Now only the pole above the well, with a cartwheel fastened to its top, jutted into the sky. Already the plain across which they had ridden seemed like a mountain that hides everything from view. Farewell to childhood, to games, to everything, everything!

* Padishah = “Great Emperor.” The title of the sultan of Turkey

* A settlement on the Dnieper in Ukraine, where the Zaporozhian Cossacks had their base camp, the Sech.

* A bandura is a lutelike instrument used by Ukrainian bards to accompany sung ballads and epics.

† Circassia is a region in the northern Caucasus.

‡ Ukrainian Cossacks shaved their heads, leaving only a forelock, known as chub.

* Archimandrite: the head of a Russian Orthodox monastery or group of monasteries.

* The pood is a Russian unit of weight equal to approximately thirty-six pounds.

2

The three horsemen rode on in silence. Old Taras was thinking of the past: he saw his youth before him, the years that had flowed by, the years that every Cossack mourns, wishing that he had the strength of youth throughout his life. He was wondering which of his old comrades in arms he would see at the Sech. He counted up those who had already passed away and those who were still alive. A tear slowly formed in his eye, and his graying head sank despondently.

His sons were immersed in other thoughts. But more needs to be said about these sons. At twelve, they had been sent to the Kiev Seminary because all the prominent men of the time thought it vital that their sons be provided with an education, even if everything they learned was later forgotten. When the boys entered the Seminary they were wild, like all the other new pupils who had been raised in the open. At the Seminary they were given a light veneer that made them all resemble one another. Ostap, the older of the two, ran away in the first year. He was brought back, given a terrible beating, and forced to return to his books. Four times he took his primer and buried it on the Seminary grounds, and four times, after an inhuman beating, he was given a new one. He would have doubtless buried the fifth primer, too, had his father not sworn a solemn oath that he would have him locked up for twenty years as a novice in a monastery, and also sworn that Ostap would never see Zaporozhe if he did not learn everything the Seminary had to teach. It was interesting that these were the words of Taras Bulba, who always cursed learning and, as we have already seen, advised his sons not to concern themselves with it at all.

After Bulba’s oath, Ostap had begun applying himself to the tedious books with uncommon diligence, and soon was counted among the best pupils. The academic curriculum of that era was very much at odds with the way of life, and the curriculum’s scholastic, grammatical, rhetorical, and logical divisions in no way corresponded to the needs of the times. Even if what the pupils were taught had been less scholarly, they could never hope to apply it. In those days, the most learned men were also the most ignorant, far removed from experience. Not to mention that the republican setup of the Seminary and the multitude of young, robust, healthy boys could not but inspire activities that had nothing to do with the curriculum. It might have been the harsh conditions, or the frequent punishment fasts, or the many needs stirred up in the strong and healthy youths, that kindled in them the kind of enterprise they later developed in Zaporozhe. When the famished students roamed the streets of Kiev, all the townsfolk were on guard. The moment the women of the bazaars saw a student walk by, they quickly covered their pies, bread rolls, and pumpkin seeds the way female eagles will cover their young. The head student, obliged by his status to see to the welfare of his peers, had such capacious pockets in his trousers that he could empty a gaping market woman’s entire stall into them.

The students were a world unto themselves. They were not admitted into the higher circles of the Polish and Russian nobility. The governor, Adam Kisel, notwithstanding his patronage of the academy, was far from introducing the students into society. Indeed, he had issued orders that they be held in stricter check—orders that were quite unnecessary, as the Seminary’s rector and monks were anything but sparing with the rod and whip, and had the lictors give the pupils such lashings that weeks afterward they were still rubbing the seats of their pants. For many of the boys, the beatings seemed but a little sharper than good pepper vodka; and yet there were also boys who abhorred the perpetual thrashings and ran away to Zaporozhe, provided they could find the way there and were not caught.

Ostap Bulba began studying logic and even theology with great application, and yet he still did not manage to escape the relentless whip. Inevitably, this hardened his character and lent him the kind of toughness that sets a Cossack apart. Ostap was considered the best comrade one could have.