The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“No, just report that we’re here on a secret matter; we’re ashamed to explain it in front of people. Here’s another.”

The prince pocketed the fifty-kopeck piece and five minutes later called us:

“Come in, please.”

XV

Tsyganok was a thickset Ukrainian—exactly like a black cockroach; bristling mustaches, and the crudest Ukrainian-style conversation.

My uncle, in his own way, his Elets way, wanted to go up to him, but he shouted:

“Speak from a distance.”

We stopped.

“What’s your business?”

My uncle says:

“First of all—this.”

And he placed a sweetener on the table, wrapped in paper. Tsyganok covered it up.

Then my uncle began his story:

“I’m a merchant and a church warden from Elets, I came here yesterday on a church necessity; I’m staying with my relations beyond the Plautin Well …”

“So it was you who got robbed last night, was it?”

“Exactly. My nephew and I were on our way home at eleven o’clock, and an unknown man was following us, and as we started to cross the ice between the barges, he …”

“Wait a minute … And who was the third one with you?”

“There was no third one with us, besides this thief, who rushed …”

“But who got drowned there last night?”

“Drowned?”

“Yes!”

“We know nothing about that.”

The police chief rang and said to the constable:

“Take them to the clink!”

My uncle pleaded:

“For pity’s sake, Your Honor! Why? … We ourselves came to tell …”

“Wasn’t it you who drowned the man?”

“We never even heard anything about any drowning. Who got drowned?”

“Nobody knows. A mucked-up beaver hat was found by a hole in the ice, but who was wearing it—nobody knows.”

“A beaver hat!?”

“Yes. Show him the hat, let’s see what he says.”

The constable took my uncle’s hat from the closet.

My uncle says:

“That’s my hat. A thief snatched it off me yesterday on the ice.”

Tsyganok batted his eyes.

“What thief? Stop blathering! The thief didn’t take a hat, the thief stole a watch.”

“A watch? Whose watch, Your Honor?”

“The Nicetas deacon’s.”

“The Nicetas deacon’s!”

“Yes, and he was beaten badly, this Nicetas deacon.”

We were simply astounded.

So that’s who we worked over!

Tsyganok says:

“Must be you know these crooks.”

“Yes,” my uncle replies, “it’s us.”

And he told how it all happened.

“Where is this watch now?”

“If you please—here’s the one watch, and here’s the other.”

“And that’s all?”

My uncle slips him another sweetener and says:

“Here’s more for you.”

He covers it up and says:

“Bring the deacon here!”

XVI

The lean deacon comes in, all beaten up and his head bandaged.

Tsyganok looks at me and says:

“See?!”

I bow and say:

“Your Honor, I’m ready to endure anything, only please don’t send me to some far-off place. I’m my mother’s only son.”

“No, tell me, are you a Christian or not? Is there any feeling in you?”

I see the conversation isn’t going right and say:

“Uncle, give him a sweetener for me, they’ll pay you back at home.”

My uncle gives it.

“How did this happen to you?”

The deacon began telling how “the whole company of us were in the Boris and Gleb Inn, and everything was very good and noble, but then, for a bribe, the innkeeper put strangers under the bed so they could listen, and one of the Elets merchants got offended, and a fight came of it. I quietly put my coat on and left, but when I went around the office building, I see two men on the lookout ahead of me. I stop to let them go further, and they stop; I go on—so do they. And suddenly I hear somebody else from far away overtaking me from behind … I got completely frightened, rushed ahead, and the first two turned towards me in the narrow passage between the barges and blocked my way … And the one from the hill behind had almost caught up with me. I prayed in my mind: ‘Lord bless me!’ and bent down to slip between these two, and so I did, but they ran after me, knocked me down, beat me, and snatched my watch … Here’s what’s left of the chain.”

“Show me the chain.”

He put the piece of chain together with the one attached to the watch and said:

“There you are. Look, is this your watch?”

The deacon says:

“It’s mine all right, and I’d like to have it back.”

“That’s impossible, it has to stay here till the investigation.”

“And what did I get beaten for?” he says.

“That you can ask them.”

Here my uncle intervened.

“Your Honor! There’s no point in asking us. We are indeed to blame, it was we who beat the father deacon, and we’ll make up for it. We’re taking him to Elets with us.”

But the deacon was so offended that he didn’t see things that way at all.

“No,” he says, “God forbid I ever agree to go to Elets. Forget it! I was just about to accept, and right off you give me this treatment.”

My uncle says:

“Father deacon, this is all a matter of a mistake.”

“A fine mistake, when I can’t turn my head anymore.”

“We’ll get you cured.”

“No,” he says, “I don’t want your cures, I always go to the attendant at Finogeich’s bathhouse to get cured, but you can pay me a thousand roubles to build a house.”

“That we’ll do.”

“It’s no joke. I’m not to be beaten … I have my clerical dignity.”

“We’ll satisfy your dignity, too.”

And Tsyganok also started helping my uncle: