The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

All our maids and errand girls, naturally, knew a lot about the fearful Selivan, near whose inn the muzhik Nikolai froze to death. On this occasion they now remembered all of Selivan’s old pranks, which I hadn’t known about before. It now came to light that once, when the coachman Konstantin had gone to town to buy beef, he had heard a pitiful moaning coming from the window of Selivan’s place and the words: “Aie, my hand hurts! Aie, he’s cutting my finger off!”

Big Annushka, the maid, explained that during a blizzard Selivan had seized a carriage with a whole family of gentlefolk, and he was slowly cutting off the fingers of all the children one by one. This horrible barbarism frightened me terribly. Then something still more horrible, and inexplicable besides, happened to the cobbler Ivan. Once, when he was sent to town for shoemaking supplies and, having tarried, was returning home in the evening darkness, a little blizzard arose—and that gave Selivan the greatest pleasure. He immediately got up and went out to the fields, to blow about in the darkness together with Baba Yaga,³ the wood demons, and kikimoras. And the cobbler knew it and was on his guard, but not enough. Selivan leaped out right in front of his nose and barred the way … The horse stopped. But the cobbler, luckily for him, was brave by nature and highly resourceful. He went up to Selivan, as if amiably, and said, “Hi there,” and at the same time stuck him right in the stomach with his biggest and sharpest awl, which he had in his sleeve. The stomach is the only place where a sorcerer can be mortally wounded, but Selivan saved himself by immediately turning into a stout milepost, in which the cobbler’s sharp tool stuck so fast that the cobbler couldn’t pull it out, and he had to part with the awl, much though he needed it in his work.

This last incident was even an offensive mockery of honest people, and everyone became convinced that Selivan was indeed not only a great villain and a cunning sorcerer, but also an impudent fellow, who must be given no quarter. They decided to teach him a harsh lesson; but Selivan was also no slouch and learned a new trick: he began to “shapeshift,” that is, at the slightest danger, even simply at each encounter, he would change his human look and turn before everyone’s eyes into various animate and inanimate objects. True, thanks to the general uprising against him, he suffered a bit despite all his adroitness, but to eradicate him proved impossible, and the struggle against him even assumed a somewhat ridiculous aspect, which offended and angered everyone still more. Thus, for instance, after the cobbler pierced him as hard as he could with his awl, and Selivan saved himself only by managing to turn into a milepost, several people saw the awl stuck into a real milepost. They even tried to pull it out, but the awl broke off, and they brought the cobbler only the worthless wooden handle.

After that, Selivan walked about the forest as if he hadn’t been stuck at all, and turned himself so earnestly into a boar that he ate acorns with pleasure, as if such fruit were suited to his taste. But most often he came out on his tattered black roof in the guise of a red rooster and from there crowed “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” Everybody knew, naturally, that he was not interested in crowing “Cock-a-doodle-doo,” but was spying out whether anyone was coming, so as to prompt the wood demon or kikimora to stir up a good storm and worry him to death. In short, the local people figured out all his tricks so well that they never got caught in the villain’s nets and even took good revenge on Selivan for his perfidy. Once, having turned himself into a boar, he ran into the blacksmith Savely, who was returning on foot from a wedding in Kromy, and they had a real fight, but the blacksmith came out victorious, because, luckily, he happened to have a heavy cudgel in his hand. The were-boar pretended he had no wish to pay the slightest attention to the blacksmith and, grunting heavily, chomped his acorns; but the keen-witted blacksmith saw through his stratagem, which was to let him go by and then attack him from the rear, knock him down, and eat him instead of the acorns. The blacksmith decided to forestall trouble; he raised his cudgel high above his head and whacked the boar on the snout so hard that it squealed pitifully, fell down, and never got up again. And when, after that, the blacksmith began making a hasty getaway, Selivan assumed his human form again and looked at him for a long time from his porch—obviously having the most unfriendly intentions towards him.

After this terrible encounter, the blacksmith even came down with a fever, and only cured himself by taking the quinine powder sent to him from our house as a treatment and scattering it to the winds.