The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

In a certain cultivated family, some friends were sitting over tea and talking about literature—about invention, plot. They regretted that with us all this was getting poorer and paler. I remembered and recounted a characteristic observation of the late Pisemsky,¹ who said that the perceived impoverishment of literature was connected first of all with the multiplication of railroads, which are very useful for commerce, but harmful for artistic literature.

“Today man travels a lot, but quickly and painlessly,” said Pisemsky, “and therefore he doesn’t accumulate any strong impressions, he has no time to observe anything—everything slips by. Hence the poverty. Once upon a time you went from Moscow to Kostroma ‘the slow way,’ in a public tarantass or a hired coach—and happened upon a scoundrelly coachman, and insolent companions, and the postmaster was a rogue, and his ‘cooky’ was a sloven—so much diversity for the eyes. And if your heart can’t bear it—you fish some sort of vileness from the cabbage soup and start cursing the ‘cooky’ and she answers back tenfold—then there’s simply no getting away from impressions. And they sit thick in you, like yesterday’s kasha stewing—well, naturally, it came out thick in the writing as well; but nowadays it’s all railroad-like—take your plate, don’t ask anything; eat—no time for chewing; ding-ding-ding and that’s it: you’re off again, and the only impression you’re left with is that the waiter cheated you on the change, and there’s no time to curse him to your heart’s content.”

To this, one guest observed that Pisemsky was original, but wrong, and he held up the example of Dickens, who wrote in a country where they traveled very fast, yet saw and observed a great deal, and the plots of his stories do not suffer from poverty of content.

“The only exception is perhaps his Christmas stories. They’re wonderful, too, of course, but they have a certain monotony; however, the author can’t be blamed for that, because this is a kind of literature in which the writer feels himself the prisoner of a much too narrow and strictly organized form. It is unfailingly demanded of a Christmas story that it be timed to the events of the evenings from Christmas Eve to Epiphany; that it be at least to some degree fantastic, that it have some sort of moral, if only such as disproving a harmful superstition, and finally—that it unfailingly have a happy ending. In life such events are few, and therefore the author forces himself to think up and compose a plot that fits the program. Which is why Christmas stories are notable for their great artificiality and uniformity.”

“Well, I don’t entirely agree with you,” replied a third guest, a respectable man, who was often able to put in an appropriate word. Therefore we all wanted to hear him.

“I think,” he went on, “that a Christmas story, while staying within all its limits, can still be modified and show an interesting variety, reflecting in itself both its time and morals.”

“But how can you prove your opinion? For it to be persuasive, you must show us one such event from the contemporary life of Russian society, in which the present age does stand, and the contemporary man,² and which at the same time answers to the form and program of a Christmas story—that is, it should be slightly fantastic, and should eradicate some superstition, and should have not a sad, but a happy ending.”

“And why not? I can present you with such a story, if you like.”

“Please do! Only remember that it must be a real incident!”

“Oh, rest assured—I’ll tell you about the realest of incidents, and about persons who are very near and dear to me at that. It concerns my own brother, who, as you probably know, has a decent job and enjoys a good reputation, which he fully deserves.”

Everyone confirmed that it was so, and many added that the narrator’s brother was indeed a worthy and excellent man.

“Yes,” he said, “and so I shall speak of this, as you say, excellent man.”

II

Some three years ago, my brother came to me at Christmastime from the province where he was working then, and, as if some fly had bitten him, accosted me and my wife with a persistent request: “Get me married.”

At first we thought he was joking, but he badgered us seriously and in no few words: “Kindly get me married! Save me from the unbearable boredom of solitude! I hate bachelor life, I’m sick of provincial gossip and nonsense—I want to have my own hearth, I want to sit in the evening with my dear wife by my lamp. Get me married!”

“Now, wait a minute,” we say, “that’s all very fine, and let it be your way—God bless you—get married, but it takes time, you’ve got to have a nice girl in mind, a girl after your own heart, and one who also finds herself disposed towards you. That all takes time.”

And he replies:

“So what—there’s plenty of time: for the two weeks of Christmastime there’s no marrying—you find me a match during that time, and on Epiphany, in the evening, we’ll get married and leave.”