The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

The masters only ventured to say to him about their comrade, “How is it you’re taking him away without any dokyment? He won’t be able to come back!” But instead of an answer, Platov showed them his fist—terrible, burple, scarred all over and healed any old way—shook it at them, and said: “Here’s your dokyment!” And to the Cossacks, he said:

“Get a move on, boys!”

The Cossacks, the driver, and the horses all began working at once, and they carried Lefty off without any dokyment, and in two days, as Platov had ordered, they drove up to the sovereign’s palace and, going at a good clip, even rode past the columns.

Platov stood up, pinned on his decorations, and went to the sovereign, and told the Cossack odorlies to guard cross-eyed Lefty by the entrance.

XI

Platov was afraid to show his face to the sovereign, because Nikolai Pavlovich was terribly remarkable and memorable—he never forgot anything. Platov knew that he would certainly ask him about the flea. And so he, who had never feared any enemy in the world, now turned coward: he went into the palace with the little chest and quietly put it behind the stove in the reception room. Having hidden the chest, he presented himself before the sovereign in his office and hastily began to report to him what the internecine conversation was among the Cossacks on the quiet Don. He thought like this: that he would occupy the sovereign with that, and then, if the sovereign himself remembered and began to speak of the flea, he would have to give it to him and answer, but if he didn’t begin to speak, he would keep silent; he would tell the office valet to hide the chest and put Lefty in a cell in the fortress with no set term and keep him there until he might be needed.

But the sovereign, Nikolai Pavlovich, never forgot anything, and as soon as Platov finished about the internecine conversation, he asked at once:

“And so, how have my Tula masters acquitted themselves against the English nymphosoria?”

Platov replied in keeping with the way the matter seemed to him.

“The nymphosoria, Your Majesty,” he said, “is still in the same place, and I’ve brought it back, and the Tula masters were unable to do anything more astonishing.”

The sovereign replied:

“You’re a courageous old fellow, but what you report to me cannot be so.”

Platov started assuring him, and told him how the whole thing had gone, and when he reached the point where the Tula masters had asked him to show the flea to the sovereign, Nikolai Pavlovich slapped him on the shoulder and said:

“Bring it here. I know that my own can’t let me down. Something supramental has been done here.”

XII

They brought the chest from behind the stove, took off the flannel cover, opened the golden snuffbox and the diamond nut—and in it lies the flea, just as it was and as it lay before.

The sovereign looked and said:

“What the deuce!” But his faith in his Russian masters was undiminished, and he sent for his beloved daughter, Alexandra Nikolaevna, and told her:

“You have slender fingers—take the little key and quickly wind up the mechanism in the nymphosoria’s belly.”

The princess started turning the key, and the flea at once moved its feelers, but not its legs. Alexandra Nikolaevna wound it all the way up, but the nymphosoria still did no danser nor any veritations, as it had before.

Platov turned all green and shouted:

“Ah, those doggy rogues! Now I understand why they didn’t want to tell me anything there. It’s a good thing I took one of those fools along with me.”

With those words, he ran out to the front steps, seized Lefty by the hair, and began yanking him this way and that so hard that whole clumps went flying. But once Platov stopped thrashing him, the man put himself to rights and said:

“I had all my hair torn out as an apprentice. What’s the need of performing such a repetition on me?”

“It’s this,” said Platov, “that I trusted you and vouched for you, and you ruined a rare thing.”

Lefty said:

“We’re much pleased that you vouched for us, and as for ruining anything, that we haven’t done: take and look at it through the most powerful meagroscope.”

Platov ran back to tell about the meagroscope, and only threatened Lefty:

“You so-and-such-and-so,” he said, “you’re still going to get it from me.”

And he told the odorlies to pull Lefty’s elbow still tighter behind his back, while he himself went up the steps out of breath and reciting a prayer: “Blessed Mother of the blessed King, pure and most pure …” and so on, in good fashion. And the courtiers standing on the steps all turned away from him, thinking: “That’s it for Platov, now he’ll be thrown out of the palace”—because they couldn’t stand him on account of his bravery.

XIII

When Platov brought Lefty’s words to the sovereign, he at once said joyfully:

“I know my Russian people won’t let me down.” And he ordered a meagroscope brought on a cushion.