The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

by Nikolai Leskov

  The water was awfully cold: I even got stitches in my armpits, and my chest went numb, cramps seized my legs, but I kept swimming … Above me flew our bullets, and around me Tartar bullets smacked into the water without touching me, and I didn’t know if I was wounded or not, but I did reach the bank … There the Tartars could no longer hit me, because I stood just under the ridge, and in order to shoot at me they would have had to lean out over it, and our men were raining bullets on them like sand from the other bank. So I stood under the rocks and pulled the cable, and pulled it all the way, and the bridge got thrown across, and suddenly our men are coming, and I go on standing there as if taken out of myself, I don’t understand anything, because I’m thinking: did anybody else see what I saw? Because as I was swimming I saw Grusha flying over me, and she was like a girl of about sixteen, and her wings were enormous now, bright, stretched across the whole river, and she shielded me with them … However, I see nobody says a word about it: well, I think, I’ll have to tell it myself. So when the colonel started embracing me, and kissing me, and praising me, saying:

  “Oh, merciful God, what a fine fellow you are, Pyotr Serdyukov!”

  I replied:

  “I’m no fine fellow, Your Excellency, but a great sinner, and neither the earth nor the water wants to take me.”

  He asks:

  “What is your sin?”

  And I reply:

  “In my time, I’ve been the ruin of many innocent souls”—and that night in the tent I told him all that I’ve just told you.

  He listened, listened, then pondered, and said:

  “Merciful God, you’ve been through a lot, but above all, brother, whether you like it or not, you must be made an officer. I’ll send in a request for it.”

  I say:

  “As you please, but also send to find out whether it’s true, as I’ve testified, that I killed the Gypsy girl.”

  “Very well,” he says, “I’ll ask about that, too.”

  And he did, but the paper went around and around and came back with wrong information. It said there had never been such an incident with any Gypsy girl, and Ivan Severyanovich, though he had existed and had served the prince, had bought himself out and was freed in absentia, and after that had died in the house of the crown peasants, the Serdyukovs.37

  Well, what more could I do here? How could I prove my guilt?

  But the colonel says:

  “Don’t you dare to lie about yourself anymore, brother: when you swam across the Koysa, your mind got a bit addled from the cold water and the fear, and I,” he says, “am very glad that what you accused yourself of is all not true. Now you’ll be an officer, and, merciful God, that’s a good thing.”

  Here I myself even got confused in my thoughts: had I really pushed Grusha into the water, or had I imagined it all so intensely then out of my terrible longing for her?

  And they made me an officer for my bravery, only since I stood by my own truth, wanting to reveal my past life, they decided, so as to have no more bother from me about that, to award me the St. George Cross and retire me.

  “Congratulations,” the colonel said, “you’re a nobleman now and can go into government service. Merciful God, how peaceful!” And he gave me a letter to some big personage in Petersburg. “Go,” he said. “He’ll be the making of your career and well-being.” With that letter I made my way to Petersburg, but I had no luck with a career.

  “Why is that?”

  “I was without a post for a very long time, and then I landed on theta, and that made everything worse.”

  “On theta? What does that mean?”

  “That patron I’d been sent to about a career appointed me as a consultant in the address bureau, where each consultant is responsible for a single letter. Some letters are very good, like, for instance, B, or P, or S. Many last names begin with them, and that brings the consultant income. But I was put in charge of θ. It’s the most insignificant letter, very few names begin with it, and even those that should belong to it all deviously shirk it: as soon as anybody wants to ennoble himself a bit, he highhandedly puts F in place of θ. You search and search for him under θ, only it’s wasted work, he’s registered himself under F. There’s no use at all, yet you sit there. Well, I saw things were bad, and out of old habit I tried to get myself hired as a coachman, but nobody would take me; they said: ‘You’re a noble officer, and with a decoration, it’s improper to yell at you or hit you …’ I was fit to hang myself, but, thank God, even in my despair I didn’t let myself go that far, and so as not to perish from hunger, I up and became an actor.”

  “What sort of actor were you?”

  “I played roles.”

  “In what theater?”

  “In a show-booth on Admiralty Square.38 They don’t scorn the nobility, they take everybody: there are officers, and clerks, and students, and especially many scribes from the Senate.”

  “And did you like that life?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “For one thing, the memorizing and rehearsals all take place during Holy Week or just before Lent, when ‘Open to me the doors of repentance’ is sung in church—and, for another, my role was very difficult.”

  “What was it?”

  “I played the devil.”

  “Why was that especially difficult?”

  “I’ll tell you, sir: in both acts I had to dance and turn somersaults, and turning somersaults was awfully uncomfortable, because I was sewn into the shaggy skin of a hoary billy goat, fur side out, and I had a long tail strung on a wire, which was constantly getting tangled between my legs, and the horns on my head kept catching on everything, and I was no longer as young as before and had no lightness; and then it was specified that I was to be beaten all through the performance. That was terribly annoying. Granted, the sticks were hollow, made of canvas, and with flakes inside, but even so it was terribly boring to endure it, because they keep slapping you and slapping you, and some of them, whether because of the cold or just for the fun of it, manage to hit you quite painfully. Especially the Senate scribes, who have experience at it and act together: they stand up for each other, and when a military man comes along, they annoy him terribly, and it all goes on for a long time, because they start beating before the whole public at noontime, when the police flag is raised, and go on beating till night falls, and each of them, to please the public, tries to produce a louder slap. Nothing pleasant about it. And on top of it all, I was involved in an unpleasantness there as a consequence, after which I had to give up my role.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “I dragged a certain prince by the forelock.”

  “A prince?”

  “Not a real prince, but a theatrical one: he was a collegiate secretary from the Senate, but he played a prince.”

  “Why did you give him a beating?”

  “He deserved more than that, sir. He was a wicked jeerer and contriver, and kept contriving all sorts of pranks against everybody.”

  “And against you?”

  “Against me, sir, he played many pranks: he ruined my costume; he would sneak up to me in the warming room, where we warmed ourselves by a coal fire and drank tea, and fasten my tail to my horns, or do some other stupid thing for the fun of it, and I wouldn’t notice and would run out to the public like that, and the owner would get angry. For my own part I let it all go, but he suddenly started to offend one of the fairies. She was a young girl, from poor nobility; she played the goddess Fortuna for us and had to save that prince from my clutches. And her role was such that she had to go around in nothing but sparkling tulle with wings, and it was very cold, the poor girl’s hands were completely blue and numb, and he badgered her, thrust himself at her, and in the apapheosis, when the three of us fell through the trapdoor, he kept pinching her. I felt very sorry for her, so I thrashed him.”

  “And how did it end?”

  “With nothing. In the cellarage there were no witnesses, except for that
same fairy, but our Senate boys rose up and refused to have me in the company; and since they were the foremost performers there, the owner threw me out to please them.”

  “What happened to you then?”

  “I would have been left with no roof or food at all, but that noble fairy fed me, only I felt ashamed, because the poor girl had a hard enough time providing for herself, and I kept thinking how to resolve this situation. I didn’t want to go back to the θ, and, besides, another poor man was already sitting and suffering on it, so I up and went to the monastery.”

  “Only for that?”

  “Why, what was I to do, sir? I had nowhere to go. And it’s nice there.”

  “Have you come to like monastery life?”

  “Very much, sir; I like it very much—it’s peaceful there, just like in the regiment; there’s a lot of similarity, everything’s prepared for you: you’re dressed, and shod, and fed, and the superiors keep an eye out and demand obedience.”

  “And isn’t that obedience sometimes a burden to you?”

  “Why should it be? The more obedient a man is, the more peacefully he lives, and in my particular obedience there’s nothing offensive: I don’t go to church services except when I want to, and I perform my duties as I’m accustomed to: if they say ‘Hitch up, Father Ishmael’ (I’m now called Ishmael)—I hitch up; and if they say: ‘Father Ishmael, unhitch’—I undo the harness.”

  “Excuse us,” we say, “so it turns out that in the monastery you’re still … with the horses?”

  “I’m a permanent coachman. In the monastery they don’t worry about my officer’s rank, because, though I’ve only taken the initial vows, I’m already a monk and equal to them all.”

  “Will you take your solemn vows soon?”

  “I won’t be taking that on, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just … don’t consider myself worthy.”

  “Is that still because of old sins or errors?”

  “Y-y-yes, sir. And generally, why should I? I’m very pleased with my obedience, and I live in peace.”

  “And have you told anyone your whole story before, as you’ve now told it to us?”

  “Of course, sir, more than once, but to no avail, since there are no records … they don’t believe me, as if I’ve brought a worldly lie into the monastery, and there I’m counted as a nobleman. But it’s all the same how I live my life out: I’m getting old.”

  The story of the enchanted wanderer was obviously coming to an end; there remained only one thing we were curious about: what was it like in the monastery?

  XX

  Since our wanderer had sailed in his story to his life’s last haven—the monastery—which, in his deepest belief, had been his destination from birth, and since everything there seemed favorable to him, one might think that Ivan Severyanych no longer ran into any adversities there. However, it turned out quite otherwise. One of our fellow travelers recalled that, according to everything told about them, monks constantly suffered very much from the devil, and he asked:

  “Tell us, please, has the devil not tempted you in the monastery? They say he constantly tempts monks.”

  Ivan Severyanych cast a calm glance at the speaker from under his brows and replied:

  “How could he not tempt me? Naturally, if Paul the Apostle himself didn’t escape him and writes in his epistle that ‘a messenger of Satan was given me in the flesh,’39 how could I, a sinful and weak man, not suffer his torments?”

  “What have you suffered from him?”

  “Many things, sir.”

  “Of what sort?”

  “All kinds of dirty tricks, and at first, before I overcame him, there were even temptations.”

  “But you also overcame him, the devil himself?”

  “How could it be otherwise? That’s the monastic calling. But I’ll tell you in all conscience, I wouldn’t have been able to do it myself, but one perfect elder taught me how, because he was experienced and could deal with any temptation. When I confessed to him that Grusha kept appearing to me, as alive as if the air around me was breathing nothing but her, he at once cast about in his mind and said:

  “ ‘In the apostle James it is told: “Resist the devil and he will flee from you”40—so resist.’ And here he admonished me about what to do: ‘If you feel your heart softening and remember her,’ he says, ‘you should understand that it is the messenger of Satan accosting you, and you should prepare at once to act against him. Kneel, first of all. Man’s knees are the first instrument: as soon as you kneel, your soul at once soars up, and there, being thus elevated, you must bow down to the ground, as many times as you can, till you are exhausted, and wear yourself out with fasting, to mortify yourself, and when the devil sees you striving for a great deed, he will not endure it and will run away at once, for fear that with such a man his machinations will drive him still more directly to Christ, and he will think: “Better to leave him alone and not tempt him, perchance he will forget himself the sooner.” ’ I started doing that, and indeed everything went away.”

  “Did you torment yourself like that for a long time before the messenger of Satan withdrew?”

  “A long time, sir. And it was only by wearing him down that I got the better of such an enemy, because he’s not afraid of anything else: to begin with, I made up to a thousand bows and didn’t eat or drink water for four days, and then he realized that he wasn’t up to vying with me, and he grew timid and weak. As soon as he saw me throw my pot of food out the window and take up my beads so as to count the bows, he understood that I wasn’t joking and was setting out on my great deed, and he ran away. It’s terrible how afraid he is of bringing a man to the joy of hope.”

  “All right, let’s suppose … he … So you overcame him, but how much did you suffer from him yourself?”

  “It’s nothing, sir; what of it? I oppressed the oppressor, and didn’t take any constraints on myself.”

  “And now you’re completely rid of him?”

  “Completely, sir.”

  “And he no longer appears to you at all?”

  “He never comes anymore in the seductive form of a woman, and if he still shows himself now and then somewhere in a corner of the cell, it’s in the most pitiful guise: he squeals like a little pig at his last gasp. I don’t even torment the scoundrel now, I just cross him once and make a bow, and he stops grunting.”

  “Well, thank God you’ve dealt with it all like that.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ve overcome the temptations of the big devil, but I’ll tell you—though it’s against our rule—I’m more bothered by the nasty tricks of the little devils.”

  “So little devils pester you as well?”

  “What else, sir? Granted they’re of the most insignificant rank, but they constantly get at you …”

  “What is it they do to you?”

  “You see, they’re children, and what’s more, there are a great many of them there in hell, and since the grub’s provided, they’ve got nothing to do, so they ask to learn how to cause trouble on earth, and they do mischief, and the more a man wants to stand firm, the more they vex him.”

  “What, for instance, do they … How can they vex you?”

  “For instance, they put something in your way or under your feet, and you tip it over or break it, and somebody gets upset and angry, for them that’s the foremost pleasure and fun. They clap their hands and run to their chief, saying: ‘We, too, cause trouble, give us a kopeck for it.’ That’s why they do it … Children.”

  “Precisely how, for instance, did they manage to cause you trouble?”

  “There was, for instance, this case with us, when a Jew hanged himself in the forest near the monastery, and the novices all started saying he was Judas, and that he went about the place sighing during the night, and there were many witnesses to it. I wasn’t even distressed about him, because I thought: as if we don’t have enough Jews left. Only one night I’m sleeping in the stable, and suddenly I hear somebody
come up and stick his muzzle over the crossbar in the doorway and sigh. I say a prayer—no, he’s still standing there. I make a cross at him: he goes on standing there and sighs again.

  ‘What am I to do with you? I can’t pray for you, because you’re a Jew, and even if you weren’t a Jew, I have no blessing to pray for suicides. Leave me, go away to the forest or the desert.’ I laid that injunction on him, and he went away, and I fell asleep again, but the next night the blackguard came again and sighed again … disturbed my sleep, and that was it. I couldn’t stand it! ‘Pah, you lout,’ I think, ‘don’t you have enough room in the forest or on the church porch, that you have to come bursting into my stable? Well, no help for it, I’ve clearly got to invent some good remedy against you.’ The next day I took a clean piece of coal and traced a big cross on the door, and when night came, I lay down peacefully, thinking to myself: ‘He won’t come now,’ but I had only just fallen asleep, and there he was again, standing there and sighing! ‘Pah, you jailbird, what am I to do with you!’ All that night he scared me like that, but in the morning, at the first sound of the bell for the liturgy, I quickly jumped up and ran to complain to the superior, and met the bell ringer, Brother Diomed, and he says:

  “ ‘Why are you so frightened?’

  “I say:

  “ ‘Thus and so, I’ve been bothered all night, and I’m going to the superior.’

  “And Brother Diomed replies:

  “ ‘Drop it, and don’t go. The superior put leeches in his nose last night, and now he’s very angry and won’t be of any help to you in this matter, but, if you want, I can help you much better than he can.’

  “I say:

  “ ‘It makes absolutely no difference to me: only be so good as to help me—for that I’ll give you my old warm mittens, they’ll be very good for ringing the bells in winter.’

  “ ‘All right,’ he says.

  “And I gave him the mittens, and he brought me an old church door from the belfry, on which the apostle Peter was painted with the keys to the kingdom of heaven in his hand.

  “ ‘These keys,’ he says, ‘are the most important thing: just close yourself behind this door, and nobody will get through it.’