The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

Finding ourselves in the water, we seized each other’s hands and stood frozen there, while from above us heavy drops of rain were already beginning to fall. But this frozenness saved us from great danger, which we could in no way have avoided if we had gone one step further into the water.

We might easily have slipped and fallen, but fortunately we were embraced by two dark, sinewy arms, and the same muzhik who had looked at us so frighteningly from the hazel said gently:

“Ah, you silly boys, look where you’ve gotten to!”

And with that he picked us up and carried us across the stream.

Coming out on the other bank, he lowered us to the ground, took off his short jacket, which was fastened at the collar by a round brass button, and wiped our wet feet with it.

We looked at him all the while in complete bewilderment and felt ourselves wholly in his power, but—wondrous thing—the features of his face were quickly changing before our eyes. Not only did we see nothing frightening in them now, but, on the contrary, his face seemed to us very kind and pleasant.

He was a sturdy, thickset muzhik with some gray in his hair and mustache—his beard was a clump and also graying, his eyes were lively, quick, and serious, but on his lips there was something close to a smile.

Having wiped as much as he could of the dirt and slime from our feet with the skirt of his jacket, he smiled outright and spoke again:

“You just … never mind … don’t be scared …”

With that he looked around and went on:

“Never mind. There’s a big rainstorm coming!” (By then it had already come.) “You boys won’t make it on foot.”

We only wept silently in reply.

“Never mind, never mind, don’t howl, I’ll carry you!” he said and wiped my brother’s tear-stained face with his palm, which immediately left dirty streaks on it.

“See what dirty hands the muzhik’s got,” our deliverer said and passed his palm over my brother’s face again in the other direction, which didn’t decrease the dirt, but only added shading in the other direction.

“You won’t make it … I’ll take you … No, you won’t make it … and you’ll lose your little boots in the mud. Do you know how to ride?” the muzhik went on again.

I got up enough courage to utter a word and said:

“Yes.”

“Well, all right then!” he said, and in a trice he hoisted me up on one shoulder and my brother on the other, told us to hold hands behind the back of his head, covered us with his jacket, held tight to our knees, and carried us with quick, long strides over the mud, which spread and squelched under his firmly treading feet, shod in big bast shoes.

We sat on his shoulders, covered with his jacket. That must have made for a giant figure, but we were comfortable: the jacket got soaked from the downpour and turned stiff, and we were dry and warm under it. We rocked on our bearer’s shoulders like on a camel, and soon sank into some sort of cataleptic state, but came to ourselves by a spring on our farmstead. For me personally this had been a real, deep sleep, from which I did not awaken all at once. I remember that same muzhik taking us out of the jacket. He was surrounded now by all our Annushkas, and they were all tearing us from his hands and at the same time cursing him mercilessly for something, him and his jacket, which had protected us so well and which they now flung on the ground with the greatest contempt. Besides that, they also threatened him with my father’s arrival, and with running to the village at once to call out the farm people with their flails and set the dogs on him.

I decidedly did not understand the reason for such cruel injustice, and that was not surprising, because at home, under the now ruling interim government, they had formed a conspiracy not to reveal anything to us about the man to whom we owed our salvation.

“You owe him nothing,” our protectresses said. “On the contrary, it was he who caused it all.”

From those words I guessed at once that we had been saved by none other than Selivan himself!

XI

And so it was. The next day, in view of our parents’ return, the fact was revealed to us, and we swore an oath that we would say nothing to our father and mother about the incident that had occurred with us.