The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

They went across the street and … into the yard; and at the gate the supervisor himself is already greeting the field marshal—pomaded, sleek, all his buttons buttoned, and with the most joyful face.

The prince looked around and saw that everything was clean, shining brightly, in the front garden cheerful green and blossoming roses. The prince himself cheered up.

“What is my host’s name?”

The latter replies something like Filipp Filippovich Filippov.

The prince goes on talking with him and says:

“Your place is very nice, Filipp Filippych, I like it—there’s just one thing I simply can’t remember: where and when did I meet or see you, and what sort of favor could I have done you?”

And the supervisor replies:

“Your Excellency certainly did see me, but when—if you’ve forgotten—will become clear later.”

“Why later, if I want to remember you now?”

But the supervisor did not say.

“I beg Your Excellency’s pardon,” he said. “If you don’t remember that yourself, I dare not tell you, but the voice of nature will tell you.”

“Nonsense! What ‘voice of nature’? And why do you not dare to tell me yourself?”

The supervisor replied, “I just don’t dare,” and dropped his eyes.

And meanwhile they had come to the mezzanine, and here it was still more clean and tidy: the floor washed with soap and rubbed with mare’s tail till it gleamed, white runners laid all down the middle of the clean stairway, in the living room a divan, a round table before it with a big, glazed water jug, and in it a bouquet of roses and violets, further on—the bedroom, with a Turkish carpet over the bed, and again a table, a carafe of clean water and a glass, and another bouquet of flowers, and, on a special little desk, a pen, an ink stand, paper and envelopes, wax and a seal.

The field marshal took it all in at a glance, and it pleased him very much.

“It’s clear,” he says, “that you, Filipp Filippych, are a polished man, that you know how things ought to be, and it seems I really did see you somewhere, but I can’t recall it.”

And the supervisor only smiles and says:

“Please don’t worry: it will all be explained by the voice of nature.”

Baryatinsky laughed.

“In that case, brother,” he says, “you are not Filipp Filippovich, but the ‘voice of nature’ yourself”—and he became very intrigued by the man.

IV

The prince lay down on the clean bed, stretched out his legs and arms, and it felt so good that he dozed off at once. He woke up an hour later in an excellent state of mind, and before him already stood a cool cherry sherbet, and that same host asking him to taste it.

“Don’t rely on doctors’ medications, Your Excellency,” he says. “Here with us nature and the breathing of the atmosphere are beneficial.”

The prince cheerfully answers him that that is all very well, “but I must confess to you—I slept splendidly here, but, devil take me, even in my sleep I kept thinking: where did I see you, or maybe I never did?”

But the man replies:

“No,” he says, “you saw me very well, if you please, only in a completely different natural guise, and therefore you don’t recognize me now.”

The prince says:

“Very well, let it be so: there’s no one here now besides you and me, and if there’s anybody there in the next room, send them all out, let them stand on the stairs, and tell me frankly, without hiding anything, who you were and what your criminal secret is—I can promise to solicit for your pardon, and I’ll keep my promise, as I am the true Prince Baryatinsky.”

But the official even smiled and replied that there was not and never had been any guilty secret whatever concerning him, and that he simply did not dare to “abash” the prince for his forgetfulness.

“So you see,” he says, “I constantly remember Your Excellency for your goodness and commemorate you in my prayers; and our sovereign and all the royal family, once they’ve seen and noticed someone, constantly remember him all their lives. Therefore allow me,” he says, “not to remind you of myself verbally, but in due time I will reveal it all to you by clear signs through the voice of nature—and then you will remember.”

“And what means do you have for revealing it all through the voice of nature?”

“In the voice of nature,” he replies, “there is every means.”

The prince smiled at the odd fellow.

“True for you,” he said, “it’s bad to forget, and our sovereign and the royal family do indeed have very good memories, but my memory is weak. I do not override your will, do as you think best, only I would like to know when you are going to reveal your voice of nature to me, because I’m now feeling very well in your house, and I want to leave after midnight, once it cools off. And you must tell me how I can reward you for the rest I’ve had myself here—because that is my custom on such occasions.”

The supervisor says:

“Before midnight I will have time to reveal the voice of nature fully to Your Excellency, if only, in the matter of my reward, you will not deny me something that I hold most precious.”