The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

My father died when I was going on sixteen. The business was managed by my mother, Arina Leontyevna, and an old clerk, and at the time I only looked on. In everything, by paternal will, I was totally obedient to my mother. I never got up to any mischief or naughtiness, and I was zealous and fearful towards the Church of the Lord. Mama’s sister, my aunt, the venerable widow Katerina Leontyevna, also lived with us. She was a most pious, saintly woman. We were of churchly faith, as father had been, and belonged to the parish of the Protection, served by the reverend Father Efim, but Aunt Katerina Leontyevna adhered to the old ways: she drank from her own special glass and went to the Old Believers in the fish market to pray.³ My mama and aunt were from Elets, and there, in Elets and in Livny, they had very good kin, but they rarely saw them, because the Elets merchants like to boast before the Orel merchants and often get belligerent in company.

Our house by the Plautin Well wasn’t big, but it was very well appointed, merchant-style, and our way of life was the strictest. Having lived in the world for nineteen years, I knew my way only to the granaries or the barges on the riverbank, when they were being loaded, and on Sundays to the early service in the Protection—and from the service straight back home, so as to give proof to my mama by telling her what the Gospel reading was about and whether Father Efim gave any sermon; and Father Efim had a degree in divinity, and when he applied himself to a sermon, there was no understanding it. After Kamensky, our theater was kept by Turchaninov and then by Molotkovsky,⁴ but not for anything would mama allow me to go to the theater, or even to the Vienna tavern to drink tea. “You’ll hear nothing good there in the Vienna,” she’d say. “You’d better sit at home and eat pickled apples.” Only once or twice a winter was a full pleasure allowed me: to go out and see how Constable Bogdanov and the archdeacon turned their fighting geese loose or how the townsfolk and seminarians got into fistfights.

At that time many people in our town kept fighting geese and turned them loose on Kromskaya Square; but the foremost goose was Constable Bogdanov’s: he’d tear the wing off another fighter alive; and so that nobody would feed his goose soaked peas or harm him in some other way, the constable used to carry him on his back in a basket—he loved him so much. The archdeacon’s goose was clay-colored and gabbled and hissed terribly when he fought. A numerous public would gather. And for fistfights the townsfolk and the seminarians gathered on the ice, on the Oka, near the monastery, or at the Navugorskaya Gate; they got together there and went, wall against wall, across the whole street. It was often quite desperate. There was only this one rule, to hit in the belly and not in the face, and not to put big copper coins in your mittens. But, anyhow, this rule wasn’t obeyed. It often happened that they’d drag a man home in their arms and he’d pass away before he had time to confess. A lot of them were left alive, but then wasted away. Mama gave me permission only to watch, but not to stand in the wall myself. I sinned, though, by disobeying my late parent in that: my strength and daring urged me on, and if the townsfolk’s wall wavered, and the seminary wall really piled onto it and drove it back—then I sometimes couldn’t help myself and joined in. From early on my strength was such that, as soon as I jumped onto the driven-back wall and cried: “God bless us, boys! Beat the clericals!” and lit into the seminarians facing me, they’d all just scatter. But I wasn’t seeking glory for myself, and I used to ask for just one thing: “Please, brothers, be so kind, don’t mention my name!”—because I was afraid my mama would find out.

I lived like that until I was nineteen, and was so terribly healthy that I began to have fainting fits and nosebleeds. Then mama began thinking of getting me married, so that I wouldn’t start visiting the Sekerens’ brewery or playing around with rebaptized girls.⁵

III

On account of that, matchmakers in sack coats started coming to us from Nizhnaya, Kromskaya, and Karachevskaya Streets, offering my mother various brides for me. All this was carried out in secret from me, so that everybody knew more than I did. Even our fullers in the shed used to say:

“Your mama’s going to get you married, Mikhailo Mikhailych. How agreeable are you to that? Watch out—you know, your wife’s going to tickle you after the wedding, but don’t be timid—tickle her sides all you can, or else she’ll out-tickle you.”