The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“My dear man,” I say, “you must have gone a bit out of your mind from boredom.” (The word “psychopath” was not yet in use among us.) “I have no time to play the fool with you, I’m going to work at the court right now, and you can stay here with my wife and fantasize.”

I thought, naturally, that it was all trifles, or, at least, that the undertaking was very far from fulfillment, and yet I come home for dinner and see that the matter has already ripened for them.

My wife tells me:

“Mashenka Vasilieva came by, asked me to go and help her choose a dress, and while I was changing, they”—that is, my brother and the girl—“sat over tea, and your brother says: ‘What a fine girl! Why look further—get me married to her!’ ”

I reply to my wife:

“Now I see my brother’s really gone foolish.”

“No, excuse me,” my wife replies, “what makes it necessarily ‘foolish’? Why deny what you yourself have always respected?”

“What is it that I’ve respected?”

“Unaccountable sympathies, inclinations of the heart.”

“Well, my dear wife,” I say, “you won’t hook me with that. That’s all very well in due time, very well when these inclinations proceed from some clear awareness, from recognition of obvious excellencies of soul and heart, but this—what is it … they see each other for a minute and they’re ready to get hitched for life?”

“Yes, and what do you have against Mashenka? She’s precisely as you say—a girl of clear mind, noble character, and a beautiful and faithful heart. Besides, she also liked him very much.”

“What!” I exclaimed. “So you’ve already managed to secure her acceptance as well?”

“Acceptance or not,” she replied, “isn’t it obvious? Love is in our women’s line—we notice it and see it in the bud.”

“You’re all disgusting matchmakers,” I say. “All you want is to get somebody married, and what comes of it doesn’t concern you. Beware the consequences of your light-mindedness.”

“I won’t beware anything,” she says, “because I know them both and know that your brother is an excellent man and Masha the dearest of girls, and since they’ve given their word to look after each other’s happiness, that’s what they’ll do.”

“What!” I cried, forgetting myself. “They’ve already given each other their word?”

“Yes,” my wife replies. “So far it’s just allegorical, but clear enough. Their tastes and aspirations are the same, and in the evening I’ll take your brother to them—the old parents are sure to like him, and then …”

“What, what then?”

“Then—let them do as they like; only don’t you interfere.”

“Very well,” I say, “very well, I’ll be glad not to interfere in such silliness.”

“There won’t be any silliness.”

“Splendid.”

“And everything will be fine; they’ll be happy!”

“Very glad! Only it won’t do any harm,” I say, “for my brother and you to know and remember that Mashenka’s rich father is a notorious wealthy skinflint.”

“What of it? I can’t dispute that, unfortunately, but it doesn’t keep Mashenka in the least from being a wonderful girl, who is going to make a wonderful wife. You’ve probably forgotten what we’ve lingered over more than once: remember that all the best women in Turgenev, as if by design, had very unrespectable parents.”

“I’m not talking about that at all. Mashenka really is an excellent girl, but her father, in giving her two older sisters in marriage, deceived both sons-in-law and gave them nothing—and he’ll give Masha nothing.”

“Who knows? He loves her most of all.”

“Well, my dear wife, hope springs eternal: we know all about this ‘special’ love for daughters who are getting married. He’ll deceive everybody! And he can’t help deceiving them—he stands on that, and they say he laid the foundation of his fortune by lending money on pledges at high interest. You want love and magnanimity from such a man. But I’m telling you that his first two sons-in-law are both sly foxes themselves, and if he duped them and they’re now big enemies of his, then all the more will my brother, who from a young age has suffered from the most exaggerated delicacy, be left beanless.”

“How do you mean,” she says, “left beanless?”

“Well, my dear wife, there you’re playing the fool.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Do you really not know what it means to be ‘left beanless’? He won’t give Mashenka anything—that’s the long and short of it.”

“Ah, so that’s it!”

“Well, of course.”

“Of course, of course! That all may be,” she says, “only I never thought that, in your opinion, to get a sensible wife, even without a dowry, was what’s known as ‘being left beanless.’ ”

You know that sweet female habit and logic: she’s already wandered off, but you get a neighborly dig in the side …

“I’m not speaking of myself at all …”

“No, really? …”

“Well, that’s strange, ma chère!”

“Why strange?”

“Strange, because I wasn’t saying it on my own account.”

“Well, you were thinking it.”

“No, I was by no means thinking it.”

“Well, you were imagining it.”

“No, devil take it, I wasn’t imagining anything!”

“Why are you shouting?!”

“I’m not shouting.”

“And these ‘devils’ … ‘the devil’ … What’s that?”

“Because you try my patience.”