The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

But women have their own point of view on everything, and Mashenka, on receiving the necklace, burst into tears, and my wife, unable to help herself, found a convenient moment and even reprimanded Nikolai Ivanovich at the window, and by family right he heard her out. He deserved to be reprimanded for the gift of pearls, because pearls signify and foretell tears. And therefore pearls are never used as New Year’s gifts.

However, Nikolai Ivanovich deftly laughed it off.

“First of all,” he said, “that is an empty superstition, and if anyone can give me the pearl that Princess Yusupov bought from Gorgibus,⁶ I’ll take it at once. I, madam, also studied these subtleties in my time, and I know what should not be given. Girls should not be given turquoise, because turquoise, in the Persian notion, comes from the bones of people who died of love, and married women should not be given amethysts avec flèches d’Amour,^* and yet I have ventured to makes gifts of such amethysts, and ladies have taken them …

My wife smiled. And he said:

“I’ll also venture to give them to you. And with regard to pearls, it should be known that there are pearls and pearls. Not all pearls are obtained with tears. There are Persian pearls, there are pearls from the Red Sea, and there are pearls from fresh water—d’eau douce, which are obtained without tears. The sentimental Mary Stuart wore only these perles d’eau douce from Scotland’s rivers, but they did not bring her happiness. I know what should be given—and that is what I gave my daughter, but you frighten her. For that I will give you nothing avec flèches d’Amour, I will give you a cold-blooded ‘moonstone.’ But you, my child, don’t cry and put it out of your head that my pearls bring tears. These aren’t like that. I’ll reveal the secret of these pearls to you the day after your wedding, and you’ll see that you needn’t fear any superstitions …”

So it quieted down, and my brother and Mashenka were married after Epiphany, and the next day my wife and I went to visit the young couple.

V

We found them already up and in a remarkably cheerful state of mind. My brother himself opened the door to the lodgings he had rented in a hotel for the wedding day, and met us beaming all over and rocking with laughter.

This reminded me of an old novel in which the new husband went out of his mind with happiness, and I mentioned it to my brother, to which he replied:

“And what do you think, such a thing has actually happened to me as could make a man doubt his reason. My family life, having begun today, has brought me not only the expected joys from my dear wife, but quite unexpected prosperity from my father-in-law.”

“What on earth has happened?”

“Come in, I’ll tell you.”

My wife whispers:

“Must be the old scoundrel duped them.”

I reply:

“That’s none of my business.”

We went in and my brother handed us an opened letter, which had come addressed to them early in the morning by the city post, and in the letter we read the following:

“The superstition concerning pearls can in no way threaten you: those pearls are false.”

My wife sank into a chair.

“What a scoundrel!” she said.

But my brother nodded his head in the direction of the bedroom, where Mashenka was finishing her toilette, and said:

“You’re wrong: the old man has acted quite honestly. I received this letter, read it, and burst out laughing … What was sad for me here? I wasn’t looking or asking for a dowry, I was only looking for a wife, and so there was nothing distressing to me in the fact that the pearls of the necklace weren’t real but false. Let the necklace be worth not thirty thousand but a mere three hundred roubles—isn’t it all the same to me, so long as my wife is happy? … Only one thing worried me—how to break it to Masha? I fell to thinking about that and sat down facing the window, and so I didn’t notice that I’d forgotten to bolt the door. A few minutes later I turned and suddenly saw that my father-in-law was standing behind me and holding something wrapped in a handkerchief.

“ ‘Greetings, my dear son-in-law!’ he says.

“I jumped up, embraced him, and said:

“ ‘How nice! We were to go to you in an hour, and here you … It’s against all the customs … How nice and how precious.’

“ ‘Well,’ he replies, ‘who’s counting! We’re family. I went to the liturgy—prayed for you, and here I’ve brought you a prosphora.’⁷

“Again I embraced him and kissed him.

“ ‘Did you get my letter?’ he asks.

“ ‘I certainly did,’ I say.

“And I burst out laughing.

“He looks at me.

“ ‘Why are you laughing?’ he says.

“ ‘And what should I do? It’s very amusing.’

“ ‘Amusing?’

“ ‘Certainly.’

“ ‘Give me those pearls.’

“The necklace was right there in a case on the table—I gave it to him.

“ ‘Do you have a magnifying glass?’

“I say: ‘No.’

“ ‘In that case, I do. Out of old habit, I always have it with me. Please look at the clasp under the dog.’

“ ‘Why should I look?’

“ ‘No, have a look. Maybe you think I’m deceiving you?’

“ ‘Not at all.’