The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

The courier and Lefty drove very fast, and did not stop to rest anywhere between Petersburg and London, but only tightened their belts a notch at each station, so that their lungs would not get tangled with their innards; but since Lefty, after his presentation to the sovereign, on Platov’s orders, had received a plentiful supply of drink from the treasury, he did not eat, but got by on that alone, and sang Russian songs all across Europe, only adding the foreign refrain: “Ai liu-lee, say tray zhulie.”

As soon as he brought him to London, the courier made his appearance to the right people and handed them the chest, and Lefty he installed in a hotel room, but it quickly became boring for him there, and he wanted to eat. He knocked on the door and pointed at his mouth to the attendant, and the attendant led him at once to the food-taking room.

Lefty seated himself at the table and sat there, but how to ask for something in English—that he did not know. But then he figured it out: again he simply tapped the table with his finger and pointed at his mouth—the Englishmen caught on and served him, not always what he wanted, but he did not take what did not suit him. They served him a hot inflamed puddling the way they make it—he said, “I don’t know that such a thing can be eaten,” and refused it; they changed it and set something else before him. He also did not drink their vodka, because it was green, as if mixed with vitriol, but chose what looked most natural, and awaited the courier in the cool over a nice noggin.

But the persons to whom the courier delivered the nymphosoria examined it that same minute under the most powerful of meagroscopes and sent the description at once to the Publice Gazette, so that the very next day a fooliton for general information came out.

“As for that same master,” they said, “we want to see him at once.”

The courier brought them to the hotel room, and from there to the food-taking room, where our Lefty was already properly flushed, and said: “Here he is!”

The Englishmen at once gave Lefty a pat-pat on the back and shook hands with him as an equal. “Cumrade,” they said, “cumrade—good master—we’ll talk with you in due time, and now we’ll drink your health.”

They ordered many drinks, and offered Lefty the first glass, but he politely refused to drink first. He thought, “Maybe you want to poison me out of envixation.”

“No,” he says, “that’s not proper—guest is not above host—have a go yourselves first.”

The Englishmen tried all the drinks before him and then started pouring for him. He stood up, crossed himself with his left hand, and drank the health of them all.

They noticed that he had crossed himself with his left hand, and asked the courier:

“What is he—a Lutheranian or a Protestantist?”

The courier replied:

“No, he’s no Lutheranian or Protestantist, he’s of Russian faith.”

“Why then does he cross himself with his left hand?”

The courier said:

“He’s a lefty and does everything with his left hand.”

The Englishmen were still more astonished and began pumping both Lefty and the courier full of drink, and it went on like that for a whole three days, and then they said: “Enough now.” They drank fuzzy water from a symphon and, quite freshened up, began questioning Lefty: where had he studied and how much arithmetic did he know?

Lefty replied:

“Our science is simple: the Psalter and the Dream Book, and as for arithmetic, we don’t know any.”

The Englishmen exchanged glances and said:

“That’s astonishing.”

And Lefty replies:

“With us it’s that way everywhere.”

“And what,” they ask, “is this ‘Dream Book’ in Russia?”

“That,” he says, “is a book which, if you’re looking for some fortune-telling in the Psalter and King David doesn’t reveal it clearly, then in the Dream Book you get souplemental divinations.”

They say:

“That’s a pity. It would be better if you knew at least the four rules of addition in arithmetic—that would be much more useful to you than the whole Dream Book. Then you might have realized that for every mechanism there is a calculation of force, while you, though you have very skillful hands, did not realize that such a small mechanism as in this nymphosoria is calculated with the finest precision and cannot carry these horseshoes. That’s why it no longer leaps or does a danser.”

Lefty agreed.

“There’s no disputing,” he said, “that we haven’t gone far in learning, but, then, we’re faithfully devoted to our fatherland.”

And the Englishmen say to him:

“Stay with us, we’ll give you a grand education, and you’ll come out an astonishing master.”

But Lefty did not agree to that.

“I’ve got parents at home,” he said.

The Englishmen offered to send money to his parents, but Lefty did not accept.

“I’m attached to my native land,” he says, “and my father’s already an old man, and my mother’s an old woman, they’re used to going to their parish church, and I’ll be very bored here alone, because I’m still of the bachelor’s estate.”