The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

At home I endured it all, but I also couldn’t show my face outside, because as soon as they saw me, the market folk started teasing me:

“He’s the one who took the deacon’s watch.”

No living at home, no going out.

Only the orphan girl Mavrutka smiled at me.

But the matchmaker Matryona Terentyevna saved me and helped me out. She was a simple woman, but a kindly one.

“My fine lad,” she says, “would you like to have your head put back on your shoulders? I’ll do it so that, if anybody laughs at you, you won’t feel it.”

I say:

“Please do, I’m disgusted with life.”

“Well, then,” she says, “listen to me alone. You and I will go to Mtsensk, pray zealously to St. Nicholas, and offer him a candle big as a post; and I’ll marry you to a picture of beauty, whom you’ll live with all your life, thanking God and remembering me, and protecting poor orphans, because I have a soft spot for orphans.”

I replied that I myself felt pity for orphans, but that no decent sort of girl would marry me now.

“Why not? That’s all nonsense. This girl’s intelligent. You didn’t take from your own household, you brought to it. That makes a difference. I’ll tell her how to understand it, and she’ll see it clearly, and she’ll marry you all right. And we’ll travel so nicely to St. Nicholas with full satisfaction: the horse will pull a little cart with our load, with a samovar, with provisions, and we three will go by foot along the roadside, we’ll take that trouble for the saint’s sake: you, and me, and her, and I’ll take an orphan girl to keep me company. And she, my swan, Alyonushka, also pities orphans. They’ll let her go to Mtsensk with me. And you and she will walk and walk, then sit down, and sit and sit, and then take to the road again and get to talking, and the talking will lead to loving, and once you’ve tasted love, you’ll see that in it is all our life and joy, and our desire is to live in family quietude. And then you’ll just spit on all people’s talk, and not even look their way. So all will be well, and your former pranks will be forgotten.”

I obtained mama’s leave to go to St. Nicholas and heal my soul, and the rest all went as the matchmaker Matryona Terentyevna had said. I became friends with the girl Alyonushka, and I forgot about all those happenings; and once I married her and a children’s spirit came to our house, mama also calmed down, and to this day I live and keep saying: Blessed art thou, O Lord!

* Podlyot, in old Orel speech, was the same as the Moscow word zhulik or the Petersburg word mazurik (“rogue, swindler, cheat”). Author. (We translate it by the old thieves’ word “prigger.” Trans.)

Notes

Biblical quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the King James Version.

The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

(1865)

  1. the lives of the Kievan saints: A collection of writings about monks from the Monastery of the Caves in Kiev (founded in 1015) and the history of the monastery, based on letters exchanged in the early thirteenth century by Simon, bishop of Suzdal, and the monk Polycarp.

  2. include him in the communion: That is, write his name down on a list of those to be prayed for by the priest during the preparation of the bread and wine for communion.

  3. the feast of the Entrance: The full title is “The Feast of the Entrance of the Mother of God into the Temple,” commemorating Mary’s first entrance as a child into the temple of Jerusalem, where she was met by the high priest Zacharias. It is celebrated on November 21.

  4. St. Feodor Stratilatos: Theodore Stratilatos, or Stratelates (“the General”), military commander of the city of Heraclea Pontica, a fourth-century Greek martyr, executed by the Roman emperor Licinius for declaring himself a Christian and refusing to take part in a pagan celebration.

  5. the social-democratic communes of Petersburg: The first experiments by Russian nihilists in alternative social organization. In the early 1860s, the nihilists took Leskov for their ideological opponent and vilified him in their writings—hence the sarcasm here.