The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

by Nikolai Leskov

  And in this manner the two showed each other their nobility, and would not allow one to outdo the other in mutual trust, but with these two trusts a third, still stronger trust was at work, only they didn’t know what this third trust was doing. But then, as soon as the last bell of the vigil was rung, the Englishman quietly opened the casement, to tell Maroy to climb in, and he himself prepared to retreat, when he suddenly saw old Maroy had turned away and wasn’t looking at him, but was staring fixedly across the river and repeating:

  “God, bring him over! God, bring him over! God, bring him over!” and then he suddenly jumped up and danced as if he were drunk, and shouted: “God brought him over, God brought him over!”

  Yakov Yakovlevich was thrown into the greatest despair, thinking:

  “Well, that’s it: the stupid old man has gone crazy, and I’m done for.” Then he looks, and Maroy and Luka are already embracing.

  Old Maroy muttered:

  “I watched the way you walked along the chain with those lanterns.”

  And Uncle Luka says:

  “I didn’t have any lanterns.”

  “Then where did the light come from?”

  Luka replies:

  “I don’t know, I didn’t see any light, I just made a run for it and don’t know how I didn’t fall as I ran … it was as if somebody held me up under both arms.”

  Maroy says:

  “It was angels—I saw them, and for that I’ll now die before noon today.”

  But Luka had no time to talk much. He didn’t reply to the old man, but quickly gave the Englishman both icons through the window. He took them and handed them back.

  “What’s this?” he says. “There’s no seal?”

  Luka says:

  “There isn’t?”

  “No, there isn’t.”

  Well, here Luka crossed himself and said:

  “That’s it! Now there’s no time to fix it. The Church angel performed this miracle, and I know why.”

  And Luka rushed to the church at once, pushed his way to the sanctuary, where the bishop was being divested, fell at his feet, and said:

  “Thus and so, I’ve blasphemed, here’s what I’ve just done: order me put in chains and taken to jail.”

  But the bishop, more honor to him, listened to it all and replied:

  “That should bring home to you now where the true faith is at work: you took the seal off your angel by deceit, but ours took it off himself and brought you here.”

  Luka says:

  “I see, Your Grace, and I tremble. Order me to be handed over quickly for punishment.”

  But the bishop replies with an absolving word:

  “By the power granted me by God, I forgive and absolve you, child. Prepare yourself to receive the most pure body of Christ tomorrow morning.”31

  Well, gentlemen, I think there’s nothing further to tell you: Luka Kirilovich and Maroy came back in the morning and said:

  “Fathers and brothers, we have seen the glory of the angel of the ruling Church and all the divine Providence of it in the goodness of its hierarch, and we have been anointed unto it with holy chrism, and today at the liturgy we partook of the body and blood of our Savior.”

  And I, who for a long time, ever since I was the elder Pamva’s guest, had been drawn to become one in spirit with all of Russia, exclaimed for us all:

  “And we shall follow you, Uncle Luka!” And so all of us gathered together in one flock, with one shepherd, like lambs, and only then did we realize where and to what our sealed angel had brought us, first bending his steps away and then unsealing himself for the sake of the love of people for people, manifested on that terrible night.

  XVI

  The storyteller had finished. The listeners remained silent, but one of them finally cleared his throat and observed that everything in the story was explicable—Mikhailitsa’s dreams, and the vision she had imagined half awake, and the fall of the angel, whom a dog or a cat running in had knocked to the floor, and the death of Levonty, who had been ill even before meeting Pamva. Explicable, too, were all the chance coincidences in the words spoken by Pamva in some sort of riddles.

  “And it’s understandable,” the listener added, “that Luka crossed on the chain with an oar: masons are known to be good at walking and climbing anywhere, and the oar was for balance; it’s also understandable, I think, that Maroy could see a light around Luka, which he took for angels. Under great strain, a badly chilled man can start seeing all kinds of things. I’d even find it understandable if, for example, Maroy had died before noon, as he predicted …”

  “He did die, sir,” Mark put in.

  “Splendid! There’s nothing astonishing in an eighty-year-old man dying after such agitation and cold. But here’s what I really find totally inexplicable: how could the seal disappear from the new angel that the Englishwoman had sealed?”

  “Well, that’s the simplest thing of all,” Mark replied cheerfully, and he told how, soon after that, they had found the seal between the icon and the casing.

  “How could it happen?”

  “Like this: the Englishwoman also didn’t dare spoil the angel’s face, so she made a seal on a piece of paper and tucked it under the edges of the casing … It was done very cleverly and skillfully, but when Luka carried the icons in his bosom, they shifted on him, and that made the seal fall off.”

  “Well, now, that means the whole affair was simple and natural.”

  “Yes, many people suggest that it all took place in the most ordinary way. And not only the educated gentlemen who know of it, but even those of our brothers who have remained in the schism laugh at us, saying the Englishwoman slipped us into the Church on a scrap of paper. But we don’t argue against such reasoning: each man judges as he believes, and for us it’s all the same by which paths the Lord calls a man to Him and from what vessel He gives him to drink, so long as He calls him and quenches his thirst for unanimity with the fatherland. But here come our peasant lads, crawling out from under the snow. Looks like they’ve had a rest, the dear hearts, and will soon be on their way. Perhaps they’ll give me a ride. St. Basil’s night has gone by. I’ve wearied you and led you around to many places with me. But to make up for it I have the honor of wishing you a happy New Year, and forgive me, for Christ’s sake, ignorant as I am!”

  The Enchanted Wanderer

  I

  We were sailing over Lake Ladoga from the island of Konevets to Valaam and stopped for a shipyard necessity at the wharf in Korela.1 Here many of us were curious to go ashore and ride on frisky Finnish horses to the deserted little town. Then the captain made ready to continue on our way, and we sailed off again.

  After the visit to Korela, it was quite natural that our conversation should turn to that poor, though extremely old, Russian settlement, than which it would be hard to imagine anything sadder. Everyone on the boat shared that opinion, and one of the passengers, a man inclined to philosophical generalizations and political jesting, observed that he could in no way understand why it was customary that people objectionable in Petersburg should be sent to some more or less remote place or other, which, of course, incurred losses to the treasury for transportation, when right here, near the capital, on the shore of Ladoga, there is such an excellent place as Korela, where no freethinking or liberal-mindedness would be able to withstand the apathy of the populace and the terrible boredom of the oppressive, meager natural life.

  “I’m sure,” this traveler said, “that in the present case the fault must lie with the routine, or in any case, perhaps, with a lack of pertinent information.”

  Someone who often traveled here replied to this, that some exiles had apparently lived here, too, at various times, but none of them had been able to stand it for long.

  “One fine fellow, a seminarian, was sent here as a clerk on account of rudeness (that kind of exile I cannot even understand). So, having come here, he played it brave for a long time and kept hoping to start some sort of litigation; but then he took t
o drinking, and drank so much that he went completely out of his mind and sent in a petition saying it would be best, as soon as possible, to order him ‘shot or sent for a soldier, or, failing that, to hang him.’ ”

  “And what decision followed from it?”

  “Hm … I … I really don’t know; only he didn’t wait for the decision in any case: he hanged himself without leave.”

  “And he did very well,” the philosopher responded.

  “Very well?” repeated the storyteller, evidently a merchant, a solid and religious man.

  “Why not? At least he died and put a lid on it.”

  “How do you mean, a lid, sir? And how will it be for him in the other world? Suicides will be tormented for all eternity. No one can even pray for them.”

  The philosopher smiled venomously, but made no reply, but instead a new opponent stepped forward against him and against the merchant, unexpectedly defending the clerk who had carried out the death sentence on himself without official permission.

  This was a new passenger, who had come on board at Konevets without any of us noticing him. He had been silent until then, and no one had paid any attention to him, but now everyone turned to look at him, and everyone probably wondered how he could have gone unnoticed until then. He was a man of enormous stature, with an open and swarthy face and thick, wavy hair of a leaden color: so strangely was it streaked with gray. He was wearing a novice’s cassock, with a wide monastic leather belt and a tall, black broadcloth cap. Whether he was a novice or a tonsured monk it was impossible to tell, because the monks of the Ladoga islands do not always wear monastic headgear, not only when traveling, but even on their own islands, and in country simplicity limit themselves to caps. This new companion of ours, who later turned out to be an extremely interesting man, looked as if he might be a little over fifty; but he was a mighty man in the fullest sense of the word, and a typical, artless, kind Russian mighty man at that, reminiscent of old Ilya Muromets in the beautiful painting by Vereshchagin and in the poem by Count A. K. Tolstoy.2 It seemed that he should not be going around in a cassock, but riding through the forest in huge bast shoes, mounted on his “dapple gray,” and lazily scenting “how the dark thicket smells of resin and wild strawberry.”

  But for all this kindly artlessness, it did not take much keenness of observation to see in him a man who had seen much and, as they say, “had been around.” He behaved boldly, self-assuredly, though without unpleasant casualness, and he began speaking with accustomed ease in a pleasant bass voice.

  “That all means nothing,” he began, lazily and softly letting out word after word from under his thick gray mustaches, twirled upwards Hussar fashion. “What you say concerning the other world for suicides, that they will supposedly never be forgiven, I don’t accept. And that there’s supposedly no one to pray for them—that, too, is nonsense, because there is a man who can quite simply mend the situation for them all in the easiest way.”

  He was asked who this man was who can deal with and amend things for suicides after their death.

  “Here’s who, sir,” replied the black-cassocked mighty man. “There is in the Moscow diocese a certain little village priest—a most hardened drunkard, who had been all but defrocked—it’s he who handles them.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Good heavens, sir, I’m not the only one who knows, everybody in the Moscow region knows it, because it went through his grace the metropolitan Filaret himself.”3

  There was a brief pause, then someone said it was all rather dubious.

  The black-cassocked man was not offended in the least by this observation and replied:

  “Yes, sir, at first glance it looks that way—dubious, sir. And what’s surprising about it seeming dubious to us, when even his grace himself didn’t believe it for a long time, but then, receiving sure proofs of it, saw that it was impossible not to believe it, and finally believed it?”

  The passengers badgered the monk with requests that he tell them this wondrous story, and he did not refuse them and began as follows:

  The story goes that a certain archpriest supposedly wrote once to his grace the bishop that, thus and so, there’s this little priest, a terrible drunkard—he drinks vodka and is no good in his parish. And it, this report, was essentially correct. The bishop ordered the priest to be sent to him in Moscow. He looked him over and saw that the priest was indeed a boozy fellow, and decided to remove him from his post. The priest was upset and even stopped drinking, and kept grieving and weeping: “What have I brought myself to,” he thinks, “and what else can I do but lay hands on myself? That’s all that’s left to me,” he says. “Then at least the bishop will take pity on my unfortunate family and give my daughter a husband, so that he can replace me and feed my family.”4 So far so good. He firmly resolved to do away with himself and set a day for it, but since he had a good soul, he thought: “Very well, suppose I die, but I’m not a brute, I’m not without a soul—where will my soul go after that?” And from then on he began to grieve still more. Well, so he grieves and grieves, but the bishop decided to remove him from his post on account of his drunkenness, and he lay down with a book once to rest after a meal and fell asleep. Well, so he fell asleep or else just dozed off, when suddenly he seemed to see the door of his cell opening. He called out “Who’s there?” because he thought the attendant had come to announce someone; but no—instead of the attendant, he saw a most kindly old man come in, and the bishop recognized him at once—it was St. Sergius.5

  The bishop says:

  “Is that you, most holy Father Sergius?”

  And the holy man replies:

  “It is I, servant of God Filaret.”

  The bishop asks:

  “What does your purity want of my unworthiness?”

  And St. Sergius replies:

  “I want mercy.”

  “Upon whom do you want it shown?”

  The holy man named that little priest deprived of his post on account of drunkenness, and then withdrew; and the bishop woke up and thought: “What shall I count that as: a simple dream or fancy, or an inspiring vision?” And he began to reflect and, as a man known to the whole world for his intelligence, figured that it was a simple dream, because how on earth could it be that St. Sergius, an ascetic and observer of the good, strict life, would intercede for a weak priest who lived a life of negligence? Well, sir, so his grace decided that way, and left this whole matter to take its natural course, as it had begun, and passed the time as was suitable to him, and at the proper hour lay down to sleep again. But no sooner had he nodded off than another vision came, and of such a sort that it plunged the bishop’s great spirit into still worse confusion. Imagine, if you can: noise … such a frightful noise that nothing can convey it … They come riding … so many knights, there’s no counting them … racing, all in green attire, breastplates and feathers, their steeds like lions, ravenblack, and at their head a proud stratopedarchos6 in the same attire, and wherever he waves his dark banner, there they ride, and on the banner—a serpent. The bishop doesn’t know what this procession means, but the proud one commands them: “Tear them apart,” he says, “for now they have no one to pray for them”—and he galloped on; and after this stratopedarchos rode his warriors, and after them, like a flock of scrawny spring geese, drew dreary shades, and they all nodded sadly and pitifully to the bishop and moaned softly through their weeping: “Let him go! He alone prays for us.” As soon as the bishop got up, he sent at once for the drunken priest and questioned him about how and for whom he prays. And the priest, from poverty of spirit, became all confused before the hierarch and said: “Master, I do as is prescribed.” And his grace had a hard time persuading him to confess: “I am guilty,” he says, “of one thing: that I am weak of spirit, and thinking it better to do away with myself out of despair, I always pray when preparing the communion for those who passed away without confession or who laid hands on themselves …” Well, here the bishop understood what those shades
were that floated past him like scrawny geese in his vision, and he did not want to please the demons who sped before them to destruction, and he gave the little priest his blessing: “Go,” he said, “and do not sin in that other thing, but pray for those you prayed for”—and sent him back to his post. So you see, such a man as he can always be useful for such people as cannot endure the struggle of life, for he will never retreat from the boldness of his calling and will keep pestering the Creator on their account, and He will have to forgive them.

  “Why ‘have to’?”

  “Because of the ‘knock’7—you see, He ordered it Himself, so that’s never going to change, sir.”

  “And tell us, please, does anybody else pray for suicides besides this Moscow priest?”

  “I don’t rightly know how to fill you in on that. They say you supposedly shouldn’t petition God for them, because they followed their own will, though maybe there are some who don’t understand that and do pray for them. On the Trinity, or on the day of the Holy Spirit,8 though, it seems everybody’s allowed to pray for them. Some special prayers are even read then. Wonderful, moving prayers; I think I could listen to them forever.”

  “And they can’t be read on other days?”

  “I don’t know, sir. For that you’d have to ask somebody who’s studied up on it; I suppose they should know; since it’s nothing to do with me, I’ve never had occasion to talk about it.”

  “And you’ve never noticed these prayers being repeated sometimes during services?”

  “No, sir, I haven’t; though you shouldn’t take my word for it, because I rarely attend services.”

  “Why is that?”

  “My occupation doesn’t allow me to.”

  “Are you a hieromonk or a hierodeacon?”9

  “No, I just wear a habit.”

  “But still, doesn’t that mean you’re a monk?”

  “Hm … yes, sir; generally that’s how it’s considered.”