The Little Devil and Other Stories

by Alexei Remizov

  “My young sexton,” his grandfather says, praising him, “tomorrow we go to Polom for a service.”

  And Atya and his grandfather travel around the villages and settlements, holding services, eating beef and buckwheat.

  Atya’s beginning to think that he’s a real young sexton and when he grows up he’ll be a priest, like his grandfather, and then Uncle Arkady won’t cut off his hair: it will be long, to his waist, and he won’t have two braids, like Grandfather, but twenty-two.

  Uncle Arkady! Well, at long last!

  Uncle Arkady arrives, bringing with him nets and rods and so many hooks they barely fit the biggest basket.

  Atya’s fishing.

  Fish like Atya: once he caught such a big bream that they didn’t have a skillet large enough to fry it, might as well let it back into the water.

  Atya laughs—

  It’s fun in the evening: in the evening the jackdaws fly, finding a favorite spot to sleep, spend the night, and in the morning you look—better not go into the gazebo after them! But it’s stuffy inside. You’re not going to have tea inside because of the jackdaws?! Tea has to be enjoyed properly: tea is respected in Kluchi—plain and with a warm-up; it’s good in the open air.

  And so Uncle Arkady scares off the jackdaws: when he shakes the trees and shouts at the top of his voice—not just the jackdaws!—the fence clatters, the windows in the church rattle, and the corpses beneath the belfry would gladly hide somewhere, well, in the old banya at least.

  Atya can’t learn to scare off the jackdaws and shout like Uncle Arkady.

  “Grandfather! The bees are singing!” Atya brings the news.

  Drop everything: no time to drink or eat. The whole house is up.

  Grandfather, Uncle Arkady, his godmother, Panya, Sasha, Kuzmich, and of course, Atya, with a sieve on his face, spend the whole day crouching near the hive, watching where the queen will fly.

  When the queen bee comes out, they will all rise as one, like the bees, and run after the swarm, any which way, through the vegetable rows, the bushes, the wattle fence in the field, until they catch up with the queen somewhere beyond the field in the forest.

  Thank God, there’ll be another hive, and enough honey throughout the whole winter until spring.

  The winter crops are bulking, the oats are growing tall. It is the day of the feast for the Our Lady of Kazan icon.

  In Kluchi there is a fair for the Kazan festivity.

  The clairvoyant Brother Sysoyushka comes to the village. Guests will come from all over. The godmother makes a savory pie, a kulebiaka; you’d give everything you have for her kulebiaka, and that’s not enough. Oh, so much fun!

  “Why doesn’t the Kazan holiday last forever!” thinks Atya.

  The women dance a khorovod outside.

  The maidens make a circle and stamping their feet follow one another in a line to the monotonous thrum and jangle of the enticing balalaika.

  Uncle Arkady takes Atya to watch the circle dance.

  Uncle Arkady and Atya stand to the side with the men. They stand in silence, they won’t cross the line.

  Atya senses something uncanny: at first he wants to throw himself into the circle and when they twirl in the circle, twirl and fly up like a bird, when they fly up in the circle; then he remembers the ten funeral tolls and his heart contracts—was it them in wreaths out from beneath the belfry leading this horrible and enticing dance?

  Dark mists cover them, and at night pale stars appear in the sky.

  “The dead giving their souls to newborns,” Kuzmich tells Atya in the attic that night.

  “I’d like to see how that’s done!” thinks Atya.

  Kuzmich is Atya’s friend.

  Kuzmich chopped off his hand with an ax, and how can you work without a hand? Kuzmich can’t do anything and for years now has lived at Grandfather’s as a watchman at the church.

  Atya learns many marvelous stories from Kuzmich, but he finds monsters on his own, coming nose to nose with them in the forest.

  Once, walking into a grove, Atya meets the forest spirit Lesun.

  Lesun likes to frighten people who go into the forest. But it is noon—and who goes in at noon!—Lesun was wandering around without anything to do: skinny, no taller than a chamber pot—one hand, one leg, one eye, but a mouth and nose like Atya’s.

  This is scary: under an old fir tree, in the moss, all scrunched up, wheezes Kuz-Pinyo, the most horrible one, with long teeth, and nearby, at his feet lie gnawed white human bones.

  Atya looks at the monster out of the corner of his eye and then barely makes it to the road: jokes aside, he’d eat you alive, no use begging!

  And once Atya is picking strawberries and Iskal-Pydo comes out of the ravine.

  He is not bad: his face is just like Kuzmich’s, he has a club over his shoulder, but his legs are shaggy cow legs with hooves.

  Atya feeds him the strawberries.

  It is fine, he eats them.

  Now he never did see the forest spirit Leshy or the water spirit Vodyanoi, but Atya does know where Vodyanoi’s nest is on the Kosa River, and when the weirs were torn apart in fall and the water rose, he knows what it means.

  “If I could only be at Vodyanoi’s wedding, just once!” Atya dreams at night. “The Water princess is beautiful, and the Sea princess is even more beautiful … like Klavdia Guryanovna.”

  2

  Atya keeps his thoughts to himself. Atya tells no one: Kluchi is his secret.

  Even Romashka and Kharpik are only partially privy, but Atya would reveal his secret to the one and only Klavdia Guryanovna!

  And why, he doesn’t know himself—that’s what she’s like, Klavdia Guryanovna.

  Atya feels that he is drawn to her room, that he likes it when she has tea with him, when she offers him chocolates and oranges, and when she makes him laugh, and when she takes him with her for walks along Nevsky, and when she goes into stores with him and the “electric theaters,” the cinematograph.

  Atya knows that she is special; you’ll never find another like her: white face, sprinkled with white powder, curls lowered over her brow, painted red lips, narrow eyes, and everything so tiny, it’s as if there’s nothing there—no face, and she’s so tiny, and her rustling dress with a low neck, and her voice is special, no one speaks like that; he could listen to her and look at her forever.

  Atya comes into Klavdia Guryanovna’s room for no reason and stands silently, staring at her, and when she asks him something, he replies meekly and so shortly that you can’t understand what he’s saying.

  “Oh, you silly, silly boy, come on, laugh!” Klavdia Guryanovna would say.

  And she would laugh first—she laughed in her throat. Atya thought: that wasn’t laughter, ordinary people don’t laugh that way.

  Once, unable to hold it back, Atya said: “It’s good in Kluchi, you should come, Klavdia Guryanovna!”

  “You know where they are!” Klavdia Guryanovna exclaimed happily: she had lost her wardrobe keys that day and couldn’t find them no matter how much she rummaged.

  “It’s too soon,” thought Atya, “it isn’t time yet, first I have to do something outstanding, and then everything will be possible.”

  That evening his mother scolded Atya. “Don’t wander into Klavdiya Guryanovna’s room so often, she might take offense and move out.”

  Since they had a large apartment and his doctor father’s business was worse than last year, they had to rent out a room.

  Klavdia Guryanovna had that room.

  The appearance of Klavdia Guyanovna brought a new life. She was the object of constant conversation. They took care of her. They treasured her. For her, Atya’s mother wore a corset and did not spend the entire day, as she had done, in a robe. The doctor did not talk about his operations at dinner. Uncle Arkady got her tickets to the theater and concerts.

  Atya listened attentively to everything that was said about her, and did not let a single remark go by.

  They forced Atya to wash eve
ry morning: a tub was set up in the kitchen, and he splashed in the tub.

  “You’re not a baby, walking around naked, if Klavdia Guryanovna comes by it won’t be nice,” his mother said.

  That happened almost the first day the mysterious resident moved in.

  But Atya did not understand the point of the remark then: it became clear only later and confirmed his own observations.

  “If he always washed and walked around without his shirt in front of the cook Feklusha, mother, and in Kluchi in front of his godmother and Panya and Sasha,” Atya reasoned, “then that is permitted because they are all like everyone else but it is impossible and not allowed before Klavdia Guryanovna because she is the only one.”

  He soon learned from Feklusha that Klavdia Guryanovna was a mistress.

  He had never heard the word before and it took on a special meaning: for him “mistress” was no more and no less than the word for the smartest and richest women.

  “Mistress,” Atya thought, “if at school the master is the most important and wisest man, then a mistress, being beautiful, is even more important in the world.”

  That was why, in his observation, everyone turned to Klavdia Guryanovna with questions, getting her opinion about something important at the moment, and that was why she had such a long chain, which dangled to her knees, and her fur coat was white with black tails, like a royal cape.

  The doctor came home late one day and, fuming, said nothing throughout dinner and then when he was served a soufflé which unfortunately sank, he said angrily to mother, “You let a prostitute into the house …”

  A difficult word, prostitute, and you can’t blame him! Atya tried to understand, but in vain.

  “Of course,” he thought, “it’s a Latin word and we’ll have it in the second year, but I can’t wait until next year, I’d better ask Uncle Arkady now: Uncle Arkady speaks Latin!”

  The very first Sunday that Uncle Arkady came to visit, Atya asked him to explain the word.

  “Prostitute is what they call,” Uncle Arkady started to explain, without a smile, “everyone who graduates from an institute, and an institute is an educational institution which accepts only people of noble birth, so that you, for instance, as a doctor’s son, could never get in even if you exploded into bits.”

  Here Atya almost exploded into bits, not from despair of not being able to be a prostitute but with joy:

  he was right, she was unusual, not only a mistress,

  that is, wise and rich, she was a prostitute,

  which meant she was noble.

  “She,” he decided on the spot, “is a duchess. And since she’s a duchess now, then next year she’ll be a grand duchess, and then, in another year, she’ll be princess!”

  “My princess,” Atya whispered, walking past the forbidden room.

  Klavdia Guryanovna did not have visitors, except for one. Her guest would come either early in the morning or late in the evening. In the evenings he stayed after midnight: she played the piano, he sang.

  Everyone called him the Deputy.

  “The Deputy is here,” mother would say, “don’t make so much noise and straighten your jacket.”

  The doctor, hearing singing, grimaced. “The Deputy is singing?”

  “The Deputy,” Mother confirmed.

  Who the visitor was, what Deputy, quickly became clear.

  Mother told Uncle Arkady the news: the doctor decided not to subscribe to newspapers any more, since a member of the State Duma visits their tenant and the tenant knows everything better than any newspaper.

  “An unusual visitor,” Atya pondered, “from the State Duma! Of course, he was higher than Ivan Martynovich and Ivan Evseyevich, he’s probably like Greek teacher Kolosov, the homeroom mentor in the third grade.”

  Once, running into the guest, Atya clicked his heels and bowed, as if he were the school inspector, and noticed that the visitor was bald like the priest Kitaets and so well dressed—forget Uncle Arkady, Uncle Arkady couldn’t hold a candle to him, despite being an actor.

  In the evenings, Klavdia Guryanovna usually sat with his mother in the dining room, talking about all sorts of things.

  Atya, pretending to be doing his homework, listened from the next room.

  The conversation circled around the guest, the Deputy, member of the State Duma.

  Gradually, from their conversations, Atya learned that the Deputy had a family, two grown daughters of marriageable age, and that he loved his wife so much, he couldn’t breathe without her, and only his work forced him to live separately in St. Petersburg:

  they don’t even write letters to each other

  but exchange telegrams every day.

  “When we met,” Klavdia Guryanovna said, “he told me: ‘Klavdia Guryanovna, my dear, I can’t live without you, live in St. Petersburg while I’m a member.’”

  My princess, whispered Atya, forgetting his exercise notebook, I will be with you forever!

  Klavdia Guryanovna was wonderful at singing.

  Alone in her room, she sang a tramp song—songs like that are accompanied by an accordion out in the back courtyard.

  The song was all about love:

  Oh, if this night

  Were not beautiful

  My breast would not ache

  My soul would not suffer.

  Atya heard something familiar in the refrain, as if the song had been written about him and sung about him.

  His princess stood alone before him everywhere and always.

  Atya though the world was for her—for his princess.

  Everyone knew her, but they couldn’t speak aloud about her; it was not permitted to pronounce her name.

  Everyone awaited her and hid their anticipation; it was a secret.

  Why else in Kluchi, when people heard the jingle bell, did they rush out of their yards and watch the road with bated breath: was it she?

  When Grandfather raised his arms in the altar during the service and prayed quietly over the chalice with the Host, he was praying to her.

  And his godmother, if she looked happy and everything worked well for her, it was because she had seen her in her sleep.

  And Sasha and Panya, if they laughed all day and didn’t know why they were laughing, it meant that someone had hinted that she was coming to Kluchi.

  And when Kuzmich did not finish a story saying that he wouldn’t tell the end and there was a smile wandering on his lips, it was clear: the end of the story involved her and how could he say the secret word that could not be spoken, pronounced, uttered?

  Atya kept her in his thoughts always, that’s why he laughed, why his eyes burned …

  “Atya’s in love with Klavdia Guryanovna, congratulations!” his mother declared.

  “That means he’ll be held back!” Uncle Arkady said unruffled.

  “Hard heads have good luck,” Feklusha commiserated.

  “Children love me,” Klavdia Guryanovna laughed throatily.

  “I have to distinguish myself in something, otherwise it won’t happen,” thought Atya. “Conquer India or America, give her a sign, then she’ll recognize me and reveal herself.”

  “My princess!”

  3

  Hopes for a summer visit to Kluchi sank.

  Father said that if Atya was held back, don’t even think about it—he would spend the whole summer in St. Petersburg.

  It was already spring, the final quarter coming to an end, and Atya’s fate would be decided soon, and it was clear that the decision would not be in his favor.

  At penmanship class, Kharpik played “nibs” with Atya and was losing—the pen bounced and fell not belly down but on its back—and so he dropped the game and said, “Want to run away to America?”

  “I do,” Atya replied.

  “So does Romashka.”

  “How will we do it, we’ve been figuring it out since Christmas, but we didn’t say anything until we knew for sure … Do you have America?”

  “There’s Africa hanging in Father
’s reception room.”

  “We don’t need Africa. We have to ask Romashka, his father is an architect, he should have it. We’ll pick a desert island and settle there.”

  “We’ll build a palace!” Atya got into the game.

  “A palace, or a castle, whatever you want.”

  “And there won’t be anyone there, not a single soul?”

  “Just hippopotamuses.”

  “It’s starting,” thought Atya, “Now I have to act and whatever I want will happen: Kharpik and Romashka are slyboots, they’ll find the road to the end of the world.”

  The next day Romashka brought in South America.

  The map was unmarked and incomplete, just a fourth of the map, but still, it was America.

  The hour they spent after school, kept by Ivan Martynovich for a number of shenanigans, passed unnoticed.

  Kharpik and Romashka were in charge, filling Atya in on all the details of their escape, and then each with his own piece of paper drew uninhabited islands.

  They picked one circle—their island—then folded up the map and slapped one another’s hands:

  they would set out

  tomorrow after school.

  “You go straight to the train station and wait there, I’ll bring the money,” Kharpik said.

  “If we could get a passport,” wondered Romashka.

  “I can get a passport, that’s very easy,” Atya announced.

  He remembered how quite recently Uncle Arkady went to Moscow and took the cook’s passport by accident and lived there without anyone bothering him for a whole week on the cook’s passport.

  And so it was decided:

  Kharpik brings the money,

  Atya the passport,

    Romashka the map.

  He just had to live until tomorrow!

  Atya never closed his eyes. The night was like day for him. He lay in bed thinking. Not about Kluchi, but about America.

  On the desert island he would build a palace like no one had ever built; the palace would be made of peacock feathers with gold and silver staircases and windows of precious stones. He would bring his princess there on hippopotamuses and they would live there, surrounded by the sea, beneath the eternal sun, eternally. She would be called Princess Mymra, and the island he would give her would bear her name—Mymra Island. Then he would conquer many islands for her and eventually all the countries, the whole world. And then she would come out of the palace and illuminate the world …