The Little Devil and Other Stories

by Alexei Remizov

  “Bubuka!” his voice rings out. “Has the steamer come?”

  “I don’t know, what about the squeaker?”

  “I don’t have a whistle, you make me one, Bubuka!”

  And Bebka runs to me and we start talking about squeakers, yellow flowers, and the goat.

  I was getting ready to leave.

  The evening was burning out—raspberry colored, it lolled on the quiet river.

  The briar was starting to flower.

  They brought Bebka to say goodbye, they were getting him ready for bed.

  “Say goodbye to Bubuka, he’ll never come see us again!”

  Bebka, sleepy, pursed his lips and suddenly saw a pile of colorful river stones on my table.

  “What’s that, Bubuka?”

  “I eat that, food for the road.”

  “Give them to me!”

  “Well, take them, to remember me by, Bebka.”

  He grew animated, gathered all the stones in his hat, and hurried to go home. But when he tried to put on the hat, the stones scattered, and he started whining.

  “Go to bed, Bebka, I’ll bring you all the stones, well, farewell, Bebka, farewell!”

  And they took Bebka away.

  And I was left with the stones, and they weren’t even mine.

  02

  PETUSHOK THE COCKEREL

  PETKA AND HIS GRANDMOTHER LIVE IN POVERTY IN MOSCOW THROUGH THE FATEFUL YEAR OF 1905, WHEN RUSSIA SUFFERED A HUMILIATING LOSS IN THE WAR WITH JAPAN AND THE FIRST RUSSIAN REVOLUTION SWEPT THROUGH ST. PETERSBURG, THE CAPITAL, AND MOSCOW. THE UNEMPLOYED AND HUNGRY STORMED THE STREETS. FOR PETKA AND HIS FRIENDS, IT IS AN EXCITING ADVENTURE. FOR HIS PIOUS GRANDMOTHER, IT IS A TRAGEDY. AMONG THE MANY DIMINUTIVES FOR PETER, INCLUDING PETKA AND PETYA, IS PETUSHOK, WHICH ALSO MEANS “COCKEREL.”

  Petka, a curious child who enjoyed doing nothing, tagged along on a pilgrimage with his grandmother.

  It was quite a trip.

  It was free and easy for Petka: hopping here, racing off there, but his grandmother was old, her legs ached, she could scarcely draw breath.

  And she had so many scares and worries with Petka—the scamp could break his neck at any moment or poke his nose in a bad place, who knows!

  But there was laughter, too: the old woman had not laughed like that in her life, she shook her old bones in her old age. He joked in so many ways: pretending to be a bear or a goat, or cuckooing like a cuckoo, or croaking like a frog.

  And he got up to so many pranks: he scared his grandmother to death.

  “There’s no more crackers,” he said, “I ate them all, but here, I got some worms for you!”

  “A fine pilgrimage, and we haven’t even traveled half the way, Lord!”

  But Petka teased his grandmother for a bit and then suddenly handed her a fistful not of worms but strawberries, and such strawberries you would lick all your fingers. And the crackers were all there, too.

  Soon there was a different song. The travelers were exhausted. Grandmother kept praying, and Petka sang, “Lord have mercy.”

  And so, step by step, slowly but surely, they reached the monastery. They got there just in time for matins. They stood through the matins, they stood through the liturgy, and went to venerate the relics and icons.

  Petka wanted to look at the relics, to see what was inside, he pestered his grandmother, and Grandmother said:

  “It’s forbidden, it’s a sin!”

  Petka got cranky. Grandmother tried this and that, bought him a cross on a red ribbon, and well, he calmed down after a bit.

  As soon as he calmed down, he started up again. He dragged Grandmother to the belfry to look at the bell. They clambered and crawled with no end in sight, their legs buckling. They barely made it.

  Petka, like a little bell, sang and roared—imitating a bell. And then—he grabbed the rope to ring the bell. Thank God, a monk pulled him away, or who knows what would have happened.

  They managed to get down from the belfry and sat down in a cool spot for a snack. Here a little old man, a wanderer, started telling the life of a saint. Petka did not miss a single word, he could have listened forever.

  As soon as the heat died down, they started back.

  Petka was silent the whole way, thinking hard: should he join the robbers, like the saint the old wanderer was telling about, become a sinner and then turn to God and go off to a monastery?

  “It’s good in the monastery,” Petka daydreamed. “The vestments are so very gold, and you can climb up to the belfry any time you want, and no one will box your ears, and you could look at the relics. Everything is allowed a monk; a monk is long-maned.”

  Grandmother moaned and prayed.

  Petka would give up bread if he just had the freedom to run around. It was warm, as if it were summer. So once the restless rascal got started, you wouldn’t see him all the live-long day, and in the evening, you look and see him dragging himself home. He would eat, pray to God, and go to sleep—rolling up into a ball like a marmot, snuffling.

  Petka helped Grandmother chop cabbage.

  “Grandmother, I’ll chop it into flour, we’ll have enough to bake pies in the winter,” the chatterbox insisted and chopped like a real cook: at that rate he would chop off his finger and Grandmother’s, too.

  He didn’t gorge on the cabbage stumps, even though he loved them, but saved them: he’d make a pile, wait, and then carry them off somewhere. Grandmother couldn’t understand it: she thought he was taking them for the cow.

  Not the cow at all!

  Grandmother kept a very old trunk under the bed, iron clad, and in it Grandmother kept her death shirt, backless shoes, a shroud, and something handwritten along with a whisk—the old woman had brought it back from the Kiev relics with her own hands, a blessing from the cave keeper priest. And Petka was stacking the cabbage stumps in that very trunk.

  “They’ll come in handy in the next world, it’s not too tasty just licking a frying pan …”

  It happened on the holy day of the Exaltation of the Cross that Grandmother needed something from the trunk, she opened the lid, and sat down on the spot out of fear.

  When she came to her senses, she crossed herself, threw out each and every stump from the trunk, and sprinkled herself with holy water, for truly strong was the evil one, the thrice-cursed serpent.

  They, the unclean, Petka’s cabbage stumps, began appearing in Grandmother’s dream visions: one of them would stand before her, hanging there the whole night, you couldn’t spit enough to get rid of it. And a bad smell filled the rooms, cabbagy, and you couldn’t clear it out—not with an incense stick and not with turpentine.

  Petka was amazed, wondering where the stumps went from the trunk, and every chance he got he added more.

  “Let her eat, the cow’s up to her neck in hay.”

  The scamp thought Grandmother was eating them secretly before bed.

  Grandmother blamed the evil one.

  And not a day went by that Petka didn’t get into mischief. The scamp got a passion for kites, those snakes of the sky; he landed masses of them all over the garden, and many tails got stuck over the house.

  One day Petka let loose a kite with a rattle and a tricky puzzle gripped him: “The crow flies because a crow has wings, angels fly because angels have wings, and all kinds of dragonflies and houseflies—it’s all about wings, but why does a kite fly?”

  The boy fell out of sorts, wandered like a shadow, wouldn’t eat or drink.

  Grandmother tried this and that—nothing helped, twelve herbs didn’t help!

  “A kite flies because it has sticks and a tail!” Petka finally decided and without ado set to work: Petka had long dreamed about flying beneath the clouds.

  Grandmother was making viburnum cranberry dough for the holiday—the berry harvest was good, forget your grapes, the juice squirted out, and the dough was so thick it was like halvah. So Petka smeared himself with the halvah-dough, gluing on shingles, like snakeskin, and a tail in the back made of washrags,
wrapped himself in twine, and said to his grandmother: “I’m a kite, Grandmother, here, take this ball of twine and set me off; kites don’t like to fly without a start.”

  The old woman was shaking, she didn’t understand a thing but she sensed that this was devil’s work, and just as she stood there bareheaded, she gave in to the devil’s hands—she took Petka’s ball in both hands and followed the cursed kite to give him a start.

  She wanted to say a prayer, but beneath the shingles there was a stump, tiny like a tail, but still—there it was, evil, and fear dried the old woman’s lips and knocked everything out of her memory.

  Petka climbed up on the elder tree.

  “Unwind!” he shouted to his grandmother and he just jumped off and flew, except his tail got tangled up.

  Grandmother unwound the ball, but what happened next, she no longer remembers.

  “I fell down dead,” she later recounted, “the wild serpent with seven horrible heads trampled me and scratched me all over with his sharp stump and claws and dirtied me all over with something sticky, like dough, that tasted of linden honey.”

  On Intercession day Grandmother received Communion and took Petka to church with her: the boy was limping, he hurt his knee flying—a good thing that he landed on Grandmother, or he would have broken his neck.

  “Of course, it’s all in the tail, I’ll grow a tail and I’ll fly up to the seventh heaven right to God, or I’ll fly over the sea like a bird, and weave myself a nest, and lay eggs …”

  Petka bowed to the ground fervently and, pretending to scratch, felt the rag kite tail in back under his pants.

  Grandmother wept, chasing away temptation.

  On St. Ilya’s day the cow ate Petka’s fifteen-kopeck coin.

  After the vigil, before bedtime, Grandmother gave the boy a silver coin—fifteen kopecks for sweets.

  On St. Ilya’s the procession of the cross goes from the Kremlin to Ilya the Prophet onto Vorontsovo field, a big procession with Korsun crosses, and lots of gendarmes on horseback, and after the liturgy in the church garden there is a fete beneath the banners: they sell cranberry kvass, toys, all kinds of berries, gooseberries, pears, and ice cream. Petka liked berries and loved ice cream—the fifteen kopecks were just what he needed.

  So he slept with the coin that night.

  Grandmother returned from the early service at St. Nicholas on Kobylskaya, Nikola Kobylsky, and Petka was already up: he had prepared the samovar and polished his shoes with wax and gotten dressed up—he was ready to go outside at any moment.

  How many times had he fidgeted and put on his cap while waiting for Grandmother—Petka’s cap had a patent leather visor; he used to drag around a straw hat, but once he entered the city school, Grandmother bought him a cap. He tightened the strap, also patent leather, to the very last hole, adjusted his black cotton jacket with two silver buttons on the collar, only there was a problem with his pants—the pants were canvas, well laundered, Grandmother had washed and ironed them, but they were too short: you could see about two fingers of his shins—well, Petka was growing and the pants had shrunk in the wash.

  “I got the samovar on for you in a minute, Grandmother!” Petka greeted his grandmother that way, hopping on one foot.

  “What a good boy you are, Petushok!” Grandmother got tired at the service and wanted to have some tea.

  Grandmother took a long time setting up the samovar, so it seemed to Petka, too long: first Grandmother shook out the ashes, laid out a few coals, then kindling over the coals, and then when the coals were hissing, she added a few more, and she did that two more times. But Petka did not shake out the ashes and stuffed the samovar with coals on top of them, then lit the kindling chips and then put more coals on them, and the samovar seemed to roar almost instantly.

  “Good boy!” Grandmother repeated: she was happy that the samovar was making noises on the table and she could have some tea without rushing, get a bit of rest before the procession of the cross.

  Grandmother was pious and she never missed a single service, and when there was a deceased person at Nikola Kobylsky, she would attend the liturgy and then stand through the service for the dead holding a candle, and she went with Petka to all the processions of the cross.

  Grandmother sat down at the table to have her tea, but she hadn’t even chewed a bite of her prosverka, the blessed bread, when Petka started hurrying and nagging Grandmother to go meet the procession.

  Why so early! The procession probably had not even left the Kremlin, the procession was just getting organized, and probably even the janitors weren’t standing by the Morozov fence; they were in their warm room having tea.

  Grandmother and Petka usually met the procession of the cross at Vvedensky Lane at the Morozov lattice fence. They settled in simply: first Petka climbed up, and then Grandmother scrambled up after him; the old woman climbed up on the fence, and even though it was hard for her, she could see better from there and she wouldn’t get trampled.

  “Or I’ll go alone, Grandmother!” Petka had put on his cap with the patent leather visor and was at the door.

  Grandmother feared letting Petka go without her; she was afraid he would get squashed.

  “You’ll get squashed!”

  “I won’t, Grandmother, last year I, I mean my toe, the gendarme horse trod on my toe, it really hurt! And it’s fine. I’m going, Grandmother.”

  Grandmother was worried and she was equally hurt: every year they went together, after all—Petka in front, and after Petka, Grandmother in her old sleeveless talma coat and umbrella, which Grandmother did not open against the sun and carried not by the handle but the tip, so that the handle touched the ground. She didn’t want to let Petka go without her yet she wanted to have a rest, drink her tea without rushing!

  What could you do, you couldn’t hold the boy!

  Petka went alone.

  It was a fine morning, fresh, the day would not be a hot one. Whether Petka’s prayers had brought forth such a glorious day or whether the holy day—Ilya the Prophet himself—had sent it, it would be good for the procession, the golden gonfalons would shine, and it would be good for the priests to walk, dry, and for the choir to sing.

  Petka came out on the porch, the fifteen-kopeck coin in his little fist—he would buy a lot of red, fuzzy gooseberries and have five-kopeck’s worth of chocolate ice cream.

  Petka listened: somewhere far away the bells were ringing, very far. That must mean that the procession had come out of the Kremlin and the churches they passed rang their bells.

  “They’re on Ilyinka or Maroseika … by Nikola—the bells are pealing!” Petka told himself and then suddenly saw a cow.

  The deacon’s cow was walking around the yard, a stately, well-fed reddish-brown cow.

  Petka always liked meeting the deacon’s cow, a milk cow, burenushka, brownie, as Grandmother called her.

  “Hello, burenushka!”

  Petka hopped over to the cow, reached out to pet her … the coin sparkled in the sun, it slipped away, and the cow licked up the money with her tongue, licked, burped, and swallowed it.

  Nothing to do about it—she swallowed it.

  Petka rummaged in the grass, fingered the pebbles, walked around the cow, waited for the coin to come out …

  His silver coin was gone, his money was gone, burenushka ate it, took away Petka’s Ilya fifteen kopecks.

  So Petka went empty-handed to Ilya the Prophet. Should he go back and tell Grandmother? Grandmother would say: “See, you didn’t listen, went alone, and the cow ate it!” And she wouldn’t ever give him another silver coin. “Why give him a coin—the cow will just eat it!” No, better not tell her. But what about the gooseberries and ice cream? Well, he’ll have to do without them … Would Grandmother notice? No, she wouldn’t. He would tell Grandmother that he ate a whole pood of gooseberries and a hundred cups of ice cream … Would she believe him? She would! Gooseberries are cheap—cheap, Grandmother says, and so it’s nothing much: he bought a pood and ate it
. And he had a good bit of money; it was a silver coin, not a nickel—fifteen kopecks! But he didn’t have a fifteen-kopeck coin; the cow had eaten it!

  “You old cow,” Petka reproached his beloved burenushka, “why did you eat my coin! The gooseberries are so red and fuzzy, and chocolate ice cream is so tasty—a hundred cups!”

  Petka walked on, thinking about his coin, which could not be returned. There was one way: he could confess to Grandmother and she would give him another. But where would Grandmother get it?

  Money doesn’t grow on trees, Grandmother always said, she had just a few silver coins, but lots of kopecks …

  Petka walked past the Kursk train station, past the dark-gray Ryabov house where no one ever lives, thought Petka, just golden rooms, and walked on Vorontsovo Field toward Ilya the Prophet.

  They had laid grass along the entire Vvedensky Lane, all the paving was covered with fresh-mown grass, there was Khludov’s grass and from the Naidenovs and from Myslin, all wealthy parishioners. His feet slid on the grass, and Petka managed to get green stains on his pants.

  There were occasional flowers in the grass, and the flowers smelled of the fields and reminded him of pilgrimages—Petka and his grandmother went on a pilgrimage every summer.

  Petka suddenly forgot about his eaten coin and squinted: he felt the earth and grass so clearly beneath his feet, he was transported near Zvenigorod on the path through the field—with campanulas, and through the forest—with the cuckooing cuckoo—toward St. Savva’s Monastery, and from Zvenigorod, from Blessed Savva to Nikolo-Ugreshe, and from Nikolo-Ugreshe to Trinity Sergius.

  People were hurrying down the lane to church, stopping on the sidewalk, picking the most convenient place with the best view. The bells were closer now, very close: at Trinity on the Mud. No, Petka was wrong, they were still far off: those were the bells of Kosma and Demyan.

  No one was on the Morozov fence yet, no one sitting there. Only the janitors stood by the gate, and the Morozov coachman in a corduroy vest with black hair, greased with butter. Petka, when he was big, would also use butter and his hair would be just as black as the coachman’s, but for now Grandmother, and only after his steam bath, moistens it with kvass.