“I suppose,” he says, “you come from a gentleman’s household?”
“Yes, I do,” I say.
“One can see at once,” he says, “that you’re not like these swine. Gramercy to you for that.”
I say:
“It’s nothing, go with God.”
“No,” he replies, “I’m very glad to converse with you. Move over a bit, I’ll sit down beside you.”
“Please do,” I say.
He sat down beside me and began to tell me about his noble origins and grand upbringing, and again he says:
“What’s this … you’re drinking tea?”
“Yes, tea. Want to have some with me?”
“Thanks,” he replies, “but I can’t drink tea.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” he says, “my head’s not for tea, my head’s for a spree: better order me another shot of vodka! …” And once, and twice, and three times he asked me for vodka like that, and it was beginning to make me very annoyed. But I found it still more repugnant that he said very little that was true, but kept showing off all the time and making up God knows what about himself, and then would suddenly turn humble and weep, and all over vanities.
“Just think,” he says, “what sort of man am I? I was created by God Himself in the same year as the emperor. I’m his coeval.”
“Well, what of it?”
“And, despite all that, what sort of position am I in? Despite all that,” he says, “I’m not distinguished in the least and live in insignificance, and, as you just saw, I’m despised by everybody.” And with those words, he again asked for vodka, but this time for a whole decanter, and started telling me an enormous story about merchants in taverns making fun of him, and in the end he says:
“They’re uneducated people. Do they think it’s easy to bear such responsibility, to be eternally drinking vodka and nibbling the glass? It’s a very difficult calling, brother, and for many even completely impossible; but I’ve accustomed my nature to it, because I see that one must do one’s part, and I bear with it.”
“Why be so zealous about this habit?” I argue. “Just drop it.”
“Drop it?” he replies. “Ah, no, brother, it’s impossible for me to drop it.”
“Why can’t you?” I ask.
“I can’t,” he says, “for two reasons. First, because, unless I’m drunk, I’m quite unable to go to bed, and I’ll keep wandering about; and the second, the main reason, is that my Christian feelings won’t allow it.”
“What on earth does that mean? That you don’t go to bed is understandable, because you keep looking for drink; but that your Christian feelings won’t allow you to drop such harmful vileness—that I refuse to believe.”
“So,” he replies, “you refuse to believe it … That’s what everybody says … But suppose I drop this habit of drunkenness and someone else picks it up and takes it: will he be glad of it or not?”
“God save us! No, I don’t think he’ll be glad of it.”
“Aha!” he says. “There we have it, and if it must be that I suffer, you should at least respect me for that and order me another decanter of vodka!”
I rapped for another little decanter, and sat, and listened, because I was beginning to find it entertaining, and he went on in these words:
“It ought to be so that this torment ends with me, rather than going on to someone else, because,” he says, “I’m from a good family and received a proper upbringing, so that I even prayed to God in French when I was still very little; but I was merciless and tormented people: I gambled my serfs away at cards; I separated mothers and children; I took a rich wife and hounded her to death; and finally, being guilty of it all myself, I also murmured against God: why did He give me such a character? And He punished me: he gave me a different character, so that there’s no trace of pride in me, you can spit in my eye, slap me in the face, if only I’m drunk and oblivious of myself.”
“And now,” I ask, “aren’t you murmuring against that character as well?”
“No, I’m not,” he says, “because even though it’s worse, it’s still better.”
“How can that be? There’s something I don’t understand: how can it be worse, but better?”
“It’s like this,” he answers. “Now I know only one thing, that I’m ruining myself, but then I can’t ruin others, for they’re all repulsed by me. I’m now the same as Job on his dung heap,” he says, “and in that lies all my happiness and salvation”—and again he finished the vodka, and asked for another decanter, and said:
“You know, my kind friend, you should never scorn anyone, because no one can know why someone is tormented by some passion and suffers. We who are possessed suffer, but that makes it easier for others. And if you yourself are afflicted by some sort of passion, do not willfully abandon it, lest another man pick it up and suffer; but seek out such a man as will voluntarily take this weakness from you.”
“Well,” I say, “but where can such a man be found? No one would agree to it.”
“Why not?” he replies. “You don’t even have to go far: such a man is here before you, I myself am such a man.”
I say:
“Are you joking?”
But he suddenly jumps up and says:
“No, I’m not joking, and if you don’t believe it, test me.”
“How can I test you?” I say.
“Very simply: do you wish to know what my gift is? I do have a great gift, brother. You see, I’m drunk now … Yes or no, am I drunk?”
I look at him and see that he has gone quite blue in the face and is all bleary-eyed and swaying on his feet, and I say:
“Yes, of course, you’re drunk.”
And he replies:
“Well, now turn towards the icon for a moment and recite the ‘Our Father’ to yourself.”
I turn and, indeed, I’ve no sooner recited the “Our Father” to myself while looking at the icon, than this drunken gentleman again commands me:
“All right, look at me now: am I drunk or not?”
I turn and see that he’s sober as a judge and standing there smiling.
I say:
“What does this mean? What’s the secret?”
And he replies:
“It’s not a secret, it’s called magnetism.”
“What’s that?” I say. “I don’t understand.”
“It’s a special will,” he says, “which resides in man, and can neither be drunk away, nor slept away, because it’s freely given. I demonstrated it to you, so that you would understand that, if I wanted to, I could stop right now and never drink again, but I don’t want to have someone else start drinking for me, while I, having recovered, go and forget about God. But I’m ready and able to remove the drinking passion from another man in a moment.”
“Do me a favor,” I say. “Remove it from me!”
“Can it be,” he says, “that you drink?”
“Yes,” I say, “and at times I even drink very zealously.”
“Well, then, don’t be timid,” he says. “It’s all work for my hands, and I’ll repay you for your treating me: I’ll remove it all from you.”
“Ah, do me the favor, I beg you, remove it!”
“Gladly, my friend, gladly,” he says. “I’ll do it for your treating me; I’ll remove it and take it upon myself”—and with that he called again for vodka and two glasses.
I say:
“What do you want two glasses for?”
“One,” he says, “for me, the other—for you!”
“I’m not going to drink.”
But he suddenly seems to get angry and says:
“Hush! S’il vous plaît! Keep quiet! Who are you now? A patient.”
“Well, all right, have it your way: I’m a patient.”
“And I’m a doctor,” he says, “and you must obey my orders and take your medicine”—and with that he pours a glass for me and for himself and begins waving his hands in the air over my glass like a church
choirmaster.
He waves and waves, and then orders:
“Drink!”
I was doubtful, but since, to tell the truth, I myself wanted very much to sample the vodka, and he ordered me to, I thought: “Go on, if for nothing else, then for the sake of curiosity, drink up!”—and I drank up.
“How does it taste,” he asks, “good or bitter?”
“I’m unable to tell you.”
“That means you didn’t have enough,” he says, and he pours a second glass and again moves his hands to and fro over it. He moves them, moves them, then shakes them off, and he makes me drink this second glass and asks: “How was this one?”
I say jokingly:
“This one seemed a bit heavy.”
He nods his head, and at once starts waving over a third, and again commands: “Drink!” I drink it and say:
“This one was lighter”—and after that I took the decanter myself, and treated him, and poured for myself, and went on drinking. He didn’t hinder me in that, only he wouldn’t let me drink a single glass simply, without waving over it. The moment I put my hand to it, he’d take it from me and say:
“Hush, s’il vous plaît … attendez,” and would first wave his hands over it, and then say:
“Now it’s ready, you can take it as prescribed.”
And I went on curing myself in that fashion with that gentleman there in the tavern right until evening, and I was quite at peace, because I knew I was drinking not for the fun of it, but in order to stop. I patted the money in my breast pocket, and felt that it was all lying there safely in its place, as it should be, and went on.
The gentleman who was drinking with me told me all about how he had caroused and reveled in his life, and especially about love, and after all that he started to quarrel, saying that I didn’t understand love.
I say:
“What can I do if I’m not attracted to these trifles? Let it be enough for you that you understand everything and yet go around as such a scallywag.”
And he says:
“Hush, s’il vous plaît! Love is sacred to us!”
“Nonsense!”
“You,” he says, “are a clod and a scoundrel, if you dare laugh at the sacred feelings of the heart and call them nonsense.”
“But nonsense it is,” I say.
“Do you understand,” he says, “what ‘beauty nature’s perfection’ is?”
“Yes,” I say, “I understand beauty in horses.”
He jumps up and goes to box my ear.
“Can a horse,” he says, “be beauty nature’s perfection?”
But since the hour was rather late, he couldn’t prove anything to me about it, and the barman, seeing that we were both drunk, winked to his boys, and some six of them made a rush at us and begged us to “kindly clear out,” while holding us both under the arms, and they put us outside and locked the door tightly behind us for the night.
Here such bedevilment began that, though it was many, many years ago, to this day I cannot understand what actually happened and by what power it must have been worked on me, but it seems to me that such temptations and happenings as I endured then are not to be found in any saint’s life in the Menaion.28
XII
First thing, as I came flying out the door, I put my hand into my breast pocket to make sure that my wallet was there. It turned out that I had it on me. “Now,” I think, “the whole concern is how to bring it home safely.” The night was the darkest imaginable. In summer, you know, around Kursk, we have such dark nights, but very warm and very mild: the stars hang like lamps all across the sky, and the darkness under them is so dense that it’s as if someone in it is feeling and touching you … And there’s no end of bad people at the fairs, and occasions enough when people are robbed and killed. And though I felt myself strong, I thought, first of all, that I was drunk, and second of all, that if ten or more men fell upon me, even with my great strength I couldn’t do anything against them, and they would rob me, and, despite my bravado, I remembered that more than once, when I got up to pay and sat down again, my companion, that little gentleman, had seen that I had a fat lot of money with me. And therefore, you know, it suddenly came to my head: wasn’t there some sort of treachery on his part that might be to my harm? Where was he, in fact? We had been chucked out together. Where had he gotten to so quickly?
I stood there quietly looking around, and, not knowing his name, quietly called to him like this:
“Do you hear me, magnetizer? Where are you?”
And suddenly, like some devil, he rises up right before my eyes and says:
“I’m here.”
But it seemed to me that it wasn’t his voice, and in the dark even the mug didn’t look like his.
“Come closer,” I said. And when he did, I took him by the shoulders and began to examine him, and for the life of me I couldn’t make out who he was. The moment I touched him, suddenly, for no reason at all, my entire memory was blotted out. All I could hear was him jabbering something in French: “Di-ka-ti-li-ka-tipé,” and I didn’t understand a word of it.
“What’s that you’re jabbering?” I say.
And he again in French:
“Di-ka-ti-li-ka-tipé.”
“Stop it, you fool,” I say. “Answer me in Russian who you are, because I’ve forgotten you.”
He answers:
“Di-ka-ti-li-ka-tipé: I’m the magnetizer.”
“Pah,” I say, “what a little rogue you are!”—and for a moment I seemed to recall that it was him, but then I took a good look and saw he had two noses! … Two noses, that’s what! And reflecting on that—I forgot all about who he was …
“Ah, curse you,” I think, “what makes you stick yourself to me, you rascal?”—and I ask him again:
“Who are you?”
He says again:
“The magnetizer.”
“Vanish from me,” I say. “Maybe you’re the devil?”
“Not quite,” he says, “but close to it.”
I rap him on the forehead, and he gets offended and says:
“What are you hitting me for? I do you a good turn and deliver you from zealous drinking, and you beat me?”
And, like it or not, again I can’t remember him and say:
“But who are you?”
He says:
“I’m your eternal friend.”
“Well, all right,” I say, “but even if you’re my friend, maybe you can do me harm?”
“No,” he says, “I’ll present you with such a p’tit-comme-peu that you’ll feel yourself a different man.”
“Well,” I say, “kindly stop lying.”
“Truly,” he says, “truly: such a p’tit-comme-peu …”
“Don’t babble to me in French, you devil,” I say. “I don’t understand what a p’tit-comme-peu is!”
“I,” he says, “will give you a new understanding of life.”
“Well, that may be so,” I say, “only what kind of new understanding can you give me?”
“It’s this,” he says, “that you’ll perceive beauty nature’s perfection.”
“How am I going to perceive it all of a sudden like that?”
“Let’s go,” he says, “you’ll see at once.”
“Very well, then, let’s go.”
And we went. We both walk along, staggering, but walking all the same, and I don’t know where, only suddenly I remember that I don’t know who I’ve got with me, and again I say:
“Stop! Say who you are, otherwise I won’t go.”
He tells me, and I seem to remember for a moment, and I ask:
“Why is it that I keep forgetting who you are?”
And he replies:
“That’s the effect of my magnetism; but don’t let it frighten you, it will pass straightaway, only let me give you a bigger dose of magnetism right now.”
He suddenly turned me around, so that he was facing my back, and started feeling with his fingers in the hair on my nape … So strange:
he rummaged there as if he wanted to climb into my head.
I say:
“Listen, you … whoever you are! What are you burrowing for there?”
“Wait,” he replies, “stand still: I’m transferring my magnetic power into you.”
“It’s fine,” I say, “that you’re transferring your power, but maybe you want to rob me?”
He denies it.
“Well, wait then,” I say, “I’ll feel for the money.”
I felt—the money was all there.
“Well, now,” I say, “it’s likely you’re not a thief”—but who he was I again forgot, only now I no longer remembered how to ask about it, but was taken up with the feeling that he had already climbed right inside me through my nape and was looking at the world through my eyes, and my eyes were just like glass for him.
“See,” I think, “what a thing he’s done to me—and where’s my eyesight now?” I ask.
“Yours,” he says, “is no longer there.”
“What kind of nonsense is that—not there?”
“Just so,” he replies, “with your own eyesight you can now see only what isn’t there.”
“What a strange thing! Well, then, let me give it a try!”
I peel my eyes for all I’m worth, you know, and it’s as if I see various vile mugs on little legs gazing at me from all the dark corners, and running across my path, and standing at the intersections, waiting and saying: “Let’s kill him and take the treasure.” And my disheveled little gentleman is there before me again, and his mug is all lit up, and behind me I hear a frightful din and disorder, voices, and clanging, and hallooing, and shrieking, and merry guffawing. I look around and realize that I’m standing with my back up against some house, and its windows are open, and there’s light inside, and from it come those various voices, and the noise, and the twanging of a guitar, and my little gentleman is there before me again, and he keeps moving his palms in front of my face, then passes his hands over my chest, stops at my heart, pushes on it, then seizes my fingers, shakes them a little, then waves again, and he’s working so hard that I see he’s even all in a sweat.
The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories Page 25