The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“Do you know who I am? I’m no equal of yours, I had my own serfs, and I’ve whipped a great many fine fellows like you in the stable just because I felt like it, and if I’ve lost everything, it’s because there was some special divine will for it, and there’s a seal of wrath upon me, which is why nobody dares to touch me.”

They didn’t believe him and laughed at him, but he told them how he used to live, and rode around in carriages, and drove all the civilians out of the public garden, and once came naked to the governor’s wife, “and now,” he says, “I’ve been cursed for my willfulness, and my whole nature has turned to stone, and I have to wet it constantly, so give me vodka! I’ve got no money to pay for it, but instead I’ll eat the glass.”

One of the customers ordered vodka for him, so as to watch how he would eat the glass. He tossed off the vodka at once, and, as promised, honestly began to crunch the glass with his teeth and ate it right in front of us, and everybody was amazed at it and laughed heartily. But I felt sorry for him, because here was a nobleman who, from his zeal for drink, would even sacrifice his insides. I thought he should be given something to rinse the glass out of his guts, and I ordered him another shot at my expense, but I didn’t make him eat the glass. I said: never mind, don’t eat it. He was touched by that and gave me his hand.

“I suppose,” he says, “you come from a gentleman’s household?”

“Yes, I do,” I say.

“One can see at once,” he says, “that you’re not like these swine. Gramercy to you for that.”

I say:

“It’s nothing, go with God.”

“No,” he replies, “I’m very glad to converse with you. Move over a bit, I’ll sit down beside you.”

“Please do,” I say.

He sat down beside me and began to tell me about his noble origins and grand upbringing, and again he says:

“What’s this … you’re drinking tea?”

“Yes, tea. Want to have some with me?”

“Thanks,” he replies, “but I can’t drink tea.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” he says, “my head’s not for tea, my head’s for a spree: better order me another shot of vodka! …” And once, and twice, and three times he asked me for vodka like that, and it was beginning to make me very annoyed. But I found it still more repugnant that he said very little that was true, but kept showing off all the time and making up God knows what about himself, and then would suddenly turn humble and weep, and all over vanities.

“Just think,” he says, “what sort of man am I? I was created by God Himself in the same year as the emperor. I’m his coeval.”

“Well, what of it?”

“And, despite all that, what sort of position am I in? Despite all that,” he says, “I’m not distinguished in the least and live in insignificance, and, as you just saw, I’m despised by everybody.” And with those words, he again asked for vodka, but this time for a whole decanter, and started telling me an enormous story about merchants in taverns making fun of him, and in the end he says:

“They’re uneducated people. Do they think it’s easy to bear such responsibility, to be eternally drinking vodka and nibbling the glass? It’s a very difficult calling, brother, and for many even completely impossible; but I’ve accustomed my nature to it, because I see that one must do one’s part, and I bear with it.”

“Why be so zealous about this habit?” I argue. “Just drop it.”

“Drop it?” he replies. “Ah, no, brother, it’s impossible for me to drop it.”

“Why can’t you?” I ask.

“I can’t,” he says, “for two reasons. First, because, unless I’m drunk, I’m quite unable to go to bed, and I’ll keep wandering about; and the second, the main reason, is that my Christian feelings won’t allow it.”

“What on earth does that mean? That you don’t go to bed is understandable, because you keep looking for drink; but that your Christian feelings won’t allow you to drop such harmful vileness—that I refuse to believe.”

“So,” he replies, “you refuse to believe it … That’s what everybody says … But suppose I drop this habit of drunkenness and someone else picks it up and takes it: will he be glad of it or not?”

“God save us! No, I don’t think he’ll be glad of it.”

“Aha!” he says. “There we have it, and if it must be that I suffer, you should at least respect me for that and order me another decanter of vodka!”

I rapped for another little decanter, and sat, and listened, because I was beginning to find it entertaining, and he went on in these words:

“It ought to be so that this torment ends with me, rather than going on to someone else, because,” he says, “I’m from a good family and received a proper upbringing, so that I even prayed to God in French when I was still very little; but I was merciless and tormented people: I gambled my serfs away at cards; I separated mothers and children; I took a rich wife and hounded her to death; and finally, being guilty of it all myself, I also murmured against God: why did He give me such a character? And He punished me: he gave me a different character, so that there’s no trace of pride in me, you can spit in my eye, slap me in the face, if only I’m drunk and oblivious of myself.”

“And now,” I ask, “aren’t you murmuring against that character as well?”

“No, I’m not,” he says, “because even though it’s worse, it’s still better.”

“How can that be? There’s something I don’t understand: how can it be worse, but better?”

“It’s like this,” he answers. “Now I know only one thing, that I’m ruining myself, but then I can’t ruin others, for they’re all repulsed by me. I’m now the same as Job on his dung heap,” he says, “and in that lies all my happiness and salvation”—and again he finished the vodka, and asked for another decanter, and said:

“You know, my kind friend, you should never scorn anyone, because no one can know why someone is tormented by some passion and suffers. We who are possessed suffer, but that makes it easier for others. And if you yourself are afflicted by some sort of passion, do not willfully abandon it, lest another man pick it up and suffer; but seek out such a man as will voluntarily take this weakness from you.”

“Well,” I say, “but where can such a man be found? No one would agree to it.”

“Why not?” he replies. “You don’t even have to go far: such a man is here before you, I myself am such a man.”

I say:

“Are you joking?”

But he suddenly jumps up and says:

“No, I’m not joking, and if you don’t believe it, test me.”

“How can I test you?” I say.

“Very simply: do you wish to know what my gift is? I do have a great gift, brother. You see, I’m drunk now … Yes or no, am I drunk?”

I look at him and see that he has gone quite blue in the face and is all bleary-eyed and swaying on his feet, and I say:

“Yes, of course, you’re drunk.”

And he replies:

“Well, now turn towards the icon for a moment and recite the ‘Our Father’ to yourself.”

I turn and, indeed, I’ve no sooner recited the “Our Father” to myself while looking at the icon, than this drunken gentleman again commands me:

“All right, look at me now: am I drunk or not?”

I turn and see that he’s sober as a judge and standing there smiling.

I say:

“What does this mean? What’s the secret?”

And he replies:

“It’s not a secret, it’s called magnetism.”

“What’s that?” I say. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s a special will,” he says, “which resides in man, and can neither be drunk away, nor slept away, because it’s freely given. I demonstrated it to you, so that you would understand that, if I wanted to, I could stop right now and never drink again, but I don’t want to have someone else start drinking for me, while I, having recovered, go and forget about God. But I’m ready and able to remove the drinking passion from another man in a moment.”

“Do me a favor,” I say. “Remove it from me!”

“Can it be,” he says, “that you drink?”

“Yes,” I say, “and at times I even drink very zealously.”

“Well, then, don’t be timid,” he says. “It’s all work for my hands, and I’ll repay you for your treating me: I’ll remove it all from you.”

“Ah, do me the favor, I beg you, remove it!”

“Gladly, my friend, gladly,” he says. “I’ll do it for your treating me; I’ll remove it and take it upon myself”—and with that he called again for vodka and two glasses.

I say:

“What do you want two glasses for?”

“One,” he says, “for me, the other—for you!”

“I’m not going to drink.”

But he suddenly seems to get angry and says:

“Hush! S’il vous plaît! Keep quiet! Who are you now? A patient.”

“Well, all right, have it your way: I’m a patient.”

“And I’m a doctor,” he says, “and you must obey my orders and take your medicine”—and with that he pours a glass for me and for himself and begins waving his hands in the air over my glass like a church choirmaster.

He waves and waves, and then orders:

“Drink!”

I was doubtful, but since, to tell the truth, I myself wanted very much to sample the vodka, and he ordered me to, I thought: “Go on, if for nothing else, then for the sake of curiosity, drink up!”—and I drank up.

“How does it taste,” he asks, “good or bitter?”

“I’m unable to tell you.”

“That means you didn’t have enough,” he says, and he pours a second glass and again moves his hands to and fro over it. He moves them, moves them, then shakes them off, and he makes me drink this second glass and asks: “How was this one?”

I say jokingly:

“This one seemed a bit heavy.”

He nods his head, and at once starts waving over a third, and again commands: “Drink!” I drink it and say:

“This one was lighter”—and after that I took the decanter myself, and treated him, and poured for myself, and went on drinking. He didn’t hinder me in that, only he wouldn’t let me drink a single glass simply, without waving over it. The moment I put my hand to it, he’d take it from me and say:

“Hush, s’il vous plaît … attendez,” and would first wave his hands over it, and then say:

“Now it’s ready, you can take it as prescribed.”

And I went on curing myself in that fashion with that gentleman there in the tavern right until evening, and I was quite at peace, because I knew I was drinking not for the fun of it, but in order to stop. I patted the money in my breast pocket, and felt that it was all lying there safely in its place, as it should be, and went on.

The gentleman who was drinking with me told me all about how he had caroused and reveled in his life, and especially about love, and after all that he started to quarrel, saying that I didn’t understand love.

I say:

“What can I do if I’m not attracted to these trifles? Let it be enough for you that you understand everything and yet go around as such a scallywag.”

And he says:

“Hush, s’il vous plaît! Love is sacred to us!”

“Nonsense!”

“You,” he says, “are a clod and a scoundrel, if you dare laugh at the sacred feelings of the heart and call them nonsense.”

“But nonsense it is,” I say.

“Do you understand,” he says, “what ‘beauty nature’s perfection’ is?”

“Yes,” I say, “I understand beauty in horses.”

He jumps up and goes to box my ear.

“Can a horse,” he says, “be beauty nature’s perfection?”

But since the hour was rather late, he couldn’t prove anything to me about it, and the barman, seeing that we were both drunk, winked to his boys, and some six of them made a rush at us and begged us to “kindly clear out,” while holding us both under the arms, and they put us outside and locked the door tightly behind us for the night.

Here such bedevilment began that, though it was many, many years ago, to this day I cannot understand what actually happened and by what power it must have been worked on me, but it seems to me that such temptations and happenings as I endured then are not to be found in any saint’s life in the Menaion.²⁸

XII

First thing, as I came flying out the door, I put my hand into my breast pocket to make sure that my wallet was there. It turned out that I had it on me. “Now,” I think, “the whole concern is how to bring it home safely.” The night was the darkest imaginable. In summer, you know, around Kursk, we have such dark nights, but very warm and very mild: the stars hang like lamps all across the sky, and the darkness under them is so dense that it’s as if someone in it is feeling and touching you … And there’s no end of bad people at the fairs, and occasions enough when people are robbed and killed. And though I felt myself strong, I thought, first of all, that I was drunk, and second of all, that if ten or more men fell upon me, even with my great strength I couldn’t do anything against them, and they would rob me, and, despite my bravado, I remembered that more than once, when I got up to pay and sat down again, my companion, that little gentleman, had seen that I had a fat lot of money with me. And therefore, you know, it suddenly came to my head: wasn’t there some sort of treachery on his part that might be to my harm? Where was he, in fact? We had been chucked out together. Where had he gotten to so quickly?

I stood there quietly looking around, and, not knowing his name, quietly called to him like this:

“Do you hear me, magnetizer? Where are you?”

And suddenly, like some devil, he rises up right before my eyes and says:

“I’m here.”

But it seemed to me that it wasn’t his voice, and in the dark even the mug didn’t look like his.

“Come closer,” I said. And when he did, I took him by the shoulders and began to examine him, and for the life of me I couldn’t make out who he was. The moment I touched him, suddenly, for no reason at all, my entire memory was blotted out. All I could hear was him jabbering something in French: “Di-ka-ti-li-ka-tipé,” and I didn’t understand a word of it.

“What’s that you’re jabbering?” I say.

And he again in French:

“Di-ka-ti-li-ka-tipé.”

“Stop it, you fool,” I say. “Answer me in Russian who you are, because I’ve forgotten you.”

He answers:

“Di-ka-ti-li-ka-tipé: I’m the magnetizer.”

“Pah,” I say, “what a little rogue you are!”—and for a moment I seemed to recall that it was him, but then I took a good look and saw he had two noses! … Two noses, that’s what! And reflecting on that—I forgot all about who he was …

“Ah, curse you,” I think, “what makes you stick yourself to me, you rascal?”—and I ask him again:

“Who are you?”

He says again:

“The magnetizer.”

“Vanish from me,” I say. “Maybe you’re the devil?”

“Not quite,” he says, “but close to it.”

I rap him on the forehead, and he gets offended and says:

“What are you hitting me for? I do you a good turn and deliver you from zealous drinking, and you beat me?”

And, like it or not, again I can’t remember him and say:

“But who are you?”

He says:

“I’m your eternal friend.”

“Well, all right,” I say, “but even if you’re my friend, maybe you can do me harm?”

“No,” he says, “I’ll present you with such a p’tit-comme-peu that you’ll feel yourself a different man.”

“Well,” I say, “kindly stop lying.”

“Truly,” he says, “truly: such a p’tit-comme-peu …”

“Don’t babble to me in French, you devil,” I say. “I don’t understand what a p’tit-comme-peu is!”

“I,” he says, “will give you a new understanding of life.”

“Well, that may be so,” I say, “only what kind of new understanding can you give me?”

“It’s this,” he says, “that you’ll perceive beauty nature’s perfection.”

“How am I going to perceive it all of a sudden like that?”

“Let’s go,” he says, “you’ll see at once.”

“Very well, then, let’s go.”

And we went. We both walk along, staggering, but walking all the same, and I don’t know where, only suddenly I remember that I don’t know who I’ve got with me, and again I say:

“Stop! Say who you are, otherwise I won’t go.”

He tells me, and I seem to remember for a moment, and I ask:

“Why is it that I keep forgetting who you are?”

And he replies:

“That’s the effect of my magnetism; but don’t let it frighten you, it will pass straightaway, only let me give you a bigger dose of magnetism right now.”

He suddenly turned me around, so that he was facing my back, and started feeling with his fingers in the hair on my nape … So strange: he rummaged there as if he wanted to climb into my head.

I say:

“Listen, you … whoever you are! What are you burrowing for there?”

“Wait,” he replies, “stand still: I’m transferring my magnetic power into you.”

“It’s fine,” I say, “that you’re transferring your power, but maybe you want to rob me?”

He denies it.

“Well, wait then,” I say, “I’ll feel for the money.”

I felt—the money was all there.

“Well, now,” I say, “it’s likely you’re not a thief”—but who he was I again forgot, only now I no longer remembered how to ask about it, but was taken up with the feeling that he had already climbed right inside me through my nape and was looking at the world through my eyes, and my eyes were just like glass for him.

“See,” I think, “what a thing he’s done to me—and where’s my eyesight now?” I ask.

“Yours,” he says, “is no longer there.”

“What kind of nonsense is that—not there?”

“Just so,” he replies, “with your own eyesight you can now see only what isn’t there.”

“What a strange thing! Well, then, let me give it a try!”

I peel my eyes for all I’m worth, you know, and it’s as if I see various vile mugs on little legs gazing at me from all the dark corners, and running across my path, and standing at the intersections, waiting and saying: “Let’s kill him and take the treasure.” And my disheveled little gentleman is there before me again, and his mug is all lit up, and behind me I hear a frightful din and disorder, voices, and clanging, and hallooing, and shrieking, and merry guffawing. I look around and realize that I’m standing with my back up against some house, and its windows are open, and there’s light inside, and from it come those various voices, and the noise, and the twanging of a guitar, and my little gentleman is there before me again, and he keeps moving his palms in front of my face, then passes his hands over my chest, stops at my heart, pushes on it, then seizes my fingers, shakes them a little, then waves again, and he’s working so hard that I see he’s even all in a sweat.

But only here, as the light began to shine on me from the windows of the house, and I felt I was regaining consciousness, did I stop being afraid of him and say:

“Well, listen, whoever you are—devil, or fiend, or petty demon—do me a favor: either wake me up, or dissolve.”

And to that he answers me:

“Hold on, it’s still not time: it’s still dangerous, you still can’t bear it.”

I say:

“What is it I can’t bear?”

“What’s happening now in the ethereal spheres,” he says.

“Then how is it I don’t hear anything special?”

But he insists that I’m supposedly not listening right, and says to me in divine language:

“That thou mayest hear, follow thou the example of the psaltery player, who inclineth low his head and, applying his ear to the singing, moveth his hand over the instrument.”

“No,” I think, “what on earth is this? That’s even nothing at all like a drunk man’s speech, the way he’s started talking!”

And he gazes at me and slowly moves his hands over me, all the while continuing to talk in the same way.

“Thus,” he says, “from its strings all together, artfully struck one with the others, the psaltery giveth out its song, and the psaltery player rejoiceth at its honeyed sweetness.”

I’ll tell you, it was simply like I was listening not to words, but to living water flowing past my hearing, and I thought: “There’s a drunkard for you! Look how well he can talk about things divine!” And my little gentleman meanwhile stops fidgeting and comes out with these words:

“Well, now it’s enough for you; wake up now,” he says, “and fortify yourself!”

And with that he bent a little and spent a long time searching for something in his trouser pocket, and finally took something out of it. I looked: it was a teeny-weeny little piece of sugar, and dirty all over, obviously because it had been wallowing there for a long time. He picked the dirt off with his fingernail, blew on it, and said:

“Open your mouth.”

I say:

“What for?”—and gape my mouth open. And he pushes the bit of sugar between my lips and says:

“Suck fearlessly; it’s magnetic sugar-mentor: it will fortify you.”

I realized, though he had said it in French, that it was about magnetism, and didn’t question him anymore, but got busy sucking the sugar, but the one who had given it to me I no longer saw. Whether he had stepped away somewhere in the dark just then or had simply vanished somewhere, deuce knew, but I was left alone and completely in my right mind, and I think: Why should I wait for him? What I have to do now is go home. But again a problem: I don’t know what street I’m on, and what house I’m standing by. And I think: Is this really a house? Maybe it all only seems so to me, and it’s all a bedevilment … It’s night now—everyone’s asleep, so why is there light here? … Well, better test it out … go in and see what’s up: if there are real people, then I’ll ask them the way home, and if it’s only a delusion of the eye and not living people … then what’s the danger? I’ll say: “Our place is holy: get thee gone”—and it will all dissolve.

XIII

With that bold resolution, I went up to the porch, crossed myself, and did a get-thee-gone—nothing happened: the house stood, didn’t waver, and I see: the door is open, and before me is a big, long front hall, and on the far wall a lamp with a lighted candle. I look around and see two more doors to the left, both covered with matting, and above them again these candleholders with mirrors shaped like stars. I think: What kind of house is this? A tavern? No, not a tavern, but clearly some kind of guest house, but what kind—I can’t tell. Only suddenly I begin to listen, and I hear a song pouring out from behind that matted door … as languorous as could be, heartfelt, and the voice singing it is like a mellow bell, plucking the soul’s strings, taking you prisoner. I listen and don’t go any further, and just then the far door suddenly opens, and I see a tall Gypsy come out of it, in silk trousers and a velvet jacket, and he is quickly seeing someone out through a special door, which I hadn’t noticed at first, under the far lamp. I must say, though I didn’t make out very well who he was seeing out, it seemed to me that it was my magnetizer, and the Gypsy said after him:

“All right, all right, my dear fellow, don’t begrudge us these fifty kopecks, but come by tomorrow: if we get any benefit from him, we’ll add more for your having brought him to us.”

And with that he slid the bolt shut and ran to me as if inadvertently, opened a door under one of those mirrors, and said:

“Please come in, mister merchant, kindly listen to our songs! There are some fine voices.”

And with that he quietly flung the door wide open before me … My dear sirs, a wave of something poured over me, I don’t know what, but it was something so akin to me that I suddenly found myself all the way inside. The room was spacious but low, the ceiling all uneven, hanging belly down, everything was dark, sooty, and the tobacco smoke was so thick that the light from the chandelier above was barely visible. And below, in this great smoke, there were people … very many, terribly many people, and before them a young Gypsy girl was singing with that voice I had heard. Just as I came in, she was finishing the last piece on a high, high note, tenderly drawn out and trailing off, and her voice died away … Her voice died away, and with it at the same instant everything seemed to die … Yet a moment later everyone jumped up like mad, clapping their hands and shouting. I was simply amazed: where did all these people come from, and aren’t there more and more of them emerging from the smoke? “Oh-oh,” I thought, “maybe they’re some kind of wild things instead of people?” Only I saw various gentlemen acquaintances, remount officers and stud-farm owners, or rich merchants and landowners I recognized, who were horse fanciers, and amidst all this public such a Gypsy girl goes walking … she can’t even be described as a woman, but just like a bright-colored snake, moving on her tail and flexing her whole body, and with a burning fire coming from her dark eyes. A curious figure! And in her hands she held a big tray, with many glasses of champagne standing around the edge, and in the middle an awful heap of money. There was no silver, but there was gold, and there were banknotes: blue titmice, gray ducks, red heath cocks—only white swans were missing.²⁹ Whoever she offered a glass to drank the wine at once and flung money on the tray, gold or banknotes, as much as his zeal prompted him to; and she would then kiss him on the lips and bow to him. She went along the first row, and the second—the guests seemed to be sitting in a semicircle—and then passed along the last row, where I was standing behind a chair, and was about to turn back without offering me wine, but the old Gypsy who came behind her suddenly cried: “Grusha!”—and indicated me with his eyes. She fluttered her eyelashes at him … by God, what eyelashes they were, long, long and black, and as if they had a life of their own and moved like some sort of birds, and in her eyes I noticed that, when the old man gave her that order, it was as if wrath breathed all through her. Meaning she was angry that she had been ordered to serve me, but nevertheless did her duty, went behind the last row to where I was standing, bowed, and said:

“Drink to my health, dear guest!”

And I couldn’t even reply to her: that’s what she had made of me all at once! All at once, that is, as she bent before me over the tray, and I saw how, amidst the black hair on her head, the parting ran like silver and dropped down her back, I got bedeviled and all reason left me. I drank what she offered me, and looked through the glass at her face, and I couldn’t tell whether she was dark or fair, but I could see how color glowed under her fine skin, like a plum in sunlight, and a vein throbbed on her tender temple … “Here’s that real beauty,” I think, “which is called nature’s perfection. The magnetizer was telling the truth: it’s not at all like in a horse, a beast for sale.”

And so I drained the glass to the bottom and banged it down on the tray, and she stood there waiting to see what she’d get for her attention. To that end I quickly put my hand in my pocket, but in my pocket all I found were twenty- and twenty-five-kopeck pieces and other small change. Too little, I think; not enough to give such a stinging beauty, and it would be shameful in front of the others! And I hear the gentlemen say none too softly to the Gypsy:

“Eh, Vassily Ivanovich, why did you tell Grusha to serve this muzhik? It’s offensive to us.”

And he replies:

“With us, gentlemen, every guest finds grace and a place, and my daughter knows the customs of her own Gypsy forefathers; and there’s nothing for you to take offense at, because you don’t know as yet how a simple man can appreciate beauty and talent. Of that there are various examples.”

And hearing that, I think:

“Ah, let the old wolf eat you all! Can it be that if you’re richer than I am, you have more feeling? No, what will be, will be: afterwards I’ll earn it back for the prince, but now I’m not going to disgrace myself and humiliate this incomparable beauty by stinginess.”

And with that I thrust my hand into my breast pocket, took a hundred-rouble swan from the wad, and slapped it down on the tray. And the Gypsy girl, holding the tray in one hand, at once took a white handkerchief in the other, wiped my mouth, and with her lips did not even kiss so much as lightly touch my lips, and it was as if she smeared them with some poison, and then stepped away.

She stepped away, and I would have stayed where I was, but that old Gypsy, Grusha’s father, and another Gypsy took me under the arms, and dragged me forward, and seated me in the frontmost row next to the police chief and other gentlemen.

That, I confess, I had no wish for: I didn’t want to go on, I wanted to get out of there; but they begged me and wouldn’t let me leave, and called out:

“Grusha! Grunyushka, keep our welcome guest here!”

And she came up and … deuce knows what she was able to do with her eyes: she glanced as if she were putting some venom in mine, but said:

“Don’t offend us: be our guest here a while longer.”

“Well,” I said, “as if anyone could offend you”—and sat down.

And she kissed me again, and again the sensation was the same: as if she was touching my lips with a poisoned brush and all the blood in me right down to my heart was burning with pain.

And after that the singing and dancing began again, and another Gypsy woman went around again with champagne. This one was also good-looking, but nothing next to Grusha! She didn’t have half her beauty, and for that I raked up some twenty- and twenty-five-kopeck pieces and poured them onto the tray … The gentlemen started laughing at that, but it was all the same to me, because I was only looking out for her, this Grushenka, and waiting until I heard her voice alone, without any chorus, but she didn’t sing. She was sitting with some others, singing along, but not giving a solo, and I didn’t hear her voice, but only saw her pretty little mouth with its white teeth … “Ah, well,” I think, “this is my orphan’s lot: I came in for a minute and lost a hundred roubles, and she’s the only one I won’t get to hear!” But, luckily for me, I wasn’t alone in wanting to hear her: other important gentlemen visitors all shouted out together after one of the breaks:

“Grusha! Grusha! ‘The Skiff,’ Grusha! ‘The Skiff!’ ”³⁰

The Gypsies cleared their throats, her young brother took up a guitar, and she began to sing. You know … their singing usually gets to you and touches the heart, but when I heard that voice of hers, the same that had lured me from outside the door, I melted away. I liked it terribly! She began as if a bit coarsely, manfully: “Ho-o-owls the se-e-ea, mo-o-oans the se-e-ea.” It’s as if you really hear the sea moaning, and in it a sinking little skiff struggling. And then suddenly there’s a complete change of voice, as it addresses the star: “Golden one, dear one, herald of the day, with you earthly trouble can never come my way.” And again a new turnabout, something you don’t expect. With them everything’s in these turnabouts: now she weeps, torments you, simply takes your soul out of your body, and then suddenly she strikes up something completely different, and it’s as if she puts your heart right back in place again … Now, too, she stirred up this “sea” with its “skiff,” and the others all just squealed in chorus:

Ja-lá-la. Ja-la-la.

Ja-lá-la pringalá!

Ja-la-la pringa-la.

Hey da chepuringalya!

Hey hop-high, ta gara!

Hey hop-high-ta gara!

And then Grushenka again went around with the wine and the tray, and again I pulled a swan from my breast pocket for her … Everyone started looking at me, because I had placed them all beneath me with my gifts: they were even ashamed to give after me, but I was decidedly unsparing now, because it was my own free will, to express my heart, to show my soul, and I showed it. Each time Grusha sings, I give her a swan, and I’m no longer counting how many I’ve loosed, I just give and that’s it, but when the others all ask her to sing, she doesn’t, to all their requests she says “I’m tired,” but I have only to nod to the Gypsy: Can’t we make her?—and he at once gives her a look, and she sings. And she sang a lot, one song more powerful than the other, and I had already handed over a lot of swans to her, a countless number, and in the end, I don’t know what time it was, but it was already dawn, and it seemed she really was worn out, and tired, and, looking at me as if hintingly, she began to sing: “Go away, don’t look, quit my sight.” These words seemed to be driving me out, but others were as if asking: “Or do you want to toy with my lion’s soul and feel all the joy of beauty’s burning coal?”³¹ And I gave her another swan! She unwillingly kissed me again, as if stinging me, and there seemed to be a dark flame in her eyes, and the others, in this canny hour, began to shout:

You must feel, my nearest,

How I love you, dearest!

And they all joined in and looked at Grusha, and I looked and joined in: “You must feel!” And then the Gypsies struck up “Dance, cottage, dance, stove; the master has nowhere to go”—and suddenly they all started dancing … The Gypsy men danced, and the Gypsy women danced, and the gentlemen danced: all together in a whirl, as if the whole cottage really were dancing. The Gypsy women flit about before the gentlemen, who try to keep up with them, the young ones with a whistle, the older ones with a groan. I look: no one has stayed seated. Even dignified men, from whom you’d never in your life expect such clowning, all rose to it. One of the more staid ones would sit and sit, and, obviously very ashamed at first, go and only follow with his eyes, or pull at his mustache, and then it was as if a little imp would get him to twitch his shoulder, another to move his leg, and see, suddenly he jumps up and, though he doesn’t know how to dance, starts cutting such capers as you’ve never seen. A police chief, fat as can be, and with two married daughters, is there with his two sons-in-law, huffing and puffing like a catfish and kicking up his heels, but a hussar captain, a remount officer, a fine fellow and a rich one, a rollicking dancer, is the most brilliant of all: hands on hips, stamping his heels, going out in front of everybody, saluting, scraping the floor—and when he comes face-to-face with Grusha, he tosses his head, drops his hat at her feet, and shouts: “Step on it, crush it, my beauty!”—and she … Oh, she too was a dancer! I’ve seen how actresses in theaters dance, and it’s all, pah, the same as when an officer’s horse, without any fantasy, prances at a parade just to show off, grandstanding for all he’s worth, but with no fire of life. This beauty, once she sets off, goes floating like some pharaoh, smooth as can be, and inside her, the snake, you hear the cartilage crunch and the marrow flow from bone to bone, then she stands, curves her body, heaves a shoulder, and brings her brow into line with the point of her toe … What a picture! Simply from the sight of her dancing, they all seem to lose their minds: they rush to her madly, obliviously; one has tears in his eyes, another bares his teeth, but they all cry out:

“We’ll spare nothing: dance!” They simply fling money under her feet, one gold, another banknotes. And here everything starts whirling thicker and thicker, and I’m the only one sitting, and I don’t know how long I can bear it, because I can’t look at how she steps on the hussar’s hat … She steps on it, and a devil gives me a tweak; she steps on it again, and he gives me another tweak, and finally I think: “Why should I torment myself uselessly like this! Let my soul revel all it wants”—and I jump up, push the hussar away, and break into a squatting dance before Grusha … And to keep her from stepping on the hussar’s hat, I invent this method, thinking, “So you all shout that you’ll spare nothing, that doesn’t surprise me: but that I will spare nothing, I’ll prove by my true deeds”—and I leap over and fling a swan from my breast pocket under her feet and shout: “Crush it! Step on it!” She didn’t care … Though my swan was worth more than the hussar’s hat, she wasn’t even looking at the swan, but kept aiming at the hussar; only the old Gypsy, bless him, noticed it and stamped his foot at her … She understood and went after me … She’s sailing towards me, her eyes lowered, burning the ground with her anger like the dragon Gorynych,³² and I’m capering before her like some sort of demon, and each time I leap, I fling a swan under her feet … I respect her so much that I think: “Was it you, cursed thing, who created earth and heaven?”—and I brazenly shout at her: “Move faster!” and go on flinging down the swans, and then I put my hand into my breast pocket to get one more, and I see that there are only about a dozen left … “Pah!” I think, “devil take you all!” I crumpled them all into a bunch and threw them under her feet, then took a bottle of champagne from the table, broke the neck off, and shouted:

“Step aside, my soul, you’ll get wet!” and I drank it off to her health, because after that dancing I was terribly thirsty.

XIV

“Well, and what then?” we asked Ivan Severyanych.

“Then everything actually followed as he promised.”

“Who promised?”

“Why, the magnetizer who put it on me: he promised to make the demon of drink leave me, and so he did, and I’ve never drunk a single glass since. He made a very good job of it.”

“Well, sir, and how did you and the prince finish this business of the loosed swans?”

“I don’t know myself, somehow very simply: how I got myself home from those Gypsies I don’t remember, nor how I went to bed, only I hear the prince knocking and calling, and I want to get up from my cot, but I simply can’t find the edge and climb off. I crawl one way—no edge; I turn the other way—no edge there either … I’m lost on the cot, of all things! … The prince cries: ‘Ivan Severyanych!’ And I respond: ‘Just a minute!’—and I’m crawling in all directions and still don’t find the edge, and finally I think: ‘Well, if I can’t get off, I’ll jump,’ and I reared back and hurled myself as far as I could, and felt as if I’d been smashed in the mug, and around me something’s jingling and pouring down, and behind me it’s also jingling and pouring down, and the prince’s voice says to his orderly: ‘Quick, bring a light!’

“And I stand there, I don’t move, because I don’t know whether I’m seeing all this awake or in a dream; and I think I still haven’t reached the edge of the cot, but instead, when the orderly brings the light, I see that I’m standing on the floor and that I’ve rammed my mug into the master’s cabinet of crystal and broken it all …”

“How did you lose your bearings like that?”

“Very simply: I thought I was sleeping on my cot, as had always been my habit, but most likely, on coming back from the Gypsies, I lay down on the floor, and crawled all over searching for the edge, and then jumped … and jumped right into the cabinet. I lost my bearings because that … magnetizer, having rid me of the demon of drink, provided me with the demon of straying … I remembered at once the words he had spoken: ‘It may be worse if you stop drinking’—and I went looking for him—I wanted to ask him if he hadn’t better demagnetize me to the old way, but I didn’t find him. He, too, had taken a lot on himself and couldn’t bear it, and right there, in a pot-house across from the Gypsies, had drunk so much that he died.”

“And so you remained magnetized?”

“So I did, sir.”

“And did this magnetism work on you for long?”

“Why for long? Maybe it’s still working.”

“But all the same it would be interesting to learn how things went between you and the prince … Can it be that you never had it out over those swans?”

No, sir, we had it out, only it wasn’t much. The prince also came home having lost at cards and began asking me for money to win it back. I say:

“Forget about that: I have no money at all.”

He thinks I’m joking, but I say:

“No, it’s true, I had a big outing while you were gone.”

He asks:

“What could you have done with five thousand on one outing?”

I say:

“I threw it all to a Gypsy girl …”

He doesn’t believe me.

I say:

“Well, don’t believe me, then; but I’m telling you the truth.”

He got angry and said:

“Lock the door, I’m going to give it to you for throwing my money away”—and then he suddenly cancelled it and said: “No, never mind, I myself am as wayward as you are.”

And he went to his room to finish his night’s sleep, and I also went to sleep again in the hayloft. I came to my senses in a hospital and heard them saying that I had had delirium tremens and had wanted to hang myself, only, thank God, I’d been swaddled in a long shirt. Then I got better and went to the prince on his country estate, because in the meantime he had resigned his commission, and I said:

“Your Serenity, I have to earn the money back for you.”

He says:

“Go to the devil.”

I see he’s very offended at me, go up to him, and bend down:

“What does this mean?” he says.

“At least,” I beg, “give me a good, sound thrashing.”

And he replies:

“And why do you think I’m angry at you? Maybe I don’t consider you guilty at all.”

“For pity’s sake,” I say, “how am I not guilty, when I squandered a whole province of money? I myself know that hanging’s too good for such a scoundrel as me.”

And he replies:

“No help for it, brother, since you’re an artist.”

“How’s that?” I ask.

“It is,” he replies, “that you, dearest Ivan Severyanych, my half-esteemed fellow, are an artist.”

“That,” I say, “I can’t understand.”

“Don’t think anything bad,” he says, “because I’m also an artist myself.”

“Well, that’s clear enough,” I think. “Obviously, I’m not the only one who has made a pursuit of delirium tremens.”

He stood up, flung his pipe on the floor, and said:

“No wonder you threw all you had before her: I, brother, gave for her what I don’t have and never did have.”

I stared at him goggle-eyed.

“Merciful heavens,” I say, “Your Serenity, my dear man, what are you saying? It’s even dreadful for me to hear it.”

“Well,” he replies, “don’t be very frightened: God is merciful, and perhaps I’ll get out of it somehow, only I gave the Gypsy camp fifty thousand for this Grusha.”

I gasped.

“What?” I say. “Fifty thousand? For a Gypsy girl? Can the snake be worth it?”

“Well, there,” he replies, “my half-esteemed fellow, you are talking most stupidly and inartistically … Is she worth it? A woman is worth everything in the world, because she can inflict such a wound that you won’t be cured of it for a whole kingdom, but she alone can cure you of it in a single moment.”

I keep thinking it’s all true, and keep shaking my head and saying:

“Such a sum! A whole fifty thousand!”

“Yes, yes,” he says, “and don’t go on repeating it, because thankfully they took it, otherwise I’d have given more … as much as you like.”

“You should have spat on it,” I say, “and left it at that.”

“I couldn’t, brother,” he says, “I couldn’t spit on it.”

“Why not?”

“She stung me with her beauty and talent, and I need to be cured, otherwise I’ll go out of my mind. But tell me: she is beautiful, isn’t she? Eh? Isn’t she? Enough to drive you out of your mind? …”

I bit my lips and only nodded silently:

“Right, right.”

“You know,” says the prince, “I could even die for a woman, it would be nothing to me. Can you understand that I think nothing of dying?”

“What’s there not to understand?” I say. “It’s beauty, nature’s perfection.”

“How do you understand that?”

“Like this,” I reply, “that beauty is nature’s perfection, and from that ravishment a man can perish—even joyfully!”

“Good for you,” my prince replies, “good for you, my almost half-esteemed and most greatly insignificant Ivan Severyanych! Precisely, sir, precisely, it is joyful to perish, and it now feels sweet to me that I overturned my whole life for her: resigned my commission, mortgaged my estate, and from now on I’ll live here, seeing nobody, but only looking in her face.”

I lowered my voice still more and whispered:

“How are you going to look in her face?” I say. “You mean she’s here?”

And he answers:

“What else? Of course she’s here.”

“Can it be?” I ask.

“Wait here,” he says, “I’ll bring her right now. You’re an artist—I’m not going to hide her from you.”

And with that he left me and went out the door. I stood there, waiting and thinking:

“Eh, it’s not good your insisting that you only want to look at her face! You’ll get bored!” But I didn’t reason about it in detail, because when I remembered that she was there, I immediately felt that my sides were even getting hot, and my mind became addled, and I thought: “Can it be that I’m going to see her now?” And suddenly they came in: the prince came first, carrying a guitar on a broad red ribbon in one hand, and with the other dragging Grusha by both hands, and she walked downcast, reluctantly, without looking, and only those huge eyelashes of hers fluttered against her cheeks like a bird’s wings.

The prince led her in, picked her up in his arms, and seated her like a child, with her legs tucked under, in the corner of a wide, soft sofa; he put one velvet pillow behind her back, another under her right elbow, threw the ribbon of the guitar over her shoulder, and placed her fingers on the strings. Then he himself sat on the floor by the sofa, leaned his head against her red morocco bootie, and nodded for me to sit down, too.

I quietly lowered myself to the floor by the doorway, also tucked my legs under, and sat looking at her. It became as quiet as if the room were empty. I sat and sat, my knees even began to ache, and I glanced at her, she was still in the same position, and I looked at the prince: I see he’s gnawing his mustache from languor, but he doesn’t say a word to her.

I nod to him, as if to say: tell her to sing! And in response he does me a pamtomine, meaning: she won’t listen to me.

And again we both sit on the floor and wait, but suddenly it’s as if she starts raving, sighing, and sobbing, and a little tear flows from her lashes, and her fingers crawl and murmur over the strings like wasps … And suddenly she begins to sing very, very softly, as if she’s weeping: “Good people, listen to my heartfelt grief.”

The prince whispers: “What?”

And I whisper back in French:

“P’tit-comme-peu”—and have nothing more to say, but at that same moment she suddenly cries out: “And for my beauty they’ll sell me, they’ll sell me,” and she flings the guitar far from her knees, and tears the kerchief from her head, and falls facedown on the sofa, covers her face with her hands, and weeps, and I weep, looking at her, and the prince … he, too, begins to weep, and he takes up the guitar, and, not really singing but more like intoning in church, moans: “If you but knew all the fire of love, all the anguish in my ardent soul”—and he bursts into sobs. He sings and sobs: “Comfort me, the comfortless one, make me happy, the unhappy one.” As he becomes so cruelly shaken, I see that she begins to heed his tears and singing and grows quieter, calmer, and she suddenly takes her hand quietly from under her face and, like a mother, tenderly embraces his head …

Well, here it became clear to me that she had pitied him this time and would now comfort him and heal all the anguish of his ardent soul, and I got up quietly, inconspicuously, and left.

“And it was probably then that you entered the monastery?” someone asked the storyteller.

“No, sir, not then, but later,” replied Ivan Severyanych and added that he was still to see much from that woman in this world, before all that was destined for her was fulfilled and crossed him out.

His listeners naturally fell upon him with requests that he tell them Grusha’s story, if only briefly, and Ivan Severyanych did so.

XV

You see (Ivan Severyanych began), my prince had a good heart, but a changeable one. Whatever he wanted, he had to get at all costs on the spot—otherwise he’d go out of his mind; and in that state, he wouldn’t spare anything in the world to attain it, but then, once he got it, he wouldn’t appreciate his good luck. That’s how it was with this Gypsy girl, and Grusha’s father and all the Gypsies of the camp right away understood that very well about him and asked him God knows what price for her, more than all his domestic property allowed, because though he did have a nice country estate, it was ruined. The prince did not have on hand then the kind of money the camp was asking for Grusha, and he went into debt for it and could no longer serve in the army.

Knowing all his habits, I didn’t expect much good from him for Grusha, and it came out as I thought. He kept clinging to her, endlessly gazed at her and sighed, and suddenly he started yawning and kept inviting me to keep them company.

“Sit down,” he’d say, “and listen.”

I’d take a chair, sit somewhere near the door, and listen. This happened often: he’d ask her to sing, and she’d say:

“Who am I going to sing for! You’ve turned cold, and I want my song to make someone’s soul burn and suffer.”

The prince would at once send for me again, and the two of us would listen to her; later Grusha herself started reminding him to invite me, and began to treat me very amiably, and more than once after her singing I had tea in her rooms together with the prince, though, naturally, either at a separate table or somewhere by the window, but when she was alone, she always simply sat me down beside her. Some time passed this way, and the prince was becoming more and more troubled, and once he said to me:

“You know, Ivan Severyanych, thus and so, things are very bad with me.”

I say:

“What’s so bad about them? Thank God, you live as one ought to, and you’ve got everything.”

He suddenly became offended.

“How stupid you are, my half-esteemed fellow,” he says. “I’ve ‘got everything’? And what is it I’ve got?”

“Why,” I say, “everything a man needs.”

“Not so,” he says. “I’ve become poor, I now have to calculate whether I can have a bottle of wine with dinner. Is that a life? Is that a life?”

“So,” I think, “that’s what you’re upset about,” and I say:

“Well, if there’s not wine enough, that’s still no great trouble, it can be endured, since there’s something sweeter than wine and honey.”

He understood I was hinting at Grusha and seemed to be ashamed, and he paced about, waved his arm, and said:

“Of course … of course … naturally … only … I’ve been living here for half a year now and haven’t set eyes on another human being …”

“And what do you need another human being for,” I say, “when you’ve got your heart’s desire?”

The prince flared up.

“You understand nothing, brother,” he says. “All’s well when you’ve got the one and the other.”

“Aha!” I think, “so that’s your tune, brother?”—and I say:

“What do we do now?”

“Let’s take up horse trading,” he says. “I want to have remount officers and horse breeders come to me again.”

Horse trading is a futile and ungentlemanly business, but, I think, “So long as baby’s amused and doesn’t cry,” and I say: “If you like.”

And we began to set up a corral. But we had barely started work, when the prince got carried away by this passion: whenever a little money came in, he at once bought horses, and he took them, he snatched them up senselessly; he wouldn’t listen to me … We bought a slew of them, but there were no sales … He couldn’t stand it, dropped the horses, and gave himself to whatever happened along: first he threw himself into building an extraordinary mill, then he started a saddler’s shop, and all of it brought losses and debts, and worst of all it deranged his character … He was never at home, but flew now here, now there, looking for something, and Grusha was alone and in a certain condition … expecting. She was bored. “I see little of him,” she said—but she forced herself to be tactful. The moment she noticed that he was bored at home for a day or two, she would say at once:

“My ruby-jewel, why don’t you go out and have some fun? What should you sit with me for? I’m simple and uneducated.”

At these words he would at once feel ashamed, and kiss her hands, and hold himself back for two or three days, but then he would just go off in a whirl and leave me in charge of her.

“Take care of her, my half-esteemed Ivan Severyanych,” he’d say. “You’re an artist, you’re not a whippersnapper like me, but a real high-class artist, and therefore you’re somehow able to talk to her so that you both have a nice time, while those ‘ruby-jewels’ just put me to sleep.”

I say:

“Why so? They’re loving words.”

“Loving,” he says, “but stupid and tiresome.”

I made no reply, but from then on started visiting her without ceremony: when the prince wasn’t there, I’d go to her wing twice a day to have tea and amuse her the best I could.

And I had to amuse her because, if she happened to start talking, she always complained:

“My dear Ivan Severyanych, friend of my heart,” she’d say, “jealousy, my darling one, torments me bitterly.”

Well, naturally, I reassured her:

“Why be so tormented?” I’d say. “Wherever he goes, he always comes back to you.”

She would burst into tears, beat her breast, and say:

“No, tell me … don’t conceal it from me, friend of my heart: where does he go?”

“To gentlefolk,” I say, “in the neighborhood or in town.”

“But isn’t there some woman,” she says, “who has come between us? Tell me: maybe he loved someone before me and has now gone back to her—or might my wicked one be thinking of marrying?” And her eyes blaze so as she says it that it’s even terrible to see.

I comfort her, but I think to myself:

“Who knows what he’s up to?”—because we saw little of him at that time.

Once it occurred to her that he wanted to marry, she got to begging me:

“Go to town, Ivan Severyanych, my darling, my this-and-that; go, find out the whole truth about him, and tell me everything without any secrets.”

She badgered me about it more and more and made me feel so sorry for her that I thought:

“Well, come what may, I’ll go. Though if I find out anything bad about betrayal, I won’t tell her everything, but I’ll see and clear things up for myself.”

I chose as a pretext that I supposedly had to go to buy medicine for the horses from the herbalists, and so I went, but I went not simply, but with a cunning design.

Grusha didn’t know, and the servants were under the strictest orders to conceal from her, that the prince, before this occasion with Grusha, had had another love in town: Evgenia Semyonovna, a gentlewoman, an official’s daughter. She was known to the whole town as a great piano player and a very kindly lady, and was also very good-looking, and she had a daughter by my prince, but she gained weight, and people said that was why he left her. However, as he still had considerable capital at that time, he bought a house for this lady and her daughter, and they lived on the income from this house. After bestowing it upon Evgenia Semyonovna, the prince never visited her, but our people, remembering old times, recalled her kindliness, and on each trip to town they would all drop in on her, because they loved her and she was terribly affectionate towards them all and was interested in the prince.

So on coming to town I went straight to her, to this good lady, and said:

“My dear Evgenia Semyonovna, I am going to stay with you.”

She replies:

“Well, of course, I’m very glad. But why aren’t you going to the prince’s place?”

“Ah,” I say, “is he here in town?”

“Yes, he is,” she replies. “It’s already the second week he’s been here, setting up some kind of business.”

“What kind of business?” I ask.

“He wants to lease a fulling mill,” she says.

“Lord,” I say, “what will he think up next?”

“Why,” she says, “is there something wrong with it?”

“Not at all,” I say, “only it surprises me a little.”

She smiles.

“No,” she says, “but here’s something that will really surprise you: the prince has sent me a letter asking me to receive him today, because he wants to have a look at his daughter.”

“And you, my dearest Evgenia Semyonovna,” I say, “are going to let him?”

She shrugs her shoulders and replies:

“Why not? Let him come and look at his daughter”—and with that she sighs and turns thoughtful; she sits with her head lowered, and she’s still so young, fair and full-bodied, and her manners are quite unlike Grusha’s … who knows nothing besides her “ruby-jewel,” while this one’s quite different … I became jealous for her.

“Oh,” I think, “while he’s here looking at his child, his greedy heart may notice you as well! Not much good will come of that for my Grushenka.” And in such reflections I was sitting in Evgenia Semyonovna’s nursery, where she had told the nanny to serve me tea, when I suddenly heard the doorbell, and the maid ran in all joyful and said to the nanny:

“Our dear prince has come!”

I was about to get up and go to the kitchen, but the nanny Tatyana Yakovlevna was a talkative old woman from Moscow: she passionately loved to tell all and on account of that didn’t want to be deprived of a listener, so she said:

“Don’t leave, Ivan Golovanych, let’s go to the dressing room there behind the wardrobes, she’ll never bring him there, and we can chat some more.”

I agreed, because, given Tatyana Yakovlevna’s talkativeness, I hoped to find out something useful for Grusha from her, and since Evgenia Semyonovna had sent me a little lodicolone bottle of rum to have with tea, but by then I was no longer drinking, I thought: “If I lace the blessed old woman’s tea with a bit of chat from this little bottle, maybe, in her goodness, she’ll let slip to me something she wouldn’t tell otherwise.”

We left the nursery and went to sit behind the wardrobes, and that little dressing room was so narrow it was more like a corridor with a door at the end, and that door gave directly onto the room where Evgenia Semyonovna was receiving the prince, and even right onto the sofa they were sitting on. In short, all that separated me from them was that closed door with its cloth curtain on the other side, so that I heard everything just like I was sitting in the same room with them.

As soon as he comes in, the prince says:

“Greetings, my old friend, tried and true!”

And she replies:

“Greetings, Prince! To what do I owe the pleasure?” And he to her:

“Of that we shall speak later, but first let me greet you and allow me to kiss you on your little head”—and I hear him give her a smacking kiss on the head and ask about their daughter. Evgenia Semyonovna replies that she is at home.

“Is she well?”

“Quite well,” she says.

“And grown, most likely?”

Evgenia Semyonovna laughs and replies:

“Naturally, she’s grown.”

The prince asks:

“You’ll show her to me, I hope?”

“Why not?” she replies. “With pleasure”—and she gets up, goes to the nursery, and calls for this same nanny, Tatyana Yakovlevna, with whom I’m having tea.

“Nanny,” she says, “bring Lyudochka to the prince.”

Tatyana Yakovlevna spits, puts the saucer down on the table, and says:

“Oh, dash it all! You just sit down, in the right appetite for talking with a man, and they’re sure to interrupt you, they never let you enjoy anything the way you’d like to!” And she quickly covers me with her mistress’s skirts, which are hanging on the walls, and says: “Sit here”—and she herself goes out with the girl, and I’m left there alone behind the wardrobes, and suddenly I hear the prince kiss the girl a couple of times and dandle her on his knee and say:

“My anfan, would you like to go for a ride in the carriage?”

The girl makes no reply. He says to Evgenia Semyonovna:

“Zhe voo pree, please let her and the nanny go out for a ride in my carriage.”

She also says something to him in French, what for and poorkwa, but he says something like “It’s absolutely necessary,” and so they exchange words some three times, and then Evgenia Semyonovna reluctantly says to the nanny:

“Get her dressed and go for a ride.”

They left, and these two remained alone, with me there listening in secret, because I couldn’t come out from behind the wardrobes, and I thought to myself: “My time has come, and now I’ll really discover if anyone has bad thoughts against Grusha.”

XVI

Having come to this decision to eavesdrop, I didn’t content myself with that, but wanted to see what I could with my own eyes, and I succeeded in that as well: I quietly climbed onto a stool, and at once found a little chink above the door and put my greedy eye to it. I see the prince sitting on the sofa, and the lady standing by the window and probably looking at her child being put in the carriage.

The carriage drives off; she turns and says:

“Well, Prince, I’ve done everything as you wanted: tell me now, what business do you have with me?”

And he replies:

“Ah, why talk of business! … It won’t run away. Come here to me, first: we’ll sit next to each other and talk nicely, like the old times, like we used to.”

The lady stands there, hands behind her back, leaning against the window, and says nothing. She is frowning. The prince asks:

“What’s the matter? I beg you: we must talk.”

She obeys, goes to him; seeing that, he at once jokes again:

“Well, let’s sit, let’s sit like the old times”—and he goes to embrace her, but she pushes him away and says:

“Business, Prince, talk business: what can I do for you?”

“What’s this?” asks the prince. “You mean I should just lay it out openly, without any preamble?”

“Of course,” she says, “explain straight out what the business is. You and I are close acquaintances—there’s no need to stand on ceremony.”

“I need money,” says the prince.

She says nothing and looks at him.

“Not a lot of money,” he says.

“How much?”

“Just twenty thousand this time.”

Again she doesn’t reply, and the prince starts painting it on, saying: “I want to buy a fulling mill, but I don’t have a penny. If I buy it, though, I’ll be a millionaire. I’ll redo the whole thing,” he says. “I’ll throw all the old stuff out and start making bright-colored fabrics and sell them to the Asiatics in Nizhny.³³ From the most trashy materials,” he says, “but dyed bright colors, and it will sell well, and I’ll make big money, but now I need only twenty thousand in down payment for the mill.”

Evgenia Semyonovna says:

“Where are you going to get it?”

The prince says:

“I don’t know myself, but I must get it, and then my calculations are quite correct: I have a man, Ivan Golovan, an army connoisseur, not very bright, but a solid gold muzhik—honest, and zealous, and he was held captive for a long time by the Asiatics and knows all their tastes very well, and now there’s the Makary fair, I’ll send Golovan there to take orders and bring samples, and there’ll be down payments … then … first thing, I’ll immediately pay back the twenty thousand …”

And he fell silent, and the lady said nothing for a moment, then sighed and began:

“Your calculations are correct, Prince.”

“Aren’t they, though?”

“Correct,” she says, “correct. Here’s what you’ll do: you’ll pay the down payment for the mill, after which you’ll be considered a mill owner; there’ll be talk in society that your affairs have improved …”

“Right.”

“Right. And then …”

“Golovan will take a lot of orders and down payments at the fair, and I’ll return my debt and become rich.”

“No, please, don’t interrupt me: first, you’ll use all that to flimflam the marshal of the nobility,³⁴ and, while he thinks you’re rich, you’ll marry his daughter, and then, having taken her dowry along with her, you’ll indeed become rich.”

“You think so?” the prince says.

And the lady replies:

“And do you think otherwise?”

“Ah, well, if you understand everything,” he says, “then God grant we see it all come true.”

“We?”

“Of course,” he says, “then it will be good for all of us: you’ll mortgage the house for me now, and I’ll give our daughter ten thousand in interest on the twenty thousand.”

The lady replies:

“The house is yours: you gave it to her, take it if you need it.”

He starts saying: “No, the house isn’t mine; you’re her mother, I ask you … of course, only in the event that you trust me …”

But she replies:

“Ah, enough, Prince, I trusted you with more than that! I entrusted you with my life and honor.”

“Ah, yes,” he says, “you mean that … Well, thank you, thank you, excellent … So, then, tomorrow I can send you the mortgage papers for signing?”

“Send them,” she says, “I’ll sign them.”

“You’re not afraid?”

“No,” she says, “after what I’ve already lost, I’m not afraid of anything.”

“And you’re not sorry? Tell me: you’re not sorry? It must be that you still love me a tiny bit? What? Or you simply pity me? Eh?”

She merely laughs at these words and says:

“Stop babbling nonsense, Prince. Wouldn’t you like it better if I served you some steeped cloudberries with sugar? Mine came out very tasty this year.”

He must have been offended: he had clearly expected something else. He gets up and smiles:

“No,” he says, “you eat your cloudberries yourself, I can’t be bothered with sweets now. Thank you and good-bye”—and he started kissing her hands, and just then the carriage came back.

Evgenia Semyonovna gave him her hand in farewell and said:

“And how are you going to deal with your dark-eyed Gypsy girl?”

He suddenly slapped himself on the forehead and cried out:

“Ah, true! What a smart one you’ve always been! Believe it or not, I always remember your intelligence, and I thank you for reminding now of that ruby!”

“And you had forgotten her just like that?” she says.

“By God,” he says, “I had. She’d gone clean out of my head, but I really do have to set the foolish girl up.”

“Set her up,” Evgenia Semyonovna replies, “only good and proper: she’s got no cool Russian blood half mixed with milk, she won’t be meekly pacified, and she won’t forgive anything for the sake of the past.”

“Never mind,” he says, “she’ll be pacified somehow.”

“She loves you, doesn’t she, Prince? They say she even loves you very much?”

“I’m awfully sick of her; but, thank God, luckily for me, she and Golovan are great friends.”

“What do you gain by that?” asks Evgenia Semyonovna.

“Nothing. I’ll buy them a house and register Ivan as a merchant, they’ll get married and start a life.”

But Evgenia Semyonovna shakes her head, smiles, and says:

“Ah, dear Prince, dear Prince, dear muddleheaded Prince: where is your conscience?”

But the prince replies:

“Kindly leave my conscience out of it. By God, I can’t be bothered with it now: I’ve somehow got to bring Ivan Golovan here today.”

The lady told him that Ivan Golovan was in town and was even staying with her. The prince was very gladdened by that, told her to send me to him as soon as possible, and left her house at once.

After that everything went at a spanking pace, like in a fairy tale. The prince gave me warrants and certificates that the mill was his, taught me how to talk about the fabrics he produced, and sent me straight from town to the fair, so that I couldn’t even see Grusha, only I was all offended at the prince over her: how could he say she’d be my wife? At the fair I had a run of good luck: I gathered up orders, and money, and samples from the Asiatics, and I sent all the money to the prince, and came back myself and couldn’t recognize his place … It was as if everything there had been changed by some kind of magic: it was all done up new, like a cottage decorated for a feast, and there was no trace of the wing where Grusha used to live: it had been torn down, and a new house had been built in its place. I just gasped and went rushing around: where’s Grusha? But nobody knew anything about her. And the servants were all new, hired, and very haughty, so that I no longer had my former access to the prince. He and I used to deal with each other in military fashion, simply, but now it had all become politics, and if I had to say something to the prince, I could only do it through his valet.

I detest that sort of thing so much that I wouldn’t have stayed there for a minute and would have left at once, only I felt very sorry for Grusha, and I couldn’t find out what had become of her. I asked some of the old servants—they all said nothing: clearly they were under strict orders. I finally managed to get out of an old serving woman that Grushenka had been there still recently, and it was only ten days ago that she had gone off somewhere in a carriage with the prince and hadn’t come back since. I went to the coachmen who had driven them: I started questioning them, but they wouldn’t tell me anything. They said only that the prince had changed horses at a station and sent his own back, and he and Grusha had gone on somewhere with hired ones. Wherever I rushed, there was no trace, and that was it: the villain might have put a knife in her, or shot her and thrown her into a ditch somewhere in the forest and covered her with dry leaves, or drowned her … From a passionate man, all that could easily be supposed; and she was a hindrance to his marrying, because Evgenia Semyonovna had spoken truly: Grusha loved this villain with all her passionate, devastating Gypsy love, and she was incapable of enduring and submitting like Evgenia Semyonovna, a Russian Christian, who burned her life like an icon lamp before him. In her, I thought, that great Gypsy flame had flared up like a smoldering bonfire when he told her about his wedding, and she must have made the devil’s own row, and so he finished her off.

The more I entertained this thought in my head, the more convinced I was that it couldn’t be otherwise, and I couldn’t look at any of the preparations for his marriage to the marshal’s daughter. And when the wedding day came, and the servants were all given bright-colored neckerchiefs and new clothing, each according to his duties, I put on neither the neckerchief nor the outfit, but left it all in my closet in the stables, and went to the forest in the morning, and wandered about, not knowing why myself, till evening, thinking all the while: maybe I’ll happen upon her murdered body? Evening fell, and I came out on the steep riverbank and sat there, and across the river the whole house is lit up, shining, and the feast is going on; guests are making merry, music resounds, echoing far away. And I go on sitting and looking, not at the house now, but into the water, where that light is all reflected and ripples in streams, as if the columns are moving, like watery chambers opening out. And I felt so sad, so oppressed, that I began to speak with the invisible power—something that hadn’t happened to me even in captivity—and, as it’s told in the tale of little sister Alyonushka, whose brother called out to her,³⁵ I called out to my little orphan Grunyushka in a pitiful voice:

“My dear sister, my Grunyushka! Answer me, call out to me; answer me; show yourself to me for one little moment!”—And what do you think: I moaned these words three times, and I began to feel eerie, and fancied somebody was running towards me, was coming close, was fluttering around me, whispering in my ears, and peeking over my shoulder into my face, and suddenly, out of the darkness of night, something comes shooting at me! … And hangs right onto me and throbs against me …

XVII

I almost fell down from fright, but I was not quite unconscious, and I felt something alive and light, like a shot-down crane, fluttering and sighing, but saying nothing.

I recited a prayer to myself—and what then? Right in front of my face I see Grusha’s face …

“My own!” I say. “My little dove! Are you alive, or have you come to me from the other world? Don’t hide anything,” I say. “Tell me the truth: I won’t be afraid of you, my poor orphan, even if you’re dead.”

And she sighs deeply, deeply, from deep down in her breast, and says:

“I’m alive.”

“Well, thank God for that.”

“Only,” she says, “I’ve escaped in order to die here.”

“What are you saying, Grunyushka?” I say. “God help you: why should you die? Let’s go and live a happy life: I’ll work for you, and I’ll set up a special little chamber for you, my dearest orphan, and you’ll live with me like my own sister.”

And she replies:

“No, Ivan Severyanych, no, my gentle one, dear friend of my heart, accept from me, an orphan, my eternal respect for your words, but it’s impossible for me, a bitter Gypsy, to live any longer, because I might destroy an innocent soul.”

“Who are you talking about?” I ask. “Whose soul do you pity so?”

And she replies:

“It’s her, my villain’s young wife, that I pity, because she’s a young soul, not guilty of anything, but even so my jealous heart can’t bear it, and I’ll destroy her and myself.”

“What are you saying? Cross yourself,” I say. “You’re baptized: what will become of your soul?”

“No-o-o,” she says, “I won’t be sorry for my soul, let it go to hell. The hell here is worse!”

I could see that the woman was all upset and in a frenzied state of mind: I took her hands and held them, and I looked closely and marveled at how awfully changed she was. Where had all her beauty gone? There was even no flesh on her, only eyes burning in a dark face, like a wolf’s eyes at night, and they seemed to have grown twice bigger than before, and her womb had swollen, because her term had almost come; her little face was clenched like a fist, and strands of black hair hung on her cheeks. I looked at the dress she was wearing—it was a dark cotton dress, all in tatters, and her feet were bare in her shoes.

“Tell me,” I say, “where have you come here from? Where have you been, and how is it you’re so unsightly?”

And she suddenly smiled and said:

“What? … So I’m not beautiful? … Beautiful! The dear friend of my heart adorned me like this because of my faithful love for him: because I forgot for his sake the one I loved more than him and gave him my all, without mind or reason. For that he hid me away in a sure place and set guards to keep strict watch on my beauty …”

And at that she suddenly burst out laughing and said wrathfully:

“Ah, you fool of a little prince: is a Gypsy girl a young lady to be kept under lock and key? If I like, I’ll throw myself at your young wife right now and bite through her throat.”

I could see she was shaking all over from the torments of jealousy, and I thought: “Let me distract her from it, not by the fear of hell, but by a sweet memory,” and I said:

“But how he loved you! Oh, how he loved you! How he kissed your feet … He used to kneel by the sofa while you sang and kiss your red slipper all over, even on the sole …”

She listened to that, and her black eyelashes moved on her dry cheeks, and, looking into the water, she began in a hollow, quiet voice:

“He loved me, he loved me, the villain, he loved me, he spared nothing, as long as my heart wasn’t his, but when I came to love him—he abandoned me. And for what? … Is she, my interloper, better than I am, or is she going to love him more? … Foolish, foolish man! Winter’s sun gives no heat compared to summer’s, and he’ll never ever see a love to compare with my love for him; you tell him that: So Grusha, dying, foretold for you, and as your fate it will hold true.”

I was glad she had started talking, and I joined in, asking:

“What was it that went on between you and what brought it all about?”

And she clasped her hands and said:

“Ah, nothing brought it about, it all came from betrayal alone … I ceased to please him, that’s the whole reason”—and as she said it, she became tearful. “He had dresses made for me that were to his own taste, but that a pregnant woman has no need of: narrow in the waist. I’d put them on, show him, and he’d get angry and say: ‘Take it off, it doesn’t suit you.’ If I didn’t wear them and showed myself in a loose dress, he’d get twice as upset and say: ‘What a sight you are!’ I understood then that I couldn’t win him back, that I disgusted him …”

And with that she burst into sobs and, looking straight ahead, whispered to herself:

“I’d long been feeling that I was no longer dear to him, but I wanted to try his conscience. I thought: I won’t vex him in anything, I’ll see if he feels pity. And here’s how he pitied me …”

And she told me that her last break with the prince had occurred on account of such a trifle that I didn’t even understand, and don’t understand to this day, why the perfidious man parted with this woman forever.

XVIII

Grusha told me how, “when you,” she says, “went and disappeared,” that is, when I went off to the fair, “the prince stayed away from home for a long time, and rumors reached me that he was getting married … These rumors made me cry terribly, and my face got all pinched … My heart ached and the child turned over in me … I thought: it’s going to die in my womb. Then suddenly I hear them say: ‘He’s coming!’ … Everything inside me trembled … I rushed to my rooms in the wing to dress up the best I could for him, put on my emerald earrings, and pulled from under a sheet on the wall his favorite blue moiré dress, trimmed with lace, with an open neck … I was in a hurry, I put it on, but couldn’t get it buttoned in the back … so I didn’t button it, but quickly threw a red shawl over it so that you couldn’t see it was unbuttoned, and ran out to meet him on the porch … Trembling all over and forgetting myself, I cried out:

“ ‘My golden one, my ruby-jewel!’—threw my arms around his neck, and went numb …”

She had fainted.

“When I came to in my room,” she says, “I lay on the sofa and tried to remember: was it in a dream or awake that I embraced him? Only,” she says, “there was a terrible weakness in me”—and she didn’t see him for a long time … She kept sending for him, but he didn’t come.

At last he shows up, and she says:

“Why have you abandoned me and forgotten me so completely?”

And he says:

“I have things to do.”

“What things?” she replies. “Why didn’t you have any before? Oh, my ruby-diamond!”—and she held out her arms again to embrace him, but he frowned and pulled the string of the cross on her neck with all his might …

“Luckily for me,” she says, “the silk string on my neck wasn’t strong, it was worn out and broke, because I’d been wearing an amulet on it for a long time, otherwise he’d have strangled me; and I suppose that’s precisely what he wanted to do, because he went all white and hissed:

“ ‘Why do you wear such a dirty string?’

“And I say:

“ ‘What’s my string to you? It used to be clean, but it has turned black on me from the heavy sweat of grief.’

“And he spat—‘Pah, pah, pah’—spat and left, but before evening he came back angry and said:

“ ‘Let’s go for a carriage ride!’ And he pretended to be tender and kissed my head, and, fearing nothing, I got in with him and went. We drove for a long time and changed horses twice, yet I couldn’t get out of him where we were going, but I saw we’d come to a place in the forest—swampy, unlovely, wild. And we arrived at some beehives, and beyond the beehives—a yard, and there we were met by three strapping young peasant wenches in red linen skirts, and they called me ‘lady.’ As soon as I got out of the carriage, they took me under the arms and hustled me straight to a room that was all prepared.

“Something about all this, and especially about these wenches, made me sick at once, and my heart was wrung.

“ ‘What kind of stopping place is this?’ I asked him.

“And he replied:

“ ‘You’re going to live here now.’

“I began to weep, to kiss his hands, so that he wouldn’t abandon me there, but he had no pity: he pushed me away and left …”

Here Grushenka fell silent and looked down, then sighed and said:

“I wanted to escape, tried a hundred times—impossible: those peasant wenches were on guard and never took their eyes off me … I languished, then I finally got the notion to pretend I was carefree, merry, as if I wanted to go for a walk. They took me for a walk in the forest, watched me all the time, and I watched the trees, noticing by the treetops and the bark which way was south, and I planned how I’d escape from these wenches, and yesterday I did it. Yesterday after lunch I went to a clearing with them, and I said:

“ ‘Come, my sweet ones, let’s play blind man’s buff in the clearing.’

“They agreed.

“ ‘But instead of our eyes,’ I say, ‘let’s tie each other’s hands behind our backs and play catch from behind.’

“They agreed to that, too.

“And so we did. I tied the first one’s hands very tightly behind her back, and with the second one I ran behind a bush, and that one I hobbled there, and the third one came running at her cries, and I trussed her up by force before the eyes of the other two. They shouted, but I, heavy with child as I am, started running faster than a frisky horse through the forest, right through the forest, and I ran all night and in the morning I fell down by some old beehives in the dense second growth. There a little old man came up to me and mumbled something I couldn’t understand, and he was all covered with wax and smelled of honey, and bees were crawling in his yellow eyebrows. I told him that I wanted to see you, Ivan Severyanych, and he says:

“ ‘Call to him, young one, first with the wind, and then against the wind: he’ll start pining and come looking for you—and you’ll meet.’ He gave me water to drink and a cucumber with honey to fortify myself. I drank the water and ate the cucumber and went on again, and I kept calling you, as he told me to, now with the wind, now against the wind—and so we met. Thank heaven!” And she embraced me, and kissed me, and said:

“You’re the same as a dear brother to me.”

I say:

“And you’re the same as a dear sister to me”—and I’m so moved that tears come to my eyes.

And she weeps and says:

“I know, Ivan Severyanych, I know and understand it all; you’re the only one who loved me, dear friend of my heart, my gentle one. Prove to me now your final love, do what I ask of you in this terrible hour.”

“Tell me what you want,” I say.

“No,” she says, “first swear by the most dread thing in the world that you’ll do what I’m going to ask.”

I swore by the salvation of my soul, but she says:

“That’s not enough: you’ll break it for my sake. No,” she says, “swear by something more dreadful.”

“Well,” I say, “I can’t think of anything more dreadful than that.”

“Well,” she says, “I’ve thought of it for you. Quickly repeat after me, and don’t hesitate.”

I promised, fool that I was, and she says:

“Damn my soul the same as you’ve damned your own if you don’t obey me.”

“Very well,” I say—and I damned her soul.

“Well, now listen,” she says. “You must quickly become the savior of my soul. I have no strength left to live like this and suffer, seeing his betrayal and his outrages against me. If I live a day longer, I’ll settle it for him and for her, but if I take pity on them and settle it for myself, I’ll destroy my poor soul forever … Take pity on me, my own, my darling brother: strike me once through the heart with a knife.”

I turned aside, made a cross over her, and backed away, but she embraced my knees, weeping, bowing at my feet, and pleading:

“You’ll live, you’ll pray to God for my soul and for your own, don’t be the ruin of me, don’t make me raise my hand against myself … W—w—well? …”

Ivan Severyanych frowned dreadfully and, chewing his mustaches, breathed out as if from the depths of his heaving breast.

She took the knife from my pocket … opened it … straightened out the blade … and put it into my hand … And she … began pouring out such talk, I couldn’t stand it …

“If you don’t kill me,” she says, “I’ll become a shameful woman, and that will be my revenge on all of you.”

I started trembling all over, and told her to pray, and didn’t stab her, but just pushed her over the steep riverbank …

All of us, on hearing this latest confession from Ivan Severyanych, began for the first time to doubt the truthfulness of his story and kept silent for a rather long while, but, finally, someone cleared his throat and said:

“Did she drown?”

“She went under,” replied Ivan Severyanych.

“And how was it for you after that?”

“What do you mean?”

“You must have suffered?”

“Of course, sir.”

XIX

I ran away from that place, beside myself, and only remember that somebody seemed to be pursuing me, somebody terribly big and tall, and shameless, naked, and his body was all black, and his head was small, and he was all overgrown with hair, and I figured that if it wasn’t Cain, it was the demon of destruction himself, and I kept trying to run from him and called out to my guardian angel. I came to my senses somewhere on a high road under a bush of broom. And the day was autumnal, dry, the sun was shining, but it was cold, and there was dust in the wind, and yellow leaves were whirling; and I didn’t know what time it was, or what place it was, or where the road led, and there was nothing in my soul, no feeling, no notion of what I should do; and I could think of only one thing, that Grusha’s soul is lost now, and it’s my duty to suffer for her and deliver her from hell. But how to do it—I don’t know and I’m in anguish over it, and then something touches my shoulder: I look—a twig has fallen from the broom and goes swirling, swirling into the distance, and suddenly it’s Grusha walking, only small, no more than six or seven years old, and with little wings on her shoulders. But as soon as I notice her, she flies away from me like a shot, and only dust and dry leaves billow up behind her.

I thought: that must surely be her soul following me; she’s probably beckoning to me and showing me the way. And I set off. All day I walked, not knowing where myself, and I became unbearably tired, and suddenly people overtook me, an old man and woman in a cart and pair, and they say:

“Get in, poor man, you can ride with us.”

I get in. They drive, and they grieve:

“Woe to us,” they say, “our son’s being taken as a soldier, and we have no money, we can’t pay to replace him.”

I felt sorry for the old people and said:

“I’d go for you just like that, without pay, but I have no papers.”

They say:

“That’s a trifle: leave it to us; you only have to give our son’s name, Pyotr Serdyukov.”

“Well,” I reply, “it’s all the same to me: I’ll pray to my saint, John the Baptist, and call myself anything you like.”

That was the end of it, and they took me to another town and handed me over as a recruit instead of their son, and gave me twenty-five roubles in cash for the road, and promised their help as long as they lived. The money I took from them, the twenty-five roubles, I placed with a poor monastery, as a contribution for Grusha’s soul, and I started asking my superiors to send me to the Caucasus, where I could die quickly for the faith. So they did, and I spent more than fifteen years in the Caucasus and never revealed my real name or condition to anyone, and was always called Pyotr Serdyukov, and only on St. John’s day I prayed for myself through my saint, the Baptist. And I forgot about my former existence and condition, and was serving out my last year that way, when suddenly, right on St. John’s day, we were pursuing the Tartars, who had done some nastiness and withdrawn across the Koysa River. There were several Koysas in those parts: the one that flows through Andia, and is called the Andian Koysa, another through Avaria, called the Avarian Koysa, and there’s also the Korikumuiskian and the Kuzikumuiskian, and they all flow together, and at the confluence the Sulak River begins. But each of them is swift and cold, especially the Andian, which the Tartars had crossed. We killed countless numbers of those Tartars, but the ones who crossed the Koysa sat behind the rocks on the other bank and kept firing at us the moment we showed ourselves. But they fired so skillfully that they never wasted a shot, but saved their powder for doing sure harm, because they knew we had much more ammunition than they had, and so they caused us real harm, because though we all stood in full view of them, the rogues never just popped off at us. Our colonel was a man of valiant soul and liked to imitate Suvorov,³⁶ saying “Merciful God” all the time and giving us courage by his example. So here, too, he sat down on the bank, took his boots off, put his legs up to the knees into that terribly cold water, and boasted:

“Merciful God, how warm the water is: just like your fresh-drawn milk in the bucket. Which of you, my benefactors, is willing to swim to the other side with a cable, so we can throw a bridge across?”

The colonel sat and gibble-gabbled with us like that, and on the other shore the Tartars put two gun barrels through a crack, but didn’t shoot. But as soon as two willing soldiers volunteered and started swimming, flames flashed, and both soldiers sank into the Koysa. We pulled out the cable, sent two more, and started showering bullets on the stones where the Tartars were hiding, but couldn’t do them any harm, because our bullets hit the stones, but they, the cursed ones, spat fire at the swimmers, the water clouded with blood, and again the two soldiers plunged down. A third pair went after them, but before they reached the middle of the Koysa, the Tartars sank them, too. After the third pair, there was a lack of volunteers, because it was obvious that this wasn’t war, but simple murder. Yet it was necessary to punish the villains. The colonel says:

“Listen, my benefactors. Isn’t there someone among you who has a mortal sin on his soul? Merciful God, how good it would be for him now to wash his iniquity away with his own blood.”

And I think:

“Why wait for a better occasion than this to end my life? Lord, bless my hour!”—and I stepped forward, undressed, recited the “Our Father,” bowed in all directions before my superior and my comrades, and said to myself: “Well, Grusha, my adopted sister, accept the blood I give for you!”—and with that I took a thin string in my mouth, the other end of which was tied to the cable, made a run to the bank, and dove into the water.

The water was awfully cold: I even got stitches in my armpits, and my chest went numb, cramps seized my legs, but I kept swimming … Above me flew our bullets, and around me Tartar bullets smacked into the water without touching me, and I didn’t know if I was wounded or not, but I did reach the bank … There the Tartars could no longer hit me, because I stood just under the ridge, and in order to shoot at me they would have had to lean out over it, and our men were raining bullets on them like sand from the other bank. So I stood under the rocks and pulled the cable, and pulled it all the way, and the bridge got thrown across, and suddenly our men are coming, and I go on standing there as if taken out of myself, I don’t understand anything, because I’m thinking: did anybody else see what I saw? Because as I was swimming I saw Grusha flying over me, and she was like a girl of about sixteen, and her wings were enormous now, bright, stretched across the whole river, and she shielded me with them … However, I see nobody says a word about it: well, I think, I’ll have to tell it myself. So when the colonel started embracing me, and kissing me, and praising me, saying:

“Oh, merciful God, what a fine fellow you are, Pyotr Serdyukov!”

I replied:

“I’m no fine fellow, Your Excellency, but a great sinner, and neither the earth nor the water wants to take me.”

He asks:

“What is your sin?”

And I reply:

“In my time, I’ve been the ruin of many innocent souls”—and that night in the tent I told him all that I’ve just told you.

He listened, listened, then pondered, and said:

“Merciful God, you’ve been through a lot, but above all, brother, whether you like it or not, you must be made an officer. I’ll send in a request for it.”

I say:

“As you please, but also send to find out whether it’s true, as I’ve testified, that I killed the Gypsy girl.”

“Very well,” he says, “I’ll ask about that, too.”

And he did, but the paper went around and around and came back with wrong information. It said there had never been such an incident with any Gypsy girl, and Ivan Severyanovich, though he had existed and had served the prince, had bought himself out and was freed in absentia, and after that had died in the house of the crown peasants, the Serdyukovs.³⁷

Well, what more could I do here? How could I prove my guilt?

But the colonel says:

“Don’t you dare to lie about yourself anymore, brother: when you swam across the Koysa, your mind got a bit addled from the cold water and the fear, and I,” he says, “am very glad that what you accused yourself of is all not true. Now you’ll be an officer, and, merciful God, that’s a good thing.”

Here I myself even got confused in my thoughts: had I really pushed Grusha into the water, or had I imagined it all so intensely then out of my terrible longing for her?

And they made me an officer for my bravery, only since I stood by my own truth, wanting to reveal my past life, they decided, so as to have no more bother from me about that, to award me the St. George Cross and retire me.

“Congratulations,” the colonel said, “you’re a nobleman now and can go into government service. Merciful God, how peaceful!” And he gave me a letter to some big personage in Petersburg. “Go,” he said. “He’ll be the making of your career and well-being.” With that letter I made my way to Petersburg, but I had no luck with a career.

“Why is that?”

“I was without a post for a very long time, and then I landed on theta, and that made everything worse.”

“On theta? What does that mean?”

“That patron I’d been sent to about a career appointed me as a consultant in the address bureau, where each consultant is responsible for a single letter. Some letters are very good, like, for instance, B, or P, or S. Many last names begin with them, and that brings the consultant income. But I was put in charge of θ. It’s the most insignificant letter, very few names begin with it, and even those that should belong to it all deviously shirk it: as soon as anybody wants to ennoble himself a bit, he highhandedly puts F in place of θ. You search and search for him under θ, only it’s wasted work, he’s registered himself under F. There’s no use at all, yet you sit there. Well, I saw things were bad, and out of old habit I tried to get myself hired as a coachman, but nobody would take me; they said: ‘You’re a noble officer, and with a decoration, it’s improper to yell at you or hit you …’ I was fit to hang myself, but, thank God, even in my despair I didn’t let myself go that far, and so as not to perish from hunger, I up and became an actor.”

“What sort of actor were you?”

“I played roles.”

“In what theater?”

“In a show-booth on Admiralty Square.³⁸ They don’t scorn the nobility, they take everybody: there are officers, and clerks, and students, and especially many scribes from the Senate.”

“And did you like that life?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, the memorizing and rehearsals all take place during Holy Week or just before Lent, when ‘Open to me the doors of repentance’ is sung in church—and, for another, my role was very difficult.”

“What was it?”

“I played the devil.”

“Why was that especially difficult?”

“I’ll tell you, sir: in both acts I had to dance and turn somersaults, and turning somersaults was awfully uncomfortable, because I was sewn into the shaggy skin of a hoary billy goat, fur side out, and I had a long tail strung on a wire, which was constantly getting tangled between my legs, and the horns on my head kept catching on everything, and I was no longer as young as before and had no lightness; and then it was specified that I was to be beaten all through the performance. That was terribly annoying. Granted, the sticks were hollow, made of canvas, and with flakes inside, but even so it was terribly boring to endure it, because they keep slapping you and slapping you, and some of them, whether because of the cold or just for the fun of it, manage to hit you quite painfully. Especially the Senate scribes, who have experience at it and act together: they stand up for each other, and when a military man comes along, they annoy him terribly, and it all goes on for a long time, because they start beating before the whole public at noontime, when the police flag is raised, and go on beating till night falls, and each of them, to please the public, tries to produce a louder slap. Nothing pleasant about it. And on top of it all, I was involved in an unpleasantness there as a consequence, after which I had to give up my role.”

“What happened to you?”

“I dragged a certain prince by the forelock.”

“A prince?”

“Not a real prince, but a theatrical one: he was a collegiate secretary from the Senate, but he played a prince.”

“Why did you give him a beating?”

“He deserved more than that, sir. He was a wicked jeerer and contriver, and kept contriving all sorts of pranks against everybody.”

“And against you?”

“Against me, sir, he played many pranks: he ruined my costume; he would sneak up to me in the warming room, where we warmed ourselves by a coal fire and drank tea, and fasten my tail to my horns, or do some other stupid thing for the fun of it, and I wouldn’t notice and would run out to the public like that, and the owner would get angry. For my own part I let it all go, but he suddenly started to offend one of the fairies. She was a young girl, from poor nobility; she played the goddess Fortuna for us and had to save that prince from my clutches. And her role was such that she had to go around in nothing but sparkling tulle with wings, and it was very cold, the poor girl’s hands were completely blue and numb, and he badgered her, thrust himself at her, and in the apapheosis, when the three of us fell through the trapdoor, he kept pinching her. I felt very sorry for her, so I thrashed him.”

“And how did it end?”

“With nothing. In the cellarage there were no witnesses, except for that same fairy, but our Senate boys rose up and refused to have me in the company; and since they were the foremost performers there, the owner threw me out to please them.”

“What happened to you then?”

“I would have been left with no roof or food at all, but that noble fairy fed me, only I felt ashamed, because the poor girl had a hard enough time providing for herself, and I kept thinking how to resolve this situation. I didn’t want to go back to the θ, and, besides, another poor man was already sitting and suffering on it, so I up and went to the monastery.”

“Only for that?”

“Why, what was I to do, sir? I had nowhere to go. And it’s nice there.”

“Have you come to like monastery life?”

“Very much, sir; I like it very much—it’s peaceful there, just like in the regiment; there’s a lot of similarity, everything’s prepared for you: you’re dressed, and shod, and fed, and the superiors keep an eye out and demand obedience.”

“And isn’t that obedience sometimes a burden to you?”

“Why should it be? The more obedient a man is, the more peacefully he lives, and in my particular obedience there’s nothing offensive: I don’t go to church services except when I want to, and I perform my duties as I’m accustomed to: if they say ‘Hitch up, Father Ishmael’ (I’m now called Ishmael)—I hitch up; and if they say: ‘Father Ishmael, unhitch’—I undo the harness.”

“Excuse us,” we say, “so it turns out that in the monastery you’re still … with the horses?”

“I’m a permanent coachman. In the monastery they don’t worry about my officer’s rank, because, though I’ve only taken the initial vows, I’m already a monk and equal to them all.”

“Will you take your solemn vows soon?”

“I won’t be taking that on, sir.”

“Why not?”

“I just … don’t consider myself worthy.”

“Is that still because of old sins or errors?”

“Y-y-yes, sir. And generally, why should I? I’m very pleased with my obedience, and I live in peace.”

“And have you told anyone your whole story before, as you’ve now told it to us?”

“Of course, sir, more than once, but to no avail, since there are no records … they don’t believe me, as if I’ve brought a worldly lie into the monastery, and there I’m counted as a nobleman. But it’s all the same how I live my life out: I’m getting old.”

The story of the enchanted wanderer was obviously coming to an end; there remained only one thing we were curious about: what was it like in the monastery?

XX

Since our wanderer had sailed in his story to his life’s last haven—the monastery—which, in his deepest belief, had been his destination from birth, and since everything there seemed favorable to him, one might think that Ivan Severyanych no longer ran into any adversities there. However, it turned out quite otherwise. One of our fellow travelers recalled that, according to everything told about them, monks constantly suffered very much from the devil, and he asked:

“Tell us, please, has the devil not tempted you in the monastery? They say he constantly tempts monks.”

Ivan Severyanych cast a calm glance at the speaker from under his brows and replied:

“How could he not tempt me? Naturally, if Paul the Apostle himself didn’t escape him and writes in his epistle that ‘a messenger of Satan was given me in the flesh,’³⁹ how could I, a sinful and weak man, not suffer his torments?”

“What have you suffered from him?”

“Many things, sir.”

“Of what sort?”

“All kinds of dirty tricks, and at first, before I overcame him, there were even temptations.”

“But you also overcame him, the devil himself?”

“How could it be otherwise? That’s the monastic calling. But I’ll tell you in all conscience, I wouldn’t have been able to do it myself, but one perfect elder taught me how, because he was experienced and could deal with any temptation. When I confessed to him that Grusha kept appearing to me, as alive as if the air around me was breathing nothing but her, he at once cast about in his mind and said:

“ ‘In the apostle James it is told: “Resist the devil and he will flee from you”⁴⁰—so resist.’ And here he admonished me about what to do: ‘If you feel your heart softening and remember her,’ he says, ‘you should understand that it is the messenger of Satan accosting you, and you should prepare at once to act against him. Kneel, first of all. Man’s knees are the first instrument: as soon as you kneel, your soul at once soars up, and there, being thus elevated, you must bow down to the ground, as many times as you can, till you are exhausted, and wear yourself out with fasting, to mortify yourself, and when the devil sees you striving for a great deed, he will not endure it and will run away at once, for fear that with such a man his machinations will drive him still more directly to Christ, and he will think: “Better to leave him alone and not tempt him, perchance he will forget himself the sooner.” ’ I started doing that, and indeed everything went away.”

“Did you torment yourself like that for a long time before the messenger of Satan withdrew?”

“A long time, sir. And it was only by wearing him down that I got the better of such an enemy, because he’s not afraid of anything else: to begin with, I made up to a thousand bows and didn’t eat or drink water for four days, and then he realized that he wasn’t up to vying with me, and he grew timid and weak. As soon as he saw me throw my pot of food out the window and take up my beads so as to count the bows, he understood that I wasn’t joking and was setting out on my great deed, and he ran away. It’s terrible how afraid he is of bringing a man to the joy of hope.”

“All right, let’s suppose … he … So you overcame him, but how much did you suffer from him yourself?”

“It’s nothing, sir; what of it? I oppressed the oppressor, and didn’t take any constraints on myself.”

“And now you’re completely rid of him?”

“Completely, sir.”

“And he no longer appears to you at all?”

“He never comes anymore in the seductive form of a woman, and if he still shows himself now and then somewhere in a corner of the cell, it’s in the most pitiful guise: he squeals like a little pig at his last gasp. I don’t even torment the scoundrel now, I just cross him once and make a bow, and he stops grunting.”

“Well, thank God you’ve dealt with it all like that.”

“Yes, sir, I’ve overcome the temptations of the big devil, but I’ll tell you—though it’s against our rule—I’m more bothered by the nasty tricks of the little devils.”

“So little devils pester you as well?”

“What else, sir? Granted they’re of the most insignificant rank, but they constantly get at you …”

“What is it they do to you?”

“You see, they’re children, and what’s more, there are a great many of them there in hell, and since the grub’s provided, they’ve got nothing to do, so they ask to learn how to cause trouble on earth, and they do mischief, and the more a man wants to stand firm, the more they vex him.”

“What, for instance, do they … How can they vex you?”

“For instance, they put something in your way or under your feet, and you tip it over or break it, and somebody gets upset and angry, for them that’s the foremost pleasure and fun. They clap their hands and run to their chief, saying: ‘We, too, cause trouble, give us a kopeck for it.’ That’s why they do it … Children.”

“Precisely how, for instance, did they manage to cause you trouble?”

“There was, for instance, this case with us, when a Jew hanged himself in the forest near the monastery, and the novices all started saying he was Judas, and that he went about the place sighing during the night, and there were many witnesses to it. I wasn’t even distressed about him, because I thought: as if we don’t have enough Jews left. Only one night I’m sleeping in the stable, and suddenly I hear somebody come up and stick his muzzle over the crossbar in the doorway and sigh. I say a prayer—no, he’s still standing there. I make a cross at him: he goes on standing there and sighs again.

‘What am I to do with you? I can’t pray for you, because you’re a Jew, and even if you weren’t a Jew, I have no blessing to pray for suicides. Leave me, go away to the forest or the desert.’ I laid that injunction on him, and he went away, and I fell asleep again, but the next night the blackguard came again and sighed again … disturbed my sleep, and that was it. I couldn’t stand it! ‘Pah, you lout,’ I think, ‘don’t you have enough room in the forest or on the church porch, that you have to come bursting into my stable? Well, no help for it, I’ve clearly got to invent some good remedy against you.’ The next day I took a clean piece of coal and traced a big cross on the door, and when night came, I lay down peacefully, thinking to myself: ‘He won’t come now,’ but I had only just fallen asleep, and there he was again, standing there and sighing! ‘Pah, you jailbird, what am I to do with you!’ All that night he scared me like that, but in the morning, at the first sound of the bell for the liturgy, I quickly jumped up and ran to complain to the superior, and met the bell ringer, Brother Diomed, and he says:

“ ‘Why are you so frightened?’

“I say:

“ ‘Thus and so, I’ve been bothered all night, and I’m going to the superior.’

“And Brother Diomed replies:

“ ‘Drop it, and don’t go. The superior put leeches in his nose last night, and now he’s very angry and won’t be of any help to you in this matter, but, if you want, I can help you much better than he can.’

“I say:

“ ‘It makes absolutely no difference to me: only be so good as to help me—for that I’ll give you my old warm mittens, they’ll be very good for ringing the bells in winter.’

“ ‘All right,’ he says.

“And I gave him the mittens, and he brought me an old church door from the belfry, on which the apostle Peter was painted with the keys to the kingdom of heaven in his hand.

“ ‘These keys,’ he says, ‘are the most important thing: just close yourself behind this door, and nobody will get through it.’

“I all but bowed to his feet from joy, and I think: ‘Rather than just closing myself behind the door and then removing it, I’d better attach it fundamentally, so that it will always be a protection for me,’ and I hung it on very secure, strong hinges, and for more safety I also attached a heavy pulley to it with a cobblestone as counterweight, and I did it all quietly in one day, before evening, and when nighttime came, I went to bed at the proper hour and slept. But what would you think: I hear him breathing again! I simply can’t believe my ears, it’s impossible, but no: he’s breathing. And not just that! That was nothing, that he was breathing, but he also pushed the door … My old door had a lock inside, but with this one, since I was relying more on its holiness, I didn’t put a lock on it, because I had no time, and so he just pushes it, and more boldly each time, and finally I see something like a muzzle poking in, but then the door swung on the pulley and knocked him back with all its might … And he backed up, evidently scratched himself, waited a little, came even more boldly, and again the muzzle, but the pulley smacks him even harder … It must have been painful, he grew quiet and stopped pushing, and I fell asleep again, but only a short time went by, and I see the scoundrel is at it again, and with new artfulness. He doesn’t butt straight on now, but gradually opens the door with his horns, brazenly pulls off the sheepskin jacket I’ve covered my head with, and licks me on the ear. I couldn’t stand this insolence any longer: I reached under the bed, grabbed an axe, and bashed him with it. I heard him grunt and drop down on the spot. ‘Well,’ I think, ‘serves you right’—but instead of him, in the morning, I look, and there’s no Jew at all. Those scoundrels, those little devils, had put our monastery cow there for me instead of him.”

“And you had wounded her?”

“I’d hacked her to death with the axe, sir! It caused a terrible stir in the monastery.”

“And you probably got into trouble on account of it?”

“That I did, sir. The father superior said I’d imagined it all because I don’t go to church enough, and he gave me a blessing that, once I was finished with the horses, I should always stand by the screen in front to light candles, but here those nasty little demons contrived things even better and thoroughly did me in. It was on the Wet Savior,⁴¹ at the vigil, during the blessing of bread according to the rite, the father superior and a hieromonk were standing in the middle of the church, and one little old woman gave me a candle and said:

“ ‘Put it before the icon of the feast, dearie.’ ”

“I went to the icon stand where the icon of the ‘Savior on the Waters’ lay, and was putting that candle in place, when another fell. I bent down to pick it up, started putting it back in place—and two more fell. I started replacing them—and four fell. I just shook my head: ‘Well,’ I think, ‘that’s bound to be my little imps vexing me again and tearing things out of my hands …’ I bent down, quickly picked up the fallen candles, and on straightening up hit the back of my head against the candle stand … and the candles just came raining down. Well, here I got angry, and I knocked all the rest of the candles off with my hand. ‘Why,’ I think, ‘if there’s such insolence going on, I’d better just throw it all down myself.’ ”

“And what did you get for that?”

“They wanted to try me for it, but our recluse, the blind elder Sysoy, who lives with us in an underground hermitage, interceded for me.

“ ‘What would you try him for,’ he says, ‘when it’s Satan’s servants who have confounded him?’

“The father superior heeded him and gave his blessing that I be put in an empty cellar without trial.”

“How long did you spend in the cellar?”

“The father superior didn’t give his blessing for a precise length of time, he simply said ‘Let him sit there,’ and I sat there all summer right up to the first frost.”

“It must be supposed that the boredom and torment in the cellar were no less than on the steppe?”

“Ah, no, how can you compare them? Here the church bells could be heard, and comrades visited me. They came, stood over the pit, and we talked, and the father bursar ordered a millstone lowered to me on a rope, so that I could grind salt for the kitchen. There’s no comparison with the steppe or anywhere else.”

“And when did they take you out? Probably with the frost, because it got cold?”

“No, sir, it wasn’t on account of the cold at all, but for a different reason: because I started to prophesy.”

“To prophesy!?”

“Yes, sir, in the cellar I finally fell to pondering what an utterly worthless spirit I had, and how much I’d endured because of it, and without any improvement, and I sent a novice to a certain teaching elder, to inquire if I could ask God to give me a different, more appropriate spirit. And the elder ordered him to tell me: ‘Let him pray as he should, and then expect what cannot be expected.’

“I did just that: three whole nights I spent on this instrument, my knees, in my pit, praying fervently to heaven, and I began to expect something else to be accomplished in my soul. And we had another monk, Geronty, he was very well read and had various books and newspapers, and once he gave me the life of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk⁴² to read, and whenever he happened to pass by my pit, he’d throw me a newspaper he had under his cassock.

“ ‘Read,’ he says, ‘and look for what’s useful: that will be a diversion for you in your ditch.’

“In expectation of the impossible answer to my prayer, I meanwhile began to occupy myself with this reading: once I finished grinding all the salt it was my task to grind, I’d start reading, and first I read about St. Tikhon, how our most holy Lady and the holy apostles Peter and Paul visited him in his cell. It was written that St. Tikhon then started asking the Mother of God to prolong peace on earth, and the apostle Paul answered him loudly about the sign of the cessation of peace: ‘When everyone talks of peace and stability,’ he says, ‘then suddenly will the all-destroyer come upon them.’ And I thought a long time about these apostolic words, and at first I couldn’t understand: why had the saint received these words of revelation from the apostle? Finally I read in the newspapers that at home and in foreign lands tireless voices were constantly proclaiming universal peace. And here my prayer was answered, and all at once I understood that the saying, ‘If they talk of peace, suddenly will the all-destroyer come upon them,’ was coming true, and I was filled with fear for our Russian people and began to pray and with tears exhorted all those who came to my pit to pray for the subjugation under the feet of our tsar of all enemies and adversaries, for the all-destroyer was near. And I was granted tears in wondrous abundance! … I kept weeping over our native land. They reported to the father superior that ‘our Ishmael in his cellar has started weeping a lot and prophesying war.’ For that the father superior gave me a blessing to be transferred to the empty cottage in the kitchen garden and given the icon ‘Blessed Silence,’ which shows the Savior with folded wings, in the guise of an angel, but with the Sabaoth’s eight-pointed halo, and his arms crossed meekly on his breast. And I was told to bow down before this icon every day, until the prophesying spirit in me fell silent. So I was locked up with this icon, and remained locked up there till spring and stayed in that cottage and kept praying to the ‘Blessed Silence,’ but as soon as I caught sight of a man, the spirit rose up in me again and I spoke. At that time the superior sent a doctor to me to see if my wits were addled. The doctor sat in my cottage for a long time, listened, like you, to my whole story, and spat:

“ ‘What a drum you are, brother,’ he says. ‘They beat and beat on you, and still can’t beat you down.’

“I say:

“ ‘What to do? I suppose it’s got to be so.’

“And he, having heard it all, says to the superior:

“ ‘I can’t figure him out. Is he simply a good soul, or has he gone mad, or is he a true soothsayer? That,’ he says, ‘is your department, I’m not versed in it, but my opinion is: chase him somewhere far away to get some air, he may have sat too long in one place.’

“So they released me, and now I have a blessing to go to Solovki and pray to Zosima and Sabbatius, and I’m on my way there.⁴³ I’ve been all over, but them I haven’t seen, and I want to bow down to them before I die.”

“Why ‘before I die’? Are you ill?”

“No, sir, I’m not. It’s still on this same chance that we’ll soon have to go to war.”

“Sorry, but it seems you’re talking about war again?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So the ‘Blessed Silence’ didn’t help you?”

“That’s not for me to know, sir. I try my best to keep silent, but the spirit wins out.”

“What does he say?”

“He keeps exhorting me to ‘take up arms.’ ”

“Are you prepared to go to war yourself?”

“What else, sir? Certainly: I want very much to die for my people.”

“So you mean to go to war in your cowl and cassock?”

“No, sir, I’ll take the cowl off and put on a uniform.”

Having said that, the enchanted wanderer seemed to feel prophetic inspiration coming upon him anew and lapsed into quiet concentration, which none of his interlocutors ventured to interrupt with any new question. And what more could they have asked him? He had divulged the story of his past with all the candor of his simple soul, and his predictions remained in the hands of Him who conceals their destinies from the wise and prudent and only sometimes reveals them unto babes.

* Russian for “big head.” Trans.