Alaska (40 page)

Few imaginative men in history were given diplomatic assignments more precisely tailored to fit their peculiar talents than this one handed to Aleksandr Baranov. As a lowly merchant with no social standing, he was to compete on equal terms with haughty naval officers from the nobility. In a dying fur market he was to earn a profit. In an ocean where he must not make any overt moves he was to extend Russian power in all directions. And burdened with a wife who was never with him, he was to civilize and educate the wild islands of the northern seas. Nodding to those who were about to send him on this impossible mission, he said with quiet dignity: 'I'll do my best.'

Next day he learned that he would have help, for at a luncheon arranged by Madame Zhdanko he met with the Bishop of Irkutsk, who said ominously: 'The tsarina is aware that the international reputation of Russia depends upon how successful we are in establishing a Christian church among the natives, and, frankly, we've not accomplished much'. If the tsarina ever learns how remiss we've been, control of Russian America will be ripped away from The Company and you'll never see a pelt again.' He glared at Baranov as

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if he were responsible for past error, and thundered: 'We expect you to mend these matters.'

'I can't do it alone,' this practical man replied. 'And I certainly can't do it with the kind of priests you've been sending to eastern Siberia.'

The bishop surrendered to these blunt truths: 'To correct my church's past deficiencies I shall be sending with you a priest of true devotion and unlimited promise, Madame Zhdanko's nephew, young fellow named Vasili Voronov.' At this, Marina rang a bell, and a servant brought into the room the young man who had already garbed himself in the black robes of a priest whose life was to be dedicated to the welfare of his church, and for the first time these two conspirators, the aspiring young cleric determined to save souls in the islands and the energetic businessman afire with a desire to enlarge Russia's power, met. Neither man, at that moment, appreciated how important in his life the other was to be, but each knew that a partnership had been established whose purpose was to Christianize, civilize, explore, make money, and extend the might of Russia deep into North America.

FATHER VASILI VORONOV, WHO LEFT IRKUTSK MONTHS before Baranov could arrange his affairs, had not been in Kodiak a full day in 1791 before he identified the man with whom he would wrestle for the spiritual leadership of Russian America. He was walking about, exploring his parish, when he saw coming toward him a tall, gangling Aleut man of untidy appearance and haunted eye who appeared to be roaming aimlessly, with no apparent affiliation with The Company, and from his disheveled looks, with not even a home. He was the kind of person Vasili would normally meet only when visiting him in some pastoral capacity, like the distribution of alms or the extension of sympathy over a death, but this old man had such a penetrating gaze, and was obviously so interested in the new priest, that Vasili felt compelled to know more about him.

Nodding austerely, a gesture that was not returned, he hurried back to Company officials and asked: 'Could that strange-looking Aleut be a shaman?' and the Russian said: 'We think so,' but Vasili uncovered no substantial proof until he queried Ensign Belov: 'Yes, he's a known shaman. Lives in a dugout among the roots of the big spruce.'

Satisfied that he was on the track of the devil, Vasili asked to see the acting manager, who listened respectfully as the young priest warned about 'the presence of Anti-Christ in our midst,' and agreed that Voronov should 'keep a sharp eye 250

on that one.' But the priest's attention was soon directed to his major task, for a Company official informed him: 'You arrive at a propitious moment. A young Aleut wants to join the church, so you have your first conversion waiting.'

'I'll see him at once,' Vasili said, and the official made a correction: 'It's a girl,' and when the young priest inquired into the matter, he discovered that this was a conversion with strings attached, for when he met with Cidaq to discuss what conversion meant, he found her strangely ambivalent. Obviously she was interested in becoming a Christian, for this would mean that she could enter the favored world of the Russians, but she lacked the emotional intensity of a real convert, and this dualism was disturbing. And even after three long discussions, with her looking soulfully into his eyes as if in search of enlightenment, he failed to discover that she was playing games with him, and had he learned that she was interested in Christianity only as a weapon with which to castigate her would-be husband, he would have been outraged.

But fortified by his innocence, Father Vasili forged ahead with his instruction, and the beauties of Christianity were so real to him that Cidaq, despite her original scorn, began to listen. She was especially impressed with his stories of how Jesus had loved little children, for this had been one of the attributes of her Aleuts which she sorely missed, and twice when the priest elaborated on this she found tears coming into her eyes, a fact which Vasili noted.

Unaware that in fencing theologically with Father Vasili, she was confronting a far more dangerous adversary than either Ensign Belov or old Father Petr, she found herself increasingly seduced by the Christian testimony on redemption, for this was completely alien to the teachings of the shaman and the mummy; for them there was good and evil, reward and punishment, and no vagueness in the dichotomies, and to learn that there was another view of life in which a human being could sin, repent, and gain redemption, with the sin being totally erased, was new and perplexing. After asking a few preliminary questions which revealed her honest interest, and which provided Vasili with an opportunity for an enthusiastic elaboration of this cardinal principle, she unwittingly asked the question that would entangle her in the real and very beautiful mysteries of Christianity: 'Do you mean that a man who has done really awful things can be redeemed?'

'Yes!' he replied with great excitement. 'It's exactly that man that Jesus came here to save.'

'Did he come to the Aleutians too?'

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'He came everywhere. He came especially to save you.'

'But this man ...' She hesitated, dropped her question, and sat for some moments staring out the window toward the spruce tree. Then she said in a low voice: 'He is a real man, this one. He did terrible things to me, and now he wants to marry me.'

Vasili jumped back as if he had been struck, for he had supposed that Cidaq was thirteen or fourteen, and in the society he had known at Irkutsk, girls that age did not marry.

'How old are you?' he asked in a state of shock, and when she said 'Sixteen,' he stared at her as if seeing her for the first time.

But her last statement had contained so many surprising revelations that he had to sort them out. 'You're sixteen?' Yes. 'And a man wants to marry you?' Yes. 'And he's been a terrible man?' Yes. 'What did he do to people?'

In a low, controlled voice she said: 'He did them to me,' and Vasili gasped, for up to this moment he had seen her as a child of some maturity who was perplexed by the arrival in her primitive community of the advanced concepts of Christianity; to discover that she was of marriageable age and bewildered by problems relating to that was confusing. Had he known that she was grappling in her own unsophisticated way with the most profound moral and philosophical problems nothing less than the nature of good and evil he would have been astounded. Keeping the discussion on the only level he comprehended, he asked: 'What could he have done to you?' and his continuing innocence made him so attractive to Cidaq, that in her sympathy for him she realized that she was already much older and better informed than he.

'He was ugly' was all she thought him capable of understanding at this time, but Vasili pressed on, unaware that he was about to detonate a bomb that would shatter him far more gravely than it would her: 'In what way did he harm you? Did he steal?

Did he lie?'

A half-smile sneaked across her face as she stared into the eyes of this earnest young man who was trying to bring her into his religion, and she recognized his goodness of spirit and his desire to help, but she felt it was time he understood aspects of life that apparently he did not know. In quiet, unemotional words she told him of the depopulation of Lapak and the intended death of the women remaining there, and by the daze that came over his face she saw that he could not believe his people capable of such brutality, and for a while she lost him as he contemplated Russia.

But when she resumed her narrative she brought him back 252

with a force that sickened: 'So I was sold to this man on the Tsar Ivan, and he kept me in the hold of the ship, without much food, and when he was through with me he passed me along to his friends and there was no day or night.' Now Vasili closed his eyes and tried to close his ears, but she continued with her account of her life in Kodiak: 'So this evil man was shipped off to the Seal Islands and I was free of him, but others like him caught me here in Three Saints, and I might have been killed, but the shaman brought help and we killed the worst of the men who abused me.'

Once more the details cascaded so rapidly that Vasili could not absorb them: 'What do you mean by abused and she replied: 'Everything.'

'When you say killed, you don't mean you murdered someone!'

'Not exactly.' He sighed, then gasped anew when she added: 'The shaman fetched five Aleuts with clubs and they beat the man to death and we hid his body under rocks.'

He leaned back, clasped his hands, and stared at this child, and when the physical horror at her account had passed, the psychological shock remained: 'Twice you said that you went to the shaman. You mean that strange old man who lives among the tree roots?'

'He's the keeper of our spirits,' Cidaq said. 'He and the spirits saved my life.'

This was too much: 'Cidaq, his spirits do not control the world. The Lord God does, and until you and your people acknowledge this, you cannot be saved.'

'But Lunasaq saved me, and he was able to do it only because the mummy warned us that the men were coming to kill us.'

'The mummy?'

'Yes. She lives in a sealskin sack and is very old. Thousands of years, she said.'

'Said?' he asked incredulously, and she replied: 'Yes, she talks to us about many things.'

'Who are us'

'Lunasaq and me.'

'It's a deception, child. Don't you know that wizards can throw their voices? Make anything talk, even old mummies? The Lord has brought me here to end the reign of wizards and shamans, to bring you into the salvation of Jesus Christ.' He stopped, resumed his position near her, and stared once more into her dark eyes: 'They tell me you wish to join His regiments.' The metaphor missed her, and she asked: 'What?'

and he translated: 'They said you wanted to become a Christian.'

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'I do.'

'Why?'

'Because they said I couldn't marry Rudenko, that's the evil man I told you about, unless I did.'

Again the statements were incomprehensible, but patient questioning elicited the truth: 'You're converting only to get married?' Yes. 'Why would you marry a man who had treated you this way?' and because she was an honest young woman, devoid of duplicity when she was not playing games, she told him: 'I discussed this with the shaman and the ancient one, and they approved when I told them that I would fool you Russians and make believe that I was becoming a Christian so that I could marry Rudenko.'

Vasili was completely lost, unable to believe that she could have devised such a strategy, and confused as to why: 'But what did you hope to gain by such trickery?'

Again she had to be honest: 'When that evil man's heart was joyed with the thought of escaping the Seal Islands, I wanted to look at him and all the Russians and say in a loud voice: ”It was all a sham. I did it to torment you. I will never marry you. Now back to the seals . . . for the rest of your life.”'

In that ugly moment of complete revelation, Vasili no longer saw her as a delightful, innocent child of thirteen. He heard her low voice as a wanton cry from some ancient past when horrible spirits roamed the earth and devastated souls. He was shattered to learn that such hardness of heart could exist in a young girl like Cidaq, and he felt his own secure world trembling.

Of the horrors she had endured in the hold of the Tsar Ivan he had no conception, and the slaying' which had rescued her from a continuation ashore he was able to dismiss as one of those fractures of the peace to be expected among sailors, but her proposed use of Christianity to exact revenge was abhorrent, and the discovery that her shaman had encouraged her in this perversion strengthened his resolve to eliminate shamanism from Kodiak. From here on, it would be a battle to the death.

But first he must attend to the spiritual needs of this child, and the purity of his own soul, which had been nourished and kept untarnished by the simple country faith of his father and mother, enabled him to regard Cidaq for what she was: half child, half-woman, brave, honest and surprisingly uncontaminated by what had happened to her. She was, like him, a pure spirit, but unlike him, she was in mortal danger because of her traffic with a shaman.

Putting aside other tasks, he directed his considerable spir-254

itual energy to the salvation of her soul, and with extended prayer, and exhortation, and the telling of noble Bible stories, he showed her the ideal nature of Christianity, and having discovered that she was moved by Christ's relation to children, he stressed that aspect, and now, having learned that she had been forced into sin, he emphasized especially the theory of redemption. Christ was no longer one who could redeem the hypothetical sinner Rudenko; He could now redeem Cidaq.

After five unbroken days of this incessant pressure, Cidaq said, with no conviction but only to please the young priest: 'I feel called to Jesus Christ,' and he interpreted this as a true conversion, shouting to the members of his little world: 'Cidaq is saved!' He told the Company managers, the sailors, the uncomprehending Aleuts that the child Cidaq was saved, at which the trader who had escaped murder at her hands growled: 'That one's no child!'