The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“Give me a new, whole candle at once.”

“What do you need a whole one for?”

“That’s none of your business—I won’t be going to bed very soon. Maybe the blizzard will pass and we’ll go on.”

“The blizzard won’t pass.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter—I’ll pay you for the candle.”

“I know you’d pay, but I don’t have a candle.”

“Look for one, my dear!”

“No point looking for what’s not there!”

An extremely weak, high voice unexpectedly mixed into this conversation from behind the partition.

“We have no candle, dear lady.”

“Who is that speaking?” asked my aunt.

“My wife.”

My aunt’s face and the nanny’s brightened a little. The nearby presence of a woman seemed to have something cheering about it.

“Is she sick or something?”

“Yes.”

“With what?”

“An ailment. Go to bed, I need the candle end for the lantern. To bring the horses in.”

And no matter what they said to him, Selivan stood his ground: he needed the candle end, and that was that. He promised to bring it back—but meanwhile he took it and left.

Whether Selivan kept his promise to bring the candle end back—I didn’t see, because my cousin and I fell asleep again, though I kept being troubled by something. Through my sleep I heard the occasional whispering of my aunt and the nanny, and in that whispering I most often heard the word “box.”

Obviously, the nanny and our other people knew that this coffer concealed a great treasure, and everybody had noticed that from the first moment it had caught the greedy attention of our untrustworthy host.

Possessed of great practical experience, my aunt clearly saw the necessity of submitting to circumstances, but then she at once gave orders that suited our dangerous situation.

To keep Selivan from murdering us, it was decided that no one should sleep. Orders were given to unharness the horses, but not to remove the collars, and the coachman and footman both had to sit in the sleigh: they mustn’t separate, because Selivan would kill them one by one, and then we would be helpless. Then he would also murder us and bury us all under the floor, where he had already buried the numerous victims of his fiendishness. The footman and coachman couldn’t stay in the cottage with us, because Selivan could then cut the tugs of the shaft horse, so that it would be impossible to harness up, or else simply hand the whole troika over to his comrades, whom he meanwhile kept hidden somewhere. In that case we would be quite unable to escape, but if the storm let up soon, as might very well happen, then the coachman would start hitching up, Boris would rap three times on the wall, and we would all rush to the yard, get in, and drive off. So as to be constantly at the ready, none of us got undressed.

I don’t know whether the time went quickly or slowly for the others, but for us, the two sleeping boys, it flew by like a single moment, which suddenly ended in a most terrible awakening.

XVI

I woke up because I found it unbearably hard to breathe. When I opened my eyes, I saw precisely nothing, because it was dark all around me, but in the distance something seemed to show gray: that was the window. As in the light of Selivan’s lantern I had at once seen the faces of all the people in that terrible scene, so now I instantly recalled everything—who I was, and where, and why I was there, and who were all my near and dear people in my father’s house—and I felt pity, and pain, and fear for everything and everybody, and I wanted to cry out, but that was impossible. My mouth was tightly covered by a human hand, and a trembling voice was whispering to me:

“Not a sound, quiet, not a sound! We’re lost—somebody’s trying to break in.”

I recognized my aunt’s voice and pressed her hand as a sign that I had understood her request.

A rustling could be heard outside the door to the front hall … Someone was softly stepping from one foot to the other and feeling the wall with his hands … Obviously, the villain was looking for the door but couldn’t find it …

My aunt pressed us to herself and whispered that God might still help us, because she had fortified the door. But at that same moment, probably because we had betrayed ourselves with our whispering and trembling, behind the plank partition where the rest of the cottage was and from where Selivan’s wife had told us about the candle, someone ran and fell upon the one who was softly stealing up to our door, and they both started breaking it down; the door cracked, the table, bench, and suitcases my aunt had piled against it fell to the floor, and in the flung-open doorway appeared the face of Borisushka, with Selivan’s powerful hands around his neck …

Seeing that, my aunt shouted at Selivan and rushed to Boris.

“Dear lady! God has saved us!” wheezed Boris.

Selivan took his hands away and stood there.

“Quick, quick, let’s get out of here,” said my aunt. “Where are our horses?”