The Mysterious Alexandra Tarasova-Yusupov Page 10

  “Typhoon! and again “taepung” for the Chinese hands,” screamed the captain over the din of the howling of the wind and the crashing of the ten-foot waves against the outboard bulkheads of the ship.

  The first mate yelled from abaft, “All sails ahull, lash the spars to the deck rails.”

  Every man and even Alexandra ran to furl and to get the helm lashed. The main mast tops’ll ripped apart, but none of the other sails suffered any damage. The work to affix all the spars to the deck rails was dangerous, and every man who went up a mast knew that this could be his last voyage–his last day. One man fell from the foremast and broke his arm, and another was catapulted from the port yardarm of the mizzenmast and into the boiling sea. He was never seen again.

  Finally, with the sails all furled, the chaotic movement of the helpless ship began to diminish, and the tremendous rocking and pitching grew less threatening. A deck hand lashed Alexandra to the mainmast against her wishes and her protestations.

  “Ye’ll have some chance to survive iffen we still have a ship when this blows over,” he shouted, but she could not hear over the harsh, discordant racket from the assorted and seemingly endless noises.

  Alexandra gave in and sagged to the deck and wrapped herself around the mast. She was freezing, soaked, and exhausted. She found enough strength from deep inside herself to hang on for dear life for what seemed to be an eternity.

  The ship slammed into house sized waves coming from every direction with booming noises adding to the insane cacophony. Men were screaming from injuries and panic; the pigs brought along to provide fresh meat for the voyage had all been broken out of their pens and were running hither and yon in a mindless panic. Eventually, most of them were washed overboard squealing and screaming. Alexandra envisioned the ship as a helpless sinner being punished in hell, and she prayed that God would forgive her of her transgressions.

  “I will never curse or sneak a taste of rum again, or steal from my brothers, if you will spare the ship and me. I promise,” she said quietly to herself with no real faith or hope that she would live to be thirteen.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  LOSS OF A SHIP AND A GREAT LESSON

  “There’s always a siren, singing you to shipwreck. Some of us may be more susceptible than others are, but there’s always a siren. It may be with us all our lives, or it may be many years or decades before we find it, or it finds us. But when it does find us, if we’re lucky we’re Odysseus tied up to the ship’s mast, hearing the song with perfect clarity…”

  —Caitlín R. Kiernan, The Drowning Girl

  Aboard the Jardine-Matheson-Tarasova Brigantine, The Far East Transporter, South China Sea between the Chosŏn Coast and Hainan Province, Japan, Russia, October 24, 1873

  The typhoon persisted for three hellish days; and when the winds died down, the torrential rains kept on for another three days. No one on board had any idea where they had traveled or where they were. The sky and the sea were black, and visibility was no more than a few feet in any direction. At last–on the sixth day of starving and freezing–the storm left as quickly as it had arrived. The sun broke through the fog and mist at noon, and the captain called out their location. It was as if God had heard all their prayers.

  “God be praised. Hallelujah! Golden Horn Bay off the port side. We are saved, my friends, saved!”

  Alexandra wept with relief and utter weariness. She was too hungry, too cold, and too weak to be able to stand for several minutes after one of the sailors untied her from the mast. Alexandra’s self-esteem, and cock-sureness, her faith in her own abilities, and her very self, were shaken by the sustained terror she had experienced. She felt like a little girl, a little twelve-year-old child; and she wanted her mother. As soon as she could get away from the overly solicitous ship’s hands, she ran to the aft of the ship and down the ladder. She hid in her poop deck stateroom and had a good cathartic cry. There, she slipped under the covers on her bed and began to weep. She cried for more than an hour—a noisy, voluminous outburst that vented all her fears and rage. Now that the force and destruction of the storm was gone, the tumult of her emotions began to abate. At first, she felt that she had lost her self-esteem and its attendant chutzpah—her inextinguishable sense of destiny. She became a weak, frightened, pre-teenage girl, who wanted her mother.

  I will never step foot in a ship again, so help me, God!” she moaned to herself.

  Slowly, she began to think more objectively and to recognize that she was a survivor of the worst the sea had to set against her. She accepted the fact that the monstrous natural typhoon had passed, and eventually her personal hurricane had abated as well. When she felt more like the girl she had been before the storm struck, she knew she had to venture back out on deck. She was not so sure about the survival of the crew of the ship, and she became ashamed of her selfish joy at being alive and not caring about the other human beings on the ship—or about the great ship, The Far East Transporter, itself.

  Her tears dried up; her courage came back; and her sense of responsibility for the men and the ship and the business became of paramount importance to her. Alexandra stiffened her resolve and retraced her steps up to the weather deck. She was embarrassed, but not displeased when the officers and the crew broke into a spontaneous standing applause. She had become the ship’s mascot and a good-luck albatross to them all.

  It took only a few moments for the joy of the fresh air and sunshine, the exhilaration of being cheered by the crew, and the feeling of the solidity of the weather deck to subside. She looked around her and saw with dismay the terrible destruction the sturdy ship had suffered. Masts were broken, sails torn into jagged tatters, holes broken in the bulkheads above the sea level, and cargo strewn all around the usually pin neat decks. Bolts of precious silk were unrolled, ripped, and filthy. The worst thing was the awful look on the faces of the captain and the crew. There was a look of despair on brave men’s sun creased visages; some simply stood and stared out to sea, looking at nothing–a thousand-yard stare. There was a sense in many of the men that there was nothing left for them, and a profound gloom hung over the battered survivors.

  At Alexandra and James’s insistence, Captain Brilinskov took the two young owners on a damage reconnaissance tour of the ship. The damage was far worse than they had presumed from their first view on the weather deck. Below decks, furniture had been thrown around and multiple holes the size of large dinner plates had been punched into and in some cases through the bulkheads so that daylight was clearly visible from the inside. The farther below decks they went, the worse the damage. One deck below the poop deck, the ladder was broken to pieces. They made a detour. There was debris scattered all over the next deck and a hole was broken into the cabin below. In the aft cargo hold, debris was sliding back and forth as the ship rocked from side to side.

  It appeared that none of the carefully packed crates remained intact. Alexandra’s carefully packed treasures were broken and ripped. They moved forward toward the bow on the deck above the cargo hold and opened the hatch leading into the hold just ahead of the main mast. Water mixed with whiskey from smashed kegs was sloshing ominously around the deck as the ship rocked from side to side. The precious rolls of century old hand knotted carpets were torn open, and the rugs floated on top of the gathering water, obviously ruined.

  Alexandra fought to hold back her tears. Jamie looked at her face and nodded his agreement.

  Captain Brilinskov looked forlorn; his face sagged; and he said, “Come now. We’ve seen enough. Nothin’ left but for the insurance sharks to fight us over. This is a mighty loss for the lot of us. This great ship will be on the bottom of the ocean before night fall.”

  He was right. The captain was a master sailor and managed to get the Far East Transporter to a sandspit at the mouth of Golden Horn Harbor before she listed aport and lay forlornly half in and half out of the icy sea. Alexandra, James, and the ship’s officers saw to it that every man was off the ship and on dry land before they clamber
ed over the broken railing and into the knee-deep freezing water to get onto the land spit. They waited anxiously for Captain Brilinskov until he finally completed his inspection of the dying ship and became the last man to leave the ship as was his duty.

  He instructed the first and second mates to run into Vladivostok to reach the insurers office before other salvagers could take what was left. He dispatched two of the strongest crewmen to run around the banks of the harbor until they came to someone with a boat large enough to fetch the crew home before they all froze. Only then did he sit wearily down and stare at his boots. No one was interested in speaking.

  It was dark when Alexandra was dropped off at the Tarasova fur commercial offices. She knew her father would still be up and working on the next ship’s agenda and already spending the money he was going to reap from the returns of the treasures of the Far East Transporter.

  He leaped out of his chair when he saw Alexandra come into the light of his office. He wrapped her up in a strong bear hug.

  “I didn’t expect you until a week from now, my girl. I’m all the more the happier to have my princess back. Sit and tell me of your adventures and your treasures. I can hardly wait to hear.”

  “Father, I have to give you the worst news first. We were struck by a typhoon and nearly sunk. We were battered around for three days, and the ship was very badly damaged.”

  Abram started to speak, but Alexandra raised her hand to have him wait.

  “And, the ship sank just at the mouth of the harbor. We lost eight hands and all the cargo. My great success is now like ashes in my mouth.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  FORCED TO BEGIN LEARNING THE FAMILY BUSINESS ON LAND

  “Joseph shall return to Canaan, grieve not. Hovels shall turn to rose gardens, grieve not. If a flood should arrive, to drown all that’s alive, grieve not. Noah is your guide in the typhoon’s eye, grieve not.”

  —Khaled Hosseini,

  A Thousand Splendid Suns, 2008

  Tarasova Fur Company Headquarters and Trading Center, No. 71 Svetlanskaya Street, Vladivostok, Russia, December 9, 1873

  Abram Timurovitch tried to hide his shock and grief. It was not possible that his ever serious and bright princess of a daughter would make a joke out of such a terrible thing. He mulled over what to say. If this had been one of his grown sons, he would have given him a beating, laying all of the blame on him. If this had been a ship’s captain who brought him the news, he would have had him flogged and his career with the company terminated and had him black-balled. Had the ship simply been lost at sea, he would have raged and then wept. But this was his daughter. He could not think of anything but great joy that she had survived.

  “That is terrible news, Alexandra,” he managed after a lengthy pause as he ran over the great losses in his mind, “but you are here and not harmed. I thank our seamen’s patron Saint Nicholas the Miracle-Worker that our family has been blessed by your safe return. Please now tell me all about it if it is not too terrible for you to do so, my love.”

  Alexandra chocked back a small sob then began, “We had great success in our trading efforts. I was able to achieve very good discounts in Seoul and packed millions of rubles worth of goods into the holds. They would have been worth tens of millions when sold from here in the trading center.”

  She went on making each occurrence into a fascinating story. The story of the storm was almost more than her father could bear, and he moved to her side and put both of his heavily muscled arms around her as she continued to the end of her harrowing tale.

  “Have you lost all faith in me, Father,” Alexandra asked plaintively. “I feel it is all or at least mostly my fault. Will you ever let me go on another commercial sailing venture?”

  Abram laughed at his daughter’s altogether genuine distress and said soothingly in his rich deep voice, “My girl. I am most proud of what you did. You are not Iisus or Bog Otets. You are just a human like me and cannot control the winds and the waves. Only the Son and God the Father can do that.”

  “I love you, Father.”

  “And I, you, my princess. So much so that I will keep you by my side for some time to learn the business and to keep you safe. You will have your day as a Tarasova captain, but you must let your old father have a time to get over this terrible near miss.”

  “I will obey you, Father; but I will not always be a girl. I will be a woman soon. You must promise that I will be able to travel all the China seas and even around the Pacific. There is so much world to see, and I want not only to see it but to be an important competitor as a captain of the Tarasova commercial company. I will one day succeed you. That is not a boast; it is a fact. I have every confidence. My brothers can be my equals, but I will not walk or sit behind them. That may be all right for other women, but I will never kowtow to a man.”

  Abram laughed heartily, “I would expect nothing less of you, Princess. Just don’t take over while I am still able to run the company.”

  Then they both laughed.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  MORE EVIDENCE

  “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.”

  —Arthur Conan Doyle,

  The Boscombe Valley Mystery, 1891

  National Archives of Australia, Victorian Archives Centre, 99 Shiel Street, North Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, December 15, 2013

  The Mormon senior missionary couples had developed a firm bond over their several months of service in Australia. That bond enabled them to work with an efficiency none of them would have imagined five months ago. In part, their burgeoning success in digitalizing the Victoria Archives Centre’s hand-written records came from the fact that all of them were professionally proficient in performing the complex and difficult electronic tasks of changing old, long-hand, penscript, and barely legible yellowing records into easily accessible digital photographs and computerized documents. Another element of their success was the missionaries’ genuine affection for one another which translated into a love for the work they were doing. A further element of that affection was their genuine conversion to the church in which they had believed all their lives and now saw its practical goodness in ongoing operation. Finally, they began to have fun doing their work; the most fun came from their united effort to solve an enticing mystery.

  “Brothers and Sisters, we have another breakthrough in our quest to prove who the mysterious Alexandra Tarasova was. I declare humbly, that I found a great document; and I am graciously willing to share this priceless nugget with you,” Sister Marianne Clyde announced with an impish expression on her cherubic face.

  “We’re certainly glad that you have done all of this marvelous work and a wonder in appropriate humility,” joked her husband, Moroni.

  “Out with it, Marianne,” insisted Sister Lisa Taylor. “No more suspense. I, for one, could use a bit of uplifting.”

  Marianne gently removed a yellow parchment document and a newspaper front page which appeared about to crumble. She placed the papers on a parchment paper lining of the collating table.

  The writing on the document was in Cyrillic calligraphy which was a handsome example of the best of Russian handwriting. The meaning was completely obscured by the foreign language and alphabet and required considerable explanation. The newspaper, dated 05, April, 1876, was too long and complicated to permit a full translation; so, the missionaries had to make do with a synopsis kindly provided by the Russian born janitor of the archive centre.

  Marianne began, “The gist of the pretty hand writing is that it is an invitation to a debut and birthday party for one Alexandra Abramovna Tarasova. Perhaps you have heard of her?” she said with an impish smile.

  “Tell us the rest, Sister Clyde, and hurry up about it,” insisted Sister Taylor again.

  “It is on letterhead parchment stationary from the Tarasova Commercial Trading Centre in Vladivostok, Far Eastern Russia. It must have been a very important and very formal occasion given the expensive paper used in the announcement,
and goodness only knows how many invitations went out. The newspaper article tells about the grand party and the dignitaries who attended, including captains of industry, an admiral, multiple probably important businessmen and their wives, the commandant of the Balagansk Prison, and two headmen from the Buryat tribes—one local to the Vladivostok area and one from well to the north.”

  The missionary couples poured over the documents and made their own scanned copies. It was considered by all of them to be an invaluable piece of their puzzling mystery. It was P-day, and by prior arrangement, the band of senior missionaries set out for another day of low-grade, appropriate, adventure and a quest to learn more about Melbourne. By now, all of them were comfortable with the correct pronunciation for their adopted city—

  “Mel bun”.

  This time they decided on a vigorous walking tour and started at Southgate to visit the Victorian Arts Center, then crossed the bridge to Swanston Street Walk and on to Collins Street. They quickly took in Bourke Street Mall and did a little cursory shopping. Then, they made the climb up the hill to the State Houses of Parliament. They were not permitted to enter the parliament buildings; so, they went back down to Russell Street and took a tour through the Old Melbourne Gaol. Afterwards, they went back to La Trobe Street and walked through the magnificent State Library, their putative employer.

  Sister Lisa Taylor suggested, “Let’s do lunch—as they say in California—I’ve heard of this nice little pub right here by the library. We can have authentic Aussie food.”