The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

The count was very glad that the girl had unexpectedly volunteered and, on receiving assurances from the director that “Lyuba won’t spoil the role,” said:

“If she does, your back will answer for it, and take her these camarine⁶ earrings from me.”

“Camarine earrings” were both a flattering and a repulsive gift. They were a first token of the special honor of being raised for a brief moment to the position of the master’s odalisque. Soon after that, and sometimes straightaway, Arkady would be given the order to make the doomed girl up after the theater “with the innocent look of St. Cecilia,” and this symbolized innocence, all in white, in a coronet and with a lily in her hand, would be delivered to the count’s quarters.

“That,” said my nanny, “you can’t understand at your age, but it was the most terrible thing, especially for me, because I was dreaming of Arkady. I began to weep. I threw the earrings on the table and wept, and of how I was going to perform that evening I couldn’t even think.”

VI

And in those same fatal hours another matter—also fatal and trying—stole up on Arkady as well.

The count’s brother came from his country estate to present himself to the sovereign. He was still worse looking and had long been living in the country and never put on his uniform or shaved himself, because “his whole face was overgrown and bumpy.” Now, on this special occasion, he had to wear a uniform and put himself all in order and “in a military impression,” as form required.

And it required a great deal.

“Now nobody even understands how strict it was then,” my nanny said. “Form was observed in everything then, and there was a standard for important gentlemen as much in their faces as in their hairstyle, and for some it was terribly unbecoming, and it could happen that, if a man’s hair was done according to fashion, with a brushed-up forelock and side-whiskers, the face came out looking exactly like a muzhik’s balalaika without strings. Important gentlemen were terribly afraid of that. In these matters, skill in shaving and doing hair counted for a lot—how to clear a path on the face between the side-whiskers and mustache, and how to dispose the curls, and how to brush up—these same small things resulted in a face having a totally different fantasy. It was easier for civilians,” in my nanny’s words, “because no attentive regard was paid to them—they were only required to have a meek look; but from the military more was required—that they express meekness before their superiors, but before all others flaunt their boundless courage.”

It was this that Arkady was able to impart to the count’s ugly and insignificant face by means of his astonishing art.

VII

The count’s country brother was still uglier than the city one, and on top of that had “got so overgrowned” and “coarse in the face” from country life that he even felt it himself, and there was no one to tend to him, because he was very stingy in all things and had let his barber go to Moscow in exchange for quitrent, and besides, this second count’s face was all in big bumps, so that it was impossible to shave him without cutting it all over.

He arrived in Orel, summoned the town barbers, and said:

“If any of you can make me look like my brother, Count Kamensky, I’ll give him two gold pieces, but if he cuts me, I’m putting two pistols here on the table. If you do a good job—take the gold and go, but if you cut a single pimple or shave the side-whiskers wrong by a hair—I’ll kill you on the spot.”

He was just scaring them, because the pistols were loaded with blanks.

In Orel at that time there were few town barbers, and those mostly went around to the bathhouses with bowls, to apply cupping glasses and leeches, but had neither taste nor fantasy. They realized that themselves, and they all refused to “transfigure” Kamensky. “God be with you,” they thought, “and with your gold.”

“We can’t do what you want,” they say, “because we’re not worthy even to touch a person like you, and we don’t have the right razors, because ours are simple Russian razors, and for your face English razors are needed. Only the count’s Arkady can do it.”

The count ordered the town barbers thrown out on their ears, and they were glad to escape to freedom, while he himself goes to his older brother and says:

“Thus and so, brother, I’ve come to you with a big request: let me have your Arkashka before evening, so that he can get me into shape good and proper. I haven’t shaved for a long time, and the local barbers can’t do it.”

The count answers his brother:

“The local barbers are sure to be vile. I didn’t even know there were any here, because my dogs, too, are clipped by my own people. But as for your request, you’re asking an impossible thing, because I gave an oath that, as long as I live, Arkashka will tend to nobody but me. What do you think—can I change my word given before my own slave?”

The other says:

“Why not? You decreed it, you can also repeal it.”