The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

But once the performance was over, they took the dress of the duchesse de Bourblan off of me and dressed me as Cecilia, in a simple white dress with no sleeves and only caught up in knots at the shoulders—we couldn’t stand this costume. And then Arkady comes to do my hair in the innocent way it’s done in pictures of St. Cecilia, and to fix a thin coronet around it, and he sees six men standing by the door of my little closet.

That meant that as soon as he does me up and goes back out the door, he’ll be seized at once and led off somewhere to be tortured. And the tortures with us were such that it would be a hundred times better to be condemned to death. Racking and drawing and squeezing the head with a twisted rope: there was all that. Punishment by the state authorities was nothing compared to it. There were secret cellars under the whole house where people lived chained up like bears. Going past, you could sometimes hear the chains clank and the fettered people moan. They probably wanted news of them to reach us or for the authorities to hear it, but the authorities did not dare even to think of intervening. And people languished there for a long time, sometimes all their lives. One man sat and sat and made up verses:

Snakes—he says—will come slithering and suck out your eyes,

Scorpions will pour poison on your face.⁷

Sometimes you whisper these verses to yourself and get terrified.

And others were even chained with bears, so the bear was only within an inch of getting his paws on them.

Only they didn’t do any of that with Arkady Ilyich, because as soon as he sprang into my little closet, he instantly seized the table and smashed out the whole window, and I don’t remember anything more after that …

I began to come to myself because my feet were very cold. I moved my legs and felt that I was all wrapped up in a wolfskin or bearskin coat, and it was pitcher-dark around, and the troika of horses is dashing along, and I don’t know where. And by me are two men in a heap, sitting in a wide sled—one holding me, that was Arkady Ilyich, and the other urging the horses on with all his might … Snow sprays from under the horses’ hooves, and the sled tilts every second to one side, then to the other. If we hadn’t been sitting right in the middle on the floor and holding each other with our arms, nobody could possibly have stayed whole.

And I hear their worried conversation, in agictation as always—all I can understand is:

“They’re coming, they’re coming! Faster, faster!” and nothing more.

Arkady Ilyich, when he noticed that I was coming to myself, bent over to me and said:

“Lyubushka, my dove! We’re being pursued … Do you agree to die if we can’t get away?”

I replied that I even agreed with joy.

He was hoping to get to Turkish Rushchuk,⁸ where many of our people had escaped from Kamensky.

And suddenly we flew cross the ice of some river, and ahead something like dwellings showed gray and dogs were barking; and the driver whipped up the troika, and the sled all at once heaved to one side, and Arkady and I tumbled out onto the snow, but he, and the sled, and the horses all vanished from sight.

Arkady says:

“Don’t be afraid, it has to be this way, because I don’t know the driver who brought us here, and he doesn’t know us. He hired out for three gold pieces to take you away, and he’s saved his own life. Now we’re in the hands of God: this is the village of Dry Orlitsa—a brave priest lives here who marries desperate couples and has helped many of our people. We’ll give him a gift, he’ll hide us till next evening and marry us, and in the evening the driver will come back, and then we’ll disappear.”

XII

We knocked at the door and went into the front hall. The priest himself opened, old, stocky, one front tooth missing, and his little old wife lit a candle. We both fell down at his feet.

“Save us, let us get warm and hide till next evening.”

The priest asks:

“What is it, my bright lights, have you come with stolen goods or are you just fugitives?”

Arkady says:

“We haven’t stolen anything, we’re running away from Count Kamensky’s ferocity and want to escape to Turkish Rushchuk, where not a few of our folk are living already. And we have our own money with us, and if we’re not found, we’ll give you a gold piece for one night’s lodging and three for marrying us. Marry us if you can, and if you can’t, we’ll get hitched in Rushchuk.”

The priest says:

“No, what do you mean, can’t? I can. Why do it in Rushchuk? Give me five gold pieces in all—I’ll hitch you here.”

Arkady gave him the money, and I took the camarine earrings from my ears and gave them to his wife.

The priest took the money and said: