The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

The Enchanted Wanderer

I

We were sailing over Lake Ladoga from the island of Konevets to Valaam and stopped for a shipyard necessity at the wharf in Korela.¹ Here many of us were curious to go ashore and ride on frisky Finnish horses to the deserted little town. Then the captain made ready to continue on our way, and we sailed off again.

After the visit to Korela, it was quite natural that our conversation should turn to that poor, though extremely old, Russian settlement, than which it would be hard to imagine anything sadder. Everyone on the boat shared that opinion, and one of the passengers, a man inclined to philosophical generalizations and political jesting, observed that he could in no way understand why it was customary that people objectionable in Petersburg should be sent to some more or less remote place or other, which, of course, incurred losses to the treasury for transportation, when right here, near the capital, on the shore of Ladoga, there is such an excellent place as Korela, where no freethinking or liberal-mindedness would be able to withstand the apathy of the populace and the terrible boredom of the oppressive, meager natural life.

“I’m sure,” this traveler said, “that in the present case the fault must lie with the routine, or in any case, perhaps, with a lack of pertinent information.”

Someone who often traveled here replied to this, that some exiles had apparently lived here, too, at various times, but none of them had been able to stand it for long.

“One fine fellow, a seminarian, was sent here as a clerk on account of rudeness (that kind of exile I cannot even understand). So, having come here, he played it brave for a long time and kept hoping to start some sort of litigation; but then he took to drinking, and drank so much that he went completely out of his mind and sent in a petition saying it would be best, as soon as possible, to order him ‘shot or sent for a soldier, or, failing that, to hang him.’ ”

“And what decision followed from it?”

“Hm … I … I really don’t know; only he didn’t wait for the decision in any case: he hanged himself without leave.”

“And he did very well,” the philosopher responded.

“Very well?” repeated the storyteller, evidently a merchant, a solid and religious man.

“Why not? At least he died and put a lid on it.”

“How do you mean, a lid, sir? And how will it be for him in the other world? Suicides will be tormented for all eternity. No one can even pray for them.”

The philosopher smiled venomously, but made no reply, but instead a new opponent stepped forward against him and against the merchant, unexpectedly defending the clerk who had carried out the death sentence on himself without official permission.

This was a new passenger, who had come on board at Konevets without any of us noticing him. He had been silent until then, and no one had paid any attention to him, but now everyone turned to look at him, and everyone probably wondered how he could have gone unnoticed until then. He was a man of enormous stature, with an open and swarthy face and thick, wavy hair of a leaden color: so strangely was it streaked with gray. He was wearing a novice’s cassock, with a wide monastic leather belt and a tall, black broadcloth cap. Whether he was a novice or a tonsured monk it was impossible to tell, because the monks of the Ladoga islands do not always wear monastic headgear, not only when traveling, but even on their own islands, and in country simplicity limit themselves to caps. This new companion of ours, who later turned out to be an extremely interesting man, looked as if he might be a little over fifty; but he was a mighty man in the fullest sense of the word, and a typical, artless, kind Russian mighty man at that, reminiscent of old Ilya Muromets in the beautiful painting by Vereshchagin and in the poem by Count A. K. Tolstoy.² It seemed that he should not be going around in a cassock, but riding through the forest in huge bast shoes, mounted on his “dapple gray,” and lazily scenting “how the dark thicket smells of resin and wild strawberry.”

But for all this kindly artlessness, it did not take much keenness of observation to see in him a man who had seen much and, as they say, “had been around.” He behaved boldly, self-assuredly, though without unpleasant casualness, and he began speaking with accustomed ease in a pleasant bass voice.

“That all means nothing,” he began, lazily and softly letting out word after word from under his thick gray mustaches, twirled upwards Hussar fashion. “What you say concerning the other world for suicides, that they will supposedly never be forgiven, I don’t accept. And that there’s supposedly no one to pray for them—that, too, is nonsense, because there is a man who can quite simply mend the situation for them all in the easiest way.”

He was asked who this man was who can deal with and amend things for suicides after their death.

“Here’s who, sir,” replied the black-cassocked mighty man. “There is in the Moscow diocese a certain little village priest—a most hardened drunkard, who had been all but defrocked—it’s he who handles them.”

“How do you know that?”

“Good heavens, sir, I’m not the only one who knows, everybody in the Moscow region knows it, because it went through his grace the metropolitan Filaret himself.”³

There was a brief pause, then someone said it was all rather dubious.

The black-cassocked man was not offended in the least by this observation and replied:

“Yes, sir, at first glance it looks that way—dubious, sir. And what’s surprising about it seeming dubious to us, when even his grace himself didn’t believe it for a long time, but then, receiving sure proofs of it, saw that it was impossible not to believe it, and finally believed it?”

The passengers badgered the monk with requests that he tell them this wondrous story, and he did not refuse them and began as follows:

The story goes that a certain archpriest supposedly wrote once to his grace the bishop that, thus and so, there’s this little priest, a terrible drunkard—he drinks vodka and is no good in his parish. And it, this report, was essentially correct. The bishop ordered the priest to be sent to him in Moscow. He looked him over and saw that the priest was indeed a boozy fellow, and decided to remove him from his post. The priest was upset and even stopped drinking, and kept grieving and weeping: “What have I brought myself to,” he thinks, “and what else can I do but lay hands on myself? That’s all that’s left to me,” he says. “Then at least the bishop will take pity on my unfortunate family and give my daughter a husband, so that he can replace me and feed my family.”⁴ So far so good. He firmly resolved to do away with himself and set a day for it, but since he had a good soul, he thought: “Very well, suppose I die, but I’m not a brute, I’m not without a soul—where will my soul go after that?” And from then on he began to grieve still more. Well, so he grieves and grieves, but the bishop decided to remove him from his post on account of his drunkenness, and he lay down with a book once to rest after a meal and fell asleep. Well, so he fell asleep or else just dozed off, when suddenly he seemed to see the door of his cell opening. He called out “Who’s there?” because he thought the attendant had come to announce someone; but no—instead of the attendant, he saw a most kindly old man come in, and the bishop recognized him at once—it was St. Sergius.⁵

The bishop says:

“Is that you, most holy Father Sergius?”

And the holy man replies:

“It is I, servant of God Filaret.”

The bishop asks:

“What does your purity want of my unworthiness?”

And St. Sergius replies:

“I want mercy.”

“Upon whom do you want it shown?”

The holy man named that little priest deprived of his post on account of drunkenness, and then withdrew; and the bishop woke up and thought: “What shall I count that as: a simple dream or fancy, or an inspiring vision?” And he began to reflect and, as a man known to the whole world for his intelligence, figured that it was a simple dream, because how on earth could it be that St. Sergius, an ascetic and observer of the good, strict life, would intercede for a weak priest who lived a life of negligence? Well, sir, so his grace decided that way, and left this whole matter to take its natural course, as it had begun, and passed the time as was suitable to him, and at the proper hour lay down to sleep again. But no sooner had he nodded off than another vision came, and of such a sort that it plunged the bishop’s great spirit into still worse confusion. Imagine, if you can: noise … such a frightful noise that nothing can convey it … They come riding … so many knights, there’s no counting them … racing, all in green attire, breastplates and feathers, their steeds like lions, ravenblack, and at their head a proud stratopedarchos⁶ in the same attire, and wherever he waves his dark banner, there they ride, and on the banner—a serpent. The bishop doesn’t know what this procession means, but the proud one commands them: “Tear them apart,” he says, “for now they have no one to pray for them”—and he galloped on; and after this stratopedarchos rode his warriors, and after them, like a flock of scrawny spring geese, drew dreary shades, and they all nodded sadly and pitifully to the bishop and moaned softly through their weeping: “Let him go! He alone prays for us.” As soon as the bishop got up, he sent at once for the drunken priest and questioned him about how and for whom he prays. And the priest, from poverty of spirit, became all confused before the hierarch and said: “Master, I do as is prescribed.” And his grace had a hard time persuading him to confess: “I am guilty,” he says, “of one thing: that I am weak of spirit, and thinking it better to do away with myself out of despair, I always pray when preparing the communion for those who passed away without confession or who laid hands on themselves …” Well, here the bishop understood what those shades were that floated past him like scrawny geese in his vision, and he did not want to please the demons who sped before them to destruction, and he gave the little priest his blessing: “Go,” he said, “and do not sin in that other thing, but pray for those you prayed for”—and sent him back to his post. So you see, such a man as he can always be useful for such people as cannot endure the struggle of life, for he will never retreat from the boldness of his calling and will keep pestering the Creator on their account, and He will have to forgive them.

“Why ‘have to’?”

“Because of the ‘knock’⁷—you see, He ordered it Himself, so that’s never going to change, sir.”

“And tell us, please, does anybody else pray for suicides besides this Moscow priest?”

“I don’t rightly know how to fill you in on that. They say you supposedly shouldn’t petition God for them, because they followed their own will, though maybe there are some who don’t understand that and do pray for them. On the Trinity, or on the day of the Holy Spirit,⁸ though, it seems everybody’s allowed to pray for them. Some special prayers are even read then. Wonderful, moving prayers; I think I could listen to them forever.”

“And they can’t be read on other days?”

“I don’t know, sir. For that you’d have to ask somebody who’s studied up on it; I suppose they should know; since it’s nothing to do with me, I’ve never had occasion to talk about it.”

“And you’ve never noticed these prayers being repeated sometimes during services?”

“No, sir, I haven’t; though you shouldn’t take my word for it, because I rarely attend services.”

“Why is that?”

“My occupation doesn’t allow me to.”

“Are you a hieromonk or a hierodeacon?”⁹

“No, I just wear a habit.”

“But still, doesn’t that mean you’re a monk?”

“Hm … yes, sir; generally that’s how it’s considered.”

“Indeed it is,” the merchant retorted to that, “only even in a habit they can still call you up as a soldier.”

The black-cassocked mighty man was not offended in the least by this observation, but only reflected a little and replied:

“Yes, they can, and they say there have been such cases; but I’m too old now, I’m in my fifty-third year, and then military service is nothing unusual for me.”

“You mean you’ve already been in military service?”

“That I have, sir.”

“What, as a corporal, was it?” the merchant asked again.

“No, not as a corporal.”

“Then what: a soldier, an orderly, a noodle—the whole caboodle?”

“No, you haven’t guessed it; but I’m a real military man, involved in regimental doings almost since childhood.”

“So you’re a cantonist?”¹⁰ the merchant persisted, getting angry.

“No again.”

“Then what the deuce are you?”

“I’m a conosoor.”

“A wha-a-at?”

“A conosoor, sir, a conosoor, or, as plain folk put it, a good judge of horseflesh, and I served as an adviser to the remount officers.”

“So that’s it!”

“Yes, sir, I’ve selected and trained a good few thousand steeds. I’ve broken such wild beasts as, for example, the ones that rear up and then throw themselves backwards with all their might, and the rider can have his chest crushed right then against the pommel, but with me not one of them could do that.”

“How did you tame that kind?”

“I—it was very simple, because I received a special gift for it from nature. When I jump into the saddle, straightaway, without giving the horse time to collect its wits, I pull its ear to the side as hard as I can with my left hand, and with my right fist I bash it between the ears, and I grind my teeth at it something terrible, so that sometimes you even see brains come out its nostrils along with blood—and it quiets down.”

“And then?”

“Then you dismount, stroke it, let it look you in the eye and admire you, so that a good picture stays in its memory, and then you mount up again and ride.”

“And the horse goes quietly after that?”

“It goes quietly, because a horse is smart, it feels what sort of man is handling it and what he’s thinking about it. Me, for instance, by that same reasoning, every horse loved me and felt me. In Moscow, in the manège, there was one horse that got completely out of hand, and he learned this heathenish trick of biting off a rider’s knee. The devil simply caught the kneecap in his big teeth and tore it off whole. Many men were done in by him. At that time the Englishman Rarey visited Moscow¹¹—the ‘furious breaker,’ as he was called—and the lowdown horse nearly ate him, too, and put him to shame in any case; they say the only thing that saved him was that he wore a steel knee guard, so, though the horse did bite his leg, he couldn’t bite through, and so he bucked him off; otherwise it would have been the death of him; but I straightened him out good and proper.”

“Tell us, please, how did you do that?”

“With God’s help, sir, because, I repeat, I have a gift for it. This Mister Rarey, known as the ‘furious tamer,’ and the others who took on this steed, used all their art against his wickedness to keep him bridled, so that he couldn’t swing his head to this side or that. But I invented a completely opposite means to theirs. As soon as this Englishman Rarey renounced the horse, I said: ‘Never mind, it’s all futile, because this steed is nothing if not possessed by a devil. The Englishman can’t fathom that, but I can, and I’ll help you.’ The superiors agreed. Then I say: ‘Take him out the Drogomilovsky Gate!’ They took him out. Right, sir. We led him by the bridle down to a hollow near Fili, where rich people live in their summer houses. I saw the place was spacious and suitable, and went into action. I got up on him, on that cannibal, without a shirt, barefoot, in nothing but balloon trousers and a visored cap, and I had a braided belt around my naked body, brought from the brave prince St. Vsevolod-Gavriil of Novgorod,¹² whom I believed in and greatly respected for his daring; and embroidered on the belt was ‘My honor I yield to none.’ I had no special instruments in my hands, except that in one I had a stout Tartar whip topped with a lead head of no more than two pounds, and in the other a simple glazed pot of liquid batter. Well, sir, I sat him, and there were four men pulling the horse’s bridle in different directions so that he wouldn’t hurl himself at anybody with his teeth. And he, the demon, seeing that we’re all up in arms against him, whinnies, and shrieks, and sweats, and trembles all over with wickedness, wanting to devour me. I see that and tell the stablemen: ‘Quick, tear the bridle off the scoundrel.’ They don’t believe their ears, that I’m giving them such an order, and they gape at me. I say: ‘What are you standing there for! Don’t you hear? What I order you to do, you should do at once!’ And they answer: ‘But, Ivan Severyanych’ (my name in the world was Ivan Severyanych, Mr. Flyagin), ‘how can you tell us to take the bridle off?’ I began to get angry at them, because I could see and feel in my legs that the horse was raging with fury, and I pressed him hard with my knees, and shouted to them: ‘Take it off!’ They were about to say something, but by then I was in a complete frenzy and gnashed my teeth so hard that they pulled the bridle off at once, in an instant, and made a dash for it wherever their feet would take them, while in that same moment I first off did something he wasn’t expecting and smashed the pot on his head; the pot broke and the batter ran down over his eyes and nose. And he got frightened, thinking: ‘What’s that?’ And I quickly snatched the cap from my head and with my left hand began to rub the batter into the horse’s eyes still more, and I gave him a whack on the side with my whip … He surged forward, and I kept rubbing him on the eyes with my cap, to blear his eyesight completely, and gave him a whack on the other side … And I keep laying it on hotter and hotter. I don’t let him catch his breath or open his eyes, and keep smearing the batter over his muzzle with my cap, blinding him, gnashing my teeth to make him tremble, scaring him, and flogging him on both sides with the whip, so he’ll understand this is no joke … He understood it and didn’t stay stubbornly in one place, but raced off with me. He carried me, the dear heart, carried me, and I thrashed and thrashed him, and the more zealously he carried me, the more ardently I plied the whip, and at last we both began to get tired of this work. My shoulder ached and I couldn’t raise my arm, and he, I could see, also stopped looking sideways and stuck his tongue out of his mouth. Well, here I saw he was begging for mercy. I quickly dismounted, wiped his eyes, took him by the forelock, and said: ‘Don’t move, dog meat, bitch’s grub!’ and pulled him down—he fell to his knees before me, and after that he became so meek, you couldn’t ask for anything better: he let people mount him and ride around, only he dropped dead soon after.”

“So he dropped dead?”

“Dropped dead, sir. He was a very proud creature, behaved humbly, but clearly couldn’t subdue his character. But Mr. Rarey, when he heard about it, invited me to work for him.”

“So, then, did you work for him?”

“No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“How can I put it to you! First, because I was a conosoor and was more used to that line—to selecting, and not to breaking, and he only needed furious taming—and second, because on his side, as I suppose, it was just a crafty ploy.”

“Of what sort?”

“He wanted to get my secret.”

“Would you have sold it to him?”

“Yes, I would have.”

“So what was the matter?”

“Must be he just got frightened of me.”

“Will you be so kind as to tell us that story as well?”

“There was no special story, only he said: ‘Reveal your secret to me, brother—I’ll pay you a lot and take you to be my conosoor.’ But since I was never able to deceive anybody, I answered: ‘What secret? It’s just foolishness.’ But he looked at everything from his English, learned point of view, and didn’t believe me. He says: ‘Well, if you don’t want to reveal it, have it your way, let’s go and drink rum together.’ After that we drank a lot of rum together, so much that he turned all red and said, as well as he was able: ‘Well, go on and tell me now, what did you do to the horse?’ And I answered: ‘Here’s what …’—and I threw him as scary a look as I could and gnashed my teeth, and since I had no pot of batter around just then, I took a glass, as an example, and swung it, but seeing that, he suddenly ducked his head, got under the table, and then made a dash for the door, and that was it, and there was no going looking for him. We haven’t set eyes on each other since.”

“That’s why you didn’t go to work for him?”

“That’s why, sir. How could I work for him, when from then on he was even afraid to meet me? And I was quite willing to go to him then, because, while we were competing over that rum, I got to like him very much, but, right enough, there’s no sidestepping your path, and I had to follow a different calling.”

“And what do you consider your calling?”

“I really don’t know how to tell you … I’ve done all kinds of things, had occasion to be on horses, and under horses, and was taken prisoner, and made war, and beat people myself, and was made a cripple, such that maybe not everybody could have stood it.”

“And when did you go to the monastery?”

“That wasn’t long ago, sir, just a few years after all my past life.”

“And you also felt a calling for that?”

“Mm … I … I don’t know how to explain it, sir … though it must be assumed I did.”

“How is it that you speak of it as … as if you’re not certain?”

“Because how can I say for certain, when I can’t even embrace all my extensive past living?”

“Why is that?”

“Because much that I did wasn’t even by my own will.”

“And by whose, then?”

“By a parental promise.”

“And what happened to you by this parental promise?”

“I kept dying all my life, and could never die.”

“Really?”

“Precisely so, sir.”

“Then please tell us your life.”

“What I remember, I can tell you if you like, only I can’t do it otherwise than from the very beginning.”

“Do us the favor. That will be all the more interesting.”

“Well, I don’t know if it will be of any interest at all, but listen if you like.”

II

The former connoisseur Ivan Severyanych, Mr. Flyagin, began his story thus:

I was born a serf and come from the household staff of Count K——of Orel province.¹³ Now, under the young masters, these estates have been broken up, but under the old count they were very sizeable. In the village of G——, where the count himself lived, there was a great, huge mansion, with wings for guests, a theater, a special skittles gallery, a kennel, live bears sitting chained to posts, gardens; his singers gave concerts, his actors performed various scenes; there were his own weavers, and he kept workshops for various crafts; but most attention was paid to the stud farm. Special people were appointed for each thing, but the horse department received still more special attention, and as in military service in the old days cantonists descended from soldiers in order to fight themselves, so with us little coachmen came from coachmen in order to drive themselves, from stablemen came little stablemen to tend the horses, and from the fodder peasant—the fodder boy, to carry fodder from the threshing floor to the cattle yard. My father was the coachman Severyan, and though he wasn’t among the foremost coachmen, because we had a great many, still he drove a coach-and-six, and once, during the tsar’s visit, he came in seventh and was awarded an old-style blue banknote.¹⁴ I was left an orphan of my mother at a very young age and I don’t remember her, because I was her prayed-for son, meaning that, having no children for a long time, she kept asking God for me, and when she got what she asked for, having given birth to me, she died at once, because I came into the world with an unusually big head, for which reason I was called not Ivan Flyagin, but simply Golovan.* Living with my father in the coachmen’s yard, I spent my whole life in the stables, and there I comprehended the mystery of animal knowing and, you might say, came to love horses, because as a little boy I crawled on all fours between horses’ legs, and they didn’t hurt me, and once I got a little older, I became quite intimate with them. Our stud farm was one thing, the stables were another, and we stable folk had nothing to do with the farm, but we received horses ready to be taught and trained them. Every coachman and postillion drove a coach-and-six, and of all different breeds: Vyatka, Kazan, Kalmyk, Bitiug, Don—these were all horses bought at fairs and brought to us. There were more of our own from the stud farm, naturally, but they’re not worth talking about, because stud-farm horses are placid and have neither strong character nor lively fantasy, but these wild ones were terrible beasts. The count used to buy up whole shoals of them, entire herds outright, cheap, at eight or ten roubles a head, and once we drove them home, we immediately set about schooling them. They were terribly headstrong. Half of them would even drop dead rather than submit to training: they stand there in the yard—they’re bewildered and even shy away from the walls, and only keep their eyes turned to the sky, like birds. You’d even feel pity looking at them, because you see how the dear heart would like to fly away, save that he has no wings … And from the very start he won’t eat or drink for anything, neither oats nor water from the trough, and so he pines away, until he wears himself out completely and drops dead. Sometimes we lost half of what we spent, especially on Kirghiz horses. They love steppe freedom terribly. And of those who get habituated and stay alive, no small number get crippled during training, because against their wildness there’s only one means—strictness; but then those that survive all this training and learning come out as such choice horses, no stud-farm horse can compare to them in driving quality.

My father, Severyan Ivanych, drove a Kirghiz six, and when I grew up, they set me on that same six as a postillion. They were cruel horses, not like some of the cavalry horses taken for officers nowadays. We called these officer’s horses Kaffeeschenks,¹⁵ because there was no pleasure in riding them, since even officers could sit them, but ours were simply beasts, asps and basilisks at once: their muzzles alone were worth something, or their bared teeth, or else their legs, or their manes … that is, to put it simply, sheer terror! They never knew fatigue; to do not only fifty, but even seventy or eighty miles from the village to Orel and back again without a rest was nothing to them. Once they got going, you had to watch out that they didn’t fly right by. At the time when they sat me in the postillion’s saddle, I was all of eleven years old, and my voice was just the kind that, by the custom of that time, was required of a nobleman’s postillion: most piercing, resounding, and so long-drawn-out that I could keep that “hhhi-i-i-ya-a-ahhh” ringing for half an hour; but my strength of body wasn’t great enough yet for me to keep myself freely sitting up for long journeys, and they would tie me to the saddle and harness with straps, so that I was all twined around and couldn’t fall. I was jolted to death, and even passed out and lost consciousness more than once, but still rode in my upright position, and, sick of dangling, would come to my senses again. It was no easy duty; on the way, these changes would occur several times, I’d grow faint, then straighten up, and at home they’d untie me from the saddle like a dead man, lay me out, and make me sniff horseradish. Well, but later I got used to it, and it all became like nothing to me. I even kept aiming to give some passing peasant a hot one over the shirt as we drove—that’s a well-known postillion’s prank. So, once we were taking the count visiting. The weather was beautiful, summery, and the count and his dog were sitting in the open carriage, father was driving a four-in-hand, and I was blowing about in front, and here we turned off the main road and went along a special byway for some ten miles to a monastery called the P—— hermitage. This little road was tended by the monks, to make it more enticing to go to them: naturally, on the state road there were weeds and broom and twisted branches sticking out everywhere; but the monks kept the road to the hermitage clean, all swept and cleared, with young birches planted along both sides, and these birches were so green and fragrant, and the wide view of the fields in the distance … In short—it was so good, I was about to cry out to it all, but, of course, I couldn’t cry out for no reason, so I controlled myself and galloped on. Then suddenly, two or three miles before the monastery, the road began to slope downwards a bit, and I suddenly saw a little speck ahead of me … something was creeping along the road like a little hedgehog. I was glad of the chance and struck up with all my might: “Hhhhi-i-i-i-ya-a-a-ahh!” and kept it going for almost a mile, and got so fired up that when we began to overtake the hay wagon I was shouting at, I rose in the stirrups and saw a man lying on the hay in the wagon, and it was probably so pleasant for him, warmed by the sun in the fresh breeze, that he lay there fast asleep, fearing nothing, sweetly sprawled facedown, and even with his arms spread wide, as if embracing the wagon. I could see he wasn’t going to pull over, so I went alongside, and, drawing even with him, stood up in the stirrups, gnashed my teeth for the first time in my life, and hit him across the back as hard as I could with my whip. His horses lunged forward down the hill, and he gave a start—he was a little old man in a novice’s cap, like the one I’m wearing now, and his face was pitiful, like an old woman’s, all frightened, with tears running down, and he thrashed on the hay like a gudgeon in a frying pan, and suddenly, probably half-asleep, not knowing where the edge was, he tumbled off the wagon under the wheels, and went sprawling in the dust … his legs tangled in the reins … At first my father and I, and even the count himself, found it funny the way he tumbled off, but then I saw that, down there by the bridge, the horses had caught one of the wheels on a post and stopped, but he didn’t get up and didn’t move … We came closer, I looked, he was all gray, covered with dust, and on his face there was no nose to be seen, only a crack, and blood coming from it … The count ordered us to stop, got out, looked, and said: “Dead.” He threatened to give me a good thrashing for that at home and ordered us to drive quickly to the monastery. From there people were sent down to the bridge, and the count talked things over with the father superior, and in the fall a whole train of gifts went there from us, with oats, and flour, and dried carp, and father gave me a whipping behind a shed in the monastery, not a real thrashing, but over the trousers, because it was my duty to mount up again right away. The matter ended there, but that same night the monk I had whipped to death comes to me in a vision and again weeps like a woman. I say:

“What do you want from me? Get out!”

But he replies:

“You took my life before I could confess.”

“Well, it happens,” I reply. “What am I to do with you now? I didn’t do it on purpose. And what’s so bad for you now?” I say. “You’re dead, and it’s all over.”

“It’s all over,” he says, “that’s true enough, and I’m very grateful to you for it, but I’ve come now from your own mother to ask you, do you know you’re her prayed-for son?”

“Of course, I’ve heard that,” I say. “My grandmother Fedosya has told me so more than once.”

“But do you know,” he says, “that you’re also a promised son?”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning,” he says, “that you’re promised to God.”

“Who promised me to Him?”

“Your mother.”

“Well,” I say, “then let her come and tell me that herself, because maybe you’re making it up.”

“No,” he says, “I’m not making it up, but she can’t come herself.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” he says, “here with us it’s not like with you on earth: here not everybody can speak or go places, but each of us does what he has a gift for. But if you like,” he says, “I can give you a sign to confirm it.”

“I’d like,” I say, “only what sort of sign?”

“Here is the sign for you,” he says, “that you’ll be dying many times, but you won’t die until real death comes for you, and then you’ll remember your mother’s promise and go to be a monk.”

“Wonderful,” I say. “I accept and I’ll be waiting.”

He disappeared, and I woke up and forgot all about it and didn’t foresee that all these deaths would begin right away one after another. But a short while later I went with the count and countess to Voronezh—to the newly revealed relics there,¹⁶ to cure the little countess, who had been born pigeon-toed—and we stopped in the Elets district, in the village of Krutoe, to feed the horses, and I fell asleep again by the trough, and I see—again that little monk comes, the one I did in, and says:

“Listen, Golovan, I feel sorry for you, quickly ask your masters to go to the monastery—they’ll let you.”

I answer:

“Why should I?”

And he says:

“Well, look out, you’re going to suffer a lot of evil.”

I thought, all right, you’ve got to caw about something, since I killed you, and with that I got up, hitched the horses with my father, and we drove out, and the mountain here was steep as could be, with a sheer drop on one side, where who knows how many people had perished by then. The count says:

“Watch out, Golovan, be careful.”

I was good at it, and though the reins of the shaft horses, which had to make the descent, were in the coachman’s hands, I could do much to help my father. His shaft horses were strong and reliable: they could make the descent simply by sitting on their tails, but one of them, the scoundrel, was into astronomy—you only have to rein him in hard, and straightaway he throws his head up and starts contemplating deuce knows what in the sky. There’s no worse harness horses than these astronomers—and they’re most dangerous especially between the shafts, a postillion always has to watch out for horses with that habit, because an astronomer doesn’t see where he puts his feet, and who knows where they’ll land. Naturally, I knew all about our astronomer and always helped my father: I’d hold the reins of my saddle horse and his mate under my left elbow, and place them so that their tails were just in front of the shaft horses’ muzzles and the shafts were between their croups, and I always held the whip ready in front of the astronomer’s eyes, and the moment I see him looking up in the sky, I hit him on the nose and he lowers his head, and we make the descent perfectly well. So it was this time: we’re taking the carriage down, and I’m fidgeting around in front of the shaft and controlling the astronomer with the whip, when suddenly I see that he no longer feels either my father’s reins or my whip, his mouth is all bloody from the bit and his eyes are popping, and behind me I suddenly hear something creak and crack, and the whole carriage lurches forward … The brakes have snapped! I shout to my father: “Hold up! Hold up!” And he also yells: “Hold up! Hold up!” But what is there to hold up, when all six are racing like lunatics and don’t see a thing, and something suddenly goes whizzing before my eyes, and I see my father fly off the box—a rein has broken … And ahead is that terrible abyss … I don’t know whether I felt sorry for my masters or for myself, but seeing death was inevitable, I threw myself off of the lead horse right onto the shaft and hung from the end of it … Again I don’t know how much weight was in me then, only I must have been much heavier in the overbalance, and I choked the two shaft horses till they wheezed and … I see my lead horses aren’t there, as if they’ve been cut off, and I’m hanging over the abyss, and the carriage is standing propped against the shaft horses that I had throttled with the shaft.

Only then did I come to my senses and get frightened, and my hands lost their grip, and I went flying down and don’t remember anything more. I don’t know how long it was before I came to and saw that I’m in some cottage, and a stalwart muzhik says to me:

“Well, can it be you’re alive, lad?”

I answer:

“Must be I am.”

“And do you remember what happened to you?” he asks.

I began to recall and remembered how the horses had bolted on us and I had thrown myself onto the end of the shaft and was left hanging over the abyss; but what happened next I didn’t know.

The muzhik smiles:

“And where could you know that from,” he says. “Your lead horses didn’t make it to the bottom of that abyss alive, they got all broken up, but it’s like you were saved by some invisible force: you dropped onto a lump of clay and slid down on it like on a sled. We thought you were quite dead, then we see you’re breathing, only the air has stopped your breath. Well,” he says, “now get up if you can, hurry quick to the saint: the count left money to bury you if you died, and to bring you to him in Voronezh if you should live.”

So I went, only I didn’t say anything all the way, but listened to how that muzhik who was taking me kept playing “Mistress Mine” on the concertina.

When we came to Voronezh, the count summoned me to his rooms and said to the countess:

“So, my dear countess,” he says, “we owe this boy our lives.”

The countess only nodded her head, but the count said:

“Ask me whatever you like, Golovan—I’ll do it all for you.”

I say:

“I don’t know what to ask!” And he says:

“Well, what would you like to have?”

I think and think, and then say:

“A concertina.”

The count laughs and says:

“Well, you’re a real fool, but anyhow, it goes without saying, I’ll remember you when the time comes. And,” he says, “buy him a concertina right now.”

A footman went to a shop and brought me a concertina in the stables:

“Here,” he says, “play.”

I took it and started to play, but only saw that I didn’t know how and dropped it at once, and the next day some wanderers¹⁷ stole it on me from where I’d hidden it under the shed.

I ought to have taken advantage of the count’s favor on that occasion and asked to go to a monastery right then, as the monk had advised; but, without knowing why myself, I had asked for a concertina, and had thereby refuted my very first calling, and on account of that went from one suffering to another, enduring more and more, yet didn’t die of any of them, until everything the monk had predicted to me in my vision came true in real life because of my mistrust.

III

I barely had time, after this show of benevolence from my masters, to return home with them on new horses, from which we again put together a six in Voronezh, when the fancy took me to acquire a pair of crested pigeons, a male and a female, which I kept on a shelf in the stables. The male had clay-colored feathers, but the female was white and with such red legs, a real pretty little thing! … I liked them very much: especially when the male cooed in the night, it was so pleasant to listen to, and in the daytime they’d fly among the horses and land in the manger, pecking up food and kissing each other … It was comforting for a young boy to see it all.

And after this kissing children came along; they hatched one pair, and they were growing up, and they went kiss-kissing, and more eggs got laid and hatched … They were such tiny little pigeons, as if all furry, with no feathers, yellow as the little chamomile known as “cat’s communion,” but they had beaks on them worse than on a Circassian prince, big and strong … I started examining them, these pigeon chicks, and so as not to squash them, I picked one up by the beak and looked and looked at it, and got lost in contemplating how tender it was, and the big pigeon kept driving me away. I amused myself with them—kept teasing him with the pigeon chick; but then when I went to put the little bird back in the nest, it wasn’t breathing anymore. What a nuisance! I warmed it in my hands and breathed on it, kept trying to revive it; but no, it was dead, that’s all! I got angry and threw it out the window. Well, never mind; the other one was left in the nest, and the dead one got snatched up and carried off by some white cat that ran past from who knows where. And I made good note of this cat then, that she was all white and had a black spot on her forehead like a little hat. Well, I thought to myself, darn it all, let her eat the dead one. But that night I was asleep, and suddenly I heard the pigeon on the shelf above my bed fighting angrily with someone. I jumped up and looked, and it was a moonlit night, and I saw it was the same white cat carrying off my other pigeon chick, the live one.

“Well,” I thought, “no, why should she do that?” and I threw my boot after her, only I missed, and she carried off my pigeon chick and no doubt ate it somewhere. My two pigeons were left childless, but they didn’t pine for long and began kissing again, and again they had a pair of children ready, but that cursed cat was there again … Deuce knows how she managed to spy it all out, only I look once, and in broad daylight she’s dragging off another pigeon chick, and just when I had nothing to fling after her. But for that I decided to pull a fast one on her and set a trap in the window, so that as soon as she showed her face at night, it slammed shut on her, and she sat there complaining and miaowing. I took her out of the trap at once, stuffed her head and front paws into a boot to keep her from scratching, held her back paws and tail in my left hand, with a mitten on it, took a whip from the wall with my right hand, and began teaching her a lesson on my bed. I think I gave her some hundred and fifty hot ones, with all my might, so that she even stopped struggling. Then I took her out of the boot, wondering: is she done in or not? How, I wonder, can I test whether she’s alive or not? And I put her on the threshold and chopped her tail off with a hatchet: she went “Mia-a-a-ow,” shuddered all over, spun around ten times or so, and then ran off.

“Good,” I thought, “now you’re sure not to come here after my pigeons again.” And to make it still scarier for her, the next morning I nailed the chopped-off tail outside over my window, and was very pleased with that. But an hour later, or two hours at the most, I look, and the countess’s maid comes running in, though she’s never set foot in our stable in all her born days, and she’s holding a parasol over herself, and she screams:

“Aha, aha! So that’s who, that’s who!”

I say:

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s you,” she says, “who mutilated Zozinka! Confess: it’s her tail you’ve got nailed over the window!”

I say:

“Well, what’s so important about a nailed-up tail?”

“How dared you?” she says.

“And how dared she eat my pigeons?”

“Well, what’s so important about your pigeons!”

“Your cat’s no great lady either.”

You see, I was already old enough for back talk.

“She’s just a crummy cat,” I say.

And the fidget says:

“How dare you speak that way: don’t you know that she’s my cat and the countess herself has petted her?” And with that she slaps me across the cheek with her hand, but I, since I had also been quick with my hands since childhood, not thinking twice, grabbed a dirty broom that was standing by the door and hit her across the waist with it …

My God, here everything blew up! I was taken to the German steward’s office to be judged, and he decided I should be given the severest possible thrashing and then be taken from the stables and sent to the English garden, to crush gravel for the paths with a hammer … They gave me a terribly severe hiding, I couldn’t even pick myself up, and they took me to my father on a bast mat, but that would have been nothing to me; but then there was this last punishment, of going on my knees and crushing stones … That tormented me so much that I kept thinking and thinking how to get out of it, and decided to put an end to my life. I provided myself with a stout cord, having begged it from a houseboy, and went for a swim in the evening, then to the aspen grove behind the threshing floor, got on my knees, prayed for all Christians, tied the cord to a branch, made a noose, and put my head in it. It only remained for me to jump, and the story would be all told … Given my character, I could have done it quite easily, but I had only just swung, jumped off the branch, and hung down, when I saw that I was lying on the ground, and in front of me stood a Gypsy with a knife, laughing—his bright white teeth flashing against his swarthy mug in the night.

“What’s this you’re up to, farmhand?” he says.

“And you, what do you want with me?”

“Or,” he persisted, “is your life so bad?”

“Seems it’s not all sweetness,” I say.

“Instead of hanging by your own hand,” he says, “come and live with us, maybe you’ll hang some other way.”

“But who are you and what do you live by? I’ll bet you’re thieves.”

“Thieves we are,” he says, “thieves and swindlers.”

“There, you see,” I say, “and, on occasion, I’ll bet you put a knife in people?”

“Occasionally,” he says, “we do that, too.”

I thought over what to do: at home it would be the same thing again tomorrow and the day after, going on your knees in the path, and tap, tap, crushing little stones with a hammer, and I already had lumps growing on my knees from the work, and all I had in my ears was people jeering at me, that the fiend of a German had condemned me to make rubble of a whole mountain of stones on account of a cat’s tail. Everybody laughed: “And yet they call you a savior: you saved the masters’ lives.” I simply couldn’t stand it, and figuring that, if I didn’t hang myself, I’d have to go back to the same thing, I waved my hand, wept, and went over to the robbers.

IV

That sly Gypsy gave me no time to collect my wits. He said:

“To convince me you won’t go back on it, you must bring me a pair of horses from the master’s stable right now, and take the best ones, so that we can gallop far away on them before morning.”

I grieved inwardly: Lord knows I didn’t want to steal; but then it was sink or swim; and, knowing all the ins and outs of the stables, I had no trouble leading two fiery steeds, the kind that knew no fatigue, out beyond the threshing floor, and the Gypsy had already taken wolves’ teeth on strings from his pocket, and he hung them on each horse’s neck, and the Gypsy and I mounted them and rode off. The horses, scenting wolves’ teeth on them, raced so fast I can’t tell you, and by morning we were seventy miles away, near the town of Karachev. There we sold the horses at once to some innkeeper, took the money, went to the river, and began settling our accounts. We had sold the horses for three hundred roubles—in banknotes, of course, as it was done then—but the Gypsy gave me one silver rouble and said:

“Here’s your share.”

I found that insulting.

“How come?” I say. “I stole the horses and could suffer more for it than you—why is my share so small?”

“Because,” he says, “that’s how big it grew.”

“That’s nonsense,” I say. “Why do you take so much for yourself?”

“And again,” he says, “it’s because I’m a master and you’re still a pupil.”

“Pupil, hah!” I say. “What drivel!” And one word led to another, and we got into a quarrel. Finally, I say:

“I don’t want to go any further with you, because you’re a scoundrel.”

And he replies:

“Do leave me, brother, for Christ’s sake, because you’ve got no passport,¹⁸ and I could get in trouble with you.”

So we parted ways, and I was about to go to the local justice and turn myself in as a runaway, but when I told my story to his clerk, the man says to me:

“You fool, you: why go turning yourself in? Have you got ten roubles?”

“No,” I say, “I’ve got one silver rouble, but not ten.”

“Well, then maybe you’ve got something else, maybe a silver cross on your neck, or what’s that in your ear—an earring?”

“Yes,” I say, “it’s an earring.”

“A silver one?”

“Yes, a silver one, and I’ve also got a silver cross from St. Mitrofan’s.”¹⁹

“Well,” he says, “take them off quickly and give them to me, and I’ll write you out a release, so you can go to Nikolaev—they need people there, and hordes of vagrants flee there from us.”

I gave him my silver rouble, the cross, and the earring, and he wrote out the release, put the court seal on it, and said:

“I should have added something for the seal, like I do with everybody, but I pity your poverty and don’t want papers of my making to be imperfect. Off you go,” he says, “and if anybody else needs it, send him to me.”

“Well,” I think, “a fine benefactor he is: takes the cross from my neck and then pities me.” I didn’t send anybody to him, I only went begging in Christ’s name without even a penny in my pocket.

I came to that town and stood in the marketplace so as to get myself hired. There were very few people up for hire—three men in all—and all of them must have been the same as me, half vagrants, and many people came running to hire us, and they all latched onto us and pulled us this way and that. One gentleman, a great huge one, bigger than I am, fell on me, pushed everybody away, seized me by both arms, and dragged me off with him: he led me along, making his way through the others with his fists and cursing most foully, and there were tears in his eyes. He brought me to his little house, hastily slapped together from who knows what, and asked me:

“Tell me the truth: are you a runaway?”

“I am,” I say.

“A thief,” he says, “or a murderer, or just a vagrant?”

I answer:

“Why do you ask me that?”

“The better to know what kind of work you’re good for.”

I told him all about why I ran away, and he suddenly threw himself into kissing me and said:

“Just the one I need, just the one I need! If you felt sorry for your pigeons,” he says, “surely you’ll be able to nurse my baby: I’m hiring you as a nanny.”

I was horrified.

“How do you mean,” I say, “as a nanny? I’m not at all suited to that situation.”

“No, that’s trifles,” he says, “trifles: I see you can be a nanny; otherwise I’m in a bad way, because my wife, out of boredom, ran off with a remount officer and left me a baby daughter at the breast, and I’ve got no time and no way to feed her, so you’ll nurse her, and I’ll pay you a salary of two roubles a month.”

“For pity’s sake,” I reply, “it’s not a matter of two roubles, but how am I to manage that kind of work?”

“Trifles,” he says. “Aren’t you a Russian? Russians can manage anything.”

“Well, all right, so I’m a Russian, but I’m also a man, and what’s needed for nursing a baby at the breast, I’m not endowed with.”

“But,” he says, “to help you in that regard, I’m going to buy a goat from a Jew: you’ll milk her and nurse my daughter with the milk.”

I thought it over and said:

“Of course, why not nurse a baby with a goat,” I say, “only it seems to me you’d be better off having a woman do this work.”

“No, kindly don’t talk to me about women,” he replies. “All the scandals here are caused by women, and there’s nowhere to get them, and if you don’t agree to nurse my baby, I’ll call the Cossacks at once and order you bound and taken to the police, and you’ll be sent back under convoy. Choose now what’s better for you: to crush stones again on the count’s garden path or nurse my baby?”

I thought: no, I won’t go back, and agreed to stay on as a nanny. That same day we bought a white goat with a kid from a Jew. The kid I slaughtered, and my master and I ate it with noodles, and I milked the goat and started giving her milk to the baby. The baby was little, and so wretched, so pathetic: she whined all the time. My master, her father, was a Pole, an official, and the rogue never stayed home, but ran around to his comrades to play cards, and I stayed alone with this charge of mine, this little girl, and I began to be terribly attached to her, because it was unbearably boring for me, and having nothing to do, I busied myself with her. I’d put her in the tub and give her a good washing, and if she had a rash somewhere, I’d sprinkle it with flour; or I’d brush her hair, or rock her on my knees, or, if it got very boring at home, I’d put her on my bosom and go to the estuary to do laundry—and the goat, too, got used to us and would come walking behind us. So I lived until the next summer, and my baby grew and began to stand on her feet, but I noticed that she was bowlegged. I pointed it out to the master, but he wasn’t much concerned and only said:

“What’s that got to do with me? Go and show her to the doctor: let him look her over.”

I took her, and the doctor says:

“It’s the English disease, she must sit in the sand.”

I began doing that. I chose a little spot on the bank of the estuary where there’s sand, and whenever the day was nice and warm, I took the goat and the girl and went there with them. I’d rake up the warm sand with my hands and cover the girl with it up to the waist and give her some sticks and pebbles to play with, and our goat walks around us, grazing on the grass, and I sit and sit, my arms around my knees, and get drowsy, and fall asleep.

The three of us spent whole days that way, and for me it was the best thing against boredom, because, I repeat again, the boredom was terrible, and that spring especially, when I started burying the girl in the sand and sleeping over the estuary, all sorts of confused dreams came to me. I’d fall asleep, and the estuary is murmuring, and with the warm wind from the steppe fanning me, it’s as if some kind of sorcery flows over me, and I’m beset by terrible fantasies. I see a wide steppe, horses, and somebody seems to be calling me, luring me somewhere. I even hear my name shouted: “Ivan! Ivan! Come, brother Ivan!” I rouse myself, give a shake, and spit: “Pah, hell’s too good for you, what are you calling me for?” I look around: dreariness. The goat has wandered far off, grazing in the grass, and the baby sits covered with sand, and nothing more … Ohh, how boring! The emptiness, the sun, the estuary, and again I fall asleep, and this current of wafting wind gets into my soul and shouts: “Ivan, let’s go, brother Ivan!” I even curse and say: “Show yourself, deuce take you, who are you to call me like that?” And once I got bitterly angry and was sitting half asleep, looking across the estuary, and a light cloud rose up from there and came floating straight at me. I thought: “Whoa! Not this way, my good one, you’ll get me all wet!” Then suddenly I see: it’s that monk with the womanish face standing over me, the one I killed with my whip long ago when I was a postillion. I say: “Whoa there! Away with you!” And he chimes out so tenderly: “Let’s go, Ivan, let’s go, brother! You still have much to endure, but then you’ll attain.” I cursed him in my sleep and said: “As if I had anywhere to go with you or anything to attain.” And suddenly he turned back into a cloud and through himself showed me I don’t know what: the steppe, some wild people, Saracens, like in the tales of Eruslan and Prince Bova,²⁰ in big, shaggy hats and with bows and arrows, on terrifying wild horses. And along with seeing that, I heard hooting, and neighing, and wild laughter, and then suddenly a whirlwind … a cloud of sand rose up, and there is nothing, only a thin bell softly ringing somewhere, and a great white monastery all bathed in the scarlet dawn appears on a height, and winged angels with golden lances are walking on its walls, all surrounded by the sea, and whenever an angel strikes his shield with his lance, the sea around the monastery heaves and splashes, and from the deep terrible voices cry: “Holy!”

“Well,” I think, “it’s this monkhood getting at me again!” and from vexation I wake up and am astonished to see that someone of the gentlest appearance is kneeling in the sand over my little mistress and pouring out floods of tears.

I watched this for a long time, because I kept thinking it was my vision going on, but then I saw that it didn’t vanish, and I got up and went closer: I see the lady has dug my little girl out of the sand, and has picked her up in her arms, and is kissing her and weeping.

I ask her:

“What do you want?”

She rushes at me, pressing the baby to her breast and whispering:

“This is my baby, this is my daughter, my daughter!”

I say:

“Well, what of it?”

“Give her to me,” she says.

“Where did you get the idea,” I say, “that I’d give her to you?”

“Don’t you feel sorry for her?” she weeps. “See how she clings to me.”

“She clings because she’s a silly baby—she also clings to me, but as for giving her to you, I’m not going to do that.”

“Why?”

“Because,” I say, “she’s been entrusted to my keeping—and that goat there walks with us, and I must bring the baby back to her father.”

The lady began to weep and wring her hands.

“Well, all right,” she says, “so you don’t want to give me the baby, but at least don’t tell my husband, your master, that you saw me,” she says, “and come here to this same place again tomorrow with the baby, so that I can fondle her more.”

“That,” I say, “is a different matter. I promise and I’ll do it.”

And just so, I said nothing about it to my master, but the next morning I took the goat and the child and went back to the estuary, and the lady was there waiting. She was sitting in a little hollow, and when she saw us, she jumped out and came running, and wept, and laughed, and gave the baby toys in each hand, and even hung a little bell on a red ribbon around our goat’s neck, and for me there was a pipe, and a pouch of tobacco, and a comb.

“Kindly smoke the pipe,” she says, “and I’ll mind the baby.”

And we kept meeting in this way over the estuary: the lady with the baby all the time, and me asleep, and occasionally she would start telling me that she was sort of … given in marriage to my master by force … by a wicked stepmother, and this husband of hers she sort of … never could come to love. But … that one … the other … the remount officer … or whatever … that one she loves, and she complained that, against her will, she says, “I’ve given myself to him. Because my husband,” she says, “as you know yourself, leads an irregular life, but this one with the—well, how is it called?—the little mustache, or whatever, deuce knows, is very clean,” she says, “he’s always well dressed, and he pities me, only once again,” she says, “for all that I still can’t be happy, because I’m sorry about this baby. And now,” she says, “he and I have come here and are staying in one of his friends’ lodgings, but I live in great fear that my husband will find out, and we’ll leave soon, and again I’ll suffer over the baby.”

“Well,” I say, “what’s to be done? If you’ve scorned law and relidgin, and changed your ritual, then you ought to suffer.”

And she began to weep, and from one day to the next she started weeping more and more pitifully, and she bothered me with her complaints, and suddenly, out of the blue, she started offering me money. And finally she came for the last time, to say good-bye, and said:

“Listen, Ivan”—by then she knew my name—“listen to what I tell you,” she says. “Today,” she says, “he himself will come to us here.”

I ask:

“Who’s that?”

She replies:

“The remount officer.”

I say:

“Well, what’s that got to do with me?”

And she tells me that the night before he supposedly won a lot of money at cards and said he wanted to please her by giving me a thousand roubles—that is, provided I give her her daughter.

“Well, that,” I say, “will never happen.”

“Why not, Ivan? Why not?” she insists. “Aren’t you sorry for both of us that we’re separated?”

“Well,” I say, “sorry or not, I’ve never sold myself either for big money or for small, and I won’t do it now, and therefore let all the remounter’s thousands stay with him, and your daughter with me.”

She began to weep, and I said:

“You’d better not weep, because it’s all the same to me.”

She says:

“You’re heartless, you’re made of stone.”

And I reply:

“I’m not made of stone at all, I’m the same as everybody else, made of bones and sinews, but I’m a trustworthy and loyal man: I undertook to keep the baby, so I’m looking after her.”

She tries to convince me, says, “Judge for yourself, the baby will be better off with me.”

“Once again,” I reply, “that’s not my business.”

“Can it be,” she cries out, “can it be that I must part with my baby again?”

“What else,” I say, “since you’ve scorned law and relidgin …”

But I didn’t finish what I wanted to say, because I saw a light uhlan coming towards us across the steppe. Back then regimental officers went about as they ought, swaggering, in real military uniform, not as nowadays like some sort of clerks. This remount uhlan walks towards us, so stately, arms akimbo, and his greatcoat thrown over his shoulders—there may not be any strength in him, but he’s full of swagger … I look at this visitor and think: “It would be an excellent thing to have some fun with him out of boredom.” And I decided that the moment he said so much as a word to me, I’d be as rude as possible to him, and maybe, God willing, we’d have the satisfaction of a good fight. That, I exulted, would be wonderful, and I no longer listened to what my little lady was saying and tearfully babbling to me, I only wanted to have fun.

V

Once I had decided to provide myself with such amusement, I thought: how can I best tease this officer into attacking me? And I sat myself down, took the comb out of my pocket, and started combing my hair; and the officer walks straight up to this little lady of his.

She goes blah, blah, blah—that is, all about me not giving her the baby.

But he strokes her head and says:

“It’s nothing, dear heart, nothing: I’ll find a means against him right now. We’ll spread out the money for him, he’ll be dazzled; and if that means has no effect, then we’ll simply take the baby from him”—and with those words, he comes over to me and hands me a wad of banknotes.

“Here,” he says, “this is exactly a thousand roubles—give us the baby, take the money, and go wherever you like.”

But I was being deliberately impolite, I didn’t answer him at once: first I slowly got to my feet; then I hung the comb on my belt, cleared my throat, and finally said:

“No, Your Honor, this means of yours has no effect”—and I tore the money from his hand, spat on it, threw it down, and said:

“Here, boy, here, good doggy, come fetch!”

He got angry, turned all red, and flew at me; but me, you can see how I’m built—dealing with a uniformed officer takes me no time: I just gave him a little shove and that was it: he went sprawling, spurs up, and his saber stuck out sideways. I stamp my foot down on the saber.

“Take that,” I say, “and your bravery I trample underfoot.”

But though he wasn’t much for strength, he was a courageous little officer: he saw he couldn’t get his saber from me, so he unbuckled it and instantly rushed at me with his little fists … Naturally, that way he got himself nothing but bodily injury from me, but I liked it that he had such a proud and noble character. I didn’t take his money, and he also wasn’t about to pick it up.

Once we stopped fighting, I shouted:

“Pick up the money, Your Serenity, to cover your traveling expenses!”

And what do you think: he didn’t pick it up, but ran straight to the baby and grabbed her; but, naturally, he takes the baby by one arm, and I immediately grab her by the other and say:

“Well, let’s pull: we’ll see who tears off the bigger half.”

He shouts:

“Scoundrel, scoundrel, monster!”—and with that he spits in my face and lets go of the child, and now only draws that little lady away, and she’s in despair and howls pathetically, and drawn away by force, she follows him, but her eyes and arms reach out to me and the baby … and I see and feel how she’s torn in two alive, half to him, half to the baby … And that same minute I suddenly see my master, whose service I was in, come running from town with a pistol in his hand, and he fires the pistol and shouts:

“Hold them, Ivan! Hold them!”

“Well, now,” I think to myself, “should I go holding them for you? Let them love each other!”—and I caught up with the little lady and the uhlan, gave them the baby, and said:

“Take the little scamp with you! Only now you’ll have to take me, too,” I say, “or else he’ll hand me over to justice for having an illegal passport.”

She says:

“Come along, Ivan dearest, come along, you can live with us.”

So we galloped off, and took the little girl, my charge, with us, and that gentleman was left with the goat, the money, and my passport.

I sat on the box of the tarantass and rode all the way to Penza with these new masters of mine, thinking: was it a good thing I did, beating an officer? He’s taken an oath, and in war he defends the fatherland with his saber, and maybe the sovereign himself addresses him formally, according to his rank, and I, fool that I am, offended him so! … And then, having thought that over, I began thinking about something else: what is fate going to allot me now? And there was a fair in Penza then, and the uhlan says to me:

“Listen, Ivan, I think you know that I can’t keep you with me.”

I say:

“Why’s that?”

“Because,” he replies, “I’m in the service, and you haven’t got any sort of passport.”

“No, I had a passport,” I say, “only it was a false one.”

“Well, you see,” he replies, “and now you don’t even have that. Here, take these two hundred roubles for the road, and go with God wherever you like.”

I confess I was terribly unwilling to leave them, because I loved that baby; but there was nothing to be done.

“Well, good-bye,” I say. “I humbly thank you for your reward—only there’s just one thing.”

“What’s that?” he asks.

“It’s that I’m guilty before you,” I reply, “for fighting with you and being rude.”

He laughed and said:

“Well, what of it, God be with you, you’re a good fellow.”

“No, sir,” I reply, “never mind my being good, it can’t be left like this, because it may weigh on my conscience: you’re a defender of the fatherland, and maybe the sovereign himself addresses you formally.”

“That’s true,” he replies. “When we’re given our rank, it’s written in the document: ‘We grant unto you and order that you be honored and respected.’ ”

“Well, please, then,” I say, “I can’t stand it any longer …”

“But what can we do about it now?” he says. “You’re stronger than I am, and you gave me a beating—that can’t be taken back.”

“To take it back is impossible,” I say, “but at least to ease my conscience, think what you like, but kindly hit me a few times”—and I puffed up both cheeks before him.

“But what for?” he says. “What should I beat you for?”

“Just like that,” I reply, “for my conscience, so that I don’t go unpunished for insulting my sovereign’s officer.”

He laughed, and again I puffed up my cheeks as full as I could and again stood there.

He asks:

“Why this puffing yourself up, what are you making faces for?”

And I say:

“I’m preparing myself soldier-like, according to the rules,” I say. “Kindly hit me on both sides”—and again I puffed up my cheeks; but instead of hitting me, he suddenly tore from his place and started kissing me, and he says:

“Enough, Ivan, enough, for Christ’s sake: I wouldn’t hit you even once, not for anything in the world, only go away quickly, while Mashenka and her daughter aren’t home, otherwise they’ll weep very much over you.”

“Ah, now that’s another matter. Why upset them?”

And, though I didn’t want to go, there was nothing to be done: so I left quickly, without saying good-bye, went out the gate, and stood, and thought:

“Where do I go now?” And in truth, so much time had passed since I ran away from my masters and started rambling, and yet nowhere had I warmed up a place for myself … “That’s it,” I think, “I’ll go to the police and turn myself in, only,” I think, “again it’s awkward now that I have money, the police will take it all away: why don’t I spend at least some of it, have tea and sweet rolls in a tavern for my own good pleasure?” So I went into a tavern at the fair, asked for tea and sweet rolls, and drank it for a long time, but then I saw that I couldn’t drag it out any longer, and went for a stroll. I went across the river Sura to the steppe, where herds of horses stood, and here there were also Tartars in kibitkas.²¹ The kibitkas were all identical, but one was multicolored, and around it there were many different gentlemen occupied with trying out saddle horses. Civilians, military, landowners come for the fair—these different men all stood smoking their pipes, and in the midst of them, on a multicolored rug, sat a tall, dignified Tartar, thin as a rail, in a fancy robe and a golden skullcap. I look around and, seeing a man who was having tea when I was in the tavern, I ask him who this important Tartar is, to be the only one sitting down among them all. And he replies:

“Don’t you know him? He’s Khan Dzhangar.”

“Who is this Khan Dzhangar?”

And the man says:

“Khan Dzhangar is the foremost horse breeder of the steppe, his herds go from the Volga all the way to the Ural over the whole Ryn Sands, and he himself, this Khan Dzhangar, is the same as a tsar of the steppe.”²²

“Isn’t that steppe ours?” I say.

“Yes,” he replies, “it’s ours, but we can’t have any hold on it, because all the way to the Caspian it’s either salt marshes or just grass and birds wheeling under the heavens, and there’s nothing for an official to get out of it,” he says, “and that’s the reason why Khan Dzhangar rules there, and there in the Ryn Sands he’s got his own sheikhs, and sheikh-zadas, and malo-zadas, and imams, and dervishes, and uhlans, and he orders them around as he likes, and they gladly obey him.”

I was listening to those words, and at the same time I saw a Tartar boy bring a small white mare before this khan and start to babble; and the man stood up, took a long-handled whip, placed himself right in front of the mare’s head, put the whip to her forehead, and stood there. But how did the brigand stand there? I’ll describe to you: a magnificent statue, that’s how, you couldn’t have enough of looking at him, and you see at once that he spies out all that’s in a horse. And since I’ve been observant in these matters from childhood, I could see that the mare herself perceived the expert in him and stood at attention before him: here, look at me and admire! And this dignified Tartar looked and looked at the mare like that, without walking around her the way our officers do, who bustle and fidget around a horse, but kept gazing at her from one point, and suddenly he lowered the whip and silently kissed his fingertips, meaning perfect!—and again sat cross-legged on the rug, and the mare at once twitched her ears, snorted, and began to act up.

The gentlemen who were standing there got into a haggling match for her: one offered a hundred roubles, another a hundred and fifty, and so on, raising the price higher and higher against each other. The mare was, in fact, wonderful—of smallish stature, like an Arabian, but slender, with a small head, a full, apple-like eye, pricked-up ears; her flanks were ringing, airy, her back straight as an arrow, and her legs light, finely shaped, swift as could be. As I was a lover of such beauty, I simply couldn’t tear my eyes off this mare. And Khan Dzhangar, seeing that a hankering for her has come over them all, and the gentlemen are inflating the price for her like they’re possessed, nods to the swarthy little Tartar, and the boy leaps on her, the little she-swan, and starts her off—sits her, you know, in his own Tartarish way, working her with his knees, and she takes wing under him and flies just like a bird and doesn’t buck, and when he leans down to her withers and whoops at her, she just soars up in one whirl with the sand. “Ah, you serpent!” I think to myself, “ah, you kestrel of the steppe, you little viper! Wherever could you have come from?” And I feel that my soul yearns for her, for this horse, with a kindred passion. The Tartar came riding back, she puffed at once through both nostrils, breathed out, and shook off all fatigue, and didn’t snort or sniff anymore. “Ah, you darling,” I think, “ah, you darling!” If the Tartar had asked me not just for my soul, but for my own father and mother, I’d have had no regrets—but how could I even think of getting such a wingèd thing, when who knows what price had been laid down for her by the gentlemen and the remount officers, but even that would have been nothing, the dealing still wasn’t over, and no one had gotten her yet, but suddenly we see a swift rider come racing on a black horse from beyond the Sura, from Seliksa, and he waves his broad-brimmed hat and comes flying up, jumps off, abandons his horse, goes straight to the white mare, stands by her head, like that first statue, and says:

“It’s my mare.”

And the khan replies:

“She’s not yours: the gentlemen are offering me five hundred coins for her.”

And that rider, an enormous, big-bellied Tartar, his mug sunburned and all peeling, as if the skin had been torn off, his eyes small, like slits, bawls at once:

“I give a hundred coins more!”

The gentlemen flutter themselves up, promise still more, and the dry Khan Dzhangar sits and smacks his lips, and from the other side of the Sura another Tartar horseman comes riding on a long-maned sorrel horse, this time a skinny and yellow one, his bones barely holding together, but a still greater rascal than the first one. This one slips off his horse and sticks himself like a nail in front of the white mare and says:

“I tell you all: I want this mare to be mine!”

I ask my neighbor what this business depends on for them. And he replies:

“This business depends on Khan Dzhangar’s very great understanding. More than once,” he says, “and maybe each time, he has pulled this trick at the fair: first he sells all the ordinary horses, the horses he brings here, but then, on the last day, he produces, devil knows from where, as if pulling it out of his sleeve, such a horse, or two, that the connoisseurs don’t know what to do; and he, the sly Tartar, watches it and amuses himself, and makes money as well for all that. Knowing this habit of his, everybody expects this last twist from him, and that’s what’s happened now: everybody thought the khan would leave today, and, in fact, he will leave tonight, but just see what a mare he’s brought out …”

“It’s a wonder,” I say, “such a horse!”

“A real wonder, and they say he drove her to the fair in the middle of the herd, so that nobody could see her behind all the other horses, and nobody knew about her except the Tartars who came with him, and them he told that the horse wasn’t for sale, she’s too precious, and during the night he separated her from the others and drove her to a forest near a Mordovian village and had her pastured there by a special herdsman, and now he suddenly brought her and put her up for sale, and you just watch what antics go on here and what that dog will make from her. Want to wager on who’s going to get her?”

“But what’s the point in us betting on it?”

“The point is,” he says, “that passions are going to break loose, the gentlemen are all sure to back out, and the horse will be bought by one of these two Asians.”

“Are they very rich or something?” I ask.

“They’re both rich,” he replies, “and shrewd horse fanciers: they’ve got their own big herds, and never in their lives will either of them yield a fine, precious horse to the other. Everybody knows them: this big-bellied one with the peeling mug, his name is Bakshey Otuchev, and the skinny one, nothing but bones, is Chepkun Emgurcheev—they’re both wicked horse fanciers. Just watch what a show they’ll put on.”

I fell silent and watched: the gentlemen who had been haggling for the mare had already quit and were only looking on, and the two Tartars keep pushing each other aside and slapping Khan Dzhangar’s hands and taking hold of the mare, and they’re shaking and shouting. One shouts:

“Besides the coins, I also give five head for her” (meaning five horses)—and the other screams:

“You lying gob—I give ten.”

Bakshey Otuchev shouts:

“I give fifteen head.”

And Chepkun Emgurcheev:

“Twenty.”

Bakshey:

“Twenty-five.”

And Chepkun:

“Thirty.”

And evidently neither of them had any more … Chepkun shouted thirty, and Bakshey also offered only thirty, and no more; but then Chepkun offers a saddle on top, and Bakshey a saddle and a robe, so Chepkun also takes off his robe, and again they have nothing to outbid each other with. Chepkun cries: “Listen to me, Khan Dzhangar: when I get home, I’ll send you my daughter”—and Bakshey also promises his daughter, and again they have nothing to outvie each other with. Here suddenly all the Tartars who had been watching the haggling started yelling, yammering in their own language; they parted them, so that they wouldn’t drive each other to ruin, pulled them, Chepkun and Bakshey, to different sides, poked them in the ribs, trying to persuade them.

I ask my neighbor:

“Tell me, please, what’s going on with them now?”

“You see,” he says, “these princes who are parting them feel sorry for Chepkun and Bakshey, that they overdid the haggling, so now they’ve separated them, so they can come to their senses and one of them can honorably yield the mare to the other.”

“But,” I ask, “how can one of them yield her to the other, if they both like her so much? It can’t be.”

“Why not?” he replies. “Asiatic folk are reasonable and dignified: they’ll reason that there’s no use losing all they’ve got, and they’ll give Khan Dzhangar as much as he asks, and agree on who gets the horse by flogging it out.”

I was curious:

“What does ‘flogging it out’ mean?”

And the man replies:

“No point asking, look, it’s got to be seen, and it’s beginning right now.”

I look and see that Bakshey Otuchev and Chepkun Emgurcheev seem to have quieted down, and they tear free of those peace-making Tartars, rush to each other, and clasp hands.

“Agreed!”—meaning, it’s settled.

And the other one says the same thing:

“Agreed: it’s settled.”

And at once they both throw aside their robes and beshmets and shoes, take off their cotton shirts, and remain in nothing but their wide striped trousers; they plop down on the ground facing each other, like a pair of steppe ruffs, and sit there.

This was the first time I’d had occasion to see such a wonder, and I watched for what would come next. They gave each other their left hands and held them firmly, spread their legs and placed them foot to foot, and shouted: “Bring ’em on!”

What it was they wanted “brought on,” I couldn’t guess, but the Tartars from the bunch around them replied:

“At once, at once.”

And a dignified old man stepped from this bunch of Tartars, and he had two stout whips in his hands and held them up together and showed them to the public and to Chepkun and Bakshey: “Look,” he says, “they’re the same length.”

“The same length,” the Tartars cried, “we all see it’s honorably done, the lashes are the same length! Let them sit up and begin.”

Bakshey and Chepkun were just dying to get hold of those whips.

The dignified Tartar said “Wait” to them, and gave them the whips himself, one to Chepkun and the other to Bakshey, and then quietly clapped his hands, one, two, and three … And just as he clapped for the third time, Bakshey, with all his might, lashed Chepkun with the whip over the shoulder on his bare back, and Chepkun replied to him in the same way. And they went on regaling each other like that: they look each other in the eye, their foot soles are pressed together and their left hands firmly clasped, and with their right hands they deal out lashes … Oh, how expertly they whipped! One gives a good stroke, the other still better. The eyes of both became glassy, and their left hands didn’t move, and neither of them would yield.

I ask my new acquaintance:

“So what they’re doing is like when our gentlemen fight a duel?”

“Yes,” he says, “it’s a kind of duel, only not for the sake of honor, but so as not to spend their money.”

“And can they keep whipping each other like this for a long time?” I ask.

“As long as they like,” he says, “and as long as they have the strength.”

And they go on lashing each other, and an argument starts among the people around them. Some say, “Chepkun will outflog Bakshey,” and others argue, “Bakshey will outwhip Chepkun,” and they place bets, if they want to—some for Chepkun, others for Bakshey, whoever they think is stronger. They look knowingly in their eyes, in their teeth, at their backs, and seeing by some tokens which one is surer, they stake on him. The man I had been talking with was also an experienced spectator and began by staking on Bakshey, but then said:

“Ah, drat, my twenty kopecks are lost: Chepkun will beat Bakshey.”

And I say:

“How do you know? Nothing’s sure yet: they’re sitting the same way.”

And the man replies:

“They’re sitting the same way, but they lash differently.”

“Well,” I say, “in my opinion, Bakshey lashes more fiercely.”

“And that,” he replies, “is what’s wrong. No, my twenty kopecks are lost: Chepkun will finish him off.”

“What a remarkable thing,” I think. “How can my acquaintance reason so incomprehensibly? And yet,” I reflect, “he must understand this practice rather well, since he placed a bet!”

And, you know, I got very curious, and I started badgering my acquaintance.

“Tell me, my dear man,” I say, “what makes you fear for Bakshey now?”

And he says:

“What a stupid bumpkin you are! Look at the back on Bakshey.”

I look: all right, it’s a good enough back, manly, big and plump as a pillow.

“And do you see how he hits?”

I look and see that he beats fiercely, his eyes are even popping out, and with each stroke he draws blood.

“Well, and now consider, what is he doing to his insides?”

“Who knows about his insides? I see one thing, that he’s sitting up straight, and his mouth is wide open, and he’s quickly taking in air.”

And my acquaintance says:

“That’s the bad thing: his back is big, there’s lots of room for lashing; he beats quickly, huffing and puffing, and breathing through his open mouth, he’ll burn up all his insides with air.”

“So,” I ask, “that means Chepkun is surer?”

“Certainly he’s surer,” he says. “See, he’s all dry, nothing but skin and bones, and his back’s as warped as a shovel, the blows don’t land full on it, but only in places, and see how he pours it out on Bakshey measuredly, not rapidly, but with little pauses, and doesn’t pull the lash away at once, but lets the skin swell under it. That’s why Bakshey’s back is all swollen and blue as a stew pot, but there’s no blood, and all the pain stays in his body now, but on Chepkun’s lean back the skin crackles and tears, like on a roast pig, and his pain will all come out in blood, and he’ll finish Bakshey off. Do you understand now?”

“Now,” I say, “I understand.” And, in fact, here I understood this whole Asiatic practice all at once and became extremely interested in it: what in that case was the most useful way to act?

“And another most important thing,” my acquaintance points out. “Notice how well this cursed Chepkun keeps the rhythm with his mug. See, he strikes and suffers the reply and blinks his eyes correspondingly—it’s easier than just staring the way Bakshey stares, and Chepkun clenches his teeth and bites his lips, and that’s also easier, because owing to that reticence there’s no unnecessary burning inside him.”

I bore in mind all these curious examples and looked closely at Chepkun and Bakshey myself, and it became clear to me, too, that Bakshey was bound to collapse, because his eyes already looked quite stupefied, and his lips were drawn thin and revealed his bare teeth … And, in fact, we look: Bakshey gives Chepkun some twenty more lashes, weaker and weaker each time, and suddenly flops backwards, letting go of Chepkun’s left hand, but still moving his right as if lashing, only unconsciously now, completely passed out. Well, here my acquaintance said: “That’s it: my twenty kopecks are gone.” Here all the Tartars started talking, congratulating Chepkun, shouting:

“Ai, clever Chepkun Emgurcheev, ai, clever head—completely outwhipped Bakshey. Mount up—the mare is yours now.”

And Khan Dzhangar himself got up from the rug and strode about, and smacked his lips, and also said:

“Yours, Chepkun, the mare is yours: mount up, ride, you can rest on her.”

And Chepkun got up: blood streamed down his back, but he didn’t show any pain; he put his robe and beshmet on the mare’s back, threw himself on his belly over her, and rode off that way, and I again felt bored.

“There,” I think, “it’s over now, and thoughts about my situation will start coming into my head again”—and Lord knows I didn’t want to think about that.

But, thanks be, this acquaintance of mine says to me:

“Wait, don’t leave, there’s sure to be something more here.”

I say:

“What more can there be? It’s all over.”

“No,” he says, “it’s not over. Look how Khan Dzhangar’s pipe is burning. See, it’s smoking away: he’s sure to be thinking something over to himself, something most Asiatic.”

And I thought to myself: “Ah, if there’s going to be more of the same sort, then just let somebody wager on me and see if I back down.”

VI

And what do you think? It all came out just as I wished: Khan Dzhangar’s pipe was smoking away, and another little Tartar comes racing towards him from the open, this one not on a mare like the one Chepkun peaceably took from Bakshey, but on a dark bay colt impossible to describe. If you’ve ever seen how a corncrake—in Orel we call him a twitcher—runs along a boundary through the wheat: he spreads his wings out wide, but his behind doesn’t spread in the air, as with other birds, but hangs down, and he lets his legs dangle, too, as if he doesn’t need them—it comes out as if he’s really riding on air. So this new horse, just like the bird, raced as if by a power not his own.

I truly won’t be telling a lie if I say that he didn’t even fly, but the ground behind him just kept increasing. Never in my life had I seen such lightness, and I didn’t know how to put a price on a horse like that, in what treasure, and whom he was fated for, what kind of prince, and still less did I ever think that this horse would become mine.

“So he became yours?” the astonished listeners interrupted the storyteller.

“Yes, sir, mine, by all rights mine, but only for one minute, and kindly listen to how it happened, if you want.”

The gentlemen, as was their habit, began haggling over this horse as well, and my remount officer, to whom I had given the baby, also mixed into it, but against them, like their equal, the Tartar Savakirey stepped in, a short fellow, small but sturdy, well-knit, head shaven as if turned on a lathe and round as a firm young cabbage, and his mug red as a carrot, and the whole of him like some sort of healthy and fresh vegetable. He shouts: “Why empty your pockets for nothing? Whoever wants to can lay down his money, as much as the khan asks, and flog it out with me for who gets the horse.”

For the gentlemen, naturally, that was unseemly, and they backed away from it at once: why should they go thrashing with this Tartar—the rascal would outwhip them all. And by then my remount officer wasn’t rolling in money, because in Penza he had lost at cards again, but I could see he wanted the horse. So I tugged his sleeve from behind and said: “Thus and so, don’t offer anything extra, but give what the khan asks, and I’ll sit down to contend peaceably with Savakirey.”

At first he didn’t want to, but I persuaded him. I said:

“Do me the favor: I want it.”

Well, and so we did.

“What … you and that Tartar … whipped each other?”

“Yes, sir, we also thrashed it out peaceably in the same way, and the colt went to me.”

“So you beat the Tartar?”

“Beat him, sir, not without difficulty, but I overcame him.”

“Yet it must have been terribly painful.”

“Mmm … how shall I put it … Yes, to begin with it was; I really felt it, especially since I was unaccustomed, and he, that Savakirey, also had a trick of hitting so that it swelled and didn’t let the blood out, but against that fine art of his I applied my own clever trick: as he lashed me, I hitched my back up under the whip and adjusted it so that the skin got torn at once, that way it was safe, and I finished Savakirey off.”

“How, finished him off? You mean to death?”

“Yes, sir, through his stubbornness and through his politics, he stupidly let himself go so far that he was no longer in the world,” the storyteller replied good-naturedly and impassively, and, seeing that all his listeners were looking at him, if not with horror, then with dumb bewilderment, he seemed to feel the need to supplement his story with an explanation.

“You see,” he went on, “that came not from me, but from him, because he was considered the foremost battler in the whole Ryn Sands, and on account of that ambition he didn’t want to yield to me for anything, he wanted to endure nobly, so that shame wouldn’t fall on his Asiatic nation on account of him, but he wilted, the poor fellow, and couldn’t hold out against me, probably because I kept a copper in my mouth. That helped me terribly, and I kept biting it so as not to feel the pain, and to distract my mind I counted the strokes, so it was all right for me.”

“And how many strokes did you count?” they interrupted the storyteller.

“I can’t say for certain. I remember that I counted up to two hundred and eighty-two, but then I suddenly reeled in something like a swoon and lost count for a moment, and then went on without counting, but soon after that Savakirey swung at me for the last time, but couldn’t hit anymore, and fell over onto me like a doll: they looked, and he was dead … Pah, what a fool! To hold out that long! I almost landed in jail on account of him. It was nothing to the Tartars: well, if you killed him, you killed him, those were the conditions, because he could have beaten me to death as well, but our own folk, our Russians, it’s even annoying how they didn’t understand and got riled up. I said:

“ ‘Well, what is it to you? What are you after?’

“ ‘But,’ they say, ‘you killed the Asiatic, didn’t you?’

“ ‘Well, what if I did? It was all done amicably. Would it have been better if he beat me to death?’

“ ‘He could beat you to death,’ they say, ‘and it would be nothing to him, because he’s of another faith, but you,’ they say, ‘have got to judge by Christianity. Come along,’ they say, ‘let’s go to the police.’

“Well, I think to myself: ‘All right, brothers, chase the wind in the field.’ And since, in my opinion, there’s nothing more pernicious than the police, I dodged behind one Tartar, then behind another. I whisper to them:

“ ‘Save me, princes: you saw it was all a fair fight …’

“They pressed together and pushed me from one to the other, and concealed me.”

“Excuse me … but how did they conceal you?”

“I cleared out with them all the way to their steppe.”

“To the steppe even!”

“Yes, sir, right to the Ryn Sands.”

“And did you spend long there?”

“A whole ten years: I was twenty-three when they brought me to the Ryn Sands and thirty-four when I escaped and came back.”

“So, did you like living in the steppe or not?”

“No, what could you like there? Boredom, and nothing else; only it was impossible to get away earlier.”

“Why’s that? Did the Tartars keep you in a pit or under guard?”

“No, they’re kind, they didn’t allow themselves such meanness with me as to put me in a pit or in the stocks, but simply said: ‘Be our friend, Ivan; we like you very much, and you’ll live with us in the steppe and be a useful man—treat our horses and help our women.’ ”

“And did you treat them?”

“Yes, I was like a doctor to them, and I attended to them, and all their cattle, and horses, and sheep, and most of all their wives, the Tartar women.”

“So you know how to treat people?”

“How shall I put it … Well, I mean, what’s so clever about it? When somebody was sick, I gave them aloe or galingale root, and it would go away, and they had a lot of aloe—in Saratov one of the Tartars found a whole sack of it and brought it back, but before me they didn’t know what it was meant for.”

“And you felt at home with them?”

“No, sir, I always longed to go back.”

“And can it really have been so impossible to leave them?”

“No—why? If my feet had been in good shape, I’d most likely have gone back to the fatherland long before.”

“And what happened to your feet?”

“They bristled me up after the first time.”

“How’s that? … Forgive us, please, we don’t quite understand what you mean by ‘bristled up.’ ”

“It’s a most ordinary means with them: if they like somebody and want to keep him, but the man pines away or tries to escape, they do it to him so he doesn’t get away. So with me, after I got lost trying to escape once, they caught me and said: ‘You know, Ivan, you be our friend, and to make it so you don’t leave us again, we’d better cut open your heels and stuff a few bristles in them.’ Well, they ruined my feet that way, so I had to crawl on all fours all the time.”

“Tell us, please, how do they do this terrible operation?”

“Very simply. Some ten men threw me down on the ground and said: ‘Shout, Ivan, shout louder when we start cutting. It’ll be easier for you.’ And they sat on me, and in a trice one master craftsman of theirs cut the skin open on my soles, put in some chopped-up horsehair, covered it with the skin, and sewed it up with string. After that they kept my hands tied for a few days, for fear I’d harm my wounds and the bristles would come out with the pus; but once the skin healed, they let me go: ‘Now,’ they say, ‘greetings to you, Ivan, now you’re our real friend and you’ll never go away and leave us.’

“I only just got to my feet then, when I went crashing to the ground again: the chopped-up hair sewn under the skin of my heels pricked the live flesh with such deadly pain that it was not only impossible to take a step, but there was even no way to stand on my feet. I had never cried in my life, but here I even howled out loud.

“ ‘What have you done to me, you cursed Asiatics?’ I say. ‘You’d have done better to kill me outright, you vipers, than to make me a cripple like this for all time, so that I can’t take a step.’

“But they say:

“ ‘Never mind, Ivan, never mind, don’t upset yourself over a trifle.’

“ ‘What kind of trifle is it?’ I say. ‘You ruin a man like this, and then say he shouldn’t upset himself?’

“ ‘You’ll get the knack of it,’ they say. ‘Don’t step square on your heels, but walk bowlegged on the little bones.’

“ ‘Pah, you scoundrels!’ I thought to myself and turned my back on them and didn’t talk, but made up my mind that I’d rather die than follow their advice about walking bowlegged on my anklebones; but then I went on lying there—a deadly boredom came over me, and I began to get the knack of it, and gradually hobbled around on my anklebones. But they didn’t laugh at me in the least for that, and kept saying:

“ ‘How well you walk, Ivan, see how well you walk.’ ”

“What a misfortune! And how was it you tried to escape and got caught?”

“It was impossible, sir; the steppe is flat, there are no roads, and you get hungry … I walked for three days, grew feeble as a fox, caught some sort of bird barehanded and ate it raw, then got hungry again, and there was no water … How could I go on? … So I fell down, and they found me and took and bristled me up.”

One of the listeners remarked, apropos of this bristling up, that it must have been devilishly awkward to walk on your anklebones.

“At the outstart it was even very bad,” Ivan Severyanych replied, “and later on, though I managed better, all the same I couldn’t go far. But then again, I’ll tell you no lies, those Tartars took good care of me after that.

“ ‘Now, Ivan,’ they say, ‘it’s going to be pretty hard for you to fetch water, and to cook for yourself will also be awkward. Take yourself a Natasha now, brother,’ they say, ‘we’ll give you a nice Natasha, choose whichever one you like.’

“I say:

“ ‘What’s there to choose: they’re the same use one and all. Give me whichever you like.’ Well, so they married me off at once without any argument.”

“What? Married you to a Tartar woman?”

“Yes, naturally, to a Tartar woman. First to one who’d been the wife of that Savakirey that I outwhipped, only she, this Tartar woman, wasn’t to my taste at all: she was a bit off and always seemed very afraid of me and didn’t delight me in the least. She missed her husband, maybe, or had something weighing on her heart. Well, so they noticed that I began to feel burdened by her and right away brought me another, this one a young little girl, no more than thirteen years old … They said to me:

“ ‘Take this Natasha, too, Ivan, this one will be more fun.’

“So I took her.”

“And was she really more fun for you?” the listeners asked Ivan Severyanych.

“Yes,” he replied, “this one turned out to be more fun, only sometimes she amused me, and sometimes she annoyed me with her pranks.”

“What sort of pranks?”

“All sorts … Whatever she happened to think up; she’d jump onto my knees; or I’d be asleep, and she’d flick the skullcap off my head with her foot and throw it away somewhere and laugh. I’d start scolding her, and she’d laugh loud, merrily, running around like a nymph, and I couldn’t catch her on all fours—I’d fall down and burst out laughing myself.”

“So you shaved your head there on the steppe and wore a skullcap?”

“That I did, sir.”

“What for? Most likely you wanted to please your wives?”

“No, more for cleanliness, because there are no bathhouses there.”

“So you had two wives at once?”

“Yes, sir, two in that steppe; and then with another khan, with Agashimola, who stole me from Otuchev, they gave me two more.”

“Excuse me,” one of the listeners inquired again, “but how could they steal you?”

“By trickery, sir. I ran away from Penza with the Tartars of Chepkun Emgurcheev, and for some five years on end I lived in Emgurcheev’s horde, and all the princes, and uhlans, and sheikh-zadas, and malozadas used to get together with him there for festivities, and Khan Dzhangar would be there, and Bakshey Otuchev.”

“The one Chepkun whipped?”

“Yes, sir, the very same.”

“But how’s that … Wasn’t Bakshey angry with Chepkun?”

“What for?”

“For outwhipping him and winning the horse away from him?”

“No, sir, they never get angry with each other for that: whoever wins out by amicable agreement takes it, and that’s all; though once, in fact, Khan Dzhangar reproached me … ‘Eh, Ivan,’ he says, ‘eh, you numbskull, Ivan, why did you sit down for the whipping with Savakirey in place of the Russian prince? I wanted to have a laugh,’ he says, ‘seeing a Russian prince take his shirt off.’

“ ‘You’d have had a long wait,’ I replied to him.

“ ‘How so?’

“ ‘Because,’ I say, ‘our princes are fainthearted and unmanly, and their strength is quite negligible.’

“He understood.

“ ‘I could see,’ he says, ‘that they had no real passion, and if they wanted to get something, they’d pay money for it.’

“ ‘True enough: they can’t do anything without money.’ Well, but Agashimola, he was from a far-off horde, his herds roamed about somewhere near the Caspian; he loved medical treatment and invited me to cure his wife and promised Emgurchey many head of cattle for it. Emgurchey let me go with him: I took along a supply of aloe and galingale root and went. But as soon as Agashimola took me, he hied himself off with his whole band, and we galloped for eight days.”

“And you rode on horseback?”

“That I did, sir.”

“But what about your feet?”

“What about them?”

“The chopped-up horsehair that was in your heels didn’t bother you?”

“Not at all. They’ve got it worked out nicely: when they bristle a man up like that, he can’t walk very well, but such a bristled-up man sits a horse better than anybody, because, walking on his anklebones all the time, he’s used to being bowlegged and grips the horse so tight he can’t be knocked off for anything.”

“Well, and how was it for you afterwards in the new steppe with Agashimola?”

“I was dying again even more cruelly.”

“But you didn’t die?”

“No, sir, I didn’t.”

“Will you be so kind as to tell us what you endured after that with Agashimola?”

“If you like.”

VII

“As soon as Agashimola’s Tartars brought me to their camp, they hied themselves off to another one, in a new place, and wouldn’t let me leave.

“ ‘Why should you live with Emgurchey’s people, Ivan?’ they say. ‘Emgurchey’s a thief. Live with us, we’ll gladly respect you and give you nice Natashas. There you had two Natashas in all, but we’ll give you more.’

“I refused.

“ ‘Why should I have more?’ I say. ‘I don’t need more.’

“ ‘No,’ they say, ‘you don’t understand, more Natashas are better: they’ll bear you more Kolkas, they’ll all call you daddy.’

“ ‘Well,’ I say, ‘I have no need to bring up little Tartars. If they could be baptized and take communion, that would be a different matter, but now what: as many of them as I multiply, they’ll all be yours, not Orthodox, and they’ll cheat Russian peasants when they grow up.’ So again I took two wives, and wouldn’t have more, because when there’s a lot of women, even if they’re Tartars, the foul things will get to quarreling, and you have to discipline them all the time.”

“Well, sir, and did you love these new wives of yours?”

“What’s that?”

“These new wives of yours—did you love them?”

“Love? … Ah, so that’s what you mean? Yes, one that I had from Agashimola was very obliging to me, so I just … took pity on her.”

“And that girl, the young one who had been married to you before—most likely she pleased you more?”

“She was all right. I took pity on her, too.”

“And you probably missed her when you were stolen by one horde from the other?”

“No, I didn’t miss her.”

“But still, you most likely had children there, from your first wives?”

“Of course I did: Savakirey’s wife bore two Kolkas and a Natasha, and the young one gave birth to six in five years, because once she had two Kolkas at the same time.”

“Allow us to ask you, though: why do you keep calling them ‘Kolkas’ and ‘Natashas’?”

“That’s the Tartar way. For them, if it’s a grown Russian man—it’s Ivan, if it’s a woman—it’s Natasha, and boys they call Kolka, and so my wives, though they were Tartars, were counted as Natashas because of me, and the boys were Kolkas. Though all this, naturally, was only superficial, because they had no Church sacraments, and I didn’t consider them my children.”

“So you didn’t consider them yours? Why was that?”

“How could I, when they weren’t baptized or anointed with oil?”

“And your parental feelings?”

“What’s that, sir?”

“Can it be that you didn’t love these children at all and never caressed them?”

“Why should I caress them? Naturally, if I happened to be sitting alone and one of them came running up, well, I’d just pat him on the head and tell him: ‘Go to your mother’—only that rarely happened, because I couldn’t be bothered with them.”

“Why couldn’t you be bothered: did you have so much to do?”

“No, sir, I had nothing to do, but I was pining away: I wanted very much to go home to Russia.”

“So in ten years you still didn’t get used to the steppe?”

“No, sir, I wanted to go home … I pined for it. Especially in the evenings, or even at midday, when it was fair weather, hot, the camp was quiet, the Tartars had all dropped off to sleep in their tents from the scorching heat, and I raise the flap of my tent and look at the steppe … to this side and to that—it’s all the same … Scorching hot, a cruel sight; the expanse boundless; a riot of grass; feather-grass white, fluffy, billowing like a silver sea; and a smell borne on the breeze, the smell of sheep, and the sun beats down, burning hot, and the steppe, like a burdensome life, has no foreseeable end, and there’s no bottom to the depths of your anguish … You gaze off somewhere, and suddenly out of the blue a monastery or a church appears, and you remember your baptized land and start to weep.”

Ivan Severyanych paused, sighed deeply at his memories, and went on:

“Or even worse than that was on the salt marshes near the Caspian: the sun glows, bakes, and the salt marsh glitters, and the sea glitters … You get befuddled by that glitter even worse than by the feather-grass, and you don’t know anymore what part of the world you’re in, that is, whether you’re still alive or dead and suffering for your sins in hopeless hell. Where there’s more feather-grass on the steppe, all the same it’s more heartening; at least you find gray-blue sage here and there on a low rise, or small clusters of wormwood and thyme, colorful in all that whiteness, but here there’s nothing but glitter … If fire runs scorching through the grass somewhere, there’s a great bustle: bustards, kestrels, steppe snipe fly up, and the hunt for them begins. We’d overtake the bustards on horseback, surround them, and bring them down with long whips; but then we and our horses would have to flee from the fire ourselves … All this was a diversion. And then strawberries would grow again on the old burnt places; birds of all sorts would come flying, mostly small ones, and there’d be chirping in the air … And then you’d occasionally come upon a little bush: meadowsweet, wild peach, or broom. And when the mist falls as dew at sunrise, it’s as if there’s a breath of coolness, and the plants give off their scents … Of course, it’s boring even with all that, but still you can endure it, but God keep anyone from staying long on a salt marsh. A horse is content there for a while: he licks the salt, which makes him drink a lot and get fat, but for a man it’s the end. There’s not a living thing there, there’s only, as if in mockery, one little bird, the redbill, like our swallow, quite unremarkable, only it has a red edging on its bill. Why it comes to that seashore, I don’t know, but since there’s nothing for it to light on, it drops onto the salt, lies there for a while on its behind, and then flutters up and flies off again, but you’re deprived even of that, for you’ve got no wings, and so here you are again, and you’ve got neither death, nor life, nor repentance, and if you die, they’ll put you in the salt like mutton, and you can lie there salted till the end of the world. And it’s still more wearisome in winter; it snows a little, just enough to cover the grass, and hardens. Then the Tartars all sit by the fire in their yurts and smoke … And here, out of boredom, they often have whipping contests among themselves. Then you go out, and there’s nothing to look at: the horses are all sullen and go around hunched up, so skinny that only their tails and manes flutter in the wind. They can barely drag their feet and dig through the snowy crust with their hooves to nibble on the frozen grass, which is all they feed on … Unbearable. The only distraction is when they notice one of the horses has grown very weak and can no longer break the snow with his hoof and get at the frozen roots with his teeth, so they slit his throat with a knife at once, skin him, and eat the meat. It’s vile-tasting meat, though: sweet, like cow’s udder, but tough; you eat it, of course, because you have to, but it turns your stomach. Thankfully, one of my wives knew how to smoke horse ribs; she’d take a rib with meat on both sides, put it in the large intestine, and smoke it over the fire. That wasn’t too bad, you could eat it more readily, because at least it smelled something like ham, but even so the taste was vile. So here you are gnawing on this foul thing, and you suddenly think: Ah, at home now in the village they’re plucking ducks and geese for the feast, slaughtering pigs, cooking cabbage soup with the nice, fatty necks, and soon now Father Ilya, our priest, a most kindly old man, will lead the procession glorifying Christ, and the deacons and their wives walk with him, and the seminarians, and they’re all tipsy, but Father Ilya himself can’t drink much; the butler in the manor house offers him a little glass; the steward sends the nanny with a bit more from the office; Father Ilya goes limp, he can barely drag his feet to us in the yard from drunkenness: he’ll manage to sip another little glass at the first cottage on his way, but after that he can’t take any more and pours it all into a bottle under his chasuble. He does it all in a family-like way, even with regard to food. If he sees something that looks appetizing, he asks: ‘Wrap it up in newspaper for me, I’ll take it along.’ They usually reply: ‘We have no newspaper, Father’—he doesn’t get angry, but takes it as it is, unwrapped, gives it to his wife, and goes on just as peaceably. Ah, gentlemen, when all that life remembered since childhood comes to mind, and it suddenly weighs on your soul and suddenly begins to press on your liver that you’ve been perishing in this place, separated from all that happiness, and haven’t been to confession for so many years, and are living without a Church marriage, and will die without a Church funeral, you’re overcome with anguish and … you wait for night, quietly crawl outside the camp, so that neither your wives, nor the children, nor any of the infidels can see you, and you begin to pray … and you pray … pray so hard that the snow even melts under your knees, and where your tears fall you see grass the next morning.”

The storyteller fell silent and hung his head. No one disturbed him; they all seemed filled with respect for the sacred sorrow of these last memories; but a moment went by, and Ivan Severyanych himself sighed, as if waving it away; he took his monastery hat from his head and, crossing himself, said:

“But that’s all past, thank God!”

We let him rest awhile and then ventured upon some new questions about how he, our enchanted mighty man, had cured his heels ruined by the chopped-up horsehair, and by what paths he had escaped from his Natashas and Kolkas on the Tartar steppe and ended up in a monastery.

Ivan Severyanych satisfied this curiosity with complete frankness, which he was obviously quite unable to abandon.

VIII

Valuing the sequence of development in Ivan Severyanych’s story, which had caught our interest, we asked him first of all to tell us by what extraordinary means he had rid himself of his bristles and left captivity. He gave the following account of it:

I utterly despaired of ever returning home and seeing my fatherland. The thought of it even seemed impossible to me, and my anguish itself even began to fade. I lived like an insensible statue and nothing more; and sometimes I’d think how, in church at home, that same Father Ilya who asked for newspaper used to pray during services “for travelers by land and by sea, for the suffering and for captives,” and I used to listen and think: “If there’s no war now, why pray for captives?” But now I understood why they prayed like that, but I didn’t understand why all those prayers were no use to me, and, to say the least, though not an unbeliever, I became confused and did not pray myself.

“Why pray,” I think, “if nothing comes of it?”

And meanwhile one day I suddenly hear the Tartars are in a commotion about something.

I say:

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” they say. “Two mullahs have come from your country. They have a safe conduct from the white tsar and are going far and wide to establish their faith.”

I hurriedly said:

“Where are they?”

They pointed to one yurt, and I went where they pointed. I come and see there’s a gathering of many sheikh-zadas, and malo-zadas, and imams, and dervishes, and they’re all sitting cross-legged on rugs, and in the midst of them are two unknown men dressed for traveling, but you can see they’re some sort of clerics. The two are standing in the midst of this Tartar riffraff and teaching them the word of God.

When I caught sight of them, I rejoiced at seeing Russians, and my heart throbbed inside me, and I fell at their feet and wept. They also rejoiced at my bowing and both exclaimed:

“Well, well! So you see how grace works! It has already touched one of yours, and he is turning away from Mohammed!”

The Tartars replied that nothing was working: this is your Ivan, he’s from you Russians, only he’s living here with us as a prisoner.

The missionaries were very displeased at that. They didn’t believe I was Russian, so I butted in myself:

“No,” I say, “I really am Russian! Spiritual fathers, have mercy on me! Rescue me from this place! It’s already the eleventh year I’ve been languishing here in captivity, and see how crippled I am: I can’t walk.”

But they didn’t pay the slightest attention to my words, turned away, and went on with their business of preaching.

I think: “Well, what’s there to grumble about: they’re on official business, and maybe it’s awkward for them to treat me differently in front of the Tartars”—and I left off, and chose a time when they were alone in their separate quarters, and I flung myself at them and told them everything in all frankness, how I was suffering from the cruelest lot, and I begged them:

“My father-benefactors, threaten them with our beloved white tsar: tell them that he does not allow Asiatics to hold his subjects captive by force, or, better still, pay them a ransom for me, and I’ll serve you for it. Living here,” I say, “I’ve learned their Tartar language very well and can be a useful man to you.”

But they reply:

“We have no ransom for you, my son, and we are not permitted to threaten the infidels, because they are devious and disloyal people even without that, and we maintain a courteous policy towards them.”

“So, then,” I say, “it means that on account of that policy I’m to perish with them here for all time?”

“Well,” they say, “it makes no difference where you perish, my son, but you must pray: God’s mercy is great, perhaps He will deliver you.”

“I’ve already prayed,” I say, “but I have no strength left, and I’ve laid aside all hope.”

“Do not despair,” they say, “because that is a great sin!”

“I don’t despair,” I say, “only … how is it that you … it pains me very much that you are Russians and my countrymen, and you don’t want to help me at all.”

“No, child,” they reply, “don’t mix us into this, we are in Christ, and in Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew: whoever listens to us is our countryman. For us all are equal, all are equal.”

“All?” I say.

“Yes,” they reply, “all—that is the teaching we have from the apostle Paul.²³ Wherever we go, we do not quarrel … it is not befitting for us. You are a slave and, no help for it, you must endure, for, according to the apostle Paul, slaves should obey. But remember that you are a Christian, and therefore with you we have nothing to worry about, since even without us the gates of paradise are open to your soul, while these people will be in darkness if we don’t join them up, so we must worry about them.”

And they show me a book:

“Here,” they say, “see how many names we’ve got written down in this register—that’s how many people we’ve joined to our faith!”

I didn’t talk with them anymore and didn’t see any more of them, except for one of them, and that by chance: one of my little sons came running from somewhere and said:

“Daddy, there’s a man lying over there near the lake.”

I went to look: I see that his legs have been skinned from the knees down like stockings, and his arms from the elbows down like gloves. The Tartars do it skillfully: they make an incision around and pull the skin off in one piece. The man’s head was lying nearby, with a cross cut on the forehead.

“Eh,” I thought, “you didn’t want to concern yourself with me, your countryman, and I condemned you, and here you’ve been found worthy of a martyr’s crown. Forgive me now for Christ’s sake!”

I made a cross over him, put his head together with his body, bowed to the ground, buried him, and sang “Holy God”²⁴ over him—and what became of his comrade I don’t know, but most likely he also ended by receiving the crown, because afterwards the Tartar women of the horde turned up with lots of little icons like the ones these missionaries had with them.

“So these missionaries even get as far as the Ryn Sands?”

“Of course they do, only it’s all no use.”

“Why so?”

“They don’t know how to handle them. The Asiatic has to be brought to faith by fear, so that he’s shaking with fright, but they preach the meek God to him. At the outstart that’s no good at all, because without threats an Asiatic will never respect a meek God for anything and will kill the preachers.”

“And the main thing, it must be supposed, when going to the Asiatics, is that you should have no money or valuables with you?”

“You shouldn’t, sir, though all the same they won’t believe that somebody came and brought nothing with him; they’ll think you buried it somewhere in the steppe, and start torturing you, and torture you to death.”

“The bandits!”

“Yes, sir, that’s what happened in my time with a certain Jew: an old Jew turned up from who knows where and also talked about faith. He was a good man, and obviously zealous for his faith, and all in such rags that you could see his whole body, and he started talking about faith so that it even seemed you could listen to him forever. At the outstart I began to argue with him, saying what kind of faith is it if you haven’t got any saints, but he said, ‘We do,’ and he began reading from the Talmud about the saints they have … very entertaining. ‘And this Talmud,’ he says, ‘was written by the rabbi Jovoz ben Levi, who was so learned that sinful people couldn’t look at him; as soon as they looked, they all died straightaway, on account of which God called him before Him and said: “You, learned rabbi, Jovoz ben Levi! It’s good that you’re so learned, but it’s not good that because of you all my Jews may die. It was not for that,” he says, “that I drove them over the steppe with Moses and made them cross the sea. For that, get out of your fatherland and live somewhere where nobody can see you.” ’ And so the rabbi Levi left and went straight to the place where paradise was, and he buried himself up to the neck in the sand there, and stayed in the sand for thirteen years, and even though he was buried up to the neck, he prepared a lamb for himself every Saturday, cooked by a fire that came down from heaven. And if a mosquito or a fly landed on his nose to drink his blood, they were consumed at once by a heavenly fire …’ The Asiatics liked this story about the learned rabbi very much, and they listened to the Jew for a long time; but then they got after him and began questioning him about where he buried his money before coming to them. The Jew swore up and down that he had no money, that God had sent him with nothing but wisdom, but they didn’t believe him, and raking up the coals where the campfire had been burning, they spread a horsehide over the hot coals, put the Jew on it, and started shaking it. ‘Tell us, tell us, where is the money?’ But when they saw that he had turned all black and didn’t speak, they said:

“ ‘Wait, let’s bury him up to the neck in the sand: maybe that will bring him around.’

“And so they buried him, but the Jew just died buried like that, and his head stuck up black from the sand for a long time afterwards, but the children began to be afraid of it, so they cut it off and threw it into a dry well.”

“There’s your preaching to them!”

“Yes, sir, it’s very hard, but all the same that Jew did have money.”

“He did?!”

“He did, sir. Later on wolves and jackals began worrying him, and they dug him out of the sand bit by bit, and finally got to his boots. Once his boots fell apart, seven coins came out of the soles. They were found later.”

“Well, but how did you break free of them?”

“I was saved by a miracle.”

“Who performed this miracle that delivered you?”

“Talafa.”

“Who is this Talafa—also a Tartar?”

“No, sir, he’s of another race, an Indian, and not a simple Indian at that, but one of their gods who comes down to earth.”

Prevailed upon by his listeners, Ivan Severyanych Flyagin told the following about this new act in the tragicomedy of his life.

IX

After the Tartars got rid of our missaneries, again nearly a year went by, and again it was winter, and we drove our herds to graze further south, towards the Caspian, and there suddenly one day before evening two men came to us, if they could be called men. Nobody knew who they were and where from and of what sort and rank. They didn’t even have any real language, neither Russian nor Tartar, but they spoke a word in ours, a word in Tartar, and between themselves in who knows what. They weren’t old. One was dark, with a big beard, in a robe, something like a Tartar, only his coat wasn’t multicolored but all red, and on his head he had a conical Persian hat. The other one was red-haired, also in a robe, but a tricky fellow: he had all sorts of little boxes with him, and as soon as there was a moment when nobody was looking at him, he’d take off his robe and remain just in trousers and a little jacket, and these trousers and jacket were of the same fashion as what Germans wear in factories in Russia. And he kept turning over and sorting out something in those boxes, but what it was that he had in them—deuce knew. They said they came from Khiva²⁵ to buy horses and wanted to make war on somebody at home, but who it was they didn’t say, they just kept stirring the Tartars up against the Russians. I heard him, this red-haired one—he couldn’t say much, but just brought out something like “soup-perear” in Russian and spat; but they had no money with them, because these Asiatics know that if you come to the steppe with money, you won’t leave with a head on your shoulders, and they urged our Tartars to drive the herds of horses to their river, the Darya, and settle accounts there. The Tartars were of two minds about that and didn’t know whether to agree or not. They thought and thought, as if they were digging gold, and were obviously afraid of something.

They tried persuading them honorably, and then also began to frighten them.

“Drive them,” they say, “or it may go badly for you: we have the god Talafa, who has sent his fire with us. God forbid he should get angry.”

The Tartars didn’t know this god and doubted that he could do anything to them with his fire on the steppe in winter. But that black-bearded man from Khiva, the one in the red robe, says, “If you have doubts, Talafa will show you his power this very night, only if you see or hear anything, don’t run outside, or he’ll burn you up.” Naturally, this was all terribly interesting amidst the boredom of the winter steppe, and we were all a bit afraid of this terrible thing, but eager to see what this Indian god could do and how, by what miracle, he would manifest himself.

We crawled into our tents early with our wives and children and waited … All was dark and quiet, as on any other night, but suddenly, during my first sleep, I heard something on the steppe hiss like a strong wind and explode, and through my sleep I fancied there were sparks falling from the sky.

I roused myself and saw my wives stirring and my children crying.

I say:

“Shh! Stop their gullets, get them sucking instead of crying.”

The children started smacking away, and it became quiet again, and on the dark steppe a fire suddenly went hissing up again … hissed and burst again …

“Well,” I think, “anyhow it’s clear this Talafa is no joke!”

And a little later he hissed again, but now in quite a different way—like a fiery bird fluttering up, and with a tail of fire as well, and the fire is of an extraordinary color, red as blood, and when it bursts, it all suddenly turns yellow and then blue.

In the camp, I can hear, it’s like everything has died. It was impossible, of course, for anybody not to hear such a cannonade, but it meant they were all frightened and lying under their sheepskins. You can only hear the earth tremble, start shaking, and stop again. That, you could figure, was the horses shying and huddling close together, and you could also hear those Khivians or Indians running somewhere, and all at once fire again shot over the steppe like a snake … The horses got terrified and bolted … The Tartars forgot their fear and all came jumping out, shaking their heads, howling “Allah! Allah!”—and set off in pursuit, but the Khivians vanished without a trace, just leaving one of their boxes behind as a souvenir … Now, when all our fighting men had gone in pursuit of the herd, and only women and old men were left in the camp, I took a look at that box: what’s in there? I see there are various powders, and mixtures, and paper tubes: I started examining one of the tubes close to the fire, and it burst, almost burned my eyes out, and flew upwards, and there—bang!—scattered in little stars … “Aha,” I thought, “so it’s not a god, it’s just fiverworks like they set off in our public garden.” I went bang with another tube, and saw that the Tartars, the old ones who had stayed here, had already fallen down and were lying on their faces where they fell, and only jerking their legs … At first I was scared myself, but when I saw them jerking like that, I suddenly acquired a completely different attitude, and for the first time since I fell into captivity, I gnashed my teeth and started uttering random, unfamiliar words at them. I shouted as loud as I could:

“Parley-bien-cumsa-shiray-mir-ferfluchter-min-adiew-moussiew!”

Then I sent up a spinning tube … Well, this time, seeing how the fire went spinning, they all nearly died … The fire went out, and they were all lying there, and only one of them raised his head every once in a while, and then put it mug-down again, while beckoning to me with his finger. I go up to him and say:

“Well, so? Confess what you want, curse you: death or life?”—because I can see they’re terribly afraid of me.

“Forgive us, Ivan,” they say, “don’t give us death, give us life.”

And the others also beckon to me from their places in the same way, and ask for forgiveness and life.

I see my case has taken a good turn: I must have suffered enough for all my sins, and I prayed:

“Mother of us, most holy Lady, St. Nicholas, my swans, my little doves, help me, my benefactors!”

And I myself sternly ask the Tartars:

“For what and to what end should I forgive you and grant you life?”

“Forgive us,” they say, “for not believing in your God.”

“Aha,” I think, “see how I’ve frightened them,” and I say: “Ah, no, brothers, that’s rubbish, I’m not going to forgive you for your opposition to relidgin!” And I gnashed my teeth again and unsealed one more tube.

This one turned out to have a rawcket … Terrible fire and crackling.

I shout at the Tartars:

“So, one more minute, and I’ll destroy you all, if you don’t want to believe in my God.”

“Don’t destroy us,” they reply, “we all agree to go under your God.”

Then I stopped setting off fiverworks and baptized them all in the river.

“You baptized them right then and there?”

“That same minute, sirs. Why put it off for long? It had to be so they couldn’t think it over. I wetted their heads with water from a hole in the ice, recited ‘in the name of the Father and the Son,’ and hung those little crosses left from the missaneries on their necks, and told them to consider that murdered missanery a martyr and pray for him, and I showed them his grave.”

“And did they pray?”

“That they did, sir.”

“But I don’t suppose they knew any Christian prayers, or did you teach them?”

“No, I had no chance to teach them, because I saw the time had come for me to flee, but I told them: ‘Pray like you always prayed, the old way, only don’t you dare call on Allah, but instead of him name Jesus Christ.’ So they adopted that confession.”

“Well, but all the same, how did you escape from these new Christians then with your crippled feet, and how did you cure yourself?”

“Then I found some caustic earth in those fiverworks; as soon as you apply it to your body, it starts burning terribly. I applied it and pretended to be sick, and meanwhile, lying under the rug, I kept irritating my heels with this caustic stuff, and in two weeks I irritated them so much that the flesh on my heels festered and all the bristles the Tartars had sewn in ten years earlier came out with the pus. I got better as soon as I could, but gave no signs of it, and pretended that I was getting worse, and I ordered the women and old men to pray for me as zealously as they could, because I was dying. And I imposed a penitential fast on them and told them not to leave their yurts for three days, and to intimidate them even more I shot off the biggest fiverwork and left …”

“And they didn’t catch you?”

“No, and how could they catch me? With all the fasting and fear I put into them, they were probably only too glad to keep their noses inside their yurts for three days, and when they peeked out later, I was already too far away to go looking for. My feet, once I got all the bristles out, dried up and became so light that, when I started running, I ran across the whole steppe.”

“All on foot?”

“How else, sir? There’s no road there, nobody to meet, and if you do meet somebody, you won’t be glad of what you’ve acquired. On the fourth day, a Chuvash appeared, alone, driving five horses. ‘Mount up,’ he said.

“I felt suspicious and didn’t.”

“Why were you afraid of him?”

“Just so … he somehow didn’t look trustworthy to me, and besides that it was impossible to figure out what his religion was, and without that it’s frightening in the steppe. And the muddlehead shouts:

“ ‘Mount up—it’s merrier with two riding.’

“I say:

“ ‘But who are you? Maybe you’ve got no god?’

“ ‘How, no cod?’ he says. ‘It’s the Tartar has no cod, he eats horse, but I have a cod.’

“ ‘Who is your god?’ I say.

“For me,’ he says, ‘everything is cod: sun is cod, moon is cod, stars are cod … everything is cod. How I have no cod?’

“Everything! … Hm … so everything is god for you,’ I say, ‘which means Jesus Christ is not god for you?’

“ ‘No,’ he says, ‘he is cod, and his mother is cod, and Nikolach is cod …’

“ ‘What Nikolach?’ I ask.

“ ‘Why, the one who lives once in winter, once in summer.’

“I praised him for respecting our Russian saint, Nicholas the Wonderworker.²⁶

“ ‘Always honor him,’ I said, ‘because he’s Russian’—and I was quite ready to approve of his faith and quite willing to ride with him, but, thankfully, he went on babbling and gave himself away.

“ ‘As if I don’t honor Nikolach,’ he says. ‘Maybe I don’t bow to him in winter, but in summer I give him twenty kopecks to take good care of my cows. Yes, and so as not to trust in him alone, I also sacrifice a bullock to the Keremet.’²⁷

“I got angry.

“ ‘How dare you not trust in Nicholas the Wonderworker,’ I say, ‘and give him, a Russian, only twenty kopecks, while you give your foul Mordovian Keremet a whole bullock! Away with you,’ I say, ‘I don’t want … I won’t go with you, if you have such disrespect for Nicholas the Wonderworker.’

“And I didn’t go: I strode on with all my might, and before I realized it, towards evening on the third day, I caught sight of water and people. I lay in the grass out of apprehension and spied out what kind of people they were. Because I was afraid of falling again into a still worse captivity, but I see that these people cook their food … They must be Christians, I thought. I crawled closer: I saw them crossing themselves and drinking vodka—well, that means Russians! … Then I jumped up from the grass and showed myself. They turned out to be a fishing crew out fishing. They received me warmly, as countrymen should, and said:

“ ‘Have some vodka!’

“I reply:

“ ‘From living with the Tartars, brothers, I’m completely unused to it.’

“ ‘Well, never mind,’ they say, ‘here it’s your nation, you’ll get used to it again: drink!’

“I poured myself a glass and thought:

“ ‘Well then, with God’s blessing, here’s to my return!’—and I drank, but the crewmen—nice lads—persisted.

“ ‘Have another!’ they say. ‘Look how scrawny you’ve grown without it.’ ”

I allowed myself one more and became very outspoken: I told them everything, where I’m from and where and how I’d lived. I spent the whole night sitting by the fire, telling it all and drinking vodka, and it was so joyful to me that I was back in Holy Russia, only towards morning, when the fire began to go out and almost all the listeners had fallen asleep, one of the crew members says to me:

“And do you have a passport?”

I say:

“No, I don’t.”

“If you don’t,” he says, “it means jail for you.”

“Well, then,” I say, “I’m not going to leave you. I suppose I can live with you here without a passport.”

And he replies:

“You can live with us without a passport,” he says, “but you can’t die without one.”

I say:

“Why’s that?”

“How’s the priest going to register you,” he says, “if you’ve got no passport?”

“What’ll happen to me in that case?”

“We’ll throw you into the water,” he says, “as fish food.”

“Without a priest?”

“Without a priest.”

Being a little tipsy, I was terribly frightened at that and began weeping and lamenting, but the fisherman laughed.

“I was joking with you,” he says. “Die fearlessly, we’ll bury you in your native soil.”

But I was already very upset and said:

“A fine joke. If you joke with me like that very often, I won’t live to see the next spring.”

And as soon as this last crewman fell asleep, I quickly got up and went away and came to Astrakhan, earned a rouble doing day labor and went on such a drinking binge that I don’t remember how I wound up in another town, and by then I was sitting in jail, and from there they sent me under escort to my own province. I was brought to our town, given a whipping at the police station, and delivered to my village. The countess who had ordered me whipped for the cat’s tail was dead by then, only the count was left, but he had grown very old and pious and didn’t hunt on horseback any more. They reported to him that I had arrived, he remembered me, ordered me to be whipped once again at home, and to go to the priest, Father Ilya, for confession. Well, they gave me a whipping the old-fashioned way, in the village lockup, and I went to Father Ilya, and he heard my confession and forbade me to take communion for three years …

“Why so, Father? I’ve gone … so many years without communion … I’ve been waiting …”

“Well, no matter,” he says. “So you’ve been waiting, but how is it you kept Tartar women around you instead of wives? … Be it known to you,” he says, “that I’m showing mercy in only forbidding you communion, and if you were handled according to the rules of the holy fathers, you’d have all your clothes burnt off you alive. Only don’t be afraid of that,” he says, “because the police laws don’t allow it now.”

“Well, there’s nothing to be done,” I thought, “so I’ll just stay like this, without communion, living at home, resting after my captivity.” But the count didn’t want it. He said:

“I will not tolerate having an excommunicated man near me.”

And he told the steward to whip me once more publicly as an example for everybody and then to release me on quitrent. And so they did: I was flogged in a new way this time, on the porch, before the office, in front of all the people, and then given a passport. I was delighted that, after so many years, I was a completely free man, with legal papers, and I left. I had no definite intentions, but it was my fate that God sent me employment.

“What sort?”

“The same thing again, in the horse line. I started from nothing, without a penny, but soon reached a very well-to-do state, and could have managed even better, if it hadn’t been for a certain matter.”

“What was it, if we may ask?”

“I fell into the great possession of various spirits and passions and yet another unseemly thing.”

“What was this unseemly thing that possessed you?”

“Magnetism, sir.”

“What? Magnetism?!”

“Yes, sir, the magnetic influence of a certain person.”

“How did you feel this influence upon you?”

“A foreign will worked in me, and I fulfilled a foreign destiny.”

“Was it then that your own ruin came upon you, after which you decided that you ought to fulfill your mother’s promise and go into a monastery?”

“No, sir, that came later, but meanwhile many other adventures of all sorts befell me, before I was granted real conviction.”

“Would you mind telling us those adventures, too?”

“Not at all. It will be a great pleasure for me.”

“Please do, then.”

X

Taking my passport, I went off without any intentions for myself, and came to the fair, and there I see a Gypsy trading horses with a muzhik and deceiving him godlessly. He started testing their strength, and hitched his own nag to a cart loaded with millet, and the muzhik’s horse to a cart loaded with apples. The loads, naturally, were of equal weight, but the muzhik’s horse got in a stew, because the smell of the apples stupefied it, since horses find that smell terribly repulsive, and, besides that, I could see that the Gypsy’s horse was prone to fainting, and you could tell it at once, because it had a mark on its forehead where it had been seared by fire, but the Gypsy said, “It’s a wart.” But I, naturally, felt sorry for the muzhik, because it would be impossible for him to work with a fainting horse, since it would fall over and that would be that, and besides I had a mortal hatred of Gypsies then, because it was from them that I first got tempted to ramble, and I probably also had a presentiment of things to come, which proved true. I revealed this flaw in the horse to the muzhik, and when the Gypsy began to argue that it wasn’t a mark from searing but a wart, to prove I was right I jabbed the horse in the kidney with a little awl, and it flopped to the ground and thrashed. Then I went and chose the muzhiks a good horse according to my understanding, and for that they treated me to food and drink and gave me twenty kopecks, and we had some good carousing. And it went on from there: my capital was growing and so was my zeal for drinking, and before the month was out, I saw that things were good. I hung myself all over with badges and horse doctor’s trappings and began going from fair to fair, giving guidance to poor people everywhere, and collecting income for myself, and wetting the good deals; and meanwhile I became just like the wrath of God for all the horse-trading Gypsies, and I learned indirectly that they intended to beat me up. I tried to avoid that, because they were many and I was one, and never once could they catch me alone and give me a sound beating, and with muzhiks around they didn’t dare, because they always stood up for me on account of the good I’d done them. Then they spread a bad rumor about me, that I was a sorcerer and it was not through my own powers that I knew about animals, but, naturally, that was all nonsense: as I told you, I have a gift for horses, and I’m ready to teach it to anybody you like, only the main thing is that it won’t be of use to anybody.

“Why won’t it be of use?”

“Nobody will understand it, sir, because for that nothing else but a natural gift will do, and more than once I’ve had the same experience, that I teach, but it’s all in vain. But, excuse me, we’ll get to that later.”

When my fame was noised around the fairs, that I could see right through a horse, a certain remount officer, a prince, offered me a hundred roubles:

“Reveal the secret of your understanding, brother,” he says. “It’s worth a lot of money.”

And I reply:

“I have no secret, I have a natural gift for it.”

But he persists:

“Reveal to me, anyway, how you understand these things. And so you don’t think I want it just like that—here’s a hundred roubles for you.”

What to do? I shrugged my shoulders, tied the money up in a rag, and said:

“All right, then, I’ll tell you what I know, but please learn and follow it; and if you don’t learn and you get nothing useful from it, I won’t answer for it.”

He was content with that, anyway, and said:

“How much I learn is not your problem, just tell me.”

“The very first thing,” I say, “if it’s a matter of knowing a horse and what goes on inside it, is that you’ve got to have a good position for examining it and never depart from it. From the first glance you have to look intelligently at the head and then at the whole horse down to the tail, and not paw it all over the way officers do. They touch it on the withers, the forelock, the nose bridge, the chest artery, the breastbone, or whatever they land on, and all senselessly. Horse dealers love cavalry officers terribly for this pawing. When a horse dealer spots such a military pawer, he immediately starts twisting and twirling the horse, turning it in all directions, and whichever part he doesn’t want to show, he won’t show for anything, and it’s there that the flaw lies, and there’s no end to these flaws. Say a horse is lop-eared—they cut away a strip of skin on the crown, pull the edges together, sew them up, and paint the seam over. The horse’s ears perk up, but not for long: the skin stretches and the ears droop again. If the ears are too big, they cut them, and to make them stand up, they put little props in them. If somebody’s looking for a match for his horse, and if, for instance, his horse has a star on its forehead, the dealers make sure to fix him up with another that has the same star: they rub the hide with pumice, or apply a hot baked turnip to the right spot, so that white hair will grow, and it does at once, only if you bother to look closely, hair that’s been grown that way is always slightly longer than normal, and it frizzes up like a little tuft. Horse dealers offend against the public even more over eyes: some horses have little hollows above their eyes, and it’s not pretty, but the dealer punctures the skin with a pin and then puts his lips to the place and blows, and the skin inflates, and the eye looks more fresh and pretty. That’s easy to do, because a horse likes the feel of warm breath on its eyes, and it stands there without moving, but then the air leaks out and there are hollows above the eyes again. There’s one remedy for that: to feel around the bone and see whether air is coming out. But it’s still funnier when they sell blind horses. That’s a real comedy. Some little officer, for instance, is stealing up to the horse’s eye with a straw, to test whether the horse can see the straw, but he himself doesn’t see that, just when the horse should shake its head, the dealer punches it in the belly or the side with his fist. Or another is stroking the horse quietly, but has a little nail in his glove, and while he seems to be stroking it, he pricks it.” And I explained this to the remount officer ten times more than I’ve been telling you now, but none of it proved any use to him: the next day I see he’s bought such horses that one nag’s worse than the other, and then he calls me over to look and says:

“Come, brother, look at my expert knowledge of horses.”

I glanced, laughed, and replied that there was nothing to look at:

“This one’s got fleshy shoulders—it’ll catch its hooves in the dirt; this one tucks its hoof under its belly when it lies down—in a year at most it’ll work itself up a hernia; and this one, when it eats oats, stamps its foreleg and knocks its knee against the trough”—and I criticized his whole purchase away like that, and it came out that I was right.

The next day the prince says:

“No, Ivan, I really can’t understand your gift. You’d better work for me as a conosoor and do the choosing, and I’ll just pay out the money.”

I agreed and lived excellently for a whole three years, not like a hired servant, but more like a friend and helper, and if these outings hadn’t got the better of me, I might even have saved up some capital for myself, because, in remounting practice, whenever a breeder comes to make the acquaintance of a remount officer, he sends a trusty man to the conosoor, so as to cajole him as much as possible, because breeders know that the real power is not with the remount officer, but in his having a real conosoor with him. And I was, as I told you, a natural conosoor and fulfilled that natural duty conscientiously: not for anything would I deceive the man I worked for. And my prince felt that and had great respect for me, and we lived together with full openness in everything. If he happened to lose at cards somewhere during the night, he would get up in the morning and come to me in the stable, still in his robe, and say:

“Well, now, my almost half-esteemed Ivan Severyanych! How are things with you?” He always joked that way, calling me “almost half-esteemed,” though, as you’ll see, he esteemed me fully.

I knew what it signified when he came with such a joke, and I’d reply:

“Not bad. Things are fine with me, thank God, but I wonder about Your Serenity—how are your circumstances?”

“Mine,” he says, “are so vile, you couldn’t even ask for worse.”

“What you mean to say, I suppose, is that you blew it all again yesterday, like the other time?”

“A good guess, my half-esteemed fellow,” he replies. “I blew it, sir, I blew it.”

“And how much lighter is Your Honor now?” I ask.

He would tell me at once how many thousands he had lost, and I would shake my head and say:

“Your Serenity needs a good spanking, but there’s nobody to do it.”

He would laugh and say:

“That’s just it, there’s nobody.”

“Lie down here on my cot,” I say, “and I’ll put a clean little sack under your head and whip you myself.”

He, naturally, starts getting around me, so that I’ll lend him money for the revanche.

“No,” he says, “better not thrash me, but give me some of our spending money for a little revanche: I’ll go, win everything back, and beat them all.”

“Well, as to that,” I reply, “I humbly thank you, playing is one thing, winning back is another.”

“Hah, you thank me!” he begins by laughing, but then he gets angry: “Well, I’ll thank you not to forget yourself,” he says. “Stop playing the guardian over me and bring me the money.”

We asked Ivan Severyanych if he ever gave his prince money for the revanche.

“Never,” he said. “I either deceived him, saying I’d spent all the money on oats, or I simply quit the premises.”

“I suppose he got angry with you for that?”

“That he did, sir. He’d announce straight off: ‘It’s all over, sir. You no longer work for me, my half-esteemed fellow.’

“I’d reply:

“ ‘Well, that’s just fine. My passport, please.’

“ ‘Very well, sir,’ he says. ‘Kindly make your preparations: you’ll get your passport tomorrow.’

“Only there was never any more talk about that tomorrow between us. In no more than an hour or so, he’d come to me in a totally different state of mind and say:

“ ‘I thank you, my greatly insignificant fellow, that you stood firm and did not give me money for the revanche.’

“And he always had such feelings about these things that, if anything happened to me during my outings, he also made allowances for me like a brother.”

“And what happened to you?”

“I already explained to you that I used to have these outings.”

“And what do you mean by ‘outings’?”

“I’d go carousing, sir. Having learned about drinking vodka, I avoided drinking it every day and never just took it in moderation, but if I happened to be troubled, then I’d get a terrible zeal for drinking, and I’d immediately go on an outing for several days and disappear. And you’d never notice why it came over me. For instance, we’d let go of some horses, and it’s not that they’re brothers to you, but I’d miss them and start drinking. Especially if you send away a very handsome horse, then the scoundrel just keeps flashing in your eyes, so you hide from him like some sort of obsession and go on an outing.”

“Meaning you’d start drinking?”

“Yes, sir, I’d go and drink.”

“And for how long?”

“Mmm … they’re not all the same, sir, these outings: sometimes you drink until you’ve drunk up everything, and either somebody gives you a beating, or you give somebody a beating, but another time it turns out shorter, you just get taken to the police station or sleep it off in a ditch, and it’s enough, the mood goes away. On such occasions I went by the rules, and if I happened to feel I needed an outing, I’d go to the prince and say:

“ ‘Thus and so, Your Serenity, kindly take the money from me, and I’ll disappear.’

“He never argued, he’d just take the money, and sometimes ask:

“ ‘Does Your Honor contemplate being at it for a long time?’

“So I’d give him a reply depending on how zealous I felt, for a big outing or a short one.

“And I’d leave, and he’d run things by himself and wait until my outing was over, and it all went quite well; only I was terribly sick of this weakness of mine, and I resolved suddenly to get rid of it; and it was then that I went on such a last outing that even now it’s frightening to remember it.”

XI

We naturally insisted that Ivan Severyanych crown his amiability by telling us all about this new ill-fated episode in his life, and he, in his goodness, of course did not refuse us that, and of his “last outing” told the following:

We had a mare named Dido that we bought from a stud farm, a young golden bay for an officer’s saddle. A marvelous beauty she was: pretty little head, comely eyes, nostrils delicate and flared—just breathe away; light mane; chest sitting smartly, like a boat, between her shoulders; supple in the flanks; and her legs light in their white stockings, and she flings them out as if she’s playing … In short, if you were a fancier and had an understanding of beauty, the sight of such a creature could make you ponder. As for me, she was so much to my liking that I never even left her stable and kept caressing her from joy. I’d brush her and wipe her all over with a white handkerchief, so that there wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere on her coat, and I’d even kiss her right on the forehead, where her golden hair turned into a little swirl … At that time we had two fairs going on at once, one in L——, the other in K——, and the prince and I separated: I did one, and he went to the other. And suddenly I received a letter from him, saying: “Send such-and-such horses and Dido to me here.” I didn’t know why he was sending for my beauty, in whom my fancier’s eyes rejoiced. But I thought, of course, that he had traded or sold my darling to someone, or, still more likely, had lost her at cards … And so I sent Dido off with the stablemen and started pining away terribly and longed to go on an outing. And my situation at that moment was quite unusual: I told you I had made it a rule that, whenever the zeal for an outing came over me, I would present myself to the prince, give him all my money, since I always had large sums on my hands, and say: “I’m going to disappear for this many or that many days.” Well, but how was I going to arrange it this time, when my prince wasn’t with me? And so I thought to myself: “No, I’m not going to drink anymore, because my prince isn’t here, and it’s impossible for me to go on a regular outing, because I have no one to give my money to, and I’ve got a considerable sum on me, more than five thousand.” So I decided it was not to be done, and I held firmly to that decision, and did not give way to my zeal for going on an outing and disappearing good and proper, but all the same I felt no weakening of that desire, but, on the contrary, craved more and more to go on an outing. And, finally, I came to be filled with a single thought: how can I arrange things so as both to fulfill my zeal for an outing and to safeguard the prince’s money? And with that aim I began hiding it and kept hiding it in the most incredible places, where it would never occur to anyone to put money … I thought: “What to do? It’s clear that I can’t control myself. I’ll put the money in a trustworthy place, to keep it safe, and then I’ll do my zeal, I’ll go on an outing.” Only I was overcome by perplexity: where should I hide this cursed money? Wherever I put it, the moment I stepped away from the place, the thought would at once come to my head that someone was stealing it. I’d go and quickly take it again and hide it again … I simply wore myself out hiding it, in haylofts, and in cellars, and under the eaves, and in other such unsuitable hiding places, and as soon as I stepped away, it immediately seemed to me that someone had seen me hide it and would certainly find it, and I would go back again, and get it again, and carry it around with me, and again think: “No, basta, I’m clearly not fated to fulfill my zeal this time.” And suddenly a divine thought occurred to me: it’s the devil who keeps tormenting me with this passion, so I’ll go and drive the scoundrel away with holiness! And I went to an early liturgy, prayed, and as I was leaving the church, I saw the Last Judgment painted on the wall, and there in a corner the devil in Gehenna being beaten with flails by angels. I stopped, looked, and prayed zealously to the holy angels, and, spitting on my fist, shoved it into the devil’s mug.

“Here’s a fig for you, buy what’ll do, and a lot of it, too”—and after that I suddenly calmed down completely and, having given all the necessary orders at home, went to a tavern to have tea … And there in the tavern I saw some rascal standing among the customers. The most futile of futile men. I had seen the man before, too, and considered him some sort of charlatan or clown, because he kept dragging himself around to the fairs and begging gentlemen for a handout in French. He was supposedly of the nobility and had served in the army, but had squandered all he had and gambled it away at cards, and now went around begging … There, in that tavern I came to, the waiters wanted to throw him out, but he refused to leave and stood there saying: