The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“By God, I don’t know what to tell him: what is it he’s asking of me?”

But the little lady, his neighbor, chirps:

“Don’t be afraid, just allow him: Filipp Filippovich won’t think up anything bad.”

The prince thinks: “Ah, come what may—let him emit the voice!”

“I’m here as a guest,” he says, “like everyone else, and you are the host—do whatever you want.”

“I thank you and everyone,” replies the supervisor, and, nodding to Amalia Ivanovna, he says: “Go, wife, bring you know what with your own hands.”

VI

Amalia Ivanovna went and came back with a big, brightly polished brass French horn and gave it to her husband. He took it, put the mouthpiece to his lips, and in an instant was utterly transformed. As soon as he puffed his cheeks and gave one crackling peal, the field marshal cried:

“I know you, brother, I know you now: you were the musician in the chasseur regiment whom I sent, on account of his honesty, to keep an eye on that crooked commissary.”

“Just so, Your Excellency,” replied the host. “I didn’t want to remind you of it, but nature herself has reminded you.”

The prince embraced him and said:

“Ladies and gentlemen, let us join in drinking a toast to an honest man!”

And they drank well, and the field marshal recovered completely and left feeling extremely merry.

A Little Mistake

A Moscow Family Secret

I

One evening, at Christmastime, a sensible company sat talking about faith and lack of faith. The talk, however, had to do not with the loftier questions of deism and materialism, but with faith in people endowed with special powers of foresight and prophecy, and perhaps even their own sort of wonderworking. Among the listeners was a staid man from Moscow, who said the following:

“It’s not easy, my good sirs, to judge about who lives with faith and who is without faith, for there are various applications of that in life: it may happen in such cases that our reason falls into error.”

And after that introduction he told us a curious story, which I shall try to convey in his own words:

My uncle and aunt were both equally devoted to the late wonderworker Ivan Yakovlevich.¹ Especially my aunt—she wouldn’t undertake anything without asking him. First she would go to him in the madhouse and get his advice, and then she would ask him to pray for her undertaking. My uncle kept his own counsel and relied less on Ivan Yakovlevich, though he also confided in him occasionally and did not hinder his wife’s bringing him gifts and offerings. They were not rich people, but quite well-to-do—they sold tea and sugar from a shop in their own house. They had no sons, but there were three daughters: Kapitolina Nikitishna, Katerina Nikitishna, and Olga Nikitishna. They were all quite pretty and were good at housekeeping and all sorts of handwork. Kapitolina Nikitishna was married, only not to a merchant, but to a painter—though he was a very good man and earned money enough: he took profitable commissions for decorating churches. One unpleasant thing for the whole family was that, while he worked on godly things, he was also versed in some sort of freethinking from Kurganov’s Pistnovnik.² He liked to talk about Chaos, about Ovid, about Prometheus, and was fond of comparing fables with sacred history. If not for that, everything would have been fine. Another thing was that they had no children, and my uncle and aunt were very upset about it. They had seen only their first daughter married, and suddenly she remained childless for three years. Owing to that, suitors started avoiding the other sisters.

My aunt asked Ivan Yakovlevich how it happened that her daughter did not have children: “They’re both young and handsome,” she said, “yet there are no children?”

Ivan Yakovlevich began to mutter:

“There’s a heaven of heavens, a heaven of heavens.”

His women prompters translated for my aunt: “The dear father says to tell your son-in-law to pray to God, for it must be that he’s of little faith.”

My aunt simply gasped: “Everything’s revealed to him,” she said. And she started badgering the painter to go to confession; but to him it was all horsefeathers! He treated it all very lightly … even ate meat on fast days … and besides that, they heard indirectly, he supposedly ate worms and oysters. Yet they all lived in the same house and were often distressed that in their merchant family there was such a man of no faith.

II

So my aunt went to Ivan Yakovlevich to ask him to pray that the servant of God Kapitolina’s womb be opened and that the servant of God Lary (that was the painter’s name) be enlightened by faith.

My uncle and aunt asked it together.

Ivan Yakovlevich began to babble something that couldn’t be understood at all, and the attendant women sitting around him explained:

“He’s not very clear today,” they said, “but tell us what you’re asking, and we’ll give him a little note tomorrow.”