The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

The sovereign keeps glancing at Platov, to see if he’s very surprised and what he’s looking at; but the man walks with lowered eyes, as if seeing nothing, and only twists his mustache into rings.

The Englishmen at once start showing them various wonders and explaining what military circumstances they are suited to: sea blowrometers, drench coats for the infantry, and for the cavalry tarred waterprovables. The sovereign is delighted with it all, to him it all seems very good, but Platov holds back his agectation, as if it all means nothing to him.

The sovereign says:

“How is it possible—where did you get such insensitivity? Can it be that nothing here surprises you?”

And Platov replies:

“One thing here surprises me, that my fine lads from the Don fought without any of it and drove off two and ten nations.”³

The sovereign says:

“That’s an imprejudice.”

Platov replies:

“I don’t know what you’re getting at, but I daren’t argue and must hold my peace.”

And the Englishmen, seeing such exchanges with the sovereign, at once bring him straight to Apollo Belderear and take from his one hand a Mortimer musket⁴ and from the other a pistolia.

“Here,” they say, “this is what our productivity is like,” and they hand him the musket.

The sovereign looked calmly at the musket, because he had one like it in Tsarskoe Selo,⁵ but then they handed him the pistolia and said:

“This is a pistolia of unknown, inimitable craftsmanship—an admiral of ours pulled it from the belt of a pirate chief in Candelabria.”

The sovereign gazed at the pistol and could not take his eyes from it.

He oh’d and ah’d something awful.

“Ah, oh, ah,” he says, “how is it … how is it even possible to do such fine work!” And he turns to Platov and says in Russian: “If I had just one such master in Russia, I’d be extremely happy and proud, and I’d make that master a nobleman at once.”

At these words, Platov instantly thrusts his right hand into his wide balloon trousers and pulls out a gunsmith’s screwdriver. The Englishmen say, “It can’t be opened,” but, paying no attention, he starts poking at the lock. He turns once, turns twice—and the lock comes out. Platov indicates the trigger to the sovereign, and there, right on the curve, is a Russian inscription: “Ivan Moskvin, town of Tula.”

The Englishmen were astonished and nudged each other.

“Oh-oh, we’ve slipped up!”

And the sovereign says woefully to Platov:

“Why did you embarrass them so? Now I feel sorry for them! Let’s go.”

They got back into the same two-sitter and drove off, and the sovereign went to a ball that evening, but Platov downed an even bigger glass of vodka and slept a sound Cossack sleep.

He was glad that he had embarrassed the Englishmen and had put the Tula masters in the limelight, but he was also vexed: why did the sovereign feel sorry for the Englishmen in such a case!

“What made the sovereign so upset?” Platov thought. “I just don’t understand it.” And in such thoughts he got up twice, crossed himself, and drank vodka, until he made himself fall into a sound sleep.

But the Englishmen also did not sleep during that time, because they got all wound up as well. While the sovereign was making merry at the ball, they arranged such a new surprise for him that it robbed Platov of all his fantasy.

III

The next day, when Platov appeared before the sovereign with his good mornings, the latter said to him:

“Have the two-sitter hitched up at once, and we’ll go to see some new collections.”

Platov even ventured to suggest that they might have had enough of looking at foreign products, and it might be better if they got ready to go back to Russia, but the sovereign said:

“No, I want to see more novelties: they’ve boasted to me how they make first-rate sugar.”

Off they went.

The Englishmen kept showing the sovereign the various first-rate things they had, but Platov looked and looked and suddenly said:

“Why don’t you show us your molvo sugar factories?”

But the Englishmen don’t even know what molvo sugar is. They exchange whispers, wink at each other, say “Molvo, molvo” to each other, but cannot understand that this is a kind of sugar we make, and have to confess that they have all kinds of sugar, but not “molvo.”

Platov says:

“Well, so there’s nothing to boast about. Come and visit us, we’ll serve you tea with real molvo sugar from the Bobrinskoy factory.”⁶

But the sovereign pulls him by the sleeve and says softly:

“Please, don’t spoil the politics on me.”

Then the Englishmen invited the sovereign to the last collection, where they have mineral stones and nymphosoria collected from all over the world, starting from the hugest Egyptian overlisk down to the subderminal flea, which cannot be seen with the eye, but causes remorsons between skin and body.

The sovereign went.

They looked at the overlisks and all sorts of stuffed things and were on their way out, and Platov thought to himself:

“There, thank God, everything’s all right; the sovereign’s not marveling at anything.”