A People without a Past

by Jaan Kross

Genres: General Fiction; Historical Fiction

Synopsis

The second part in an epic historical trilogy - The Estonian answer to Wolf Hall - by the nation's greatest modern writer The year is 1563, and by any account Balthasar Russow can be said to have risen in the world. Fresh from his studies in the German town of Stetten, he has assumed the role as pastor of Tallinn's Holy Ghost Church. Moreover, he is betrothed to a maiden of the town - much to the chagrin of her father, who has no wish to welcome peasant stock to the family when there is no shortage of upstanding young German men - and is poised to begin the chronicle that will ensure his everlasting fame. But tribulations still await the now not-quite-young Pastor - Livonia is still plagued by foreign powers, with Tallinn braced to withstand a prolonged Muscovite siege. And he will discover that marriage is a often a battlefield in itself. Translated from the Estonian by Merike Beecher

Release date: August 24, 2017

Publisher: MacLehose Press

Print pages: 445

Sample

Between Three Plagues: The Story of Balthasar Russow was published between 1970 and 1980 in Estonia, in four volumes. In this translation, titles have been given to each volume: Volume I, The Ropewalker, includes Jaan Kross’ first two volumes. Volume II is A People without a Past, and Volume III, A Book of Falsehoods.

Kross’ story of Balthasar Russow (c. 1536–1600) is not only the life story of the man, but an account of his writing the Chronicle of Livonia (published in 1578 with a later edition in 1584). The Chronicle recounts the history of Livonia from the thirteenth through most of the sixteenth century, focusing on the period to which Russow himself was witness: the years leading up to and including the Livonian Wars (1558–83).

Balthasar comes from peasant stock, in a strictly stratified society dominated by German manor lords in the countryside and German nobles and gentry in town. They are largely descendants of the Germanic Crusaders who conquered the territory of Old Livonia in the early thirteenth century.* The Town Council is exclusively German. Germans dominate the skilled crafts as well as the professions in Tallinn, barring access to those of peasant background. They refer to the peasants as “bumpkins” and “yokels”, and to town dwellers of peasant extraction as “non-Germans” or as “Greys”. (Grey is the color of their homespun clothing.) Opportunities for the non-Germans are limited. But Balthasar is ambitious. He grows up in the fishing village of Kalamaja, outside the walls of Tallinn. His father, Siimon Rissa, is a wagoner, hauling goods and peoples’ belongings across Livonia. Siimon is able and willing to pay for his son’s education at the town school. Bal is eager to learn, to acquire an education and gain a position in a world more exalted than that of his rural forebears and relatives. At the same time, he sees them as part of himself.

The title of this volume, A People without a Past, was suggested by a few lines in the first chapter. As Balthasar is about to deliver his first sermon at Holy Ghost Church, he muses that he wants “to speak about the signs of God’s justice in the fate of this wretched land where nothing is remembered”. And when he looks down over the congregation, he realises what his mission in life is to be: “In this land where nothing is remembered, I should start writing down the things that have happened here, so that people will start to remember.” A people without memory is a people without a past – a people without an identity. Already in The Ropewalker there are several intimations of the chronicler-to-be. Balthasar makes notes of current events and dates them, laughing at himself: As if I were about to start writing a chronicle! As a student in Stettin, he writes about Pomerania, imitating Julius Caesar’s opening lines to his commentaries on the Gallic Wars. But the full story of the writing of the Chronicle is told in this volume: Balthasar’s purpose in undertaking it, his doubts and apprehensions about what to include and omit, his efforts to collect information, and the attempts of the worthies on Toompea Hill to thwart its delivery to the printer.

*

There are several defining events in The Ropewalker that are recalled in this second volume. One is the opening scene in which Italian acrobats, visiting Tallinn in 1547, perform spellbinding feats of skill and daring on a rope high above the walls of the town. It is an event that remains in Balthasar’s mind and memory all his life. Another defining experience is his time studying in Stettin, where he learns about the world beyond Livonia and becomes an educated man. His uncle clearly expects that it has created a rift between them. When Bal appears in Kurgla at the time of the peasant uprising he finds the villagers preparing to join the rebellion. Why, one might ask, is Balthasar drawn into the conflict instead of returning to Stettin to continue his studies as he had planned? Perhaps, in part, to refute his uncle’s peremptory remark: “Of course, the peasant uprising is not your concern.” Bal was not intending to join the peasants but once the challenge is uttered he realises that it is his concern, and he takes up their cause as his own. He affirms his loyalty to his kin and acknowledges his own peasant roots, but his travels and his education have revealed to him a wider world, one that his kin will never know. What he is determined to give to them and all their kind, with his chronicle, is their history – their past – and thereby an identity.

in which a young man demonstrates that he has outgrown his immature ways and attitudes and indeed become a man, for he takes the time to ponder, even in the course of his daily duties and many obligations, the question of how he arrived at the position he holds, something that still causes him to marvel, which perhaps shows that his maturity does not yet extend much below the surface.

The house was without a doubt needlessly large and uncomfortably empty – this house of the pastor of Holy Ghost Church, here in the eastern part of the courtyard, between the school, the Almshouse and the back wall of the Apothecary. Its heavy grey limestone walls were crumbling, and its low windows in their lead casings peered across the small ancient graveyard at the high, stone-framed windows of the church, as if intent on staring down a rival.

Built at the same time as the church, the house was now nearly two hundred and fifty years old. The master-builder must have known, therefore, that he was not constructing just another residence and storehouse for some merchant, but a dwelling for the pastor of the church attended by both Town Council members and town Greys – someone who would require a home where he could also carry out his pastoral duties. And yet, the master-builder had not taken the trouble to draw up a specific plan for its layout or its rooms, and the house was built according to the same design as most merchants’ and council-men’s houses in Tallinn. Which is not to say that it was on a par with the finest of these dwellings, for the congregation of Holy Ghost Church had, from the beginning, consisted primarily of non-Germans. For curious reasons now long forgotten, the church also fulfilled the functions of a chapel for the Town Council. Consequently the pastor’s house was not at all inferior to the homes of, let us say, some of the less affluent merchants of the Great Guild.

Until the Great Cleansing of the Faith, many of the pastors of Holy Ghost Church (Johann of Gotland and several others after him) had taken it upon themselves when the situation required – and, as old records showed, sometimes even when it did not – to assume an owner’s prerogative when making repairs. If we were to compare a house to a ship – for what is a house if not a cog or carrack or caravel, albeit made of stone, providing shelter to mortals on the unprotected seas of Time as they sail through fierce winds whipped up by the Evil One and past reefs strewn about in the sea by his henchmen, towards the shores of their Heavenly Father? In effect, if indeed we should wish to compare a house to a ship, we could say that this home of the head pastor of Holy Ghost Church had sailed through the time of the Great Cleansing into the days of our pure faith like a ship that had had the good fortune to bring both its stern cabin and its figurehead unscathed through terrible turbulence. If one had to acknowledge now, as we have done, that the house was beginning to deteriorate, it was through no fault of its occupants. For as the old men of the Almshouse – toothless, yet with plenty of bite to their remarks – observed at those moments on All Souls’ Day when their allotted portion of ale had sufficiently loosened their tongues, the rear courtyard of their own Holy Ghost Church was only one of many places that provided evidence of a situation not to be denied: that is, that ever since the doctrine formerly promulgated within the houses of God had been cleansed, those houses themselves (and their outbuildings, which we are actually talking about here) had been neglected, some even falling into disrepair and decay. Not even Erik of Sweden had managed to improve matters, though he had been ruling the land – at least Tallinn, if not all of Livonia – for nearly five years. Of course, doctrine was what mattered most, not stone or plaster or paint. That went without saying. And religious doctrine was now so purified in Livonia that no other believers – not Anabaptists or Mennonites, not Water-carriers or Dung-carts or Zionists, or whoever they all were in Germany – could pollute this land. At times it also seemed to Bal that, leaving aside what had transpired with purifying the church of its “sinful pomp and splendour”, the parsonages were simply not being maintained as they had been in the past. Simplicity in itself, of course, was pleasing to God . . . But then again – perhaps things were not quite like that, after all. Or was it that he just saw things differently now that the matter affected him personally – now that he was no longer the wilful offspring of a Kalamaja wagoner, nor a brash upper-level student at Tallinn’s Trivium School, nor a lodger hungry for bread and knowledge, living with a poor assistant pastor? He was not even the deacon of this same Holy Ghost Church any longer, as he had been the past two years. Three weeks ago he had been ordained its pastor and presented to the congregation as “Pastor Balthasar Russow” – or, as he had heard someone say less formally, but most respectfully, “our Superior, Balthasar”. . . unless that was merely an effort to curry favour, a mode of flattery which is sometimes difficult to distinguish from honest talk.

So that when our Superior Balthasar (Hm!) now walked between the stone slabs in the graveyard towards his door (I must clean the dead leaves and splattered mud off these stones – or rather, I must have them cleaned . . .) he was quite content with his new home, and yet somewhat dissatisfied. He considered with satisfaction the bold height of the gable: its grey peak, rising above the deep-blue shadow cast by the church roof, was bright with sunlight as far as the pulley beam (at least now, at midday). He was pleased with the twenty-four small glass panes in the great-room window with its thick iron bars that were visible from the courtyard – as though this were a storeroom for foreign treasures of the kind displayed in the shops of the town merchants. Pleased, too, with the solid fir door in its arched limestone frame, as he reached beneath his cape to pull out a heavy key from the pocket of his doublet. But he was not at all pleased to see that a number of moss-covered tiles had slipped out of place on the north side of the roof, letting the September rains of last week fall straight through into the attic. Nor was he pleased with the sadly neglected walls of the stables and barn. Nor with the worn yellow paint on the front door, nor the way in which the stucco had flaked off the walls in unsightly patches, as though the house were afflicted with eczema. Not at all pleased . . . Indeed, it seemed there was so much repair and rebuilding to be done here that he had no idea how, in these confoundedly lean times, he was to find the means for it all . . . It would not do to ask the gentlemen of the Church Treasury for more than a very modest sum now that he himself was at the head of its governing board. But the pitiful sum of fifty marks, by which his salary was to increase in his new capacity as Head Pastor, was next to nothing in the context of today’s exorbitant prices, and especially if one needed to build or repair. And, in fact, there was the matter of his entire yearly income of four hundred marks, which was worth no more than seventy-three or four thalers! And what could a man possibly build with that when a mason charged a thaler for a threshold alone!? Or when a dram of communion wine cost a whole farthing . . .

He was about to thrust the two-pound key into the keyhole when it occurred to him that he could just use the knocker instead – knock-knock-knock – and the door would immediately be opened. For inside there was a maidservant, Barbara, who had come with the house. She had served the departed Herr Schinckel before him, and rumour had it that she was the widow of a mercenary soldier in the service of the town, killed fifteen years ago in some skirmish or other, and thus she had become Schinckel’s housemaid while still a young girl – and everyone knew what else she had become as well . . . Now known as Barba,* she was a large-boned woman, with a smooth face and lively eyes. On Saturdays she curled her ash-blond hair with a curling iron, and in the process filled the entire house with the smell of scorched hair, all the way up to the attic. Her breathing was often so pronounced that her high, pointed breasts heaved and fell visibly under her white linen apron. She was both inquisitive and garrulous, though in this regard (apparently thanks to Herr Schinckel’s instruction) she knew more or less where to draw the line. One thing was certain: she knew all the gossip in town.

Balthasar refrained from using the knocker and opened the door with his key. Perhaps it was a penalty he imposed on himself, because, as it suddenly struck him, he had been more aware than he should have been of the rise and fall of the maidservant’s breasts . . . The key made a grinding sound in the lock. He laid his cloak over the outstretched arm of the girl who had hurried to receive it – he would have preferred that the girl not be at home just then . . .

She said: “Twice, there were those looking for the Pastor.”

“Who?”

“The man . . . um . . . it was the man the Pastor was going to hire as the new bell-ringer, Märten . . . or something . . .”

“Ah. What did he say?”

“He said he’d come back this evening.”

“Hm. And who else?”

“There was a messenger from the furrier. The Pastor’s coat is ready.”

“Already . . .? Fine.”

He motioned with his chin for the girl to go back to the hearth in the kitchen and remained standing, straddle-legged, in the middle of his great-room.

Yes. The room was in fact quite bare. It was a good thing that the congregation had put some benches along the walls, else the room would have been completely barren. His own things could not have been put in here anyway, since the great-room was being used for confirmation classes. In any case, abundance of possessions was scarcely his problem – what did he even own that he could have brought here from his deacon’s apartment? A few chests with clothing and books. A bed. A lectern. Three stools. A few plates and bowls. That was all. He had even been obliged to sell the silver inherited from his father in order to pay his debts to Herr Sum and others. Yet, empty though it was, the room was beautiful – with its smooth and not too scuffed limestone floor, its clean white walls, its broad ash-wood stairway, its white log ceiling decorated with painted pink blooms and green foliage. Not inferior at all to the great-room of Rector Wolff, which he had considered very fine indeed. And not smaller either, even though the northern third of the room had been walled off long ago for use as the sacristy – for which the church had, oddly enough, not found space within its own walls. A separate door led into the sacristy from the courtyard. Another provided access to it from the great-room.

Stepping to the door of the sacristy, Balthasar looked to left and right. It too was fairly bare, but for a few pieces of furniture donated by members of the congregation. A lectern. Next to it, a window framing a view of the north-east corner of the church and the köster’s house and the red roof of the girls’ school in the autumn sun, which sent transparent, iridescent beams of light through the window and across the limestone floor. On the lectern, the parish register with its brass corners. (An interesting book to leaf through, comparing the handwriting of Böckhold and Wanradt and Koell and Killonius, the crabbed script of one and the flourishes of another . . . Fifty years of the christenings and weddings, births and deaths of the town Greys.) Behind a small iron door in the left wall was a vault containing the congregation’s money – a paltry sum, to be sure – and important papers. He then turned to examine the great-room. It was about the size of a small wedding hall, if one saw the sacristy as part of it – and the staircase, rising wide and grand and straight up to a sudden, bold curve, which seemed to be all but calling to him, summoning him to ascend to the small room next to his bedchamber, which he was planning to set up as a proper writing room.

All said and done, and notwithstanding its several warts and blemishes, he found this an unexpectedly impressive and stately house, and a sense of well-being enveloped him like a light, warm, woollen garment, though the chill wind of incredulity managed to penetrate it from time to time, for the garment was not all that thick . . . But then even the wind was not exceedingly icy, and it blew in gusts that were becoming ever less frequent . . .

After living three weeks in the house, Balthasar did not yet feel entirely at home. But he was wholly content with his own rise in position and status over the course of the last three years, with the exception, perhaps, of what had happened at the beginning, upon his return from Bremen, when he had disembarked in the harbour in Tallinn and set out for Kalamaja with his bundle and chest. It reminded him of the way he had left this homeland harbour five years earlier. For he had no more possessions upon his return than he had had at his departure. Just the reverse: in that early-dawn hour when he had stolen aboard the Dolphin at a pier wet and slippery with seawater, to set out on his distant journey, he had at least had two heavy bags of bread with him. Upon his return, not even one. (All he had brought back was Märten’s carving, mainly because something had held him back every time he was on the verge of giving it away or leaving it behind.) When he left, he had had a hundred and sixty silver marks in his purse. When he returned, he was two hundred and twenty-eight marks in debt – he owed Kimmelpenning a hundred marks and Herr Sum a hundred and twenty-eight. But of course he had an inheritance awaiting him in Tallinn. He knew that once he had paid off his debts he would still have about fifteen marks jingling in his pocket. In addition, he was now in possession of an education . . . Even so, the most he could hope for was a position as deacon in some dilapidated church in an outlying northern village, most of whose inhabitants had probably fled into the woods. He could not hope for a post as pastor, even though the peaked roofs of his beloved Tallinn, crowded inside their stone-wall enclosure, looked rather modest and unassuming compared to the rows of grand residences in Bremen with their several storeys and verandas, reflected in the river below for a distance of half a league. His prospects seemed still less promising when he noted that under the rule of King Erik the town had lost the last remaining traces of its faded prosperity. As he trudged from the harbour towards Kalamaja, peering out from behind the chest he was carrying on his shoulder, Balthasar saw that Herr Horn had still not managed to repair the bites his cannonballs had taken out of the walls of Toompea. And saw that the Poxhouse at the Great Coast Gate was in ruins, and that the soldiers of His Majesty Erik, King of Sweden, Duke of Estonia, et cetera, had not received their wages for nearly half a year – judging by the faces and attire of those that were unloading barrels of some kind off a Swedish carrack onto the pier.

But Balthasar had barely a day or two to rest under Annika’s care at Kalamaja. She had endless questions, of course, which was not surprising at all, considering his five-year absence and everything he had seen – distant towns and countries and men and schools with exotic, unfamiliar names. She was eager to hear from him about everything. And then Balthasar had to answer one particular question as well. Judging by the tone of voice in which she posed it, it was to her the most important one – or so it seemed to Balthasar.

They were sitting together in the old, low-ceilinged chamber where Balthasar had lived for most of his boyhood years. In the course of the first day, half the night, and the following morning they had each asked and answered countless questions, so that, listening to her brother’s vivid descriptions, Annika began to feel she could actually see the scenes he described, as if she herself had returned from wandering in those distant lands. And Balthasar began to feel as though here he might soon take the reins of his life in hand again. For it appeared that not very much had changed after all, even though his father was dead and his cargo-transport business had been terminated. And Kimmelpenning was dead, too. And Meus. And old Truuta. And the Doctor and his wife had moved away to Mitau a year ago (Really!) for Herr Kettler had in the meantime become Duke of Kurland under the Polish king (Oh yes. That I know.) and living under the Swede had become too risky for the Doctor. Incidentally, it was said that Kettler had once locked him up. Mitau of course suspected him of maintaining contact with Stockholm. And yet, after everything . . . these old log walls, these smells of smoke and soot and bread and tar and leather, these low ceilings. My God, those three knots in the half-hewn logs above his plank bed were still there! Those knots in the wood that had always become two eyes and a mouth when he had lain there as a boy, staring up at the ceiling in the darkening hours – the eyes and mouth of a household spirit, or an angel, or his Kurgla grandfather, or an earth-god, or God in Heaven. Together all these things exuded some kind of – oh, Balthasar knew it was childish, but still – a surprising sense of safety and security. As did his “big sister”, already a woman of thirty-four or five, redolent of resin soap, and even in her plain grey dress – plain as the attire of the Beguines – she was a beautiful and brave and self-possessed widow, a genteel lady (for how else would one speak of a pastor’s widow but as a lady?). Balthasar did not yet dare enquire about her plans for the future, or whether there might be a prospective husband on the horizon . . . And then Annika asked the question:

“Bal, you didn’t get the letter I sent to Stettin, in which I told you about father’s death, did you?”

“No.”

“But the one I sent to Bremen, did you get that one?”

“Yes, as I told you.”

“Yes . . . But tell me . . . what I wrote to you about Herr Vegesack . . . the story he told me on his deathbed – is it true?”

Instead of answering, Balthasar asked: “Has anyone else here besides Vegesack said anything of the kind?”

“No. I know that for certain. I committed everything he told me to memory, in detail. I never heard anyone else mention you. Only I do remember that the day the peasant leaders were brought from Kolovere to Tallinn and taken to Jerusalem Hill to be broken on the wheel (there were eleven men), that same day Father came to town and stopped in to see me, and he mentioned in passing that he wondered where you might be. I said no doubt you were in Germany. He agreed: no doubt that was where you were. So – you were not here at that time?”

Balthasar knew he had to give an answer that he could stand by. Had Annika broached the subject even a minute earlier, the heady joy of homecoming, in which he was still afloat, would have induced him to say too much . . . But now, just a split second after learning that Siimon too had held his tongue, Balthasar felt that he had the right to keep silent as well. Without having to chastise himself for keeping secrets. For knowing does not necessarily contribute to one’s peace of mind. Neither for the one who knows the secret, nor for the one who knows that his secret is known.

“You’re asking whether I was here . . .?”

Balthasar looked his sister in the eye. Maybe it was purposely such a long look. Purposely, so that his sister, if she were astute enough, could interpret his answer this way or that.

“No.”

“Aha,” said Annika, with a kind of shameless and familiar and therefore doubly irritating casualness. “So now I know.”

“Know what?”

“Well, that the answer is – No.”

They spoke no more about it. When would they have had the opportunity anyway? For Balthasar had to hurry to town to notify the Council of Clergy. He wanted to take care of this right away, so that the waiting period of one or two months, over which the decision concerning his assignment to a pulpit would be made, could begin as soon as possible. He had paid the necessary visit to the secretary of the council at the sacristy of St Olaf’s Church, Meus’ familiar old sacristy, after which he would have to wait only one more week. In the meantime, Herr Balder had snared him into joining the new schoolboys, all complete strangers to him, in slogging through a performance of the Trinummus by Plautus, with Balthasar in the role of Megaronides. He also served as assistant to the rather lazy Herr Balder in the staging of the production. The next day, after the performance at the Town Hall, he was summoned to see Herr von Geldern – in such short order, it seems, because Herr von Geldern had deigned to attend the performance.

Balthasar did not think it likely that a conversation with this gentleman would be especially difficult. To be sure, Herr von Geldern’s star had risen with meteoric speed in the intervening years. At present he was neither more nor less than the superintendent of the entire Swedish territory of Estonia. And even though the boundaries of his territory were vague and tended to change daily, Herr von Geldern was indisputably the most powerful individual in the local church, de facto episcopus*, an honour bestowed by King Erik himself. From what Balthasar could remember of a brief encounter with the man at the home of Annika and Meus, he was an affable enough gentleman – especially to those who paid sufficient heed to his stature. It was no sin, after all, that Balthasar still owed a hundred marks to the departed Kimmelpenning’s estate. Had a novice preacher ever returned home free of debt after his studies in Germany, he wondered. Besides, no-one knew a thing about his debt to Kimmelpenning. Nor about his debt to Herr Sum. True, Rector Wolff may have sent a letter of complaint to the Town Council about him before receiving the money from Herr Sum – if that were the case, Herr von Geldern would know about the debts. But unpleasant though they were, these were old matters, after all, by now long settled. Herr von Geldern could know nothing about the rest . . . Nothing about all the times that the Devil had lured the young student from the path of virtue into the thickets and swamps of vice (as the Horned One is known to do with students). Nor could Herr Geldern know just how far off the path Balthasar had swerved in his student days and what kind of unanticipated detours he had taken (as one, who was by now lying under the sod, had noted) . . . it would be sensible, in any event, to keep eyes and ears open. For Balthasar could hardly hope that the Lord God would repeat the miracle He had once before performed for him when hope and fear hung in the balance – the time he had been summoned to Rector Wolff, expecting to be punished for his foul acts, and instead, lo and behold, became the rector’s young friend.

He could scarcely hope for that . . . And yet, God had a very similar outcome in store for him on this occasion. Possibly one even more curious.

Herr Johann Robert von Geldern received Balthasar in the same large parsonage of St Olaf’s Church, on Lai Street, where he had his residence and saw his parishioners, and which had now been fitted out as the seat of his superintendency as well. Unlike the way men of rank and status often treated their inferiors, Herr Geldern did not keep Balthasar waiting before acknowledging him. He set his goose-quill down on the writing desk as soon as Balthasar entered and turned towards him in a friendly manner.

Yes, he was a little older and greyer. But he was still the same agreeable gentleman that Balthasar had met at the home of Annika and Meus, big-boned and grey-eyed, wearing a splendid cloak trimmed with mink, for his study, on account of its high vaulted ceiling and thick walls, was quite cold. Nor did he need to rummage around in his memory to recall if he had ever met Balthasar before yesterday; he recognised him right away and blessed him, making the sign of the cross over him with the astonishing hauteur and facility with which high officials execute such ritual gestures.

“Yes, I remember you. From our meeting at the home of our young friend Frolink, whom God took from us much too soon. What a fine, full-flavoured plum wine he served us. Do you remember? The Doctor and Frau Katharina were in Finland at the time . . .”

Herr Geldern deigned to converse most affably with Balthasar. True enough. But he had not merely grown slightly greyer, he had also become a little more self-important, considerably more self-important, one might say. For in the corner of his ever-judging and evaluating eye, there seemed to be a glint from time to time of what could only be disdain – So, this is the next yokel who intends to lay claim to our pulpit . . . – or