The Great Alone (33 page)

Someone ran ahead to tell the village the news while Zachar and two promyshleniki carried the pneumonia-stricken man to the settlement. The Greek Delarov, currently in command, met them and ordered Baranov to be taken to his cabin. Trailing after them, Tasha followed them inside the dwelling once occupied by the Shelekhovs. If this Baranov was the new manager sent by Shelekhov, he would surely know something about her son Mikhail. He must recover.

No one objected when she helped remove the ailing man’s waterproof parka and boots,
mukluks.
His fiery skin was damp with perspiration. Quickly she covered him with fur skins.

For the next several days, Tasha took care of him, listening to his racking cough and rattling breaths, sitting through his bouts of delirium and spooning broth through his cracked lips. Many in the village didn’t expect him to survive, but Tasha wouldn’t relent in her efforts to keep him alive.

She sat beside the cot watching the man who was the main subject of discussion in the camp. There was nothing special about Aleksandr Andreevich Baranov physically. Short of stature, he was thin and wiry, his complexion sallow. At forty-five, he was the same age as Tasha. Age had shot strands of gray through her black hair, but his flaxen hair, tinged with red, had thinned on top, leaving him with a bald crown. He didn’t look like a leader of men, certainly not the muscular, rough promyshleniki.

Zachar carried the comments being made about Baranov back to the cabin. Ismailov had nothing but contempt for Shelekhov’s choice. The man was a common merchant, hardly in the class of a navigator, such as Delarov was. He had no experience in the Aleutians. Worse, he’d never been to sea before this voyage and had been seasick most of the time. Others said he was too old for this rough life. Look at how he’d taken sick traveling in the open baidar, living on a diet of raw fish and sleeping in the open.

But, claimed the survivors, his energy was boundless. While wintering at Unalaska, he had explored, learned the Aleut language, handled a bidarka, and hunted sea otter. He was resourceful and intelligent.

The conflicting reports made little impression on Tasha, who listened to them in the hope of learning something about Mikhail. Baranov stirred beneath the layer of fur robes, the heavy lids of his eyes moving, lifting. Her attention sharpened on him as he opened his eyes and tried to moisten his parched lips.

“Water.” His voice was hoarse and thin.

Tasha picked up the tin mug with the water, then tunneled an arm under his shoulders to lift him slightly and held the cup to his lips, tipping it to let the water trickle into his mouth. When he had finished, she lowered him back onto the cot. Through half-closed eyes, he dully looked at his surroundings.

“Where am I?”

Tasha studied his eyes, searching for that vacant look of delirium, but this time it wasn’t there. “You are in Delarov’s cabin at Three Saints village.”

“Ah.” He breathed out a satisfied sound and immediately started coughing. Tasha sat him partially up again and let him cough up the choking phlegm in his throat. When the spasm passed, it left him weak, but he gave her a grateful look as she laid him back down.

“Do you know where my son is? Shelekhov took him to Russia six years ago and he has not returned. His name is Mikhail Tarakanov. Did Shelekhov speak to you of him?”

Lacking the strength to answer, Baranov shook his head negatively and shut his eyes. Tasha sat back in her chair, her hopes dashed again. Others had returned on a previous supply ship, but where was her son? No one seemed to know.

More than a month passed before Baranov was well enough to get up and move about the settlement that was his new domain. In early autumn, the two baidars carrying the rest of his shipwrecked company reached Kodiak. Leaving Delarov in charge for the time being, Baranov set out to explore the island, accompanied by Zachar and some Aleuts, and to acquaint himself with the natives, who called him Nanuk—the great white hunting leader.

When spring came, the beached sloop, the
Sv Mikhail,
was launched. Delarov and the promyshleniki whose enlistments were up and who were not indebted to the company for purchases from the commissary boarded the ship and sailed for Russia.

After Delarov departed, Baranov began exerting his authority and imposing strict discipline. The Russian flag bearing the double-headed eagle of the Romanov Empire was lowered each evening with the men at attention and a cannon salute. Gambling was forbidden. Drinking was allowed only during a man’s off-duty hours, and then only kvass, made mainly from cranberries. Native prostitution was forbidden; a man chose a woman and stayed with her. On Sundays and Holy Days, prayers were read. But he also organized celebrations,
prazniks,
where there was singing and dancing, in which he joined.

Summer brought calmer waters that facilitated the hunting of sea otters. Baranov gathered a native hunting fleet of six hundred two-man bidarkas at Three Saints Bay, promising the Koniaga Aleuts a quantity of iron for each skin and assuring them that a Russian promyshlenik would be assigned to each artel of bidarkas.

But it was more than a hunting expedition he planned. To the south and east of Kodiak, English and American ships plied the waters of the Alexander Archipelago and Prince William Sound, taking trade from the Russians. His instructions from Shelekhov had been very clear; in addition to the fortified outpost on Cook’s Inlet, more were to be established on Prince William Sound and the southeastern coast. The Tsaritsa had not given Shelekhov his monopoly, but she had granted him the exclusive rights to the lands he now occupied—or might later colonize. Baranov fully intended to use his hunting expedition to explore these areas and locate sites for new outposts.

The mass assembly of native hunters littered the sandspit upon which the settlement stood with long, sleek bidarkas. Under the half-light of a summer night, the figures lying among them appeared like dark brown shapes. Tasha stood outside the cabin and gazed at the shimmering waters of the bay. She was getting old, she decided. Sleep frequently eluded her.

There was a soft footfall behind her, and she turned to see Zachar. “I heard you leave the cabin,” he said.

“Summers are not good for sleeping.” She looked at the dusklike sky. In the still air of the windless night, she could hear the uneasy lowing of restless cattle on the nearby hillsides. “I think the bears are not sleepy either.”

“You were thinking of Mikhail,” Zachar said.

Tasha didn’t deny it. “I wonder if I will ever see him again.” The ache was always with her, the bereaved feeling.

“You are not alone,” Zachar said. “You have Katya, Larissa, and me.”

“Yes.” They were her flesh and blood, too. But Mikhail was her youngest—her baby. How could she tell Zachar, who was also her son—her firstborn—that Mikhail was somehow special? She couldn’t. So she smiled faintly at him, letting him think that he had consoled her. “That is true.” Her gaze strayed to the crowded beach. “With so many hunters, you will bring back many otter pelts this season. You will be able to buy much tobacco.” As a Creole, Zachar worked for the company on a share basis, like the rest of the promyshleniki, and had an account of his own at the commissary.

“There is little tobacco to buy. Everyone is using willow bark to make their tobacco last,” he said.

“One day I must try smoking your pipe so I can discover this pleasure you take in it,” she decided.

Zachar chuckled softly. “I will buy you one.”

The raucous cries of a colony of storm petrels filled the night, nearly drowning out the softer calls of auklets, murrelets, and other nightbirds. “They are noisy tonight.” She watched a flock sweep through the sky, appearing like a long trail of dark smoke.

Suddenly she felt the ground tremble beneath her feet. But this was a land where the earth often shook. She waited for the faint movement to cease and the ground to feel solid again. Instead the tremor grew stronger, rocking her unsteadily. Zachar grabbed her and pulled her down to the heaving sand before they could be knocked off their feet.

All around them they could hear the rattle and crash of things falling and the panicked cries of those wakened from their sleep by the violent quake. The log timbers of the buildings groaned from being rubbed together as their foundations shifted. Tasha hugged the vibrating gravel, her heart racing with alarm. She heard the ominous crack of wood splitting and looked anxiously at the cabin, seeing its shuddering sway.

“Katya!” Zachar started to crawl toward the door, but Tasha stopped him.

“It is too dangerous.”

At that instant, the door burst open, swinging crazily. Katya staggered through the opening, clutching her two-year-old daughter, Larissa, in her arms. A side timber of the door frame snapped. More logs creaked and splintered.

Larissa wailed uncertainly as Katya tried to run clear of the cabin, but with each step, the ground shifted violently, depriving her of balance. She fell, then protectively hunched her body over Larissa to shield her. Stumbling, Zachar reached her and kneeled down beside her.

Everywhere in the village there was chaos. People stumbling and staggering across the shaking ground like drunken sots. Barrels, kegs, tipping over and rolling. Broken debris falling from roofs and gables. In the bay, the waters danced in little white peaks, churned by the quaking under the ocean floor.

Slowly the tremor lessened in intensity and the rumbling faded. It had lasted such a short time, yet it had seemed so long to Tasha. She still wasn’t certain it was over. She stayed on the ground, feeling its little shudders.

Others also waited warily before tentatively pushing to their feet. Zachar helped Tasha stand up. Inside she was still shaking as she cautiously crossed the gravel, not fully trusting the solidness of the ground.

Katya was sitting up, trying to soothe the crying daughter. Larissa wasn’t the only bewildered and frightened child crying in the village. She was echoed by many others.

“You are not hurt?” Katya anxiously inspected Tasha as she stood up, bouncing her still fretful daughter in her arms.

“No.”

Tasha turned to view the destruction the tremor had wrought. Nothing was exactly where it had been. Buildings sat crookedly, some canted to one side and others turned on their foundations. Loose objects, large and small, were scattered all around. People moved among them, picking their way cautiously, still a little stunned.

“Look! Look!” The shout was followed by screams.

Tasha turned to face the bay, suddenly aware of a low rumble building into a loud rushing sound. A towering dark wall that completely obliterated the horizon loomed higher and closer. Water. It was water, a giant wave traveling toward the spit of land at incredible speed.

“Run!” Zachar shouted and caught Tasha by the waist and propelled her along with him at a run. High-pitched screams of terror mingled with the growing roar. They were caught in a stampede of people. Tasha tried to make her legs go faster, but they wouldn’t. She cast a frightened glance over her shoulder. The white-foamed top of the wave was curling high above the sandbar, five or ten times as tall as any of the buildings in its path. She could feel the wave’s breath coming down, smell the sea in the air, and taste its brine on her lips. There was no escape from it.

Wet droplets struck her. An instant later she was engulfed by the wave, the force of it slapped her to the sand. Vaguely she was conscious of Zachar’s hand gripping her forearm to hold on to her. Then it was only the sensation of the water, smashing her into the sand. She held her breath until her lungs felt as if they were going to burst. Still the water came crashing down.

Then she felt its sucking power, pulling, dragging, trying to sweep her away. She grabbed on to Zachar’s arm, holding on to it with a death grip as the outgoing force of the wave tugged and twisted her legs. The undertow’s strength was too mighty. It rolled her against Zachar and ripped them both from the sand, dragging them backwards.

There was no more strength left in her, no more air and no more will to resist the dark, watery world. Then the wave broke over her head, and Tasha instinctively gasped for air. Her knee grazed the gravelly bottom of the bay. She struck out for the shore, driving with her legs and feet to combat the current.

She had lost contact with Zachar. She wanted to look for her son, but it required all her concentration and energy to keep from being pulled out to sea. She risked little glances, but there were too many heads, too many bodies in the water. Half wading and half crawling, Tasha reached the shallower water and was able to stand, her muscles trembling in exhaustion.

Breathing hard and deep, she turned toward the sea and looked for her son. A confusion of shouts and cries for help assailed her. So many people were in the water, some floundering helplessly and others staggering toward the beach. So many people were trying to help them. Complicating everything was the debris—sections of roofs, broken timbers, wooden barrels, kayaks by the hundreds, a thousand bits and pieces of other things—all tumbling and rolling in the outgoing seismic wave.

“Zachar.” She saw him, on his knees, trying to crawl that last bit of distance to shore, coughing and choking.

A moment ago she didn’t have the strength to take another step. Now she ran through the water to her son. Tasha took hold of Zachar’s arm and tried to drag him the rest of the way to the beach, but he was too heavy. Someone splashed through the water not far from her.