The Great Alone (31 page)

A tall woman, bold and aggressive, yet very pious like her husband, Natalia was handsome, with features that bore a slight resemblance to those of a Tartar. She had a head for business and enjoyed power and intrigue. In the past, Shelekhov had frequently left her in charge of his offices in Irkutsk whenever he journeyed to Okhotsk. Many hinted she had made a misalliance by marrying someone beneath her class, but the two were well paired, each feeding the other’s ambition. Both of them regarded this daring venture as merely the first step in a grander scheme.

Despite their considerable wealth, they had been unable to personally finance the huge cost of founding a permanent settlement and had taken partners to raise the funds. They had purchased and outfitted three vessels, the sloop
Sv Simeon
, the galiot
Trekh Sviatiteli,
and the galiot
Sv Mikhail,
from which they had become separated in a storm. The latter’s fate was still unknown. Their call at the Unalaska harbor was merely to repair their vessels and reprovision them before continuing further east. Shelekhov had the livestock rafted ashore to graze on the island grasses until they were ready to sail again.

Tasha no longer had to wonder where her youngest child was since those ponderous four-legged beasts had been landed on the island. Mikhail was fascinated by them and always slipped away to watch them. He was no longer interested in learning to handle a bidarka by himself or to perfect any of his hunting skills under Zachar’s tutelage.

At the edge of the grassy meadow, Tasha stopped, keeping her distance from the beasts. Vaguely she recalled Andrei once trying to explain what a horse looked like. She wondered if it resembled at all this horned animal they called a cow. She watched as it stuck out its long, thick tongue and licked its dripping nostrils. Tasha thought it very ugly. She kept a watchful eye on it while she looked around for her son.

“Mikhail!” She saw him next to one of the short, curly-haired beasts called a sheep. “Come. You must eat.”

Reluctantly he backed away from the creature and ran to her, the wind blowing his bluntly cropped forelock away from his face. “You should feel his hair,” he told her. “It is thick and deep. My fingers went in all the way to there before I touched his hide,” he said, indicating the second finger joint from the tip. “The man watching them said his hair is called wool. They spin it into threads and make their clothes from it.”

All the way back to their small barabara, Tasha was regaled with various bits of information Mikhail had observed or been told about the strange animals. The dwelling was built in the Cossack style with a door in the side. As they neared the entrance, Tasha recognized Ismailov. With him were the big smooth-faced man and the tall Cossack woman. The three approached her dwelling. Having never seen the woman up close, Tasha stopped to stare at the voluminous material that hung all the way to the ground. It made a swishing sound as she walked. A loosely hooded garment covered her head and much of her upper body, and her hands were hidden inside a round ball of fur.

Becoming conscious of the inspection from those eyes, Tasha went forward to meet them. She looked at Ismailov and bent a knee, curtsying the way she’d been taught long ago. “Capitaine.”

He nodded to her but addressed his remarks to the couple with him. “This is the mother of the man I was telling you about. Tasha Tarakanov. She’s a Creole.”

The woman smiled as she inclined her head in Tasha’s direction. “I am Madame Shelekhova.”

“Madame.” Tasha curtsied briefly, and noticed the woman’s eyebrows lift faintly.

“Is this your son as well?” There was a touch of cool reserve in the woman’s voice as she indicated the boldly staring boy beside Tasha.

“Yes.”

“We have come to speak to Zachar,” Ismailov inserted. “Is he here?”

“Yes.” Tasha glanced at her son. “Tell your brother to come outside.”

Mikhail retreated several steps, then turned and ran to the door. He darted inside. The door had barely shut before he came bursting out again, followed more sedately by Zachar and a shyly curious Katya.

After he had introduced Zachar to the Shelekhovs, Ismailov began to explain the purpose of the visit. “I told them that you speak Russian very well—”

Shelekhov interrupted to take over the task. “We will be sailing east in a few days to locate a site on which we will build a permanent village, a place where families can live. We will need strong young men like yourself to help us. Men who can explain to the natives that we come to live in peace with them, to build Russian houses and churches and schools. Ismailov has recommended you to be one of our interpreters on the expedition.”

“Russian houses.” The phrase recalled another time for Tasha when Andrei had described what it was like in his home village. The houses with many rooms, each for a purpose. It seemed part of a dream, one she’d almost forgotten.

“I am honored that the Capitaine has spoken so well of me,” Zachar replied, speaking fluently in the Russian tongue. “But if I were to go with you, there would be no one to hunt food for my family. My brother is yet too young.”

“It is responsible men exactly like you that we are seeking.” Shelekhov nodded approvingly.

“May I offer a suggestion, Grigori Ivanovich?” Ismailov ventured.

“Please do.” Shelekhov invited him to continue.

“It occurs to me that Madame Shelekhova will be requiring a woman to help her. I can personally vouch for Zachar’s mother. She knows how to prepare a variety of dishes that are suitable for a Russian’s palate. She is tidy and clean, which cannot be said for all the native women. And she is an excellent seamstress. Perhaps Madame Shelekhova would like to inspect the beadwork on the collar of her parka. She will find none finer, I think,” Ismailov declared. “And Tasha speaks fluent Russian, so there will be no difficulty with language.”

“Did you understand what he said?” Madame Shelekhova questioned Tasha.

“Yes,” Tasha replied, then couldn’t help asking, “Will you be building houses with many rooms in them? One to sit and one to cook and one to sleep?”

“Yes.” Shelekhov and his wife exchanged glances, both smiling faintly in satisfaction. “Yes, we will.”

All four members of the Tarakanov family were on board the
Trekh Sviatiteli
when it followed the sloop
Sv Simeon
out of the Unalaska harbor, bound for a large island to the east that the natives called Kodiak. In addition to them, the Shelekhovs had obtained the services of ten Aleut hunters and a second interpreter for their expedition.

Tasha stood at the rail and watched the volcanic peaks on Unalaska Island recede from her view, remembering her previous voyage on a Cossack ship that had taken her away from her home on Attu, and the sea journey she and her brother had made when they had fled with Zachar to this island. She felt little regret at leaving. Her memory of the place would always be shadowed by the pain and suffering she’d known there.

CHAPTER XVIII

Located close to the mainland of “Aleyeska,” Kodiak Island was inhabited by a native tribe called Koniaga that belonged to the Innuit culture, the Eskimo. When Shelekhov’s ships anchored in a capacious bay on the island’s southeast coast, the natives were hostile to his overtures of peace. Some years before they had repulsed a Russian ship from their waters, but a fortuitous eclipse of the sun, two decisive Russian victories in battle, and the taking of hostages soon subdued the natives that Shelekhov mistakenly called Aleuts.

Shelekhov named the bay where he built his permanent settlement Three Saints Bay, after his ship. Although much of the shoreline was steep and rocky, a level spit of land extended into the bay, hooking in the shape of a horseshoe. The gravel bar provided a convenient place to beach their vessels and flat ground on which to build. Protected on three sides by water, the site was ideally suited to their needs. No trees grew on this side of the island, which was more than one hundred fifty versts long and roughly half that wide. And the grassy hills that sloped up from the bay offered a pasture for the livestock, and dirt suitable for vegetable gardens.

The promyshleniki, nearly a hundred and fifty men, quickly went to work building the settlement. A half dozen cabins with Russian-styled gables and roofs were constructed. In addition, they built a barracks, a blacksmith shop, a countinghouse, barns for the livestock, a commissary, a ropewalk, a warehouse for furs, as well as the usual bathhouse.

Within a year, the Russian settlement on Three Saints Bay was solidly established. Gardens were planted with potatoes, turnips, and a variety of vegetable seeds Shelekhov had brought from Russia. Cattle and sheep grazed on the new green grass covering the hills, not without some loss of their numbers to the huge brown bears that roamed the island.

But Shelekhov was not content. If they were to claim this new land by right of possession, and prevent the British or the Americans from taking it over, they must expand. The territory before him was vast and untouched. Only one other settlement existed along the entire west coast of the North American continent, the small Spanish presidio of San Francisco, founded nine years earlier in 1776. It was not a settlement the Shelekhovs had come to build in Kodiak but a foundation for an empire.

In early summer, Shelekhov organized a party of some fifty promyshleniki and several Aleuts and assigned Zachar to go along as an interpreter. They sailed from Three Saints Bay in four large baidars, accompanied by more than a hundred Koniaga Aleuts in their bidarkas. Their mission was to explore and make contact with natives on nearby islands and the mainland of Aleyeska and to establish a fortified outpost on Cook’s Inlet.

It was late summer before they returned. All the Tarakanovs sat together in their log dwelling once more to hear Zachar’s story of his journey. They gathered around the flickering light of the oil lamp, Katya cross-legged on a grass mat covering the planked floor, Tasha on the floor close to the lampstand so she could see to make the fine stitches to mend the tear in Madame Shelekhova’s gown, Zachar on the chair where all could see him, and Mikhail at his feet.

“Mountains towered above us on all sides, throwing their white peaks to the sky.” Zachar described the voyage into the great arm of the sea that the Russians called Cook’s Inlet. “Everywhere white water tumbled down the sheer sides of the mountains and fell into the sea, making a sound like faraway thunder. And there were trees with trunks five times as big around as a man, growing all the way to the water’s edge. I walked among them. They stand thickly together, tall—twenty times as tall as a man—all their branches meeting to shut out the sky like this roof.”

“Is it night there all the time?” Mikhail wanted to know.

“There are holes to let the light in,” Zachar assured him, then continued. “Many birds live among the trees. I saw ravens and white-cheeked geese, and a tiny bird that beats its wings so fast you cannot see them and makes a humming sound like a bee.”

“What about the natives you met? What were they like?” From the Koniaga Aleuts, Tasha had heard that the natives who lived on the mainland belonged to a warrior race.

Zachar shrugged. “Most of them did not like Aleuts. But we traded for some skins. Several villages gave us hostages. Along Prince William Sound, we met Chugach and Kenaitze. There, many families live together in longhouses made of logs. They are cousins to the Kolosh.” The Kolosh were an extremely warlike tribe that lived along the coast to the south, a fierce band whose reputation for cunning and treachery had spread to nearly all of the northwest tribes.

As Mikhail listened to his older brother describe an encounter with a cousin of the dangerous Kolosh, a chill of excitement danced over his skin. He was envious of Zachar’s thrilling adventures, the new places he’d seen, and strange people he’d met. All the things he’d done this summer that he had been so anxious to tell his brother about—like going to the school and listening to Mr. Shelekhov talk or reciting the words he’d memorized about the Holy God and making the sign of the cross exactly right—suddenly they all sounded uninteresting. Mikhail sighed. His brother had done just about everything and been just about everywhere. He guessed he’d never have anything exciting to tell him.

The second winter was a hard one for the Russian company. Many of the hunters stationed at outlying camps on Kodiak suffered from scurvy, and several died, although the Koniaga Aleuts were helpful in supplying many of them with fresh provisions. There was no shortage of food in the Shelekhov house, but Shelekhov appeared troubled by the problems besetting him. Tasha attempted to explain that winter and hunger were one and the same, but he insisted that a quantity of food must be stored away in the summer for consumption in the winter.

Whatever doubts Shelekhov might have been having about his venture vanished in the early spring with the arrival at Three Saints Bay of the long lost galiot
Sv Mikhail,
sister ship of the
Trekh Sviatiteli.
Damaged by the storm that had separated them, the galiot had reached Unalaska the previous year. There the vessel had been cast on the rocks and suffered further damage that had delayed her longer.

Shortly after the arrival of the
Sv Mikhail,
the Shelekhovs began their preparations to return to Russia, a task that involved more than just packing and transporting their belongings onto the
Trekh Sviatiteli.
There had to be a transfer of authority, and Shelekhov selected the newly arrived peredovchik Samoilov to take charge, a choice that necessitated familiarizing the man with the present operations, the systems in place, the projects under way. An endless number of orders concerning future tasks to be accomplished had to be written. Tasha overheard many of the conversations the Shelekhovs had regarding that, including mention of explorations to a place called California.