Alaska (44 page)

A vigorous earthquake eighteen miles below the surface of the Pacific Ocean caused a massive submarine cliff three miles below the surface to collapse. The crumbling cliff spewed downward nearly a cubic mile of mud and rock, and this dislocation created a monstrous tsunami which sped eastward as a gigantic lateral surge of water moving deep within the ocean, never creating a visible wave of more than two feet at the surface but rushing with fearsome power toward Kodiak at a speed of four hundred and sixty miles an hour.

When it reached the mouth of Three Saints Bay it did not come as one engulfing tidal wave; its forerunners entered quietly, but the following waves kept coming and coming, and their speed was so great and the pressure so persistent that the water rose rather quietly ten feet, then twenty, and finally fifty-seven. For nine dreadful minutes it hung there,

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after which it rushed out of the bay with such gurgling force that it sucked all things along with it.

Father Vasili, scrambling over the rocks to save the precious icons of his newly domed church, had reached only a small hill when he saw a sight so infuriating that it made him question the justice of the God he served. The turbulent waters were not touching the lone spruce which had served as the shaman's temple, but they were tearing the Christian church from its foundations, tumbling it this way and that until it smashed to splinters on a cluster of rocks, The loss of life at Three Saints, pinched in as it was along the bay, would have been tremendous had not young Kyril Zhdanko responded to the first sign of the incoming surge: 'Terrible danger! I saw this once on Lapak!' and he released the prisoner Yermak Rudenko to help rush people to higher ground. The powerful convict responded by dragging first the dazed Father Vasili and then Chief Manager Baranov up the side of a steep hill. Perching them like children on a rock that looked as if it might remain above the surging waters, he had gone back down the hill a third time to rescue others when a towering wave swept in, turned all things upside down, and sucked him to his death.

THE GREAT TIDAL WAVE OF 1792 SOLVED PROBLEMS FOR

one Russian at Three Saints but raised perplexing difficulties for another. Chief Manager Baranov had decided during his first hours at this spot that the location had not been well chosen and that an anchorage to the north would be more advantageous.

The site he chose seven months before the wave demonstrated his mind-set, for spiritually and emotionally Three Saints had looked backward toward Russia and its affiliations with the past, while the town of Kodiak would look eastward toward the future and the looming challenges of North America. Three Saints carried an umbilical cord to old Siberia, Kodiak to new Alaska.

As he and Zhdanko labored over their plans for the new capital, he asked Kyril: 'Are you the natural son of Madame Zhdanko, of Petropavlovsk?'

'Adopted.'

'Was your father the trader they tell about?'

'My birth father must have been some Russian serving on Lapak Island. My true father, Zhdanko.'

'What happened to him?'

'He was eighty-three. We came home from trading furs. Walked from Yakutsk to Okhotsk 'I've done that.'

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'He was tired, almost worn out, that I could see. When we reached Petropavlovsk, I said: ”Father, let's rest,” but he had always longed to see Kodiak. Wanted to control the peltries here. So we set forth when he was eighty-five.'

'What happened?'

'On the way he died. We bound him with rocks from the ballast and pitched him into the Bering Sea. Not far from the volcano that guards Lapak Island. As a boy I used to sit with him and watch its glow in the twilight.'

Baranov stopped in his planning, knocked on wood, and said fervently: 'By the grace of God, I'd like to see eighty-five. The building you and I could do!'

The second man whose life was sharply modified by the tidal wave was Father Vasili, for on the mournful day when the sixteen victims of the flood were buried, he mumbled when required to pray for the departed soul of Yermak Rudenko, for he could not in decency, when so many present knew the truth, embroider that brutal man's life with platitudes. And even had he been able to exalt charity over reality, he would have been deterred when he looked across the grave to where Sofia Kuchovskaya stood impassively staring at the rumpled soil which would cover her accursed husband.

In that accidental glance the young priest saw in vivid flashes the history of this valiant girl: her abandonment on Lapak, her hideous escape in the hold of a ship, the beatings and abuses, her fealty to an old religion, her embracing of the new.

She was, he thought, a young woman of crystal character who had allowed nothing to sully her and who had represented the best of an old society that was dying to make way for a new. He saw her firm jaw, the dark knowing eyes, the controlled little body, and finally, as the grave was closed, the irrepressible smile, not in triumph over evil but in pleasure at the ending of an episode. He could almost hear her sigh as she looked about as if to ask: 'Now what?'

On the day after the funeral Baranov summoned Father Vasili to the ruins of his office to hand him a surprising commission: 'I consider myself responsible for every human being in these islands, Russian, Creole, Aleut, Koniag, makes no difference to me.'

'I feel the same way, Chief Manager.'

'But I intend doing something about it. How many children did the tidal wave leave without parents?'

'Fourteen, fifteen at least.'

'Start an orphanage for them. This afternoon.'

'But I have no funds. The bishop promised . . .'

'With you, Vasili, the bishop promises and never delivers.

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With me, it's The Company. ”You'll have everything you need, Baranov,”but the money never arrives.'

'Then how can I . . . ?'

'I will pay. The honor of Russia demands it, and if the gentlemen who run The Company are not considerate of Russia's honor, the merchant who runs Kodiak is.' And forthwith he provided the money for the orphanage out of his own meager salary.

'But who's to run it?' he asked the priest, and after some reflection, Vasili remembered how Sofia, during her conversion, had been so deeply moved by his tales of Christ's care for children, and he said: 'Sofia Rudenko would be ideal.'

'She's not more than fifteen, just a child, really.'

'She's seventeen.'

'I can't believe it,' but when she was sent for, and Baranov asked bluntly: 'Child, how old are you?' she said: 'Seventeen,' and he asked: 'Do you think you could run an orphanage?' and she asked: 'What's that?' When it was explained, she said: 'Father Vasili told me that Jesus said ”Suffer little children to come unto me.”Children are my joy,' and the Kodiak orphanage was established with Baranov's funds and Sofia's love.

Baranov, determined to see anything he launched succeed, told Vasili: 'Get her started properly,' and the young priest maintained supervision, teaching her the rudiments of her new job and instructing the orphans in their new religion. As he worked close to Sofia he was encouraged by the enthusiastic manner in which she became mother to the infants, older sister to the girls and boys. She was so influential with the youngsters that an older Aleut told Baranov: 'If she was a man, she'd be our new shaman,' but Sofia knew this was not accurate, for a real-life shaman had slipped into the remnants of Three Saints in an effort to keep the Aleuts away from Christianity, but his magic now seemed shabby, and compared with the spiritual miracles that Sofia at her orphanage and Father Vasili in his improvised church were accomplishing, he achieved nothing and left.

As Sofia worked at the orphanage, Vasili had repeated opportunities to observe how she was maturing as she entered her new life, and in multiple ways he was drawn to her. She was serious, yet always ready to burst into her warm smile. She was industrious, but available for rough-and-tumble play with her children, and above all, she made people of whatever age or racial background happy in her presence. And in the way that happens with certain fortunate women, as she approached her twenties she grew more lovely, more complete. A full inch taller now, her face less rounded, the whalebone 275

labret slightly less conspicuous, she was what one visiting sea captain called: 'That adorable lass,' and one evening as Father Vasili left the lively warmth of the orphanage and walked under the stars to the bleak building serving as his church, he looked up at the shaman's spruce and cried aloud: 'I was never meant to be a black. I've been in love with her since the day I stepped on this island.'

He interpreted it properly as an inevitable development and in no manner as shocking as it would have been had he served in the Roman Catholic clergy, where celibacy was an act of faith and dedication; in the Orthodox branch, as he had observed in the case of his own father, far more than half the priests were whites who had married with the encouragement of their bishops, who, even though they were black and celibate, preached: 'Marriage is the normal condition of man.' To switch from black to white involved a change only in direction, not faith.

But even such a limited switch was not easy to accomplish, so on the day that Three Saints shut down, with all Company work moving to Kodiak, Vasili went to talk with Baranov, who was packing the one small box which held the few possessions he had been able to accumulate in the colony. 'Chief Manager, I seek a boon.'

'Granted. No manager ever had a better clergyman.' 'I want you to write to my bishop in Irkutsk.' 'He won't give you a kopeck. You'll have to make do.' 'I want him to release me from my vows.' 'My God! Are you leaving the church? Your parents . . .'

'No! No! I want to cease being a black. I seek to be a white.' Baranov sat heavily upon his box and stared at the young cleric, and after a very long silence, he said in a voice so low that Vasili could scarcely hear: 'I've been watching you, Vasili, and I know your problem. I know because I, too, nave fallen in love with an island woman. And I shall take her as my wife.'

Shocked by such a confession, the young man became once more a monitory priest: 'Aleksandr Andreevich, that's a terrible thing to say. You have a wife in Russia.'

'True, and she says she may join me one of these days, but she's been saying that for twenty-three years.'

'Aleksandr Andreevich, if you commit bigamy, I shall have to report you to St. Petersburg.'

'I'm not going to marry her, Father Vasili, just take her for my wife till my real wife comes.' Then he added in a low voice: 'Which will be never, and I cannot live alone.'

Vasili, who had come to consult about his problem, found himself engulfed in Baranov's: 'She's a wonderful woman,

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Vasili. Speaks Russian, has dutiful parents, is neat in the house and can sew. She promises she'll take the Russian name Anna and attend our church regularly.' Looking up from his box, his round face beaming, he asked: 'Have I your blessing?'

There was no way this young priest could sanction such cavalier treatment of the marriage vow, but on the other hand, to untangle his own affairs he had to have Baranov's letter to the bishop, so he temporized: 'Will you write to my bishop?' and by this digression he let it be known that he would not publicly castigate Baranov if the latter took a common-law wife: 'After all, Chief Manager, I'm not leaving the church.

I just want to switch from black to white.'

'In order to marry Sofia?'

'Yes.'

Til write. If I was younger, I'd take her myself.' But then he broke into such irreverent laughter that Vasili blushed, thinking that Baranov was making fun of him. He was, but not in the way Vasili feared. 'Remember what you said when I wanted Sofia's marriage to Rudenko annulled?' And now he gave a good imitation of the serious young priest:'

”A vow is a solemn engagement undertaken in the sight of the Lord. There is no way I could annul it.”Well, my young friend, you're certainly eager to annul your own vows.'

Vasili blushed again, so deeply that Baranov snapped his fingers at having made a discovery: 'You haven't asked her yet, have you?' and Vasili had to confess that he had not. 'Come along!' the energetic manager cried. 'We do it now.'

And on his stout little legs he ran to the orphanage, where he summoned its startled mistress. Facing her, with Vasili's hand in his, he said: 'Since I think of myself as your father, I must inform you that this young fellow has asked for your hand in marriage.' Sofia did not blush, or at least if she did, it was not visible through her golden skin, but she did bow, keeping her head down until she heard her priest saying softly: 'I labored to save your soul, Sofia, but equally to save you. Will you marry me?'

She now knew enough to understand the meaning of his black robes, which she reached out to take between her fingers: 'What of this?' and he said: 'I have thrown it off as you threw off your sealskin dress when you became a Christian,' and, with a smile that swept her face, she said: 'I would be proud.'

Since two or three years sometimes elapsed between the arrival and departure of a ship at Kodiak, there could be no quick response to Vasili's application to change from black to white, and even if permission had been obtained, it might 277

be another three years before a priest arrived to conduct a wedding, so Baranov made a practical proposal: 'If I'm going to live with Anna as my wife, you should do the same with Sofia . . . that is, until a priest can come to straighten things out.'

'I couldn't do that.' But then Baranov cited the ruling theology of the distant Aleutians: The tsarina's in St. Petersburg, and God's high in the heavens, but we're here on Kodiak, so let's do what's necessary.”

In this bizarre manner the two leaders of Russian America, old manager, young priest, took their island wives. Cidaq Sofia Kuchovskaya Rudenko Voronova would become the mother of that later Voronov who would illuminate Russian America and bring into fruition Baranov's dreams. The gifted Anna Baranova would serve as the chief manager's mistress for years and give birth to two excellent children, one of whom would become the wife of a later Russian governor. Upon word of the death of the real Madame Baranova, never seen in Siberia or the islands, Anna would become Baranov's legal wife, whom he presented to all as 'the daughter of the former king of Kinai.' Visitors found no difficulty in accepting this legend, because she was indeed queenly.