“Well,” he says, “take them off quickly and give them to me, and I’ll write you out a release, so you can go to Nikolaev—they need people there, and hordes of vagrants flee there from us.”
I gave him my silver rouble, the cross, and the earring, and he wrote out the release, put the court seal on it, and said:
“I should have added something for the seal, like I do with everybody, but I pity your poverty and don’t want papers of my making to be imperfect. Off you go,” he says, “and if anybody else needs it, send him to me.”
“Well,” I think, “a fine benefactor he is: takes the cross from my neck and then pities me.” I didn’t send anybody to him, I only went begging in Christ’s name without even a penny in my pocket.
I came to that town and stood in the marketplace so as to get myself hired. There were very few people up for hire—three men in all—and all of them must have been the same as me, half vagrants, and many people came running to hire us, and they all latched onto us and pulled us this way and that. One gentleman, a great huge one, bigger than I am, fell on me, pushed everybody away, seized me by both arms, and dragged me off with him: he led me along, making his way through the others with his fists and cursing most foully, and there were tears in his eyes. He brought me to his little house, hastily slapped together from who knows what, and asked me:
“Tell me the truth: are you a runaway?”
“I am,” I say.
“A thief,” he says, “or a murderer, or just a vagrant?”
I answer:
“Why do you ask me that?”
“The better to know what kind of work you’re good for.”
I told him all about why I ran away, and he suddenly threw himself into kissing me and said:
“Just the one I need, just the one I need! If you felt sorry for your pigeons,” he says, “surely you’ll be able to nurse my baby: I’m hiring you as a nanny.”
I was horrified.
“How do you mean,” I say, “as a nanny? I’m not at all suited to that situation.”
“No, that’s trifles,” he says, “trifles: I see you can be a nanny; otherwise I’m in a bad way, because my wife, out of boredom, ran off with a remount officer and left me a baby daughter at the breast, and I’ve got no time and no way to feed her, so you’ll nurse her, and I’ll pay you a salary of two roubles a month.”
“For pity’s sake,” I reply, “it’s not a matter of two roubles, but how am I to manage that kind of work?”
“Trifles,” he says. “Aren’t you a Russian? Russians can manage anything.”
“Well, all right, so I’m a Russian, but I’m also a man, and what’s needed for nursing a baby at the breast, I’m not endowed with.”
“But,” he says, “to help you in that regard, I’m going to buy a goat from a Jew: you’ll milk her and nurse my daughter with the milk.”
I thought it over and said:
“Of course, why not nurse a baby with a goat,” I say, “only it seems to me you’d be better off having a woman do this work.”
“No, kindly don’t talk to me about women,” he replies. “All the scandals here are caused by women, and there’s nowhere to get them, and if you don’t agree to nurse my baby, I’ll call the Cossacks at once and order you bound and taken to the police, and you’ll be sent back under convoy. Choose now what’s better for you: to crush stones again on the count’s garden path or nurse my baby?”
I thought: no, I won’t go back, and agreed to stay on as a nanny. That same day we bought a white goat with a kid from a Jew. The kid I slaughtered, and my master and I ate it with noodles, and I milked the goat and started giving her milk to the baby. The baby was little, and so wretched, so pathetic: she whined all the time. My master, her father, was a Pole, an official, and the rogue never stayed home, but ran around to his comrades to play cards, and I stayed alone with this charge of mine, this little girl, and I began to be terribly attached to her, because it was unbearably boring for me, and having nothing to do, I busied myself with her. I’d put her in the tub and give her a good washing, and if she had a rash somewhere, I’d sprinkle it with flour; or I’d brush her hair, or rock her on my knees, or, if it got very boring at home, I’d put her on my bosom and go to the estuary to do laundry—and the goat, too, got used to us and would come walking behind us. So I lived until the next summer, and my baby grew and began to stand on her feet, but I noticed that she was bowlegged. I pointed it out to the master, but he wasn’t much concerned and only said:
“What’s that got to do with me? Go and show her to the doctor: let him look her over.”
I took her, and the doctor says:
“It’s the English disease, she must sit in the sand.”
I began doing that. I chose a little spot on the bank of the estuary where there’s sand, and whenever the day was nice and warm, I took the goat and the girl and went there with them. I’d rake up the warm sand with my hands and cover the girl with it up to the waist and give her some sticks and pebbles to play with, and our goat walks around us, grazing on the grass, and I sit and sit, my arms around my knees, and get drowsy, and fall asleep.
The three of us spent whole days that way, and for me it was the best thing against boredom, because, I repeat again, the boredom was terrible, and that spring especially, when I started burying the girl in the sand and sleeping over the estuary, all sorts of confused dreams came to me. I’d fall asleep, and the estuary is murmuring, and with the warm wind from the steppe fanning me, it’s as if some kind of sorcery flows over me, and I’m beset by terrible fantasies. I see a wide steppe, horses, and somebody seems to be calling me, luring me somewhere. I even hear my name shouted: “Ivan! Ivan! Come, brother Ivan!” I rouse myself, give a shake, and spit: “Pah, hell’s too good for you, what are you calling me for?” I look around: dreariness. The goat has wandered far off, grazing in the grass, and the baby sits covered with sand, and nothing more … Ohh, how boring! The emptiness, the sun, the estuary, and again I fall asleep, and this current of wafting wind gets into my soul and shouts: “Ivan, let’s go, brother Ivan!” I even curse and say: “Show yourself, deuce take you, who are you to call me like that?” And once I got bitterly angry and was sitting half asleep, looking across the estuary, and a light cloud rose up from there and came floating straight at me. I thought: “Whoa! Not this way, my good one, you’ll get me all wet!” Then suddenly I see: it’s that monk with the womanish face standing over me, the one I killed with my whip long ago when I was a postillion. I say: “Whoa there! Away with you!” And he chimes out so tenderly: “Let’s go, Ivan, let’s go, brother! You still have much to endure, but then you’ll attain.” I cursed him in my sleep and said: “As if I had anywhere to go with you or anything to attain.” And suddenly he turned back into a cloud and through himself showed me I don’t know what: the steppe, some wild people, Saracens, like in the tales of Eruslan and Prince Bova,20 in big, shaggy hats and with bows and arrows, on terrifying wild horses. And along with seeing that, I heard hooting, and neighing, and wild laughter, and then suddenly a whirlwind … a cloud of sand rose up, and there is nothing, only a thin bell softly ringing somewhere, and a great white monastery all bathed in the scarlet dawn appears on a height, and winged angels with golden lances are walking on its walls, all surrounded by the sea, and whenever an angel strikes his shield with his lance, the sea around the monastery heaves and splashes, and from the deep terrible voices cry: “Holy!”
“Well,” I think, “it’s this monkhood getting at me again!” and from vexation I wake up and am astonished to see that someone of the gentlest appearance is kneeling in the sand over my little mistress and pouring out floods of tears.
I watched this for a long time, because I kept thinking it was my vision going on, but then I saw that it didn’t vanish, and I got up and went closer: I see the lady has dug my little girl out of the sand, and has picked her up in her arms, and is kissing her and weeping.
I ask her:
“What do you
want?”
She rushes at me, pressing the baby to her breast and whispering:
“This is my baby, this is my daughter, my daughter!”
I say:
“Well, what of it?”
“Give her to me,” she says.
“Where did you get the idea,” I say, “that I’d give her to you?”
“Don’t you feel sorry for her?” she weeps. “See how she clings to me.”
“She clings because she’s a silly baby—she also clings to me, but as for giving her to you, I’m not going to do that.”
“Why?”
“Because,” I say, “she’s been entrusted to my keeping—and that goat there walks with us, and I must bring the baby back to her father.”
The lady began to weep and wring her hands.
“Well, all right,” she says, “so you don’t want to give me the baby, but at least don’t tell my husband, your master, that you saw me,” she says, “and come here to this same place again tomorrow with the baby, so that I can fondle her more.”
“That,” I say, “is a different matter. I promise and I’ll do it.”
And just so, I said nothing about it to my master, but the next morning I took the goat and the child and went back to the estuary, and the lady was there waiting. She was sitting in a little hollow, and when she saw us, she jumped out and came running, and wept, and laughed, and gave the baby toys in each hand, and even hung a little bell on a red ribbon around our goat’s neck, and for me there was a pipe, and a pouch of tobacco, and a comb.
“Kindly smoke the pipe,” she says, “and I’ll mind the baby.”
And we kept meeting in this way over the estuary: the lady with the baby all the time, and me asleep, and occasionally she would start telling me that she was sort of … given in marriage to my master by force … by a wicked stepmother, and this husband of hers she sort of … never could come to love. But … that one … the other … the remount officer … or whatever … that one she loves, and she complained that, against her will, she says, “I’ve given myself to him. Because my husband,” she says, “as you know yourself, leads an irregular life, but this one with the—well, how is it called?—the little mustache, or whatever, deuce knows, is very clean,” she says, “he’s always well dressed, and he pities me, only once again,” she says, “for all that I still can’t be happy, because I’m sorry about this baby. And now,” she says, “he and I have come here and are staying in one of his friends’ lodgings, but I live in great fear that my husband will find out, and we’ll leave soon, and again I’ll suffer over the baby.”
“Well,” I say, “what’s to be done? If you’ve scorned law and relidgin, and changed your ritual, then you ought to suffer.”
And she began to weep, and from one day to the next she started weeping more and more pitifully, and she bothered me with her complaints, and suddenly, out of the blue, she started offering me money. And finally she came for the last time, to say good-bye, and said:
“Listen, Ivan”—by then she knew my name—“listen to what I tell you,” she says. “Today,” she says, “he himself will come to us here.”
I ask:
“Who’s that?”
She replies:
“The remount officer.”
I say:
“Well, what’s that got to do with me?”
And she tells me that the night before he supposedly won a lot of money at cards and said he wanted to please her by giving me a thousand roubles—that is, provided I give her her daughter.
“Well, that,” I say, “will never happen.”
“Why not, Ivan? Why not?” she insists. “Aren’t you sorry for both of us that we’re separated?”
“Well,” I say, “sorry or not, I’ve never sold myself either for big money or for small, and I won’t do it now, and therefore let all the remounter’s thousands stay with him, and your daughter with me.”
She began to weep, and I said:
“You’d better not weep, because it’s all the same to me.”
She says:
“You’re heartless, you’re made of stone.”
And I reply:
“I’m not made of stone at all, I’m the same as everybody else, made of bones and sinews, but I’m a trustworthy and loyal man: I undertook to keep the baby, so I’m looking after her.”
She tries to convince me, says, “Judge for yourself, the baby will be better off with me.”
“Once again,” I reply, “that’s not my business.”
“Can it be,” she cries out, “can it be that I must part with my baby again?”
“What else,” I say, “since you’ve scorned law and relidgin …”
But I didn’t finish what I wanted to say, because I saw a light uhlan coming towards us across the steppe. Back then regimental officers went about as they ought, swaggering, in real military uniform, not as nowadays like some sort of clerks. This remount uhlan walks towards us, so stately, arms akimbo, and his greatcoat thrown over his shoulders—there may not be any strength in him, but he’s full of swagger … I look at this visitor and think: “It would be an excellent thing to have some fun with him out of boredom.” And I decided that the moment he said so much as a word to me, I’d be as rude as possible to him, and maybe, God willing, we’d have the satisfaction of a good fight. That, I exulted, would be wonderful, and I no longer listened to what my little lady was saying and tearfully babbling to me, I only wanted to have fun.
V
Once I had decided to provide myself with such amusement, I thought: how can I best tease this officer into attacking me? And I sat myself down, took the comb out of my pocket, and started combing my hair; and the officer walks straight up to this little lady of his.
She goes blah, blah, blah—that is, all about me not giving her the baby.
But he strokes her head and says:
“It’s nothing, dear heart, nothing: I’ll find a means against him right now. We’ll spread out the money for him, he’ll be dazzled; and if that means has no effect, then we’ll simply take the baby from him”—and with those words, he comes over to me and hands me a wad of banknotes.
“Here,” he says, “this is exactly a thousand roubles—give us the baby, take the money, and go wherever you like.”
But I was being deliberately impolite, I didn’t answer him at once: first I slowly got to my feet; then I hung the comb on my belt, cleared my throat, and finally said:
“No, Your Honor, this means of yours has no effect”—and I tore the money from his hand, spat on it, threw it down, and said:
“Here, boy, here, good doggy, come fetch!”
He got angry, turned all red, and flew at me; but me, you can see how I’m built—dealing with a uniformed officer takes me no time: I just gave him a little shove and that was it: he went sprawling, spurs up, and his saber stuck out sideways. I stamp my foot down on the saber.
“Take that,” I say, “and your bravery I trample underfoot.”
But though he wasn’t much for strength, he was a courageous little officer: he saw he couldn’t get his saber from me, so he unbuckled it and instantly rushed at me with his little fists … Naturally, that way he got himself nothing but bodily injury from me, but I liked it that he had such a proud and noble character. I didn’t take his money, and he also wasn’t about to pick it up.
Once we stopped fighting, I shouted:
“Pick up the money, Your Serenity, to cover your traveling expenses!”
And what do you think: he didn’t pick it up, but ran straight to the baby and grabbed her; but, naturally, he takes the baby by one arm, and I immediately grab her by the other and say:
“Well, let’s pull: we’ll see who tears off the bigger half.”
He shouts:
“Scoundrel, scoundrel, monster!”—and with that he spits in my face and lets go of the child, and now only draws that little lady away, and she’s in despair and howls pathetically, and drawn away by force, she follows him, but her eyes
and arms reach out to me and the baby … and I see and feel how she’s torn in two alive, half to him, half to the baby … And that same minute I suddenly see my master, whose service I was in, come running from town with a pistol in his hand, and he fires the pistol and shouts:
“Hold them, Ivan! Hold them!”
“Well, now,” I think to myself, “should I go holding them for you? Let them love each other!”—and I caught up with the little lady and the uhlan, gave them the baby, and said:
“Take the little scamp with you! Only now you’ll have to take me, too,” I say, “or else he’ll hand me over to justice for having an illegal passport.”
She says:
“Come along, Ivan dearest, come along, you can live with us.”
So we galloped off, and took the little girl, my charge, with us, and that gentleman was left with the goat, the money, and my passport.
I sat on the box of the tarantass and rode all the way to Penza with these new masters of mine, thinking: was it a good thing I did, beating an officer? He’s taken an oath, and in war he defends the fatherland with his saber, and maybe the sovereign himself addresses him formally, according to his rank, and I, fool that I am, offended him so! … And then, having thought that over, I began thinking about something else: what is fate going to allot me now? And there was a fair in Penza then, and the uhlan says to me:
“Listen, Ivan, I think you know that I can’t keep you with me.”
I say:
“Why’s that?”
“Because,” he replies, “I’m in the service, and you haven’t got any sort of passport.”
“No, I had a passport,” I say, “only it was a false one.”
“Well, you see,” he replies, “and now you don’t even have that. Here, take these two hundred roubles for the road, and go with God wherever you like.”
I confess I was terribly unwilling to leave them, because I loved that baby; but there was nothing to be done.
“Well, good-bye,” I say. “I humbly thank you for your reward—only there’s just one thing.”
“What’s that?” he asks.
The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories Page 19