The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

by Nikolai Leskov

  But only here, as the light began to shine on me from the windows of the house, and I felt I was regaining consciousness, did I stop being afraid of him and say:

  “Well, listen, whoever you are—devil, or fiend, or petty demon—do me a favor: either wake me up, or dissolve.”

  And to that he answers me:

  “Hold on, it’s still not time: it’s still dangerous, you still can’t bear it.”

  I say:

  “What is it I can’t bear?”

  “What’s happening now in the ethereal spheres,” he says.

  “Then how is it I don’t hear anything special?”

  But he insists that I’m supposedly not listening right, and says to me in divine language:

  “That thou mayest hear, follow thou the example of the psaltery player, who inclineth low his head and, applying his ear to the singing, moveth his hand over the instrument.”

  “No,” I think, “what on earth is this? That’s even nothing at all like a drunk man’s speech, the way he’s started talking!”

  And he gazes at me and slowly moves his hands over me, all the while continuing to talk in the same way.

  “Thus,” he says, “from its strings all together, artfully struck one with the others, the psaltery giveth out its song, and the psaltery player rejoiceth at its honeyed sweetness.”

  I’ll tell you, it was simply like I was listening not to words, but to living water flowing past my hearing, and I thought: “There’s a drunkard for you! Look how well he can talk about things divine!” And my little gentleman meanwhile stops fidgeting and comes out with these words:

  “Well, now it’s enough for you; wake up now,” he says, “and fortify yourself!”

  And with that he bent a little and spent a long time searching for something in his trouser pocket, and finally took something out of it. I looked: it was a teeny-weeny little piece of sugar, and dirty all over, obviously because it had been wallowing there for a long time. He picked the dirt off with his fingernail, blew on it, and said:

  “Open your mouth.”

  I say:

  “What for?”—and gape my mouth open. And he pushes the bit of sugar between my lips and says:

  “Suck fearlessly; it’s magnetic sugar-mentor: it will fortify you.”

  I realized, though he had said it in French, that it was about magnetism, and didn’t question him anymore, but got busy sucking the sugar, but the one who had given it to me I no longer saw. Whether he had stepped away somewhere in the dark just then or had simply vanished somewhere, deuce knew, but I was left alone and completely in my right mind, and I think: Why should I wait for him? What I have to do now is go home. But again a problem: I don’t know what street I’m on, and what house I’m standing by. And I think: Is this really a house? Maybe it all only seems so to me, and it’s all a bedevilment … It’s night now—everyone’s asleep, so why is there light here? … Well, better test it out … go in and see what’s up: if there are real people, then I’ll ask them the way home, and if it’s only a delusion of the eye and not living people … then what’s the danger? I’ll say: “Our place is holy: get thee gone”—and it will all dissolve.

  XIII

  With that bold resolution, I went up to the porch, crossed myself, and did a get-thee-gone—nothing happened: the house stood, didn’t waver, and I see: the door is open, and before me is a big, long front hall, and on the far wall a lamp with a lighted candle. I look around and see two more doors to the left, both covered with matting, and above them again these candleholders with mirrors shaped like stars. I think: What kind of house is this? A tavern? No, not a tavern, but clearly some kind of guest house, but what kind—I can’t tell. Only suddenly I begin to listen, and I hear a song pouring out from behind that matted door … as languorous as could be, heartfelt, and the voice singing it is like a mellow bell, plucking the soul’s strings, taking you prisoner. I listen and don’t go any further, and just then the far door suddenly opens, and I see a tall Gypsy come out of it, in silk trousers and a velvet jacket, and he is quickly seeing someone out through a special door, which I hadn’t noticed at first, under the far lamp. I must say, though I didn’t make out very well who he was seeing out, it seemed to me that it was my magnetizer, and the Gypsy said after him:

  “All right, all right, my dear fellow, don’t begrudge us these fifty kopecks, but come by tomorrow: if we get any benefit from him, we’ll add more for your having brought him to us.”

  And with that he slid the bolt shut and ran to me as if inadvertently, opened a door under one of those mirrors, and said:

  “Please come in, mister merchant, kindly listen to our songs! There are some fine voices.”

  And with that he quietly flung the door wide open before me … My dear sirs, a wave of something poured over me, I don’t know what, but it was something so akin to me that I suddenly found myself all the way inside. The room was spacious but low, the ceiling all uneven, hanging belly down, everything was dark, sooty, and the tobacco smoke was so thick that the light from the chandelier above was barely visible. And below, in this great smoke, there were people … very many, terribly many people, and before them a young Gypsy girl was singing with that voice I had heard. Just as I came in, she was finishing the last piece on a high, high note, tenderly drawn out and trailing off, and her voice died away … Her voice died away, and with it at the same instant everything seemed to die … Yet a moment later everyone jumped up like mad, clapping their hands and shouting. I was simply amazed: where did all these people come from, and aren’t there more and more of them emerging from the smoke? “Oh-oh,” I thought, “maybe they’re some kind of wild things instead of people?” Only I saw various gentlemen acquaintances, remount officers and stud-farm owners, or rich merchants and landowners I recognized, who were horse fanciers, and amidst all this public such a Gypsy girl goes walking … she can’t even be described as a woman, but just like a bright-colored snake, moving on her tail and flexing her whole body, and with a burning fire coming from her dark eyes. A curious figure! And in her hands she held a big tray, with many glasses of champagne standing around the edge, and in the middle an awful heap of money. There was no silver, but there was gold, and there were banknotes: blue titmice, gray ducks, red heath cocks—only white swans were missing.29 Whoever she offered a glass to drank the wine at once and flung money on the tray, gold or banknotes, as much as his zeal prompted him to; and she would then kiss him on the lips and bow to him. She went along the first row, and the second—the guests seemed to be sitting in a semicircle—and then passed along the last row, where I was standing behind a chair, and was about to turn back without offering me wine, but the old Gypsy who came behind her suddenly cried: “Grusha!”—and indicated me with his eyes. She fluttered her eyelashes at him … by God, what eyelashes they were, long, long and black, and as if they had a life of their own and moved like some sort of birds, and in her eyes I noticed that, when the old man gave her that order, it was as if wrath breathed all through her. Meaning she was angry that she had been ordered to serve me, but nevertheless did her duty, went behind the last row to where I was standing, bowed, and said:

  “Drink to my health, dear guest!”

  And I couldn’t even reply to her: that’s what she had made of me all at once! All at once, that is, as she bent before me over the tray, and I saw how, amidst the black hair on her head, the parting ran like silver and dropped down her back, I got bedeviled and all reason left me. I drank what she offered me, and looked through the glass at her face, and I couldn’t tell whether she was dark or fair, but I could see how color glowed under her fine skin, like a plum in sunlight, and a vein throbbed on her tender temple … “Here’s that real beauty,” I think, “which is called nature’s perfection. The magnetizer was telling the truth: it’s not at all like in a horse, a beast for sale.”

  And so I drained the glass to the bottom and banged it down on the tray, and she stood there waiting to see what she’d get for her attention
. To that end I quickly put my hand in my pocket, but in my pocket all I found were twenty- and twenty-five-kopeck pieces and other small change. Too little, I think; not enough to give such a stinging beauty, and it would be shameful in front of the others! And I hear the gentlemen say none too softly to the Gypsy:

  “Eh, Vassily Ivanovich, why did you tell Grusha to serve this muzhik? It’s offensive to us.”

  And he replies:

  “With us, gentlemen, every guest finds grace and a place, and my daughter knows the customs of her own Gypsy forefathers; and there’s nothing for you to take offense at, because you don’t know as yet how a simple man can appreciate beauty and talent. Of that there are various examples.”

  And hearing that, I think:

  “Ah, let the old wolf eat you all! Can it be that if you’re richer than I am, you have more feeling? No, what will be, will be: afterwards I’ll earn it back for the prince, but now I’m not going to disgrace myself and humiliate this incomparable beauty by stinginess.”

  And with that I thrust my hand into my breast pocket, took a hundred-rouble swan from the wad, and slapped it down on the tray. And the Gypsy girl, holding the tray in one hand, at once took a white handkerchief in the other, wiped my mouth, and with her lips did not even kiss so much as lightly touch my lips, and it was as if she smeared them with some poison, and then stepped away.

  She stepped away, and I would have stayed where I was, but that old Gypsy, Grusha’s father, and another Gypsy took me under the arms, and dragged me forward, and seated me in the frontmost row next to the police chief and other gentlemen.

  That, I confess, I had no wish for: I didn’t want to go on, I wanted to get out of there; but they begged me and wouldn’t let me leave, and called out:

  “Grusha! Grunyushka, keep our welcome guest here!”

  And she came up and … deuce knows what she was able to do with her eyes: she glanced as if she were putting some venom in mine, but said:

  “Don’t offend us: be our guest here a while longer.”

  “Well,” I said, “as if anyone could offend you”—and sat down.

  And she kissed me again, and again the sensation was the same: as if she was touching my lips with a poisoned brush and all the blood in me right down to my heart was burning with pain.

  And after that the singing and dancing began again, and another Gypsy woman went around again with champagne. This one was also good-looking, but nothing next to Grusha! She didn’t have half her beauty, and for that I raked up some twenty- and twenty-five-kopeck pieces and poured them onto the tray … The gentlemen started laughing at that, but it was all the same to me, because I was only looking out for her, this Grushenka, and waiting until I heard her voice alone, without any chorus, but she didn’t sing. She was sitting with some others, singing along, but not giving a solo, and I didn’t hear her voice, but only saw her pretty little mouth with its white teeth … “Ah, well,” I think, “this is my orphan’s lot: I came in for a minute and lost a hundred roubles, and she’s the only one I won’t get to hear!” But, luckily for me, I wasn’t alone in wanting to hear her: other important gentlemen visitors all shouted out together after one of the breaks:

  “Grusha! Grusha! ‘The Skiff,’ Grusha! ‘The Skiff!’ ”30

  The Gypsies cleared their throats, her young brother took up a guitar, and she began to sing. You know … their singing usually gets to you and touches the heart, but when I heard that voice of hers, the same that had lured me from outside the door, I melted away. I liked it terribly! She began as if a bit coarsely, manfully: “Ho-o-owls the se-e-ea, mo-o-oans the se-e-ea.” It’s as if you really hear the sea moaning, and in it a sinking little skiff struggling. And then suddenly there’s a complete change of voice, as it addresses the star: “Golden one, dear one, herald of the day, with you earthly trouble can never come my way.” And again a new turnabout, something you don’t expect. With them everything’s in these turnabouts: now she weeps, torments you, simply takes your soul out of your body, and then suddenly she strikes up something completely different, and it’s as if she puts your heart right back in place again … Now, too, she stirred up this “sea” with its “skiff,” and the others all just squealed in chorus:

  Ja-lá-la. Ja-la-la.

  Ja-lá-la pringalá!

  Ja-la-la pringa-la.

  Hey da chepuringalya!

  Hey hop-high, ta gara!

  Hey hop-high-ta gara!

  And then Grushenka again went around with the wine and the tray, and again I pulled a swan from my breast pocket for her … Everyone started looking at me, because I had placed them all beneath me with my gifts: they were even ashamed to give after me, but I was decidedly unsparing now, because it was my own free will, to express my heart, to show my soul, and I showed it. Each time Grusha sings, I give her a swan, and I’m no longer counting how many I’ve loosed, I just give and that’s it, but when the others all ask her to sing, she doesn’t, to all their requests she says “I’m tired,” but I have only to nod to the Gypsy: Can’t we make her?—and he at once gives her a look, and she sings. And she sang a lot, one song more powerful than the other, and I had already handed over a lot of swans to her, a countless number, and in the end, I don’t know what time it was, but it was already dawn, and it seemed she really was worn out, and tired, and, looking at me as if hintingly, she began to sing: “Go away, don’t look, quit my sight.” These words seemed to be driving me out, but others were as if asking: “Or do you want to toy with my lion’s soul and feel all the joy of beauty’s burning coal?”31 And I gave her another swan! She unwillingly kissed me again, as if stinging me, and there seemed to be a dark flame in her eyes, and the others, in this canny hour, began to shout:

  You must feel, my nearest,

  How I love you, dearest!

  And they all joined in and looked at Grusha, and I looked and joined in: “You must feel!” And then the Gypsies struck up “Dance, cottage, dance, stove; the master has nowhere to go”—and suddenly they all started dancing … The Gypsy men danced, and the Gypsy women danced, and the gentlemen danced: all together in a whirl, as if the whole cottage really were dancing. The Gypsy women flit about before the gentlemen, who try to keep up with them, the young ones with a whistle, the older ones with a groan. I look: no one has stayed seated. Even dignified men, from whom you’d never in your life expect such clowning, all rose to it. One of the more staid ones would sit and sit, and, obviously very ashamed at first, go and only follow with his eyes, or pull at his mustache, and then it was as if a little imp would get him to twitch his shoulder, another to move his leg, and see, suddenly he jumps up and, though he doesn’t know how to dance, starts cutting such capers as you’ve never seen. A police chief, fat as can be, and with two married daughters, is there with his two sons-in-law, huffing and puffing like a catfish and kicking up his heels, but a hussar captain, a remount officer, a fine fellow and a rich one, a rollicking dancer, is the most brilliant of all: hands on hips, stamping his heels, going out in front of everybody, saluting, scraping the floor—and when he comes face-to-face with Grusha, he tosses his head, drops his hat at her feet, and shouts: “Step on it, crush it, my beauty!”—and she … Oh, she too was a dancer! I’ve seen how actresses in theaters dance, and it’s all, pah, the same as when an officer’s horse, without any fantasy, prances at a parade just to show off, grandstanding for all he’s worth, but with no fire of life. This beauty, once she sets off, goes floating like some pharaoh, smooth as can be, and inside her, the snake, you hear the cartilage crunch and the marrow flow from bone to bone, then she stands, curves her body, heaves a shoulder, and brings her brow into line with the point of her toe … What a picture! Simply from the sight of her dancing, they all seem to lose their minds: they rush to her madly, obliviously; one has tears in his eyes, another bares his teeth, but they all cry out:

  “We’ll spare nothing: dance!” They simply fling money under her feet, one gold, another banknotes. And here everything starts whirling
thicker and thicker, and I’m the only one sitting, and I don’t know how long I can bear it, because I can’t look at how she steps on the hussar’s hat … She steps on it, and a devil gives me a tweak; she steps on it again, and he gives me another tweak, and finally I think: “Why should I torment myself uselessly like this! Let my soul revel all it wants”—and I jump up, push the hussar away, and break into a squatting dance before Grusha … And to keep her from stepping on the hussar’s hat, I invent this method, thinking, “So you all shout that you’ll spare nothing, that doesn’t surprise me: but that I will spare nothing, I’ll prove by my true deeds”—and I leap over and fling a swan from my breast pocket under her feet and shout: “Crush it! Step on it!” She didn’t care … Though my swan was worth more than the hussar’s hat, she wasn’t even looking at the swan, but kept aiming at the hussar; only the old Gypsy, bless him, noticed it and stamped his foot at her … She understood and went after me … She’s sailing towards me, her eyes lowered, burning the ground with her anger like the dragon Gorynych,32 and I’m capering before her like some sort of demon, and each time I leap, I fling a swan under her feet … I respect her so much that I think: “Was it you, cursed thing, who created earth and heaven?”—and I brazenly shout at her: “Move faster!” and go on flinging down the swans, and then I put my hand into my breast pocket to get one more, and I see that there are only about a dozen left … “Pah!” I think, “devil take you all!” I crumpled them all into a bunch and threw them under her feet, then took a bottle of champagne from the table, broke the neck off, and shouted:

  “Step aside, my soul, you’ll get wet!” and I drank it off to her health, because after that dancing I was terribly thirsty.

  XIV

  “Well, and what then?” we asked Ivan Severyanych.

  “Then everything actually followed as he promised.”

  “Who promised?”

  “Why, the magnetizer who put it on me: he promised to make the demon of drink leave me, and so he did, and I’ve never drunk a single glass since. He made a very good job of it.”