Alaska (50 page)

As a builder he was indefatigable, for as soon as the last fragment of the Tlingit fort was burned, including all parts of the totem pole, he hurried his people back to start work on the hilltop, where he built himself a modest cottage from which he could survey the sound, the volcano and the surrounding mountains. During his lifetime that cottage would be rebuilt into a more imposing house of many rooms, and after his death, into a grandiose mansion three stories high and crammed with rooms of all sorts, including a theater.

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And even though he would never see or occupy it, it would always be known as Baranov's Castle, and from it Russian America would be governed.

At the foot of the hill he outlined a generous area including a large lake, and this he enclosed within a high wooden palisade; it would be the Russian town. But now a curious problem arose, for Baranov called his settlement New Archangel, while ship captains of all nations, and the Tlingits and Aleuts who shared the site, continued to call it Sitka, the name by which it would ultimately be known. So the fine town would have two names used interchangeably, but only one important rule: 'No Tlingits allowed inside the palisade.'

But even as he proclaimed that law, Baranov made plans for the day when the Indians would return to help him build a greater New Archangel, and when a huge area adjoining the palisade was cleared, he explained to the townspeople: 'That's to be kept for the Tlingits when they start to come back. They're sensible people. They'll see we need them. They'll see they can live better sharing this spot with us than hiding out in the wilderness, wherever they are now.'

That crucial decision made' Russians inside the walls, Tlingits outside 'Baranov turned his energies to the construction of a major town, and with the help of Kyril Zhdanko in a time so short it startled the workmen doing the building, he had a huge barracks for his soldiers; a school which, as in the case of the orphanage in Kodiak, he paid for out of his own meager salary; a library; a meeting hall for social affairs, with a treasured corner in which a piano imported from St. Petersburg was housed for the dances he sponsored and a stage for the one-act plays he encouraged his men and their wives to perform; plus a dozen other necessary buildings like sheds for the overhaul of ships putting in to New Archangel and shops in which their instruments of navigation and their cannon could be overhauled.

When these day-to-day essentials had been ensured, he turned to Father Vasili: ”With this safe start behind us, Father, we'll now build you a church,' and with a zeal twice what he had shown before, he plunged into the construction of St. Michael's Cathedral, which he liked to call 'our cathedral.' Converted from an abandoned ship, it was a wooden affair, taller than any of the previous buildings, and when its lower stories were well finished, Baranov himself supervised the erection of a modified onion dome, and on the day of solemn dedication, with a choir chanting in Russian, he could truthfully tell the parishioners: 'With our fine cathedral in place, New Archangel becomes Russian forever and the center of our hopes.'

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Some weeks after the dedication he received a confirmation of his dreams, which gave him profound joy, for an aide came rushing up the hill, shouting: 'Excellency! Look!'

and when he ran to the parapet surrounding his cottage, he saw a score of Indians looking tentatively toward the palisade in the hope of permission to build houses in the space Baranov had set aside for them.

If the Russians on guard were perplexed by the arrival of these former enemies, Baranov was not; he had been expecting them, and now he shouted as he hurried down the hill: 'Bring food! Those old blankets! A hammer and nails!' And with gifts spilling out of his fat arms, he went to the Tlingits, forcing the goods upon them, and when an old man who spoke Russian said: 'We come back, better here,' Baranov had to fight back the tears.

However, this moment of exaltation was soon lost as he began to experience the frustrations which would cloud the remaining years of his life, and he himself caused the unpleasantness, because the more important he made New Archangel, the more frequently the Russian government sent naval ships to support the island, and this meant inevitably that Russian naval officers would be appearing in blue-and-braid to inspect 'what the merchant Baranov was doing out there.' And as he had been warned in that famous meeting in Irkutsk so many years ago, when he was being interrogated as to his ability to manage The Company's properties, 'there's nothing on earth more insolent than a Russian naval officer.'

The one that Tsar Alexander I selected in 1810 to prowl the Pacific in the warship Muscovy

and torment local officials in Kodiak and New Archangel, especially the latter, was a prime dandy. Lieutenant Vladimir Ermelov, a brash twenty-five, was almost a caricature of the young Russian nobleman perpetually ready for a

duel if his honor was in any way impugned: tall, thin, mustachioed, hawklike in countenance, severe in deportment, he considered enlisted men, servants, most women and all merchants as not only beneath contempt but also beneath civil courtesy. Brave in battle, a fairly good naval officer, and always prepared to defend his behavior with either sword or pistol, he was a terror on any ship he commanded and a dazzling white-uniformed cynosure wherever he came ashore.

Lieutenant Ermelov, scion of a noble family that had provided Russian rulers with some of their most pigheaded and ineffective counselors, was married to the granddaughter of a real grand duke, which gave her an unchallenged patent of nobility, and when she traveled aboard ship with her husband, both she and he believed that she served as personal

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representative of the tsar. Alone, Ermelov was formidable; when supported by his arrogant wife, he was, as a junior officer told Father Vasili without being reprimanded, 'damned near insufferable.'

When Ermelov sailed out of St. Petersburg in command of the Muscovy, he had known almost nothing about Aleksandr Baranov toiling away in the farthest east of the Russian possessions, but during this long voyage, which would take him around the world, he anchored in many ports, and in conversation with Russian or English or American captains who had stopped at either Kodiak or Sitka, he began to hear strange tales about this unusual man who had stumbled by accident, it seemed, into a position of some importance in the Aleutians, 'those damned, fog-ridden fur islands, or was it Kodiak, which isn't much better,' and the more he heard, the more perplexed he was that the imperial government had placed such a man in charge of one of its increasingly important areas.

Madame Ermelova, who had been called Princess before her marriage to Vladimir and who was still authorized to use that title, was especially irritated by what she kept hearing about 'this damned fellow Baranov,' so that by the time the Muscovy

left Hawaii in 1811, they were crammed with tales about 'that crazy Russian up in New Archangel, as they're calling it now,' and the Ermelovs were pretty well fed up with the man they both considered an interloper, Ermelov for political reasons, his wife for social: 'Vladimir, I know a dozen fine young men in St. Petersburg worthy of a position as governor, and it's damned irritating to think that a clown like this Baranov has outdistanced them.' Her irritation manifested itself in her first letter home from New Archangel; it was addressed to her mother, the Princess Scherkanskaya, daughter of the grand duke and a person attuned to social niceties: Chere Maman,

We have arrived in Amerika and I can summarize our entire experience by telling you briefly what happened when we went ashore. From the sea we recognized where we were by seeing the splendid volcano which resembles so much the engravings we have on Fujeeyamma in Japan, and soon after progressing past this entry point, we saw the little mount on which our eastern capital stands. It is a promising site, and if the buildings surmounting it were of appropriate construction and ornamentation, it might in time prove to be an 310

acceptable capital, but alas, although the area consists of nothing but mountains, there is no stone for building, so what happens? The low, rambling buildings without any sign that an architect or an artist was involved in their planning consist of untempered wood poorly put together and left unpainted. You would laugh at what they call their cathedral, a gross, unplanned, ugly pile of wood topped by an amusing construction which passes for a kind of onion dome, which can be so handsome when done well, so pitiful when the various pieces don't quite match.

But this 'cathedral' is a work of art compared to what the natives proudly call their castle atop the hill. Again unpainted, unplanned, and in a very real sense still unbuilt, it is a collection of barns, no less, one added to the other in haphazard style and allowing no possibility of later improvement. A team of our finest St.

Petersburg architects could not salvage this place and I'm quite certain it will grow worse as time passes and new additions are added at random.

However, I must confess that on a clear day, and they do come occasionally but mostly it's rain, rain, rain, the country surrounding the hill can look supremely beautiful, like the best of the lake scenes we saw in Italy, for in every direction mountains of surprising height come right down to the water, forming a kind of rocky, tree covered cocoon in which New Archangel rests. And with that volcano standing guard, you have a setting worthy of a master planner.

Instead, we have Aleksandr Baranov, a miserable merchant striving ridiculously to be a gentleman, and I shall tell you only one thing about this foolish and incapable man. When Volya and I were presented to him, and we had not seen him before, he came forward, bowing low as was proper, a fat little fellow with a round little belly and a costume sewn by some provincial tailor, because no two parts fitted. When he came closer I gasped, and Volya whispered to me, almost loud enough to be heard: 'My God, is that a wig?'

It was and it wasn't. It was certainly made of hair, but from what animal I would not care to guess, for it resembled no hair that I had ever seen before and I'm quite sure it wasn't human, unless it came from the beheaded member of some savage tribe.

And obviously

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it was intended to serve as a wig, for it did rest upon his head, which I found later to be quite bald. But it was not that kind of wig which gentlemen and public officials in Europe can wear with such distinction, like Uncle Vanya's, for example. No, this was a kind of carpet, with a sickly color, no proper texture and absolutely no shape.

It was a most sorry affair.

But now comes the unbelievable part. To keep it on his head, Monsieur Baranov used two strings of the kind you see French peasant women use to keep their bonnets on while milking their cows, and these strings he brought under his chin, where they were tied in a bowknot big enough to have served as his cravat. Later, when this fat little fellow with his absurd wig stood beside my dear Volya, receiving the sorriest lot of guests in all of Russia, not a gentleman among them, the comparison was preposterous and I almost cried from shame for the dignity of Russia. There he stood in his nightcap wig, and beside him stood Volya, erect, proper and never more worthy in his white uniform with the gold epaulets Uncle Vanya gave him.

We cannot leave New Archangel too speedily for me, and if the above is not enough, I now find that this tedious Baranov has a native wife whom he preposterously calls the Princess of Kenai, wherever that is, but when I protested about this disgrace to Russian dignity, my informant reminded me that the local priest, a man named Voronov, also has a native wife. What in the world is happening to Mother Russia that she is so careless with her children?

With fondest thoughts, ever your loving daughter, Natasha

The Muscovy

remained at New Archangel for nine tedious months, and week by week Lieutenant Ermelov and his princess became more openly contemptuous of Baranov, ridiculing him before his own men as a low merchant and castigating whatever moves he made to improve his capital. 'The man's an impossible dolt,' the princess observed loudly at one party, and in his frequent reports to St. Petersburg her husband wrote disparagingly on Baranov's intelligence, managerial ability and understanding of Russia's position in the world. More seriously, in three different letters Ermelov initiated those ugly questions concerning Baranov's use of government funds which would haunt him in subsequent years:

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When one considers the funds which our government has had to pour into New Archangel and then looks at the little which has been accomplished, one has to question whether this grubbing little merchant has not sequestered a fair share of them for his own selfish purposes.

These attacks on himself Baranov could accept, since he had been forewarned to expect them from any naval officer who was also of the nobility, but when the Ermelovs began to vent their bile on Father Vasili, accusing him of improprieties that were plainly ridiculous, Baranov had to intercede: 'Esteemed Princess, I really must protest.

There is no finer clergyman in eastern Russia than Vasili Voronov, and in that comparison I include His Reverence, the Bishop of Irkutsk, whose piety is famous throughout Siberia.'

'Pious? Yes,' she granted. 'But isn't it offensive to have the leading church figure in an area as big as this with a wife who was a short time ago a savage? It's undignified.'

Under normal circumstances Baranov, never wishing to excite the animosity of the Ermelovs, would have allowed this condemnation to pass unchallenged, but in recent years he had become an intense defender of Sofia Voronova, whom he saw as the epitome of the responsible Aleut woman whose marriage to a Russian invader would form the basis of the new mixed race, Russian-Aleut, which would populate and in time govern Russia's American empire. As if eager to prove the correctness of Baranov's predictions, Sofia had already given birth to a fine boy child, Arkady, but the underlying reason for Baranov's predilection for this smiling, lovely woman lay in the fact that once more he himself was without a spouse. For reasons he could not fathom, his native wife, Anna, was behaving exactly like his Russian wife: she was refusing to leave comfortable Kodiak to live with him in what she considered a less desirable residence, New Archangel. Deprived of two wives, he brought his two half-native children to Sitka, where he acted as both father and mother, and resigned himself to the fact that he was one of those men unable to hold on to a wife.