The public did not go driving off, did not say good-bye, but simply vanished; there was no longer any orchestra or Gypsies. The restaurant was a picture of total devastation: not a single drape, not a single intact mirror, even the overhead chandelier lay all in pieces on the floor, and its crystal prisms crunched under the feet of the barely stirring, exhausted waiters. My uncle sat alone on the sofa and drank kvass; now and then he recalled something and pumped his legs. Beside him stood the hurrying-to-class Ryabyka.
They were brought the bill—a short one: “rounded off.”
Ryabyka read the bill attentively and demanded a reduction of fifteen hundred roubles. They didn’t argue much with him and totted it up: it came to seventeen thousand, and Ryabyka, after a second look, declared it fair. My uncle said monosyllabically: “Pay,” and then put his hat on and motioned for me to follow him.
To my horror, I saw that he had not forgotten anything and that it was impossible for me to escape from him. I found him extremely frightening and couldn’t imagine remaining alone with him in this state. He had taken me along without saying even two reasonable words, and now he was dragging me with him and I couldn’t get away. What would become of me? All my drunkenness disappeared. I was simply afraid of this dreadful wild beast, with his incredible fantasy and terrifying scope. And meanwhile we were already leaving: in the front hall we were surrounded by a throng of lackeys. My uncle dictated, “Five to each”—and Ryabyka paid it out; less was paid to the porters, watchmen, policemen, gendarmes, who had all been of some service to us. That was all satisfied. But it all made up quite a sum, and there were also cabbies standing over the whole visible expanse of the park. There was no end of them, and they were also all waiting for us—waiting for dear old Ilya Fedoseich, “in case His Honor needs to send for something.”
We found out how many they were, handed them each three roubles, and my uncle and I got into the carriage, where Ryabyka gave him his wallet.
Ilya Fedoseich took a hundred-rouble bill from the wallet and gave it to Ryabyka.
Ryabyka turned the bill over in his hands and said rudely:
“Too little.”
My uncle added two more twenty-fives.
“That’s still not enough: there wasn’t a single scandal.”
My uncle added a third twenty-five, after which the teacher handed him his stick and bowed out.
V
The two of us were left alone and racing back to Moscow, while all that cabby riffraff came whooping and rattling at full speed behind us. I didn’t understand what they wanted, but my uncle did. It was outrageous: they wanted to grab some smart money as well, and so, in the guise of paying special honor to Ilya Fedoseich, they exposed his highly esteemed self to shame before the whole world.
Moscow was on our noses and all in view—all in the beautiful morning brightness, in the light smoke of hearths and the peaceful ringing of church bells summoning to prayer.
To right and left of the city gate there were grocery stores. My uncle stopped at the first of them, went to a linden barrel that stood by the door, and asked:
“Honey?”
“Honey.”
“How much for the barrel?”
“We sell it by the pound for small change.”
“Sell me the whole thing: come up with a price.”
I don’t remember, I think he came up with seventy or eighty roubles.
My uncle threw him the money.
And our cortège closed in.
“Do you love me, my fine city cabbies?”
“Sure enough, we’re always at Your Honor’s …”
“You feel an attachment?”
“A strong attachment.”
“Take the wheels off.”
They were puzzled.
“Quickly, quickly!” my uncle commanded.
The most light-footed of them, some twenty men, climbed under the boxes, took out wrenches, and began unscrewing the nuts.
“Good,” said my uncle. “Now spread honey on them.”
“But sir!”
“Spread it.”
“Such a good thing … more interesting in the mouth.”
“Spread it.”
And, without further insistence, my uncle got back into the carriage, and we raced on, and they, many as they were, were all left standing with their wheels off over the honey, which they probably did not spread on the wheels, but just appropriated or sold back to the grocer. In any case they abandoned us, and we found ourselves in a bathhouse. Here I expected my end had come, and I sat neither dead nor alive in the marble bath, while my uncle stretched out on the floor, but not simply, not in an ordinary pose, but somehow apocalyptically. The whole enormous mass of his stout body rested on the floor only by the very tips of his toes and fingers, and on these fine points of support his red body trembled under the spray of the cold water showered on him, and he roared with the restrained roar of a bear tearing the ring from its nose. This lasted for half an hour, during which he went on trembling like jelly on a shaky table, until he finally jumped up all at once, asked for kvass, and we got dressed and went “to the Frenchman” on Kuznetsky.7
Here we both had a slight trim, a slight curling and brushing up, and then we crossed the city on foot—to his shop.
With me there was still no talk, no release. Only once he said:
“Wait, not all at once. What you don’t understand—you’ll understand with the years.”
In the shop he prayed, looked everybody over with a proprietary eye, and stood at the counter. The outside of the vessel was clean, but inside there still lurked a deep foulness seeking its own cleansing.
I saw it and now stopped being afraid. It interested me. I wanted to see how he was going to deal with himself: by abstinence or some sort of grace?
At around ten o’clock he became terribly restless, kept waiting and looking for a neighbor, so that the three of us could go for tea—with three it’s a whole five kopecks cheaper. The neighbor didn’t come: he had died a galloping death.
My uncle crossed himself and said:
“We’ll all die.”
This did not disconcert him, despite the fact that for forty years they had gone to have tea together at the Novotroitsky Tavern.
We invited a neighbor from across the street and went more than once to sample this or that, but all in a sober way. For the whole day I sat and went about with him, and towards evening my uncle sent for the carriage to go to the All-Glorious.8
There they also knew him and met him with the same respect as at the Yar.
“I want to fall down before the All-Glorious and weep for my sins. And this—allow me to introduce him—is my nephew, my sister’s son.”
“Welcome,” said the nuns, “welcome. From whom else if not you should the All-Glorious accept repentance—ever our cloister’s benefactor. Now is a very good moment … the vigil.”
“Let it finish—I like it without people, and so you can make a blessed darkness for me.”
They made darkness for him; put out all the icon lamps except one or two and the big green lamp in front of the All-Glorious herself.
My uncle did not fall, but crashed to his knees, then prostrated himself, beat his brow against the floor, sobbed, and lay stock still.
I sat with two nuns in a dark corner by the door. There was a long pause. My uncle went on lying there, unspeaking, unheeding. It seemed to me that he was asleep, and I even said so to the nuns. The more experienced sister thought a little, shook her head, and, lighting a thin candle, clutched it in her fist and went very, very quietly to the penitent. She quietly tiptoed around him, shook her head negatively, and whispered:
“It’s working … and with a twist.”
“What makes you say so?”
She bent down, gesturing for me to do the same, and said:
“Look straight through the light, where his feet are.”
“I see.”
“Look, what a struggle!”
I peer closely and
indeed notice some sort of movement: my uncle is lying reverently in a prayerful position, but in his feet it’s as if there are two cats fighting—now one, now the other attacking, and so rapidly, with such leaps.
“Mother,” I say, “where did these cats come from?”
“It only seems to you that they are cats,” she replies, “but they are not cats, they are temptation: see, in spirit he burns towards heaven, but his feet are still moving towards hell.”
I see that with his feet my uncle is indeed still dancing last night’s trepak,9 but in spirit is he now really burning towards heaven?
As if in reply to that, he suddenly sighs and cries out loudly:
“I will not rise until thou forgivest me! Thou only art holy, and we are all accursed devils!”—and bursts into sobs.
He sobbed so that the three of us began to weep and sob with him: Lord, do unto him according to his prayer.
And we don’t notice that he is already standing next to us and saying to me in a soft, pious voice:
“Let’s go—we’ll manage.”
The nuns ask:
“Were you granted, dear man, to see the gleam?”
“No,” he says, “I was not granted the gleam, but here … here’s how it was.”
He clenched his fist and raised it, as one raises a boy by his hair.
“You were raised?”
“Yes.”
The nuns started crossing themselves, and so did I, and my uncle explained:
“Now,” he says, “I’m forgiven! Right from above, from under the coopola, the open right hand gathered all my hair together and lifted me straight to my feet …”
And now he’s not outcast and is happy. He gave a generous gift to the convent where he had prayed and had been granted this miracle, and he felt “life” again, and he sent my mother her full share of the dowry, and me he introduced to the good faith of the people.
Since then I have become acquainted with the people’s taste for falling and rising … And this is what’s known as the devil-chase, “which drives out the demon of wrong-mindedness.” One can be granted this, I repeat, only in Moscow, and then only through special luck or the great patronage of the most venerable old men.
* Bodice. Trans.
Deathless Golovan
Perfect love casteth out fear.
1 JOHN 4:18
I
He himself is almost a myth, and his story a legend. To tell about him, one should be French, because only the people of that nation manage to explain to others what they don’t understand themselves. I say all this with the aim of begging my reader’s indulgence beforehand for the overall imperfection of my story of a person whose portrayal is worth the efforts of a far better master than I. But Golovan may soon be quite forgotten, and that would be a loss. Golovan is worthy of attention, and though I did not know him well enough to be able to draw his full portrait, I will select and present some features of this mortal man of no high rank who was reputed to be deathless.
The nickname “deathless,” given to Golovan, did not express mockery and was by no means an empty, meaningless sound—he was nicknamed “deathless” as a result of the strong conviction that he was a special man, a man who did not fear death. How could such an opinion of him have been formed among people who walk under God and are always mindful of their mortality? Was there a sufficient reason for it, which subsequently turned into a convention, or was this sobriquet given him by a simplicity akin to foolishness?
It seemed to me that the latter was more probable, but how others considered it I don’t know, because in my childhood I didn’t think about it, and when I grew up and could understand things, “deathless” Golovan was no longer in the world. He had died, and in a none-too-tidy manner at that: he perished during the so-called “big fire” in Orel,1 drowned in a boiling pit, which he fell into saving someone’s life or someone’s goods. However, “a big part of him, escaping corruption, went on living in grateful memory,”2 and I want to try to put down on paper what I knew and heard about him, so that his memory, which is deserving of attention, may be prolonged in the world.
II
Deathless Golovan was a simple man. His face, with its extraordinarily large features, was stamped in my memory early on and remained in it forever. I met him at an age when they say children cannot receive lasting impressions and carry the memory of them all their lives, but it happened otherwise with me. This incident was recorded by my grandmother in the following way:
“Yesterday [May 26, 1835], I came from Gorokhov to see Mashenka [my mother], did not find Semyon Dmitrich [my father] at home, him having been sent on a mission to Elets for an inquest into a frightful murder. In the whole house there were just us women and the serving girls. The coachman went with him [my father], there was only the yard porter Kondrat left, and in the evening a watchman came from the office [the government office, where my father was a councilor] to spend the night in the front hall. Today between eleven and twelve Mashenka went to the garden to look at the flowers and water her costmary, and took Nikolushka [me] along with her, carried by Anna [now an old woman, still living]. And when they came back for lunch, Anna was just opening the garden gate when the dog Ryabka tore free of her chain and flung herself straight onto Anna’s breast, but at the very moment that Ryabka, raising her paws, threw herself on Anna’s breast, Golovan seized her by the scruff of the neck, held her tight, and threw her through the trapdoor into the cellar. There she was shot, but the child was saved.”
The child was me, and however accurate the proofs may be that an infant of one and a half cannot remember what happens to him, I nevertheless remember this occurrence.
Of course, I don’t remember where the rabid Ryabka came from and what Golovan did with her, after he held her high up in his iron grip, wheezing, flailing her legs, her whole body squirming; but I do remember that moment … only that moment. It was like a flash of lightning amidst the dark of night, when for some reason you suddenly see an extraordinary multitude of things at once: the bed canopy, the folding screen, the window, the canary fluttering on its perch, and a glass with a silver spoon in it and spots of magnesium on its handle. It is probably the quality of fear to have big eyes. In that one moment I can see before me, as now, a dog’s enormous muzzle with little speckles, dry fur, completely red eyes, a gaping maw filled with cloudy foam in a bluish, as if pomaded, gullet … bared teeth that already want to snap shut, but suddenly the upper lip is wrenched back over them, the mouth is stretched to the ears, and the thrust-out throat below moves convulsively, like a bared human elbow. Above it all stood an enormous human figure with an enormous head, and he took the rabid dog and carried it off. And the man’s face was smiling all the while.
The figure I’ve described was Golovan. I’m afraid I’m quite unable to paint his portrait, precisely because I see him very well and clearly.
Like Peter the Great, he was nearly seven feet tall; he was broadly built, lean and muscular; he was swarthy, had a round face, blue eyes, a very big nose, and thick lips. The hair on Golovan’s head and trimmed beard was very thick, the color of salt and pepper. His head was always close-cropped, his beard and mustache were also clipped. The calm and happy smile never left Golovan’s face for a minute: it shone in his every feature, but played mostly on his lips and in his eyes, intelligent and kind, but as if slightly mocking. It seemed Golovan had no other expression, at least none that I remember. To supplement this unskillful portrait of Golovan, it is necessary to mention one oddity or peculiarity, which consisted in his gait. Golovan walked very quickly, as if he was always hurrying somewhere, not evenly, though, but with little hops. He didn’t limp, but, in a local expression, “hitched”—that is, he stepped firmly on one leg, the right one, but on the left leg he hopped. It seemed as if the leg didn’t flex, but had a spring in it somewhere, in a muscle or a joint. People walk that way on an artificial leg, but Golovan’s wasn’t artificial; however, this peculiarity also did not come from nature; he brought i
t about himself, and there was a secret in it, which can’t be explained straight off.
Golovan dressed as a muzhik—summer and winter, in scorching heat and freezing cold, he always wore a long, raw sheepskin coat, all greasy and blackened. I never saw him in any other clothes, and I remember my father often joked about that coat, calling it “everlasting.”
Golovan belted his coat with a strap of white laminated harness, which had turned yellow in many places and in others had flaked off completely, exposing the wax-end and holes. But the coat was kept clean of various little tenants—I knew that better than anyone, because I often sat in Golovan’s bosom listening to his talk and always felt myself very comfortable there.
The wide collar of the coat was never buttoned, but, on the contrary, was left wide open to the waist. Here was the “bosom,” offering a very ample space for bottles of cream, which Golovan provided to the kitchen of the Orel Assembly of the Nobility.3 That had been his trade ever since he “went free” and was given a “Ermolov cow” to start out.
The powerful chest of the “deathless” was covered only with a linen shirt of Ukrainian cut, that is, with a standing collar, always white as milk and unfailingly with long, bright-colored ties. These ties were sometimes a ribbon, sometimes simply a strip of woolen cloth or even cotton, but they lent something fresh and gentlemanly to Golovan’s appearance, which suited him very well, because he was in fact a gentleman.
III
Golovan was our neighbor. Our house in Orel was on Third Dvoryanskaya Street, and it stood third in from the precipitous bank above the river Orlik. It’s a rather beautiful spot. At that time, before the fires, this was the edge of the city proper. To the right, beyond the Orlik, lay the small outlying hovels of the neighborhood adjoining the city center, which ended with the church of St. Basil the Great. To the side was the very steep and uncomfortable descent down the bank, and behind, beyond the gardens, a deep ravine, with open pasture beyond it, on which some sort of storehouse stuck up. In the morning, soldiers’ drills and beatings with rods took place there—the earliest pictures I saw and watched more often than anything else. On that same pasture, or, better to say, on the narrow strip that separated our fenced gardens from the ravine, grazed Golovan’s six or seven cows and the red bull of the Ermolov breed, which also belonged to him. Golovan kept the bull for his small but excellent herd, and also took him around on a halter to “lend” him to those who had need of him for breeding. That brought him some income.
The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories Page 36