The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

The Voice of Nature

I

The well-known military writer General Rostislav Andreevich Faddeev, long attached to the late Field Marshal Baryatinsky,¹ told me of the following amusing incident.

Once, traveling from the Caucasus to Petersburg, the prince felt unwell on the way and sent for a doctor. It happened, if I am not mistaken, in Temir-Khan-Shura.² The doctor examined the patient and found that there was nothing dangerous in his condition, but that he was simply tired and needed to rest for a day without rocking and jolting along the road in a carriage.

The field marshal obeyed the doctor and agreed to stop in the town; but the station house there was quite vile, and private quarters, given the unforeseen nature of the occasion, had not been prepared. An unexpected predicament presented itself: where to lodge such a renowned visitor for a day.

There was much bustling and rushing about, and for the time being the unwell field marshal settled in the posting station and lay down on a dirty divan, which was covered just for him with a clean sheet. Meanwhile, news of this event, of course, quickly flew around the whole town, and all the military hastened to scrub and dress themselves up, and the civil authorities polished their boots, pomaded their whiskers, and they all crowded together across the street from the station. They stood and looked out for the field marshal, in case he should show himself in the window.

Suddenly, unexpected and unforeseen by anybody, a man pushed them all aside from behind, sprang forward, and ran straight to the station, where the field marshal lay on the dirty divan covered with a sheet, and began to shout:

“I can’t bear it, the voice of nature rises up in me!”

Everyone looked at him and marveled: what an impudent fellow! The local inhabitants all knew this man, and knew he was not of high rank—since he was neither in civil nor in military service, but was simply a minor supervisor in some local supply commissariat and had been chewing on government rusks and boot soles along with the rats, and in that fashion had chewed himself up a pretty little house with a mezzanine right across from the station.

II

This supervisor came running to the station and asked Faddeev to announce him to the field marshal without fail.

Faddeev and all the others started protesting to him.

“Why? There’s no need for that, and there won’t be any formal reception—the field marshal is tired and is here only for a temporary rest, and once he’s rested, he’ll be on his way.”

But the commissary supervisor stood his ground and became even more inflamed—asking that they announce him to the prince without fail.

“Because,” he says, “I’m not looking for glory or for honors, and I stand before you precisely as you’ve said: not out of duty, but in the zeal of my gratitude to him, because I am indebted to him for everything in the world and, in my present prosperity, moved by the voice of nature, I wish to gratefully repay my debt.”

They asked him:

“And what does your debt of nature consist in?”

And he replied:

“This is my grateful debt of nature, that it is wrong for the prince to be resting here in institutional untidiness, when I have my own house with a mezzanine just across the street, and my wife is of German stock, the house is kept clean and tidy, and I have bright, clean rooms in the mezzanine for the prince and for you, with white, lace-trimmed curtains on all the windows and clean beds with fine linen sheets. I wish to receive the prince in my house with the greatest cordiality, like my own father, because I’m indebted to him for everything in my life, and I will not leave here before you tell him that.”

He so insisted on it and refused to leave, that the field marshal heard it from the next room and asked:

“What’s this noise? Will nobody tell me what all this talk is about?”

Then Faddeev told him everything, and the prince shrugged his shoulders and said:

“I decidedly do not remember who this man is and how he’s indebted to me; but in any case, have a look at the rooms he’s offering, and if they’re better than this hovel, I’ll accept the invitation and pay him for his trouble. Find out how much he wants.”

Faddeev went to look at the commissary’s mezzanine and reported:

“The place is very quiet and of an extraordinary cleanliness, and the owner will not hear of any payment.”

“What? Why not?” asked the field marshal.

“He says he owes you a great deal and the voice of nature prompts him to the happiness of expressing his debt of gratitude to you. ‘Otherwise,’ he says, ‘if you want to pay, then I cannot open my doors.’ ”

Prince Baryatinsky laughed and praised this official.

“Still,” he says, “I see he’s a fine fellow and has character—that has become rare among us, and I like such people: how he’s indebted to me, I can’t recall, but I’ll move to his place. Give me your arm and let’s leave here.”

III

They went across the street and … into the yard; and at the gate the supervisor himself is already greeting the field marshal—pomaded, sleek, all his buttons buttoned, and with the most joyful face.

The prince looked around and saw that everything was clean, shining brightly, in the front garden cheerful green and blossoming roses. The prince himself cheered up.

“What is my host’s name?”

The latter replies something like Filipp Filippovich Filippov.

The prince goes on talking with him and says:

“Your place is very nice, Filipp Filippych, I like it—there’s just one thing I simply can’t remember: where and when did I meet or see you, and what sort of favor could I have done you?”

And the supervisor replies:

“Your Excellency certainly did see me, but when—if you’ve forgotten—will become clear later.”

“Why later, if I want to remember you now?”

But the supervisor did not say.

“I beg Your Excellency’s pardon,” he said. “If you don’t remember that yourself, I dare not tell you, but the voice of nature will tell you.”

“Nonsense! What ‘voice of nature’? And why do you not dare to tell me yourself?”

The supervisor replied, “I just don’t dare,” and dropped his eyes.

And meanwhile they had come to the mezzanine, and here it was still more clean and tidy: the floor washed with soap and rubbed with mare’s tail till it gleamed, white runners laid all down the middle of the clean stairway, in the living room a divan, a round table before it with a big, glazed water jug, and in it a bouquet of roses and violets, further on—the bedroom, with a Turkish carpet over the bed, and again a table, a carafe of clean water and a glass, and another bouquet of flowers, and, on a special little desk, a pen, an ink stand, paper and envelopes, wax and a seal.

The field marshal took it all in at a glance, and it pleased him very much.

“It’s clear,” he says, “that you, Filipp Filippych, are a polished man, that you know how things ought to be, and it seems I really did see you somewhere, but I can’t recall it.”

And the supervisor only smiles and says:

“Please don’t worry: it will all be explained by the voice of nature.”

Baryatinsky laughed.

“In that case, brother,” he says, “you are not Filipp Filippovich, but the ‘voice of nature’ yourself”—and he became very intrigued by the man.

IV

The prince lay down on the clean bed, stretched out his legs and arms, and it felt so good that he dozed off at once. He woke up an hour later in an excellent state of mind, and before him already stood a cool cherry sherbet, and that same host asking him to taste it.

“Don’t rely on doctors’ medications, Your Excellency,” he says. “Here with us nature and the breathing of the atmosphere are beneficial.”

The prince cheerfully answers him that that is all very well, “but I must confess to you—I slept splendidly here, but, devil take me, even in my sleep I kept thinking: where did I see you, or maybe I never did?”

But the man replies:

“No,” he says, “you saw me very well, if you please, only in a completely different natural guise, and therefore you don’t recognize me now.”

The prince says:

“Very well, let it be so: there’s no one here now besides you and me, and if there’s anybody there in the next room, send them all out, let them stand on the stairs, and tell me frankly, without hiding anything, who you were and what your criminal secret is—I can promise to solicit for your pardon, and I’ll keep my promise, as I am the true Prince Baryatinsky.”

But the official even smiled and replied that there was not and never had been any guilty secret whatever concerning him, and that he simply did not dare to “abash” the prince for his forgetfulness.

“So you see,” he says, “I constantly remember Your Excellency for your goodness and commemorate you in my prayers; and our sovereign and all the royal family, once they’ve seen and noticed someone, constantly remember him all their lives. Therefore allow me,” he says, “not to remind you of myself verbally, but in due time I will reveal it all to you by clear signs through the voice of nature—and then you will remember.”

“And what means do you have for revealing it all through the voice of nature?”

“In the voice of nature,” he replies, “there is every means.”

The prince smiled at the odd fellow.

“True for you,” he said, “it’s bad to forget, and our sovereign and the royal family do indeed have very good memories, but my memory is weak. I do not override your will, do as you think best, only I would like to know when you are going to reveal your voice of nature to me, because I’m now feeling very well in your house, and I want to leave after midnight, once it cools off. And you must tell me how I can reward you for the rest I’ve had myself here—because that is my custom on such occasions.”

The supervisor says:

“Before midnight I will have time to reveal the voice of nature fully to Your Excellency, if only, in the matter of my reward, you will not deny me something that I hold most precious.”

“Very well,” says the prince, “I give you my word that I will do everything you ask, only don’t ask the impossible.”

The supervisor replies:

“I will not ask the impossible, but I wish more than anything in the world that you would show me this favor—to come to my rooms downstairs and sit at the table with us, and eat something, or even just simply sit for a while, because tonight I am celebrating my silver wedding anniversary, it being twenty-five years since, by your grace, I married Amalia Ivanovna. It will be at eleven o’clock tonight; and at midnight, once it cools off, you may be well pleased to go.”

The prince agreed and gave his word, but all the same he was again simply unable to recall what this man was and where from, and why it was that twenty-five years ago, by his grace, he had married Amalia Ivanovna.

“It will even be a pleasure for me to have supper with this odd fellow,” said the prince, “because he intrigues me very much; and, to tell the truth, I do remember something either about him or about Amalia Ivanovna, but precisely what—I can’t recall. Let us wait for the voice of nature!”

V

By evening the field marshal had quite recovered and even went for a walk with Faddeev, to see the town and admire the sunset, and when he came back to the house at ten o’clock, the host was already waiting for him and invited him to the table.

The prince said:

“Very gladly, I’ll come at once.”

Faddeev said jokingly that it was even opportune, because he had a good appetite after their walk and wanted very much to eat whatever Amalia Ivanovna had cooked up for them.

Baryatinsky was only afraid that the host would seat him in the place of honor and start pouring a lot of champagne and regaling him. But these fears were all quite unfounded: the supervisor showed as much pleasant tact at the table as in all the previous hours the prince had spent in his house.

The table was laid elegantly but simply in a spacious room, with a neat but modest service, and two black cast-iron candlesticks of excellent French workmanship, each with seven candles. And the wines were of good sorts, but all local—and among them were some fat-bellied little bottles with handwritten labels.

These were liqueurs and cordials, and of excellent taste—raspberry, cherry, gooseberry.

The supervisor started seating the guests and here also showed his adroitness: he did not lead the prince to the head of the table, to the host’s place, but seated him where the prince himself wanted, between his adjutant and a very pretty little lady, so that the field marshal would have someone to exchange a few words with and could amuse himself paying compliments to the fair sex. The prince at once fell to talking with the little lady: he was interested in where she came from, and where she had been educated, and what she did for diversion in such a remote provincial town.

She answered all his questions quite boldly and without any mincing, and revealed to him that she was, it seems, mainly occupied with reading books.

The prince asked what books she read.

She replied: the novels of Paul de Kock.³

The prince laughed.

“That,” he said, “is a merry writer,” and he asked: “What precisely have you read? Which novels?”

She replied:

“The Confectioner, Moustache, Sister Anne, and others.”

“And you don’t read our Russian writers?”

“No,” she says, “I don’t.”

“And why not?”

“There’s too little high society in them.”

“And you like high society?”

“Yes.”

“Why is that?”

“Because we know all about our own life, and those things are more interesting.”

And here she said that she had a brother who was writing a novel about society life.

“That’s interesting!” said the prince. “I don’t suppose I could see a little something he’s written?”

“You may,” the lady replied, and she left the table for a moment and came back with a small notebook, in which Baryatinsky glanced only at the first page, became all merry, and, handing it to Faddeev, said:

“How’s that for a pert beginning!”

Faddeev looked at the first lines of the society novel and also became merry.

The novel began with the words: “I, as a man of society, get up at noon and do not take my morning tea at home, but go around the restaurants.”

“Wonderful, eh?” asked Baryatinsky.

“Very good,” replied Faddeev.

By then everyone had grown merry, and the host stood up, raised a glass of sparkling Tsimlyanskoe, and said:

“Your Excellency, I beg your permission, for the general good pleasure and for my own, on this day so precious for me, to be allowed to explain who I am, and where I am from, and to whom I am indebted for all the prosperity I have. But I cannot explain it in the cold words of the human voice, because I was educated on very little money, and so allow me by the whole law of my being to emit in all solemnity the voice of nature.”

Here it came time for the field marshal himself to be abashed, and he was so confused that he bent down as if to pick up his napkin, and whispered:

“By God, I don’t know what to tell him: what is it he’s asking of me?”

But the little lady, his neighbor, chirps:

“Don’t be afraid, just allow him: Filipp Filippovich won’t think up anything bad.”

The prince thinks: “Ah, come what may—let him emit the voice!”

“I’m here as a guest,” he says, “like everyone else, and you are the host—do whatever you want.”

“I thank you and everyone,” replies the supervisor, and, nodding to Amalia Ivanovna, he says: “Go, wife, bring you know what with your own hands.”

VI

Amalia Ivanovna went and came back with a big, brightly polished brass French horn and gave it to her husband. He took it, put the mouthpiece to his lips, and in an instant was utterly transformed. As soon as he puffed his cheeks and gave one crackling peal, the field marshal cried:

“I know you, brother, I know you now: you were the musician in the chasseur regiment whom I sent, on account of his honesty, to keep an eye on that crooked commissary.”

“Just so, Your Excellency,” replied the host. “I didn’t want to remind you of it, but nature herself has reminded you.”

The prince embraced him and said:

“Ladies and gentlemen, let us join in drinking a toast to an honest man!”

And they drank well, and the field marshal recovered completely and left feeling extremely merry.