The forbidden voice of a town called ‘Little Corner’

Anyone travelling from Moscow to St Petersburg in the most adventurous way, namely via the River Volga, will reach, after 230 kilometres, a bend in the river, and it is in that bend that lies the town of my birth. Home to some forty thousand souls, the town lies in a corner, a little corner to be precise, which is why the town is called Uglich, ‘Little Corner’. In the sixteenth century, Little Corner was the favourite town of Ivan IV, the first ruler of Russia to officially call himself tsar and who earned the nickname ‘the Terrible’ because greatness in Russian politics is simply indissociable from terror, or from an old-fashioned form of fear, a concept deeply rooted in the Christian tradition, which wants people to go through life on their knees. For me, that tradition is both the source of my existence and the tragedy of my fate: I am the bronze soul of the church in Little Corner, of the little Kremlin there, which is of course inferior to the great Kremlin in far-away Moscow. And Moscow, as everyone knows, has been the heart of the Christian world since the Middle Ages and the fall of Byzantium, at least according to Scripture experts.

‘Let me tell you the story of that event, the worst disaster in Little Corner and in ancient Russia. It is a story that has its roots in the past, but one that has branched out so widely over the years that it reaches into the present day’

I was cast in the beautiful river town of Little Corner, a bronze colossus weighing five hundred kilograms. That is also where I was given my voice, a twenty-kilogram clapper, and where I was hung in the bell tower to mark with my ringing the high points in the existence of Russian humanity: at celebrations and weddings, of course, but also alas at funerals and disasters. Everything related to Little Corner can be summed up in diminutive words, but one event was of such magnitude that it permanently changed the course of history. Let me tell you the story of that event, the worst disaster in Little Corner and in ancient Russia. It is a story that has its roots in the past, but one that has branched out so widely over the years that it reaches into the present day, as if it had preserved the cursed fearfulness of the first tsar and passed it on to subsequent generations.

I remember well how, in the month of May 1591, the cherry trees were in blossom in the garden of our little Kremlin. We were still living in the rapture of Easter, which had dispelled our winter gloom with the promise of new life, not only a beautiful summer, but also an enlightened future. Young peasant girls may truly have believed that the world would take a different turn in their lifetime. I saw men kneeling on the cold floor of the church, weeping with expectation and confidence. Something hung in the air – and in my case, that image can be taken literally – so that I too, every Sunday morning after Easter, and most of all at Pentecost, would ring the matins with delirious joy – ding, dong, ding – accompanied by the tinkling of the little bells, like silverware rattling on God’s great tray. There are such moments in the history of the world when all the forces of nature conspire and are capable of bringing about miracles or disasters. During one such miracle, I myself was once cast from the hot stream of fire, and so too did the fires in the bodies of the farmers in Little Corner blaze up, so that, for the first time in a long time, more children were born that year. I rang in the christening party for each newborn.

At the end of May, Dmitry was playing with the iron rings in the garden. Everyone adored the tsarevich, a son from Ivan’s seventh marriage, and they adored him even more so since Ivan had suffered a stroke a few years earlier after a game of chess and, thank God, could no longer be patched up. Dmitry’s weak brother had since worn the crown, but in reality it was Uncle Boris who ruled. Boris, called Godunov. I can still see before me Dmitry’s chubby cheeks, his raven-black hair, his bare feet in the tall grass along the Volga. He loved ring tossing; there was nothing dangerous about it. I can still hear his little voice when an iron ring would wrap itself around a peg. His voice resonated on my bronze skin.

That morning, it came as a complete surprise when a very different came from his throat while he was ring tossing. I didn’t see anything, I only heard a scream and a dull thud. My first thought was that he was having an epileptic seizure, as happened a few times a year. At the same time, I was surprised that, instead of hearing someone run towards him to see what had happened, I heard them run away. When his mother came looking for him, the boy’s blood had already drained away from the nasty slit in his throat. The world did indeed take a different turn that day, but not as we had hoped. Investigators from Moscow established that, during his epileptic seizure, Dmitry had unfortunately landed with his throat on one of the iron pegs, even though everyone could see that the slit had been inflicted with professional precision, not by a peg but by a blade.

‘And ring I did, louder and more fervently than ever, so that the whole country could hear that a great injustice had been done. Everyone wept with grief and anger, because the last chance to free Russia from Ivan’s curse had been lost.’

In no time at all, the square in front of the little Kremlin was filled with people shouting that it was Godunov who had murdered the boy in order to become tsar himself. He had tried everything already, even poison, but to no avail, and a man had been found near Little Corner with a bloodstained shirt and a bag containing a bloody knife. In the fight that ensued, people were killed. Someone climbed into the bell tower and untied the ropes of my clapper, so that I began to ring. And ring I did, louder and more fervently than ever, so that the whole country could hear that a great injustice had been done. I remember that everyone wept with grief and anger, and the weeping continued day and night, because the last chance to free Russia from Ivan’s curse had been lost. I rang and rang, so loudly and for so long that Boris sent his mounted police, a feared gang of officers to which he himself had once belonged – indeed, who had made him great. They beat all the rebels to death and threatened to set the town on fire, but then Boris had a better idea.

Because the ringing of the bells had caused unrest throughout the country, and because that unrest had led to anarchy and violence, I was torn loose from the tower and fell to the ground, cracking in the process. It took a hundred men to drag me to the courtroom, where I was tied in chains, as if I could really escape. A judge appeared, appointed by Boris, and with his hand on the Bible he accused me of subversive impertinence, blasphemy and unlawful libertine behaviour – he put it in other terms, but that’s what it came down to. I was sentenced to twenty lashes and exile. The iron strokes cut deep wounds into my skin. Before they sent me off to Siberia, they chopped off my clapper, as if they were literally ripping out my tongue so that I would be silenced forever. Hundreds of slaves, who had also been sentenced to exile, dragged me across the Urals to the Siberian city of Tobolsk, where I was left on a walled mud plain, under guard, again as if I might escape. There, I languished, year upon year, decade upon decade, century upon century. My immortal skin weathered, warped, cracked and rusted. No one paid any attention to me anymore, I would never make my voice heard again. They say that a later tsar overturned the sentence, that I was brought back to Little Corner and that I once more hang in the bell tower, with clapper and all, so that I can once more ring at all the city’s celebrations. But that is not true. My country loves lies. A pitiful copy hangs in Little Corner. My voice will never be heard again in Little Corner, nor will Dmitry’s voice, anywhere – no more than any free voice in this terrifying country.

Translated by Patrick Lennon