The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“How else! Your brother didn’t want to make a formal proposal without talking it over with you once more, but he wants to hasten his wedding, and you, as ill luck would have it, went on sitting in your disgusting court. It was impossible to wait, and they’ve become engaged.”

“Well, splendid,” I say. “There was no reason to wait for me.”

“You’re being witty, it seems?”

“Not in the least.”

“Or ironic?”

“Not ironic either.”

“It would all be useless anyway, because, in spite of your croaking, they’ll be very happy.”

“Of course,” I say, “if you guarantee it, they will be … There’s a proverb: ‘Take three days to choose, and you’ll always lose.’ It’s safer not to choose.”

“You know,” replied my wife, closing the basket of gifts, “it’s you who think you choose us, but essentially that’s all nonsense.”

“Why is it nonsense? I hope it’s not the girls who choose their suitors, but the suitors who do the wooing.”

“Yes, they do the wooing, that’s true, but there’s no such thing as a circumspect or reasonable choice.”

I shook my head and said:

“You should think before you say such a thing. I, for instance, chose you—precisely out of respect for you and being conscious of your merits.”

“Rubbish.”

“Why rubbish?!”

“Rubbish—because you didn’t choose me for my merits at all.”

“For what, then?”

“Because you liked me.”

“So you even deny that you have merits?”

“Not in the least—I do have merits, but all the same you wouldn’t have married me if you hadn’t liked me.”

I felt that what she said was true.

“However,” I said, “I waited a whole year and visited your house.

Why did I do that?”

“In order to look at me.”

“Not true—I was studying your character.”

My wife burst out laughing.

“What’s this senseless laughter?!”

“It’s not senseless at all. You, my dear, were not studying anything in me, and you couldn’t have been.”

“Why not?”

“Shall I tell you?”

“Kindly do!”

“Because you were in love with me.”

“Maybe so, but that didn’t prevent me from seeing your inner qualities.”

“Yes, it did.”

“No, it didn’t.”

“It did, and it will always prevent anyone, and therefore this prolonged studying is useless. You think that when you’re in love with a woman you look at her in a reasoning way, but in fact you only gaze in wonder all the day.”

“Well … after all,” I said, “you make it somehow … very real.”

And I thought to myself: “In fact it’s true!”

And my wife said:

“Enough thinking—there’s no harm done, and now change quickly and we’ll go to Mashenka’s: we’re celebrating Christmas with them tonight, and you should congratulate her and your brother.”

“I’ll be very glad to,” I said. And we went.

IV

Gifts were offered there and congratulations exchanged, and we all drank a fair amount of the merry nectar of Champagne.

There was no more time for thinking and persuading or dissuading. It remained only to uphold in everyone a faith in the happiness that awaited the betrothed couple and to drink champagne. That is how the days and nights were spent, sometimes at our house, sometimes at the house of the bride’s parents.

In such spirits can the time drag out long?

Before we looked twice, New Year’s Eve was upon us. The joyful expectation increased. The whole world wished for joy—and we didn’t lag behind the rest. We ushered in the New Year at Mashenka’s parents’ again, with such “wetting of the whistle,” as our grandfathers used to say, that we also justified the grandfatherly saying: “The joy of Rus’ is to drink.”⁵ Only one thing was wrong. Mashenka’s father said nothing about a dowry, but instead he gave his daughter a very odd and, as I later understood, a totally inadmissible and ill-omened present. He himself, in front of everyone at supper, put on her a rich pearl necklace … We men, looking at the thing, even gave it some good thought.

“Oh-ho-ho, just how much might that be worth? A little thing like that has probably been stored away here since the good old days, when rich people of the nobility did not yet send things to the pawnbroker, but, in great need of money, preferred to entrust their valuables to secret usurers like Mashenka’s father.”

The pearls were big, well-rounded, and extraordinarily alive. The necklace was made in the old style, what’s known as refid—strung starting at the clasp with small but perfect Black Sea pearls, then larger and larger Persian Gulf pearls, then further down came pearls as big as beans, and in the very center three black pearls of remarkable size and the finest brilliance. The beautiful, valuable gift entirely outshone and put to shame my brother’s gifts. In a word, we crude men all found Mashenka’s father’s gift beautiful, and we also liked the words the old man spoke in presenting the necklace. Mashenka’s father, giving her this treasure, said: “Here, my dear daughter, is a little thing with a spell on it: rot will never rot it, nor a thief steal it, and if he does, he won’t be glad of it. It is eternal.”