The Great Alone (20 page)

Although it was April, only a hint of spring’s greening touched the drab landscape of the island. The blunted cone tops of the volcanoes were hooded with snow, which the wind stirred up and blew into wispy streamers trailing down the slopes. As Andrei walked along the coast, he studied the island straits. In another month the fur seals would be coming through these passes on their annual spring migration north. In the fall they returned, heading south with their young. No one knew where they went, although according to Aleut legend they massed by the hundreds of thousands on an island to the north.

The face of the ragged coastline changed, broken by the wide river of rock that swept seaward. Long ago it had been molten lava from the island’s volcano. Then the sea had cooled it, hardened it into a stone river, its waves and ripples permanently solidified and smoothed by the breaking surf. Its low places became tidal pools, collecting the sea water and mixing it with hot springs that originated somewhere near the volcano’s core. The waters in the tidal pools were sufficiently warmer than the air to give off a misty vapor.

As Andrei climbed onto the old lava flow, the glare of sunlight off the water nearly blinded him. He stopped to shield his eyes with his hand and looked for the wisps of steam that marked the sunken pools. Instead he saw a naked statue of a woman, carved of ivory, facing the sun with arms upraised as if to embrace it. It was a full second before he realized it was Tasha. Backlighted by the sun, she didn’t look real.

He scrambled over the smooth rocks, the sound of his footsteps muffled by the crash of the breakers. “Tasha, what are you doing?” he demanded when he reached her. Then he noticed the raised flesh of her skin. He grabbed up the fur parka she’d dropped on the rocks and wrapped it around her. “I have seen you walk through snow in your bare feet so you wouldn’t wear out your boots, but this is ridiculous. That wind is cold. What in the name of St. Nikolai were you thinking?” He pulled the ends across in front of her, binding her tightly inside, but effectively covering only her torso.

“When a woman is with child, she should show her body to the sun,” Tasha replied calmly. Stunned, he loosened his grip on her parka and she slipped out of it and walked to the rock edge of a tidal pool. “The water is warm. Come enjoy it with me.”

“Are you saying … that you are going to have a baby?” Andrei followed her, hardly believing what he’d heard.

“Yes.” She lowered herself into the misty rock pool until the water was up to her neck. He started to follow her in. “Andrei Nikolaivich, you will get your clothes wet. Take them off.” Hurriedly he stripped and slid into the warm water.

Moving to her, he said again, “You are going to have a baby?” When she nodded, her eyes smiling, he ran his hand over her stomach, but it still felt as flat as it always had. “Are you certain?”

“The baby is small yet. It will come at summer’s end.” Her gaze searched his face. “Are you happy?”

“Happy.” He’d given up hope of having a child of his own, since his son had died in infancy and his wife, Natalia, had never conceived again. To learn that Tasha—the woman who had given him such joy—should also give him a child, it was more than a man could ask. “You will never know how happy I am at this moment.” He folded her gently in his arms, then kissed her long and hard while the warm water lapped around them.

Afterwards, she slowly rubbed her forehead against his lips. “I am happy, too.”

Andrei pulled his head back to look at her. “He will be a beautiful baby.” He felt very potent and very proud. Tasha had done that for him.

“It might be a girl,” Tasha warned him.

“Girl. Boy. It doesn’t matter.
It
will be a beautiful baby with you for its mother.”

“And you for its father.” She gazed at the rugged tanned face she’d come to adore. With wet fingers she brushed the wide silvered streak of hair at his temple. “It is the custom to live in the husband’s village,” she said; but he missed the way she looked at their island surroundings. “Tell me again about your village—this town called Irkutsk where you live.”

“Would you like to see it yourself?” For a long time, Andrei had been wondering how he could possibly leave her. The more he thought about it, the more he realized there wasn’t any reason why he couldn’t take her back with him. This expedition was going to net him another five hundred thousand rubles or more. He could afford to set her up in a house, keep her as his mistress, especially now that she was carrying his child. There was no reason for Natalia ever to know. Wives turned a blind eye to such arrangements anyway.

She listened enthralled as he described the dwellings with walls of stone and things called windows made of glass that let you see outside, the paths that were covered with planks of wood for people to walk on or ride some four-legged animal called a horse, and the special building where people told stories by pretending to be the people in the stories. She marveled at the description of his dwelling divided into rooms with one for sitting, one for eating, one for cooking, and one for sleeping.

“It sounds so strange this place where you live.”

“Maybe we will visit St. Petersburg. We can ride there in a troika—”

“Troika? What is that?”

Andrei laughed, and described the vehicle drawn by three horses abreast. At the moment, he could think of nothing more enjoyable than seeing Russia through her eyes.

It all sounded fascinating to Tasha, if a little bit frightening. Yet she knew that as long as she was with Andrei, everything would be all right. So many good things had happened to her since she’d been with him, like the baby growing inside her.

“When will we go?” She moved her arms in the water to keep the warmth flowing around her.

“Not this summer. The hunting is too good. And I wouldn’t want to risk anything happening to you on the voyage. The seas can get very rough. We will wait until next summer.”

“Walks Straight will be surprised when he learns he is to be an uncle.” Tasha could hardly wait to tell her brother that she would be going to live in a Cossack village, even though she knew he wouldn’t be happy about it.

“He is still away hunting,” Andrei said.

She looked sharply at him, detecting something in his tone. Where her brother was concerned, she always felt a little defensive. “You think he has left and won’t come back. He will. He agreed to come with you so you could speak to the villagers through him. He will not leave until you do. Sometimes he goes far to hunt. He was tired of the Cossacks. He says they are not good hunters.”

“Not as good as the Aleuts,” Andrei admitted. “Walks Straight has been gone a long time. I was concerned something might have happened to him.”

“He will be back soon.” Clouds covered the sun. Suddenly the water didn’t seem as warm. “We should leave. Our skin will be shriveled like a clam.” Tasha glided through the water to the side of the rock pool and pulled herself up on its smooth ledge. The wind blew over her skin and made her shiver as she reached for her parka.

Another week passed before Walks Straight returned. Two dozen otter pelts, all nearly six feet long, were unloaded from his two-hatch bidarka, but there was no happiness in him despite his considerable success. When Andrei attempted to welcome him back to camp, Walks Straight faced him proudly and defiantly and insisted on trading his pelts immediately.

The bargaining didn’t last long, and it seemed to Tasha that Andrei had been very generous to her brother. In exchange for the two dozen pelts, Walks Straight received a hatchet, glass beads, and some tobacco, yet he still didn’t appear satisfied.

While Andrei accompanied his men to the wood building where the furs were stored, Tasha brought her brother some food. She sat on the ground across from him and watched him eat, waiting for the usual facial indications that invited talk. It was this carefully observed rule of behavior in Aleut society not to intrude on another’s thoughts that enabled thirty or forty people to live communally in a single dwelling and still retain some privacy and peace. Tasha had found the Cossacks were not so considerate. Walks Straight was half finished with his meal before he acknowledged her presence with a look signaling his willingness to communicate.

She wanted to tell him her news, but she held back, sensing it wasn’t the time. Instead she chose to question him and let him speak what was on his mind. “You had good hunting. Did you go far?”

He nodded, shoveling the raw fish into his mouth with his short, thick fingers. After a few chews, he swallowed the food. “I went to the Umnak and the Unalaska islands. The Cossacks are there, too—three boats of them.” He looked at the chunks of fish in the carved wooden bowl as if they had lost their flavor, then set it aside. “They cheat the Aleuts. They steal their pelts, their baidars and bidarkas and other things they want. They force the men of the village to hunt for them, and while they are away the Cossacks carry the women off and make them lie with them and beat them if they refuse.”

“These things are wrong. The Cossacks will be punished when their leaders learn of this in Russia,” she said. Andrei had told her that his rulers insisted the natives be treated fairly and punished those who committed wrongful acts against them.

“When will that be?” Walks Straight scoffed at such ineffectual justice. “It does no good to our people now.”

“No.” Tasha bowed her head under the weight of his logic.

“We must stop them.”

Looking up, she met his dark gaze filled with resolve. Instantly she felt uneasy. “How can we do this?” Her eyes skimmed the short-cropped black hair covering his forehead and the thin black mustache growing below his wide nose. Both narrowed her focus to his heavy-lidded eyes set above long cheekbones.

“Some of the headmen on Umnak and Unalaska are saying that all villages must unite and rise up against the Cossacks and put them all to death.”

“Not all the Cossacks.”

“We have tried to live in peace with the Cossacks since they came to our islands. But they have committed wrongs against us from the beginning when they killed my father and all the men in the village,” Walks Straight reminded her. “We didn’t punish them for their wrongs, so they continued to do them. The village elders on Umnak and Unalaska have counseled and agreed that the Cossacks must be put to death or they will go on doing wrong. If we are to know peace, we must rid our islands of the Cossacks.”

“If the village elders have decided this, it must be the only solution, but surely they did not mean
all
the Cossacks. Andrei Nikolaivich lives in peace with the Aleuts. His men, too. They have done no wrong.”

“The elders say the tribute is unfair. The Cossacks are strong and their weapons are powerful. But our numbers are greater than theirs. The men in all the villages on all the islands must unite. We must attack them as one, suddenly, with no warning. That way we can beat them.” Although he spoke quietly, his voice rang with his commitment to the cause. “I have promised Kills Many Ducks I will speak to the villagers here so that all will fight the Cossacks.”

“You would not kill Andrei Nikolaivich,” she protested. “His child grows in my belly. He is a good, fair man. Why would you make war on him?”

“He would make war on us when he learns Cossacks are being killed.” Walks Straight stood up to tower above her. “You are thinking selfish thoughts, Tasha. Many of our people are suffering under the cruel hand of the Cossacks. They know no peace. And they will not as long as a single Cossack lives.”

As her brother went to his bidarka to gather his gear, Tasha realized it was true what he said about her. She thought only of her own happiness with Andrei Nikolaivich. She hadn’t experienced the oppression her people suffered. She was torn by the love she felt for a Cossack and her loyalty to her own kind.

The lamp wick was turned up to throw more light on the chessboard sitting in the middle of the table. Tasha stared at the regular pattern of light and dark squares, but she saw few of the remaining pieces that occupied them, white and black blurring together with the squares. She barely noticed when Andrei captured her black knight, recognizing only that it was her turn.

She stared at her chessmen and attempted to plot out their moves, but she couldn’t concentrate. Finally she picked up a pawn and advanced it a square. She leaned her elbows on the table to await Andrei’s next move on the board. It came quickly.

“Checkmate,” he announced, and Tasha had to look at the board again before she saw his bishop had her king in check and no counter move could save him. “That is the first time I have won a game from you in a long time. Are you feeling well?”

“Yes.” She watched him begin to rearrange the pieces to their respective sides of the board.

“Do you want revenge?”

His question struck too close to her own thoughts. “Would you want revenge if you were beaten?”

“Naturally. I would want a chance to get even.”

“My people never have a chance to get even when they are beaten by the Cossacks.”

Andrei stopped what he was doing and frowned at her. “What brought this on?”

Tasha couldn’t implicate her brother. “It is true. On Attu, the Cossacks cheat the hunters out of their furs, or make them pay tribute more than once. There is nothing my people can do about it. You don’t do this … but still it happens to others.”

“It’s wrong. When such occurrences are reported to the Tsaritsa’s agent, the guilty are punished for them.”