The Big Book of Classic Fantasy

by The Big Book of Classic Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  Amabel pressed all the buttons at once, and instantly felt obliged to blink. The blink over, she saw on the cushion by her side a silver tray with vanilla ice, boiled chicken, and white sauce, almonds (blanched), peppermint creams, and mashed potatoes, and a long glass of lemonade—beside the tray was a book. It was Mrs. Ewing’s Bad-tempered Family, and it was bound in white vellum.

  There is nothing more luxurious than eating while you read—unless it be reading while you eat. Amabel did both: they are not the same thing, as you will see if you think the matter over.

  And just as the last thrill of the last spoonful of ice died away, and the last full stop of the Bad-tempered Family met Amabel’s eye, the train stopped, and hundreds of railway officials in white velvet shouted, “Whereyouwantogoto! Get out!”

  A velvety porter, who was somehow like a silkworm as well as like a wedding handkerchief sachet, opened the door.

  “Now!” he said, “come on out, Miss Amabel, unless you want to go to Whereyoudon’twantogoto.”

  She hurried out, on to an ivory platform.

  “Not on the ivory, if you please,” said the porter, “the white Axminster carpet—it’s laid down expressly for you.”

  Amabel walked along it and saw ahead of her a crowd, all in white.

  “What’s all that?” she asked the friendly porter.

  “It’s the Mayor, dear Miss Amabel,” he said, “with your address.”

  “My address is The Old Cottage, Amberley,” she said, “at least it used to be”—and found herself face to face with the Mayor. He was very like Uncle George, but he bowed low to her, which was not Uncle George’s habit, and said:

  “Welcome, dear little Amabel. Please accept this admiring address from the Mayor and burgesses and apprentices and all the rest of it, of Whereyouwantogoto.”

  The address was in silver letters, on white silk, and it said:

  “Welcome, dear Amabel. We know you meant to please your aunt. It was very clever of you to think of putting the greenhouse flowers in the bare flower-bed. You couldn’t be expected to know that you ought to ask leave before you touch other people’s things.”

  “Oh, but,” said Amabel quite confused. “I did…”

  But the band struck up, and drowned her words. The instruments of the band were all of silver, and the bandsmen’s clothes of white leather. The tune they played was “Cheero!”

  Then Amabel found that she was taking part in a procession, hand in hand with the Mayor, and the band playing like mad all the time. The Mayor was dressed entirely in cloth of silver, and as they went along he kept saying, close to her ear, “You have our sympathy, you have our sympathy,” till she felt quite giddy.

  There was a flower show—all the flowers were white. There was a concert—all the tunes were old ones. There was a play called Put yourself in her place. And there was a banquet, with Amabel in the place of honour.

  They drank her health in white wine whey, and then through the Crystal Hall of a thousand gleaming pillars, where thousands of guests, all in white, were met to do honour to Amabel, the shout went up—“Speech, speech!”

  I cannot explain to you what had been going on in Amabel’s mind. Perhaps you know. Whatever it was it began like a very tiny butterfly in a box, that could not keep quiet, but fluttered, and fluttered, and fluttered. And when the Mayor rose and said:

  “Dear Amabel, you whom we all love and understand; dear Amabel, you who were so unjustly punished for trying to give pleasure to an unresponsive aunt; poor, ill-used, ill-treated, innocent Amabel; blameless, suffering Amabel, we await your words,” that fluttering, tiresome butterfly-thing inside her seemed suddenly to swell to the size and strength of a fluttering albatross, and Amabel got up from her seat of honour on the throne of ivory and silver and pearl, and said, choking a little, and extremely red about the ears—

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t want to make a speech, I just want to say, ‘Thank you,’ and to say—to say—to say…”

  She stopped, and all the white crowd cheered.

  “To say,” she went on as the cheers died down, “that I wasn’t blameless, and innocent, and all those nice things. I ought to have thought. And they were Auntie’s flowers. But I did want to please her. It’s all so mixed. Oh, I wish Auntie was here!”

  And instantly Auntie was there, very tall and quite nice-looking, in a white velvet dress and an ermine cloak.

  “Speech,” cried the crowd. “Speech from Auntie!”

  Auntie stood on the step of the throne beside Amabel, and said:

  “I think, perhaps, I was hasty. And I think Amabel meant to please me. But all the flowers that were meant for the winter…well—I was annoyed. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, Auntie, so am I—so am I,” cried Amabel, and the two began to hug each other on the ivory step, while the crowd cheered like mad, and the band struck up that well-known air, “If you only understood!”

  “Oh, Auntie,” said Amabel among hugs, “This is such a lovely place, come and see everything, we may, mayn’t we?” she asked the Mayor.

  “The place is yours,” he said, “and now you can see many things that you couldn’t see before. We are The People who Understand. And now you are one of Us. And your aunt is another.”

  I must not tell you all that they saw because these things are secrets only known to The People who Understand, and perhaps you do not yet belong to that happy nation. And if you do, you will know without my telling you.

  And when it grew late, and the stars were drawn down, somehow, to hang among the trees, Amabel fell asleep in her aunt’s arms beside a white foaming fountain on a marble terrace, where white peacocks came to drink.

  * * *

  —

  She awoke on the big bed in the spare room, but her aunt’s arms were still round her.

  “Amabel,” she was saying, “Amabel!”

  “Oh, Auntie,” said Amabel sleepily, “I am so sorry. It was stupid of me. And I did mean to please you.”

  “It was stupid of you,” said the aunt, “but I am sure you meant to please me. Come down to supper.” And Amabel has a confused recollection of her aunt’s saying that she was sorry, adding, “Poor little Amabel.”

  If the aunt really did say it, it was fine of her. And Amabel is quite sure that she did say it.

  * * *

  —

  Amabel and her great-aunt are now the best of friends. But neither of them has ever spoken to the other of the beautiful city called “Whereyouwantogoto.” Amabel is too shy to be the first to mention it, and no doubt the aunt has her own reasons for not broaching the subject.

  But of course they both know that they have been there together, and it is easy to get on with people when you and they alike belong to the Peoplewhounderstand.

  If you look in the A.B.C. that your people have you will not find “Whereyouwantogoto.” It is only in the red velvet bound copy that Amabel found in her aunt’s best bedroom.

  Aleksey Mikhaylovich Remizov (1877–1957) was a Russian modernist writer with a passion for the bizarre. He started writing for periodicals, but his real fame came with the publication of The Indefatigable Tambourine (1910), a whimsical and grotesque narrative of provincial life. In the same year, he published one of his most popular works, Sisters of the Cross. Commonly known for his fairy tales and his symbolistic novels, he was adept at integrating the surreal into his work. Due to his experience with wrongful exile in 1897, Remizov stayed away from politics and emigrated to Berlin after the Bolsheviks came into power. “Sacrifice” is one of his earlier works, and in 1911 he published a novel by the same name. “Sacrifice” is a beautifully eloquent story of the gothic that flirts with the fantastical.

  Sacrifice

  Aleksey Remizov

  Translated by Ekaterina Sedia

  FIRST CHAPTER

  TRULY, ANYONE WHO
HAD ever visited Blagodatnoye would not be lying if they praised the old Borodin’s homestead. And it was not without reason Blagodatnoye was called that: you could not imagine a better place, even though there were no grapevines in its gardens and birds of paradise were not singing in its branches, but it was so: it was as if God’s grace was nurturing its very soil.

  The old mansion with its stately columns, the maple allée, the orchards and the fields, the forest, the cattle, and the people—everything here delighted not only Blagodatnoye’s neighbors but every visitor from far-away lands, any sneering close-cropped denizen of St. Petersburg, and every spoiled and unkempt Muscovite.

  The house is in order, and a veritable cornucopia! Even bees would be jealous.

  Mr. Borodin himself, Pyotr Nikolayevich, was a known eccentric and a joker, you wouldn’t find another one like him. Wherever he went, in any company and fine society, hilarity followed him and never stopped. Whether they knew him or they didn’t, they all roared with merriment, regardless.

  Only the face of the gray-haired, never changing joker was odd: years went by, his fortieth birthday came and went, but his expression stayed the same, as if it was stamped over his unmoving frozen features once and forever. And it was even odder when everyone all but rolled on the floor busting their guts with laughter, as his face remained calm—neither a smile nor a titter, only terrible glimmers in his sunken dull eyes. And even stranger was his speech that made everyone so joyful, it had a mechanical echo to it, like a talking doll, and when once someone tried to record his jokes, on paper his words were simple and ordinary, and not at all funny.

  And despite such, you would think, incongruous appearance of Pyotr Nikolayevich Borodin and inappropriateness of his jokes, no one seemed to think to ask: what’s his secret and why is it so amusing and hilarious? Only once some lover of enigmas—there is always one—tried to explain him, aiming for the heart of the matter: there’s a play of his features, and artful expressions and mimicry, and very amusing way of talking—yes, yes, of course, that must be it. Fortunately such explanations never made any impression: no one wanted to ask anything, and why would they? It was distracting and joyful, and what else would one want?

  * * *

  —

  Pyotr Nikolayevich was not serving at any offices, and was not involved in any community affairs. Once he was elected the County Marshal of Nobility. Soon enough everyone had had enough of that memorable Borodin’s marshaldom. Not because he did poorly or because of any disasters, but rather the contrary: no one remembers a merrier year. Every problem became an amusement and every task was so entertaining that at the end there was such confusion and so many discrepancies and silliness that it took a long while to straighten things out. And those who didn’t know Pyotr Nikolayevich could have thought, God forbid, that he was a bit touched in the head (and it was rumored that someone in St. Petersburg said just that either in a salon or in a report). It was pure luck that everything had ended well.

  Every living man has his eccentricities, everyone has his own manner. So Pyotr Nikolayevich is not an exception.

  He also liked tidying up, everything to its place, and he did it so cunningly that after his tidying whatever he tidied could never be found again: many things, some of them quite necessary, disappeared in this manner. And he also liked straightening up by moving around the tables and the chairs, etageres, by re-hanging the paintings from one wall to another, by moving around the books in his library, and this is how he spent his days from morning until lunch. At dinner, he preferred scrumptious dishes, such as tripe, marrow, and shanks, and often didn’t know his measure and overstuffed himself, and always complained about his stomach. He liked to light up the fires—he was always chilly—and with a long poker he walked from one hearth to the next, stirring the embers. He would talk to the help in the house and the serfs, but even though he talked business, everything came out as nonsense at the end. As a sad and undesirable consequence of that, no one was not only fearful of him but—can’t keep this a secret!—no one had faith in Pyotr Nikolayevich. Also, joking and fooling around, he would promise impossible things, such as he would gift his land to any comer, even though not by a great measure, more like a step across and three steps in length—such jester’s share. What else? Oh yes: he had a real passion for cutting chicken’s throats, and he was as good as a chef: his hens didn’t flap around and run about headless, as happens with awkward hands. And he also liked seeing the dead: and the more disgusting were the corpse’s features, the stronger was the smell of decay, the more attractive he found them. Every time someone died in the village, the priest Father Ivan would let the Borodins know; they immediately tacked the horses and readied the carriage, and Ivan Nikolayevich dropped everything and flew to the house where the corpse happened to be.

  Such frightful passions, as Aleksandra Pavlovna, his wife, would say when teasing her spoiled husband (whom, it should be said, she adored), Pyotr Nikolayemvich’s excitements mostly dealt with such domestic details that wouldn’t be worth even mentioning if it wasn’t for one spurious rumor that stained the honor and reputation of the entire Blagodatnoye.

  Two years ago an old friend of Pyotr Nikolayevich, also a former St. Petersburg lycee graduate, visited Blagodatnoye. He had not seen his friend since their St. Petersburg days. The reasons for his visit remained unclear: he did not announce them, and his valet spoke only vaguely in the manservants’ quarters: either it was the matter of land shares or the General was surveying the provinces. But it wasn’t that important: couldn’t an old friend visit out of pure curiosity?

  The guest was welcomed with open arms. Aleksandra Pavlovna met him and lamented that not everyone was around—the children scattered, and she worried that the visit would be dull. But the guest was so charming, and talked about their close friendship with Pyotr Nikolayevich back in St. Petersburg, and he didn’t seem to be in need of much company as he waited for his friend’s return. Pyotr Nikolayevich, unfortunately, was away since morning, visiting some corpse in the village, and returned home late at night. The friends reunited. And this is when the misfortune happened. The guest was visibly scared and shaken, that he was trembling in his boots. Either he did not recognize his friend—or he did recognize him but noticed such changes in him that his head spun—or maybe he noticed in his face, gait, and speech something so unexpected, impossible, unlikely—but who knows!—that the guest took a step back, and waving his arms, fainted.

  Taciturn and sorrowful, glancing about with suspicion and agreeing with everything that anyone said, and with that pathetic smile of a man caught suddenly in between the plates of a vise that can squash one flat, the guest stayed a week, and one morning, babbling incoherently and waving about some upside-down papers, out of his mind, he rode out of Blagodatnoye only in his underclothes and left his luggage behind. And soon after his departure the rumors and the tongue-wagging started among the neighbors and even in the city.

  They said that there was nothing exceptional about Blagodatnoye, that the famed Borodin mansion was a very average house, and come to think of it, had some flaws—one half very visibly renovated after the fire, and the garden was just a garden—sure, it was old and offered a lovely shade, but if you traveled around Russia you’d know that there were plenty of others just like it. As for fields and forests—what could you say?—the fields were spacious and the forest delightful, but nothing everyone hadn’t seen before; as for people—they were, to be frank, trash: poor, with hardly any land, and one day they would move and then come back, and if there were any unrests, even if they didn’t set the mansion on fire or poked the horses’ eyes out (like they did to the neighbor Bessonov’s horses), even they would still talk about burning down the mansion, wrecking everything, and taking Borodin’s land. And when it came to Pyotr Nikolayevich, they said such God-awful nonsense that it’s a shame to repeat that. And they told their friends and their enemies to avoid Blagodatnoye even und
er the most dire of circumstances: the place was cursed.

  Some old friends advised Aleksandra Pavlovna to complain to the governor, but she would not hear of it. To her eyes, the rumors contained not a drop of truth, and there was no use in making waves. After all, who knows what some suspicious mind can imagine—they only want to make trouble. And the rumors stopped all by themselves by and by: maybe people were not as stupid as they seemed.

  After the rumors all died down, everyone remembered that Blagodatnoye was an Eden on earth, the Borodin family was exemplary, and Pyotr Nikolayevich was a known eccentric and such a joker, you wouldn’t find another one like him.

  The head of the family was Aleksandra Pavlovna: the order and the abundance of Blagodatnoye was credited to her attentive eye alone. She was of strict temper, few of words, and Aleksandra Pavlovna kept everyone in line without them ever talking back: everyone was afraid of her, and respected her word. She got married early and for love, and from the first year of marriage their children started: one son and three daughters, all a year apart. Aleksandra Pavlovna’s life went by in looking after the household and the finances, which, as the children grew older, grew more complicated and pressing, and her burdens seemed endless. But she was ready to carry a mountain on her shoulders, as long as her children and husband were content—and neither the children nor the husband ever complained.

  At nights, happy and joyful, she would sit at her grand piano; her strong fingers, confidently touching the keys, brought forth a great and festive sound—and the tall rooms filled with grandeur and gaiety.

  And if there were a desperate wanderer looking through the brightly lit windows from the outside, he would look at her with such envy, at her contentment with her home; and an unfortunate man would curse his lot if he ever met her happy gaze; and if a blind man ever heard her voice, with such resignation and faith he would follow her!