Our famous Kobzar! I saw him and spoke to him. What misfortune! We must help him somehow!”

The general looked up in surprise, regarded the young man attentively, tiny wrinkles fanned out from the corners of his usually stern, steel-cold eyes; a kindly smile flut­tered and disappeared under his gray mustache. He under­stood that passionate and sincere impulse of the soul, but it had to be dampened somehow lest the cruel blow rebound on that bright-haired head. So lending his voice a ring of stern officialdom, the general said:

“First of all, young man, you forgot to greet me on entering, and secondly, Shevchenko most probably deserved such a bitter fate. Besides, such things have to be approached with particular care and thought before voicing one’s sym­pathy for the convict, the more so before resenting the verdict of a court of law. And generally,” he raised his voice, “I am utterly surprised that you approach me with such a request. The office I head is unrelated whatsoever to the Third Department of the Office of His Imperial Highness, which considers such matters, nor to the war ministry, under whose authority Shevchenko finds himself right now. So from all points of view I have no possibility or right to interfere in the fate of your protégé.”

Lazarevsky was taken aback, his face turned red, he muttered something incoherently, his cap slipped from his fingers, and he darted out of the office. The general gave a sigh and shook his head. “That’s how such effusive young men destroy themselves. He could get into an ugly mess now. But what a fresh and unspoiled nature he still has! He is on active duty for the third year now, but he is still as fervent as a student.”

The general got up from behind his desk, picked up the cap, shook his head again, and rang a bell.

“Catch up with Mr. Lazarevsky and give him his cap,” he ordered the courier.

Sad and oppressed, Lazarevsky returned to his office where he, together with Levitsky and Galevinsky, started to think how they might help Shevchenko. After some lengthy arguments they came to a unanimous decision to appeal to Colonel Matveiev, the official who was respon­sible for special missions in the office of the Orenburg mili­tary governor and who was considered omnipotent in Oren­burg.

Matveiev came from the Ural Cossacks and in his heart condemned Czar Nicholas’ regime which had considerably curtailed the old traditional privileges of the Yayïk Cossacks. A sincere and straightforward person, Matveiev hated to give ungrounded promises and dispense perfunctory conso­lation. After hearing out Lazarevsky, he was obviously moved and even excited. Lazarevsky pleaded that Shevchenko be left in Orenburg, where there were humane and educated people, good doctors, a library, and a kind of cultural life. The colonel did not promise anything, but the young man left his office inspired with hope and confi­dent that their request would at least not be forgotten.

But when Matveiev had looked through Shevchenko’s papers the next day, it turned out that the order on his assignment to the Fifth Battalion, billeted partly in Orsk, partly in the neighboring forts, had already been signed, while a copy of the order had been sent to the war ministry in St. Petersburg by special messenger.

Such hurry surprised Matveiev very much. He even had a horseman sent after the messenger, but the courier Widler had left Orenburg that very same morning and taken the messenger along in his tarantass. Matveiev’s man, nearly riding his horse to death, turned back from the first post station, without having carried out the order.