“It’s that I’m guilty before you,” I reply, “for fighting with you and being rude.”
He laughed and said:
“Well, what of it, God be with you, you’re a good fellow.”
“No, sir,” I reply, “never mind my being good, it can’t be left like this, because it may weigh on my conscience: you’re a defender of the fatherland, and maybe the sovereign himself addresses you formally.”
“That’s true,” he replies. “When we’re given our rank, it’s written in the document: ‘We grant unto you and order that you be honored and respected.’ ”
“Well, please, then,” I say, “I can’t stand it any longer …”
“But what can we do about it now?” he says. “You’re stronger than I am, and you gave me a beating—that can’t be taken back.”
“To take it back is impossible,” I say, “but at least to ease my conscience, think what you like, but kindly hit me a few times”—and I puffed up both cheeks before him.
“But what for?” he says. “What should I beat you for?”
“Just like that,” I reply, “for my conscience, so that I don’t go unpunished for insulting my sovereign’s officer.”
He laughed, and again I puffed up my cheeks as full as I could and again stood there.
He asks:
“Why this puffing yourself up, what are you making faces for?”
And I say:
“I’m preparing myself soldier-like, according to the rules,” I say. “Kindly hit me on both sides”—and again I puffed up my cheeks; but instead of hitting me, he suddenly tore from his place and started kissing me, and he says:
“Enough, Ivan, enough, for Christ’s sake: I wouldn’t hit you even once, not for anything in the world, only go away quickly, while Mashenka and her daughter aren’t home, otherwise they’ll weep very much over you.”
“Ah, now that’s another matter. Why upset them?”
And, though I didn’t want to go, there was nothing to be done: so I left quickly, without saying good-bye, went out the gate, and stood, and thought:
“Where do I go now?” And in truth, so much time had passed since I ran away from my masters and started rambling, and yet nowhere had I warmed up a place for myself … “That’s it,” I think, “I’ll go to the police and turn myself in, only,” I think, “again it’s awkward now that I have money, the police will take it all away: why don’t I spend at least some of it, have tea and sweet rolls in a tavern for my own good pleasure?” So I went into a tavern at the fair, asked for tea and sweet rolls, and drank it for a long time, but then I saw that I couldn’t drag it out any longer, and went for a stroll. I went across the river Sura to the steppe, where herds of horses stood, and here there were also Tartars in kibitkas.21 The kibitkas were all identical, but one was multicolored, and around it there were many different gentlemen occupied with trying out saddle horses. Civilians, military, landowners come for the fair—these different men all stood smoking their pipes, and in the midst of them, on a multicolored rug, sat a tall, dignified Tartar, thin as a rail, in a fancy robe and a golden skullcap. I look around and, seeing a man who was having tea when I was in the tavern, I ask him who this important Tartar is, to be the only one sitting down among them all. And he replies:
“Don’t you know him? He’s Khan Dzhangar.”
“Who is this Khan Dzhangar?”
And the man says:
“Khan Dzhangar is the foremost horse breeder of the steppe, his herds go from the Volga all the way to the Ural over the whole Ryn Sands, and he himself, this Khan Dzhangar, is the same as a tsar of the steppe.”22
“Isn’t that steppe ours?” I say.
“Yes,” he replies, “it’s ours, but we can’t have any hold on it, because all the way to the Caspian it’s either salt marshes or just grass and birds wheeling under the heavens, and there’s nothing for an official to get out of it,” he says, “and that’s the reason why Khan Dzhangar rules there, and there in the Ryn Sands he’s got his own sheikhs, and sheikh-zadas, and malo-zadas, and imams, and dervishes, and uhlans, and he orders them around as he likes, and they gladly obey him.”
I was listening to those words, and at the same time I saw a Tartar boy bring a small white mare before this khan and start to babble; and the man stood up, took a long-handled whip, placed himself right in front of the mare’s head, put the whip to her forehead, and stood there. But how did the brigand stand there? I’ll describe to you: a magnificent statue, that’s how, you couldn’t have enough of looking at him, and you see at once that he spies out all that’s in a horse. And since I’ve been observant in these matters from childhood, I could see that the mare herself perceived the expert in him and stood at attention before him: here, look at me and admire! And this dignified Tartar looked and looked at the mare like that, without walking around her the way our officers do, who bustle and fidget around a horse, but kept gazing at her from one point, and suddenly he lowered the whip and silently kissed his fingertips, meaning perfect!—and again sat cross-legged on the rug, and the mare at once twitched her ears, snorted, and began to act up.
The gentlemen who were standing there got into a haggling match for her: one offered a hundred roubles, another a hundred and fifty, and so on, raising the price higher and higher against each other. The mare was, in fact, wonderful—of smallish stature, like an Arabian, but slender, with a small head, a full, apple-like eye, pricked-up ears; her flanks were ringing, airy, her back straight as an arrow, and her legs light, finely shaped, swift as could be. As I was a lover of such beauty, I simply couldn’t tear my eyes off this mare. And Khan Dzhangar, seeing that a hankering for her has come over them all, and the gentlemen are inflating the price for her like they’re possessed, nods to the swarthy little Tartar, and the boy leaps on her, the little she-swan, and starts her off—sits her, you know, in his own Tartarish way, working her with his knees, and she takes wing under him and flies just like a bird and doesn’t buck, and when he leans down to her withers and whoops at her, she just soars up in one whirl with the sand. “Ah, you serpent!” I think to myself, “ah, you kestrel of the steppe, you little viper! Wherever could you have come from?” And I feel that my soul yearns for her, for this horse, with a kindred passion. The Tartar came riding back, she puffed at once through both nostrils, breathed out, and shook off all fatigue, and didn’t snort or sniff anymore. “Ah, you darling,” I think, “ah, you darling!” If the Tartar had asked me not just for my soul, but for my own father and mother, I’d have had no regrets—but how could I even think of getting such a wingèd thing, when who knows what price had been laid down for her by the gentlemen and the remount officers, but even that would have been nothing, the dealing still wasn’t over, and no one had gotten her yet, but suddenly we see a swift rider come racing on a black horse from beyond the Sura, from Seliksa, and he waves his broad-brimmed hat and comes flying up, jumps off, abandons his horse, goes straight to the white mare, stands by her head, like that first statue, and says:
“It’s my mare.”
And the khan replies:
“She’s not yours: the gentlemen are offering me five hundred coins for her.”
And that rider, an enormous, big-bellied Tartar, his mug sunburned and all peeling, as if the skin had been torn off, his eyes small, like slits, bawls at once:
“I give a hundred coins more!”
The gentlemen flutter themselves up, promise still more, and the dry Khan Dzhangar sits and smacks his lips, and from the other side of the Sura another Tartar horseman comes riding on a long-maned sorrel horse, this time a skinny and yellow one, his bones barely holding together, but a still greater rascal than the first one. This one slips off his horse and sticks himself like a nail in front of the white mare and says:
“I tell you all: I want this mare to be mine!”
I ask my neighbor what this business depends on for them. And he replies:
“This business depends on Khan Dzhangar’s very great understanding. M
ore than once,” he says, “and maybe each time, he has pulled this trick at the fair: first he sells all the ordinary horses, the horses he brings here, but then, on the last day, he produces, devil knows from where, as if pulling it out of his sleeve, such a horse, or two, that the connoisseurs don’t know what to do; and he, the sly Tartar, watches it and amuses himself, and makes money as well for all that. Knowing this habit of his, everybody expects this last twist from him, and that’s what’s happened now: everybody thought the khan would leave today, and, in fact, he will leave tonight, but just see what a mare he’s brought out …”
“It’s a wonder,” I say, “such a horse!”
“A real wonder, and they say he drove her to the fair in the middle of the herd, so that nobody could see her behind all the other horses, and nobody knew about her except the Tartars who came with him, and them he told that the horse wasn’t for sale, she’s too precious, and during the night he separated her from the others and drove her to a forest near a Mordovian village and had her pastured there by a special herdsman, and now he suddenly brought her and put her up for sale, and you just watch what antics go on here and what that dog will make from her. Want to wager on who’s going to get her?”
“But what’s the point in us betting on it?”
“The point is,” he says, “that passions are going to break loose, the gentlemen are all sure to back out, and the horse will be bought by one of these two Asians.”
“Are they very rich or something?” I ask.
“They’re both rich,” he replies, “and shrewd horse fanciers: they’ve got their own big herds, and never in their lives will either of them yield a fine, precious horse to the other. Everybody knows them: this big-bellied one with the peeling mug, his name is Bakshey Otuchev, and the skinny one, nothing but bones, is Chepkun Emgurcheev—they’re both wicked horse fanciers. Just watch what a show they’ll put on.”
I fell silent and watched: the gentlemen who had been haggling for the mare had already quit and were only looking on, and the two Tartars keep pushing each other aside and slapping Khan Dzhangar’s hands and taking hold of the mare, and they’re shaking and shouting. One shouts:
“Besides the coins, I also give five head for her” (meaning five horses)—and the other screams:
“You lying gob—I give ten.”
Bakshey Otuchev shouts:
“I give fifteen head.”
And Chepkun Emgurcheev:
“Twenty.”
Bakshey:
“Twenty-five.”
And Chepkun:
“Thirty.”
And evidently neither of them had any more … Chepkun shouted thirty, and Bakshey also offered only thirty, and no more; but then Chepkun offers a saddle on top, and Bakshey a saddle and a robe, so Chepkun also takes off his robe, and again they have nothing to outbid each other with. Chepkun cries: “Listen to me, Khan Dzhangar: when I get home, I’ll send you my daughter”—and Bakshey also promises his daughter, and again they have nothing to outvie each other with. Here suddenly all the Tartars who had been watching the haggling started yelling, yammering in their own language; they parted them, so that they wouldn’t drive each other to ruin, pulled them, Chepkun and Bakshey, to different sides, poked them in the ribs, trying to persuade them.
I ask my neighbor:
“Tell me, please, what’s going on with them now?”
“You see,” he says, “these princes who are parting them feel sorry for Chepkun and Bakshey, that they overdid the haggling, so now they’ve separated them, so they can come to their senses and one of them can honorably yield the mare to the other.”
“But,” I ask, “how can one of them yield her to the other, if they both like her so much? It can’t be.”
“Why not?” he replies. “Asiatic folk are reasonable and dignified: they’ll reason that there’s no use losing all they’ve got, and they’ll give Khan Dzhangar as much as he asks, and agree on who gets the horse by flogging it out.”
I was curious:
“What does ‘flogging it out’ mean?”
And the man replies:
“No point asking, look, it’s got to be seen, and it’s beginning right now.”
I look and see that Bakshey Otuchev and Chepkun Emgurcheev seem to have quieted down, and they tear free of those peace-making Tartars, rush to each other, and clasp hands.
“Agreed!”—meaning, it’s settled.
And the other one says the same thing:
“Agreed: it’s settled.”
And at once they both throw aside their robes and beshmets and shoes, take off their cotton shirts, and remain in nothing but their wide striped trousers; they plop down on the ground facing each other, like a pair of steppe ruffs, and sit there.
This was the first time I’d had occasion to see such a wonder, and I watched for what would come next. They gave each other their left hands and held them firmly, spread their legs and placed them foot to foot, and shouted: “Bring ’em on!”
What it was they wanted “brought on,” I couldn’t guess, but the Tartars from the bunch around them replied:
“At once, at once.”
And a dignified old man stepped from this bunch of Tartars, and he had two stout whips in his hands and held them up together and showed them to the public and to Chepkun and Bakshey: “Look,” he says, “they’re the same length.”
“The same length,” the Tartars cried, “we all see it’s honorably done, the lashes are the same length! Let them sit up and begin.”
Bakshey and Chepkun were just dying to get hold of those whips.
The dignified Tartar said “Wait” to them, and gave them the whips himself, one to Chepkun and the other to Bakshey, and then quietly clapped his hands, one, two, and three … And just as he clapped for the third time, Bakshey, with all his might, lashed Chepkun with the whip over the shoulder on his bare back, and Chepkun replied to him in the same way. And they went on regaling each other like that: they look each other in the eye, their foot soles are pressed together and their left hands firmly clasped, and with their right hands they deal out lashes … Oh, how expertly they whipped! One gives a good stroke, the other still better. The eyes of both became glassy, and their left hands didn’t move, and neither of them would yield.
I ask my new acquaintance:
“So what they’re doing is like when our gentlemen fight a duel?”
“Yes,” he says, “it’s a kind of duel, only not for the sake of honor, but so as not to spend their money.”
“And can they keep whipping each other like this for a long time?” I ask.
“As long as they like,” he says, “and as long as they have the strength.”
And they go on lashing each other, and an argument starts among the people around them. Some say, “Chepkun will outflog Bakshey,” and others argue, “Bakshey will outwhip Chepkun,” and they place bets, if they want to—some for Chepkun, others for Bakshey, whoever they think is stronger. They look knowingly in their eyes, in their teeth, at their backs, and seeing by some tokens which one is surer, they stake on him. The man I had been talking with was also an experienced spectator and began by staking on Bakshey, but then said:
“Ah, drat, my twenty kopecks are lost: Chepkun will beat Bakshey.”
And I say:
“How do you know? Nothing’s sure yet: they’re sitting the same way.”
And the man replies:
“They’re sitting the same way, but they lash differently.”
“Well,” I say, “in my opinion, Bakshey lashes more fiercely.”
“And that,” he replies, “is what’s wrong. No, my twenty kopecks are lost: Chepkun will finish him off.”
“What a remarkable thing,” I think. “How can my acquaintance reason so incomprehensibly? And yet,” I reflect, “he must understand this practice rather well, since he placed a bet!”
And, you know, I got very curious, and I started badgering my acquaintance.
“Tell me, my dear m
an,” I say, “what makes you fear for Bakshey now?”
And he says:
“What a stupid bumpkin you are! Look at the back on Bakshey.”
I look: all right, it’s a good enough back, manly, big and plump as a pillow.
“And do you see how he hits?”
I look and see that he beats fiercely, his eyes are even popping out, and with each stroke he draws blood.
“Well, and now consider, what is he doing to his insides?”
“Who knows about his insides? I see one thing, that he’s sitting up straight, and his mouth is wide open, and he’s quickly taking in air.”
And my acquaintance says:
“That’s the bad thing: his back is big, there’s lots of room for lashing; he beats quickly, huffing and puffing, and breathing through his open mouth, he’ll burn up all his insides with air.”
“So,” I ask, “that means Chepkun is surer?”
“Certainly he’s surer,” he says. “See, he’s all dry, nothing but skin and bones, and his back’s as warped as a shovel, the blows don’t land full on it, but only in places, and see how he pours it out on Bakshey measuredly, not rapidly, but with little pauses, and doesn’t pull the lash away at once, but lets the skin swell under it. That’s why Bakshey’s back is all swollen and blue as a stew pot, but there’s no blood, and all the pain stays in his body now, but on Chepkun’s lean back the skin crackles and tears, like on a roast pig, and his pain will all come out in blood, and he’ll finish Bakshey off. Do you understand now?”
“Now,” I say, “I understand.” And, in fact, here I understood this whole Asiatic practice all at once and became extremely interested in it: what in that case was the most useful way to act?
“And another most important thing,” my acquaintance points out. “Notice how well this cursed Chepkun keeps the rhythm with his mug. See, he strikes and suffers the reply and blinks his eyes correspondingly—it’s easier than just staring the way Bakshey stares, and Chepkun clenches his teeth and bites his lips, and that’s also easier, because owing to that reticence there’s no unnecessary burning inside him.”
The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories Page 20