The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

In those days when there were still serfs, it sometimes happened that landowners’ children nursed the most tender feelings for household serfs and kept their secrets faithfully. That was so with us. We even concealed as well as we could the sins and transgressions of “our people” from our parents. Such relations are mentioned in many works describing the landowner’s life of that time. As for me, our childhood friendship with our former serfs still constitutes my warmest and most pleasant memory. Through them we knew all the needs and cares of the poor life of their relations and friends in the village, and we learned to pity the people. But, unfortunately, those good people were not always fair themselves and were sometimes capable of casting a dark shadow on their neighbor for no important reason, regardless of the harmful consequences it might have. That is how “the people” acted with Selivan, of whose true character and principles they had no wish to know anything substantial, but boldly, not afraid of sinning against justice, spread rumors about him, which in the eyes of all made him into a spook. And, surprisingly, everything that was said about him not only seemed probable, but even had some visible tokens which could make one think that Selivan was in fact a bad man and that horrible villainies took place near his solitary dwelling.

That was what happened now, when we were scolded by those whose duty it was to protect us: not only did they shift all the blame onto Selivan, who had saved us from the storm, but they even heaped a new accusation on him. Apollinary and all the Annushkas told us that, when Apollinary noticed a pretty hill in the forest, which he thought it would be good to declaim from, he ran to that hill across a little gully filled with last year’s fallen leaves, and stumbled there over something soft. This “something soft” turned under Apollinary’s feet and he fell, and as he got up he saw that it was the corpse of a young peasant woman. He noticed that the corpse was dressed in a clean white sarafan with red embroidery, and … its throat was cut, and blood was pouring from it …

Such a terrible unexpectedness could, of course, frighten a man and make him cry out—which was what he did; but the incomprehensible and surprising thing was that Apollinary, as I said, was far from all the others and the only one to stumble over the corpse of the murdered woman, yet all the Annushkas and Roskas swore to God that they had also seen the corpse …

“Otherwise,” they said, “why would we be so frightened?”

And I’m convinced to this day that they weren’t lying, that they were deeply convinced that they had seen a murdered woman in Selivan’s forest, in a clean peasant dress with red embroidery, with her throat cut and blood flowing from it … How could that be?

Since I’m not writing fiction, but what actually happened, I must pause here and add that this incident remained forever unexplained in our house. No one but Apollinary could have seen the murdered woman, who, according to his own words, was lying in a hollow under the leaves, because no one but Apollinary was there. And yet they all swore that they had all seen the dead woman appear in the twinkling of an eye wherever any of them looked. Besides, had Apollinary himself actually seen this woman? It was hardly possible, because it had happened during the thaw, when not all the snow had melted yet. The leaves had lain under the snow since autumn, yet Apollinary saw a body dressed in a clean, white, embroidered dress, and blood was still flowing from the wound … Nothing like that could actually be, and yet they all crossed themselves and swore that they had seen the woman just as she’s been described. And afterwards we were all afraid to sleep at night, and we were all horrified, as if we had committed a crime. Soon I, too, became persuaded that my brother and I had also seen the murdered woman. A general fear set in among us, which ended with the whole affair being revealed to my parents, and my father wrote a letter to the police chief—and he came to us wearing the longest saber and secretly questioned everybody in my father’s study. Apollinary was even called in twice, and the second time the police chief reprimanded him so severely that, when he came out, both his ears were fiery red and one was even bleeding.

That, too, we all saw.