Alaska by James A. Michener
They were spotted from a distance as they came into the island-studded sound, and as they glided resolutely through the myriad islands, word flashed through the capital that Tlingits in war dress were approaching the hill, and everyone who could rushed down to the waterfront, where with great dignity the two warriors were approaching the landing. When they were close enough for their identity to be established, a wild cry surged through the settlement: 'Kot-le-an is back! Here comes Raven-heart!'
And Baranov himself came down the eighty steps that separated his house from the shore, ignoring those who fell back to whisper about him and going directly to where the canoe was being pulled ashore.
As soon as Raven-heart stepped on dry land he halted, raised his right hand, and launched into a ten-minute oration delivered in a deep, thundering voice. The highlights of his message were memorable:
'Chief Warrior Baranov, builder of forts, burner of forts, your two enemies who destroyed your fort to the north, who lost our fort down here, greet you. In all our battles, you were toion. You fought well. You behaved with generosity when you won. You have given our people who live beyond the palisade a good life. Manager Baranov, we salute you.'
With, this, the two warriors, still big and powerful, moved forward to embrace their old enemy, and after warmly welcoming them, Baranov suggested: 'Let us climb the hill together,' and there on the porch of his hilltop house these three good men who were losing so much surveyed the noble theater in which they had played out their tragedy. 'Up there's the fort we drove you out of,' said Raven-heart, explaining how he had scouted the defenses while smoking salmon. 'And down there's the fort you Tlingits thought could not be taken,' Baranov said, and Kot-le-an surprised them both by saying: 'My heart broke when your cannon shattered our totem, because then I knew we had lost.'
They shared the saddest reversals an older man can know, the loss of dreams, and that evening dusk fell with a heavy sadness, but it was relieved somewhat when Baranov left them for a moment to fetch a most surprising gift.
Retiring to his room, he tied on his wig as ceremony required, placed about his neck the medal proclaiming his nobility, and lifted from a wooden trunk a bulky article in which he-took considerable pride. It was the wood-and-leather suit of armor which he had worn when marching against the Tlingit fort. Holding it forth in both arms, he approached Kot-le-an and said: 'Bold Chieftain,' but then his voice broke. For some moments he stood in the growing dark, striving to control his tears, and as his shoulders trembled his wig bobbed up and down, so that he was about as ridiculous as any make-believe commodore could be. Finally he controlled himself, but he dared not trust his voice, so in silence and with a kind of love for these men who had proved so valiant he handed them his armor, even though he had good reason to believe that at some future date, after he was gone, they would come storming back to try once more to destroy the Russians.
IN DISGRACE AND THREATENED WITH PRISON WHEN HE reached St. Petersburg except that Father Vasili Voronov had volunteered to travel at his own expense to the capital to defend his friend from the insane charges lodged against him Baranov left Sitka Sound a prisoner aboard a Russian warship, which wandered across the Pacific to Hawaii, whose wondrous islands he had almost brought into the Russian Empire, and then down to the unlikely port of Batavia in Java. Here, in one of the hottest, most feverish outposts of the Pacific, he was kept penned up aboard ship, until his frail body collapsed in final surrender.
He died on 16 April 1819 near the strait which separates Java from Sumatra, and almost immediately the sailors weighted him with iron, tied his beloved medal about his neck, and tossed him into the ocean.
Three men of noble bearing had wrestled with the Pacific Ocean and all had perished in their attempt. In 1741, Vitus Bering died of scurvy on a forlorn island in the sea named after him. In 1779, James Cook was slain on a remote beach in Hawaii. And in 1819, Aleksandr Baranov died of exhaustion and fever near Sunda Strait. They had loved the great ocean, had conquered it in part, had been destroyed by it, and had been consigned in death to the vast, consoling sea.
Baranov was not a great man and sometimes, as in his enslavement of the Aleuts, not even a good man. But he was a man of honor, and in the Alaska he molded his memory would always be revered.
IN 1829, TEN YEARS AFTER THE DEATH OF BARANOV, THE old warship Muscovy put in to Sitka Sound, bringing as passenger from St. Petersburg a bright-eyed young university graduate who was returning to his home island after a course of study in which he had distinguished himself. This was in the time when his father's friend, Kyril Zhdanko, served as the interim chief administrator, a notable appointment in that he was the first Creole to occupy that powerful position. The returning young man was Arkady Voronov, himself a Creole as the son of the Russian priest and the Aleut convert Sofia Kuchovskaya. Twenty-eight years old, he came with an appointment as assistant manager of trade affairs and with a passionate attachment to a young woman he had met during a visit to Moscow. So, after greeting his parents with the affection that had always marked his relationship to them, he paid his respects to Chief Administrator Zhdanko and then repaired to his room in the priest's quarters next to St. Michael's Cathedral, the little wooden church with the big onion dome and the pretentious name.
There, as soon as his bags were stowed, he wrote to his beloved back in Moscow:
My darling Praskovia, The voyage was simpler than the others had predicted. Five easy months, with a halt at the Cape and another in Hawaii, where I had expected to find many friends from Baranov's day. Alas, they are now our enemies because of errors made by others, and I'm afraid we've lost our chance to make those islands part of our empire.
Sitka Sound is as beautiful as I remembered it, and I long for the day when you stand here beside me enjoying its majesty of islands and mountains and lovely volcano.
Please, please convince your parents that it is safe to make the trip, which really isn't so long, and then to live here in what's becoming a major city.
I have given your silhouette in its ivory frame the place of honor on my table, the first item to be unpacked, and I am now hastening to the offices of The Company to acquire data on New Archangel so that your parents can be reassured that it is a real city and not merely an outpost in the wilderness. I shall resume this letter before I go to bed.
When young Voronov left the cathedral and climbed the hill to the castle, where Zhdanko waited to instruct him as to his duties, he saw all about him the signs of a bustling town, not a city as he had described it to Praskovia, but a prosperous settlement which no longer depended solely on furs for its wealth. In one direction he saw the tall windmill that operated a grist mill; in another, the smoking fires where fat from various sea animals was being rendered for soap. There was a walk for spinning rope, a smithy for forging varieties of gear, a boilermaker who made his own rivets, a foundry for casting bronze, and all sorts of carpenters, sailmakers and glaziers.
What surprised him was one small shop for making and mending watches, and another for the repair of compasses and other nautical instruments. And for the general population, there was one tailor, three dressmakers, two doctors and three priests. There was also a school, a hospital, a place for public dining, an orphanage run by his mother, a library.
Stopping at a corner where the main road intersected with one perpendicular to the bay, he asked a man carrying boards: 'Is this place always so busy?' and the man replied: 'You ought to see it when an American ship puts in to trade.'
From Zhdanko himself he learned the facts about his new post: 'I'm proud to have at my right hand the son of two people who have been so important to me. Your father and mother, Arkady, are special, and I hope you remember that. But you asked for the facts. Total population inside the palisade, nine hundred and eighty-three. That's three hundred and thirty-two Russians with the right to return to the homeland, and a hundred and thirty-six of their wives and children. Then we have a hundred and thirty-five Creoles who do not have the right of r
'And do the Tlingits still live outside the palisade?' Arkady asked, and Zhdanko replied grimly: 'They better.' Then he summarized the Russian experience with this brave, intractable people: 'The Tlingits are different. You never pacify a group of Tlingits. They love their land and they're always ready to fight for it.'
'So you think the walls are still necessary?'
'Positively. We never know when those people out there are going to try once more to drive us off this island. Observe our cannon up there,' and when Arkady looked up at the hill he saw that three of its guns were aimed down at the bay to fend off any ships which might intrude unexpectedly, but nine were directed at the Tlingit village outside the walls.
What reassured him even more than the guns was the energy with which Russians, Creoles and Aleuts attacked the problems of daily living.
A few educated Creoles like himself or trusted ones like Zhdanko supervised Company affairs, and Russian clerical types like Mr. Malakov kept accounts, but most were out in the sun conducting the businesses that one would expect to find in a thriving seaport. The average Creole did manual labor and most Aleuts went out regularly in their kayaks.
He did not find time to finish his letter that first evening, for Chief Administrator Zhdanko and his Creole wife invited him to the hill, where sixteen Russian men, each convinced that he could govern the colony better than the Creole, and their wives had joined to welcome young Voronov to his new post, and he was awed by the handsome new building which had replaced the house he had sometimes visited when Baranov occupied it. The place was now quite grand, with several stories, imported furniture and an even better view of Sitka Sound because obstructing trees had been removed. 'Everyone calls it Baranov's Castle,' Zhdanko explained, 'because we feel that his spirit still resides here.'
It was a gala evening, with a husband-and-wife team playing four-hand music on the two pianos and a set of surprisingly good baritone solos by Chief Clerk Malakov.
He sang first a selection of arias from Mozart, then a rousing medley of Russian folksongs in which the guests joined, and finally, a most moving rendition of 'Stenka Razin' whose grand, flowing notes reminded his listeners of distant Russia.
Next night, after a day of inspecting the palisade and seeing the intricate gateway through which a limited number of Tlingits were allowed entry to trade, Arkady did find time to complete his letter:
I have now seen New Archangel inside and out, and I beg you, Praskovia, to gain permission from your parents to sail here on the next ship, for this is a complete little city.
We have a good hospital, doctors trained in Moscow, and even a man who fixes teeth.
The houses are made of wood it's true, but each year the city grows, and both the chief administrator and I expect it to have two thousand citizens before very long.
Of course, it has that now if you count the Tlingits who live outside the walls.
And I must tell you one thing more, which I confide with great pride. My father and mother occupy a place of considerable honor in this part of Russia. He is known far and wide, through all the islands, for his piety, and he is loved by the natives because he has taken the trouble to learn their language and help them in their way of life before he ever importunes them to become Christians. If there is a saint walking this earth today, it is my father. Indeed, they call him a living saint.
And Mother is his equal. She is, as I told your parents most explicitly, an Aleut born, but she is now, I do believe, a better Christian than my father. Goodness radiates from her face and sanctity from her soul.
I was, as you may remember, awed by the notable traditions of your Kostilevsky family and said many times that you had a right to be proud of your heritage, but I feel the same about my father and mother, for they are establishing the new line of nobility for Russian America.
One terribly important fact, Praskovia. When you leave Moscow to come here, you must not think of yourself as going into exile at the ends of the earth. People leave here all the time to return to the mainland. Irkutsk is a splendid city where my family served in both government and the church. Hawaii is gorgeous with its wealth of flowers. And some travelers go back to Europe by way of America, which takes a long time if you round the Horn but which is, I am told, rewarding.
And if, as Baranov taught Zhdanko to do, we establish significant holdings on the North American continent, you and I could well be important factors in the new Russia.
My heart beats with excitement at the possibility.
All my love, Arkady Through a bizarre twist, it was this letter which precipitated the final wrenching crisis in the Voronov family, because when Praskovia's parents received it, they were so struck by that forceful paragraph in which Arkady spoke of his father's accomplishments in Kodiak and Sitka that Kostilevsky senior showed the passage to church authorities in Moscow, who copied the paragraph, adding the one about Father Vasili's wife, Sofia, for circulation among the authorities in St. Petersburg. There Lieutenant Captain Vladimir Ermelov was asked his opinion of the priest Voronov in New Archangel, and Ermelov replied enthusiastically: 'One of the finest,' and he instructed the church fathers as to who else now resident in Moscow had knowledge of the eastern lands, and all who were consulted testified that Vasili Voronov, white priest from the noteworthy family of Voronov in Irkutsk, was about as strong a churchman as the Orthodox Church had produced in a long time. In the discussion thus launched, Arkady's fortunate use of words was often repeated: 'They call him a living saint.'
Improbable as it seemed at the time and unlikely as it seems now, the leaders of the church, spurred on by Tsar Nicholas I, who sought to revive the spiritual force of Russian Orthodoxy, decided that what St. Petersburg needed was a forceful, devout man from the frontier uncontaminated by churchly politics and renowned for his sanctity.
For a host of intricate reasons they focused their attention on Father Vasili Voronov, wonder-worker in the islands, and the more they investigated his credentials the more satisfied they were that he was the solution to their problems. But no sooner had they announced their decision to the tsar, who applauded it, than a knotty problem arose.
'It's understood, of course,' the present metropolitan pointed out, 'if Father Vasili accepts our invitation to come to St. Petersburg as my successor, he will have to surrender his white robes and transfer to black.'
'No difficulty, Holiness. You'll remember that when he took orders in Irkutsk, he did so as a black.'
'Why was it he changed? To marry?'
'Yes, when he had assumed his first office, on that big island they call Kodiak...'
'Now I remember. You told me about this last week, didn't you?'
'On a busy day, Holiness. He fell in love with an Aleut woman, you'll remember.'
'Yes.' He reflected on this for some moments, striving to recall his own youth and to imagine distant frontiers about which he knew nothing: 'Aren't Aleuts ... well, they're pagan, aren't they?'
'This woman was, but she's proved to be a most unusual type. More Christian than the Christians, they say. Charity among the children.'
'That's always a reassuring sign,' he said, but then, as the longtime spiritual guardian of his church, he jabbed his thumb down on the real problem: 'If she's as saintly as you say, and her husband must renounce his white robes and take on the black, will there not be an outcry against him and us if he leaves her at her advanced age?
How old is she?'
No one knew exactly, but a priest who had visited New Archangel offered a guess: 'We know her husband is sixty-three. She's probably in her mid-fifties. I saw her several times and she seemed to be about that age.' He stopped, but before anyone else could speak, he volunteered: 'A fine-looking woman, you know. On the short
The metropolitan, wanting to keep the discussion on the main theme, asked: 'Would Voronov divorce her in order to reassume the black?' and an elderly churchman said:
'To lead Christ's church, a man might do anything.'
The metropolitan looked harshly at the man and said: 'You may not believe it, Hilarion, but there were many things I would not have done to attain these robes.' Then, to the others: 'Well, would he take the black?'
'I think so,' said a cleric who had served in Irkutsk. 'Service in the Lord's cause would be enticing. And the opportunity to accomplish good is not to be lightly bypassed, either.'
'If you mean power, say so,' the metropolitan snapped, and the cleric replied sharply:
'Very well, I do mean power.'
'Does this Voronov seek power?' the old man asked, and one of his younger helpers said firmly: 'He has neither sought nor avoided it. The man's a real saint, I assure you.'
'Goodness, goodness,' the metropolitan muttered. 'In one family on a remote island I never heard of, we have a male saint and a female saint. Remarkable.' But when others started to assure him that this was the case, he looked at his advisers and asked the most difficult question of all: 'If we lure him to St. Petersburg with our dazzling prize, will she let him go?' and the priest who had seen her at work said: 'She would understand if he were called to glory. He broke his vows to marry her. She would, I'm sure, advise him to do the same if he now seeks to marry the church.'
With that assurance, the powers in St. Petersburg reached the extraordinary decision, applauded by the tsar, to bring into the highest office of the Orthodox Church the saintly priest from the parish farthest from the capital, Father Vasili Voronov of St. Michael's Cathedral in New Archangel. But the metropolitan, eager to know that a successor had been selected but not eager to have the man appear in St. Petersburg too soon, suggested: 'Let us appoint him Bishop of Irkutsk this year and Metropolitan next year, when I shall be too old to continue in the office.' And even those energetic churchmen who wanted a new leader now had to agree that promoting Father Vasili by easy steps was the preferred route, and even though the tsar wanted a new man quickly, he too capitulated to this strategy, but to protect himself, announced publicly that early next year the grand old man of the Orthodox Church would be retiring.