The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

by Nikolai Leskov

  “I heard your grievances and can help you, and you have no reason to shun me … Here, now, in this great and renowned assembly, you won’t get the satisfaction you desire without me, but I’ve been in such situations and know the ways. If you’d like to get the first force from the saint, don’t grudge a hundred roubles for your success, and I will provide it.”

  The merchant looked at the fellow and said:

  “Quit lying.”

  But the man held his ground:

  “You probably think that way judging by my nonentity,” he says, “but what is nonentity in the eyes of men may be reckoned quite differently with God, and what I undertake to do, I’m firmly able to accomplish. Here you’re worrying about earthly grandeur, that so much of it has come here, but to me it’s all dust, and if there were no end of princes and kings, they couldn’t hinder us in the least, and would even make way for us themselves. And so, if you wish to have a clear and smooth path ahead of you, and see the foremost persons, and give the first kisses to the friend of God, don’t stint on what I told you. But if you’re sorry about the hundred roubles and don’t scorn company, then I’ll promptly find two more persons I’ve already had my eye on, and that will make it cheaper for you.”

  What did the pious worshippers have left to do? Of course, there was risk in trusting the wastrel, but they didn’t want to miss the chance, and the money he was asking wasn’t so much, especially with company … The patriarch decided to risk it and said:

  “Get up a company.”

  The wastrel took the down payment and ran off, having told the family to dine early and, an hour before the first bell rang for vespers, to take a new hand towel for each of them, go out of town to a designated place in the “poor train,” and wait for him there. From there they would immediately set out on their march, which, the entrepreneur assured them, no princes or kings could stop.

  These “poor trains,” of larger or smaller dimensions, stood in vast camps during all such assemblies, and I myself saw and remember them in Korennaya, outside Kursk, and about the one our narrative has come upon I had heard tell from eyewitnesses to what is about to be described.

  IX

  The place occupied by the poor encampment was outside town, between the river and the high road, on a spacious and free common which at the end bordered on a big, meandering ravine, overgrown with thick shrubs and with a rivulet running through it. Beyond it began a mighty pine forest where eagles screamed.

  On the common stood a multitude of poor carts and wagons, which, however, presented in all their indigence a rather motley diversity of national genius and inventiveness. There were ordinary bast mat hutches, canvas tents covering the whole cart, “bowers” made of fluffy feather grass, and perfectly hideous bast wagons. A whole big piece of bast from a century-old linden is bent and nailed to the sides of the wagon, leaving space enough to lie down underneath: people lie with their feet towards the inside of the vehicle and their heads towards the open air at both ends. The wind passes over them lying there, airing them out, so they don’t choke on their own breath. Right there, by the baskets and sacks of hay tied to the shafts, stood the horses, mostly skinny, all of them in collars, and some, owned by thrifty people, under matted “lids.” In some carts there were also dogs, which were not supposed to be taken on pilgrimages, but, being “zealous” dogs, had caught up with their owners at the second or third stop and, for all that they were beaten, did not want to be left behind. There was no place for them here, in true conditions of pilgrimage, but they were put up with and, sensing their contraband position, behaved very meekly; they huddled somewhere under a tar barrel by the cart wheel and maintained a grave silence. Modesty alone saved them from ostracism and from the danger posed for them by the baptized Gypsy, who would have “taken their coat off” in a minute. Here, in the poor train, under the open sky, life was merry and good, as at a fair. There was more diversity here than in hotel rooms, which only special chosen ones could get, or under the sheds of the inns, where, in eternal semidarkness, people of the second-best sort found shelter with their carts. True, fat monks and deacons did not come to visit the poor train, and there were also no real, experienced pilgrims to be seen, but instead there were jacks-of-all-trades, and a vast production of various “holy objects” went on. When I happened to read in the Kiev papers about a notorious case of faking relics from sheep bones, I was amazed at the childish methods of these fabricators, compared to the boldness of the artisans I had heard about earlier. Here it was a sort of frank negligée with valor. Even the street leading down to the common was already distinguished by a totally unrestrained freedom of the widest enterprise. People knew that such occasions do not occur often, and they didn’t waste time: little tables stood by many gateways, displaying little icons, crosses, and paper envelopes supposedly containing rotten wood dust from the old coffin, with shavings from the new one lying next to them. All these materials were, on the assurances of the sellers, of much higher quality than in the actual places, because they had been brought there by the woodworkers, diggers, and carpenters who had done the most important work. At the entrance to the camp, “hurriers and scurriers” ran around with little icons of the new saint, covered for the time being in white paper with a cross drawn on it. These icons were sold very cheaply and could be bought on the spot, but they were not supposed to be uncovered before the first prayer service was held. For many of the unworthy, who bought such icons and opened them beforehand, they turned out to be bare boards.

  In the ravine behind the encampment, under overturned sledges, by the stream, a Gypsy lived with his Gypsy wife and Gypsy children. The Gypsy and his wife had a big medical practice there. They kept tied to one sledge runner a big, voiceless cock, who produced stones in the morning that “promoted bedstead potency,” and the Gypsy had a catnip that was then quite necessary against “aphedronian sores.”30 This Gypsy was a celebrity of sorts. Word went around about him that when the seven sleeping virgins were “revealed” in infidel lands, he was not a superfluous man there: he could transform old people into young, could heal serfs punished by flogging, could make the pain of soldiers who had run the gauntlet pass out of their insides through the drainage system. His Gypsy wife seemed to know still greater secrets of nature. She gave husbands two kinds of water: one to expose wives who sin by fornication (such wives, when given this water, could not retain it, but passed it right out again); the other a magnetic water, which made an unwilling wife embrace her husband passionately in her sleep, but if she tried to love another man, she would fall out of bed.

  In short, things were at the boil here, and the manifold needs of mankind found useful helpers.

  When the wastrel caught sight of the merchants, he didn’t speak to them, but started beckoning to them to go down into the ravine, and darted down there himself.

  Again this seemed a bit frightening: there was the danger of an ambush, in which evildoers could be hiding capable of robbing pilgrims blind, but piety overcame fear, and after some reflection, the merchant, having said a prayer and commemorated the saint, decided to go three steps down.

  He moved carefully, holding on to little shrubs, after telling his wife and daughter to shout with all their might if anything happened.

  There was indeed an ambush there, but it was not dangerous: the merchant found in the ravine two men like himself, pious men in merchant garb, with whom he was to be “put together.” They all had to pay the wastrel the promised sum for taking them to the saint, and then he would reveal his plan to them and take them there at once. There was no point in thinking long about it, and resisting would not have gotten them anywhere: the merchants put together the sum and handed it over, and the wastrel revealed his plan to them, a simple plan, but, in its simplicity, of pure genius. It consisted of there being in the “poor train” a paralytic whom the wastrel knew, who needed only to be picked up and carried to the saint, and nobody would stop them or bar their way with a sick man. All they had to do was buy a litt
er and a coverlet for the paralytic, and then the six of them would pick him up and carry the litter on towels.

  The first part of this idea seemed excellent—with the paralytic, the bearers would, of course, be allowed in, but what would the consequences be? Wouldn’t there be embarrassment afterwards? However, they were also set at ease on this account; their guide simply said it wasn’t worthy of attention.

  “We’ve already seen such occasions,” he said. “You’ll be honored with seeing everything to your satisfaction and with kissing the relics during the singing of the vigil, and as for the sick man, it’s as the saint wills: if he wishes to heal him, he will heal him, and if he doesn’t, again it’s as he wills. Now, just chip in quickly for the litter and coverlet, I’ve got it all ready in a house nearby, I only have to hand over the money. Wait here for me a little, and we’ll be on our way.”

  After some bargaining, he took another two roubles per person for the tackle and ran off, came back ten minutes later, and said:

  “Let’s go, brothers, only don’t step too briskly, and lower your eyes so you look a bit more God-fearing.”

  The merchants lowered their eyes and walked along with reverence, and in the same “poor train” they came to a wagon where a completely sickly nag stood eating from a sack, and a scrofulous little boy sat on the box amusing himself by tossing the plucked hearts of yellow chamomile from hand to hand. In this wagon, under a bast top, lay a middle-aged man with a face yellower than the chamomile, and his arms were also yellow, stretched out and limp as soft wattle.

  The women, seeing such terrible infirmity, began crossing themselves, but their guide addressed the sick man and said:

  “Look, Uncle Fotey, these good people have come to help me take you to be healed. The hour of God’s will is approaching you.”

  The yellow man began to turn towards the strangers, looking at them with gratitude and pointing his finger at his tongue.

  They guessed that he was mute. “Never mind,” they said, “never mind, servant of God, don’t thank us, it’s God you must thank,” and they started pulling him from the wagon, the men taking him under the shoulders and legs, but the women only held up his weak arms, and became still more frightened by the man’s dreadful condition, because his arms were completely “loose” in the shoulder joints and were only held on somehow by horsehair ropes.

  The litter stood right there. It was a little old bed, the corners thickly covered with bedbug eggs; on the bed lay a sheaf of straw and a piece of flimsy cloth with the cross, the spear, and the reed crudely painted on it.31 The guide fluffed up the straw with a deft hand, so that it hung over the edges on all sides; they put the yellow paralytic on it, covered him with the cloth, and carried him off.

  The guide went ahead with a little clay brazier, censing them crosswise.

  Even before they left the train, people began to cross themselves at the sight of them, and as they went down the streets, the attention directed at them became more and more serious: seeing them, everyone realized that this was a sick man being carried to the wonderworker, and they joined in. The merchants hastened on, because they heard the bells ringing for the vigil, and they arrived with their burden just in time, as they started singing: “Praise the name of the Lord, ye servants of the Lord.”32

  The church, of course, had no room for even a hundredth part of the assembled crowd; untold numbers of people stood in a packed mass around it, but as soon as they saw the litter and the bearers, everyone started buzzing: “They’re bearing a paralytic, there’ll be a miracle,” and the crowd parted.

  They made a living passageway up to the door of the church, and then everything went as the guide had promised. Even the firm hope of his faith was not put to shame: the paralytic was healed. He stood up and walked on his own feet, “glorifying and giving thanks.”33 Someone took notes about it all, in which the healed paralytic, in the words of the guide, was called a “relative” of the Orel merchant, which made many people envious, and the healed man, owing to the late hour, did not go to his poor train, but spent the night under the shed with his new relatives.

  This was all very nice. The healed man was an interesting person, and many came to look at him and left “donations.”

  But he still spoke little and indistinctly—he mumbled badly from lack of habit and mostly pointed to the merchants with his healed hand, meaning, “Ask them, they’re my relatives, they know everything.” And willy-nilly they had to say they were his relatives; but suddenly amidst all this an unexpected unpleasantness stole up on them: during the night following the healing of the yellow paralytic, it was noticed that a gold cord with a gold tassel had disappeared from the velvet cover on the saint’s coffin.

  Discreet inquiries were made, and the Orel merchant was asked if he had noticed anything when he came close, and who were the people who had helped him to bear his sick relative. He answered in good conscience that they were all strangers from the poor train and had helped him out of zeal. He was taken there to identify the place, the people, the nag, and the wagon with the scrofulous boy who was playing with the chamomile, but only the place was in its place, while of the people, the cart, and the boy with the chamomile there was no trace.

  The inquiry was abandoned, “so there would be no rumors among the people.” A new tassel was attached, and the merchants, after such unpleasantness, quickly made ready to go home. But here the healed relative gratified them with a new joy: he insisted that they take him with them, threatening to make a complaint otherwise, and reminding them of the tassel.

  And therefore, when the time came for the merchants to leave for home, Fotey was found on the box beside the driver, and it was impossible to throw him off before they came to the village of Krutoe, which was on their way. In those days there was a very dangerous descent there and a difficult ascent up the other side, and all sorts of incidents occurred with travelers: horses fell, carriages overturned, and other things of that sort. One had to pass through the village of Krutoe while it was light, or else spend the night there. Nobody risked the descent in the dark.

  Our merchants also spent the night there, and while ascending the hill in the morning found themselves “at a loss,” that is, they had lost their healed relative Fotey. They had “given him a good taste of the flask” in the evening, and in the morning had left without waking him up. But some other good people were found who set this loss to rights and, taking Fotey with them, brought him to Orel.

  There he tracked down his ungrateful relatives, who had abandoned him in Krutoe, but he did not meet with a family welcome from them. He went around the town begging and telling how the merchant had not gone to the saint for his daughter, but to pray that the price of wheat would go up. Nobody was so precisely informed of that as Fotey.

  X

  Not long after the appearance in Orel of the known and abandoned Fotey, the merchant Akulov, from the parish of the Archangel Michael, set up “poor tables.” In the courtyard, on boards, stood big, steaming lime-wood bowls of noodles and iron kettles of kasha, and onion tarts and savory pies were handed out from the merchant’s porch. A multitude of guests gathered, each with his own spoon in his boot or on his bosom. The pies were handed out by Golovan. He was often invited to such “tables” as the architricline or chief butler, because he was fair, did not hide anything away for himself, and knew very well who deserved what sort of pie—with peas, with carrots, or with liver.

  So he stood now and “endowed” each approaching person with a big pie, and if he knew someone had a sick person in the house, he gave them two or more as a “sick ration.” And among the various approaching people, Fotey also approached Golovan, a new man, who seemed to surprise Golovan. Seeing Fotey, it was as if Golovan remembered something, and he asked:

  “Who are you and where do you live?”

  Fotey winced and said:

  “I’m God’s, that’s all, wrapped in a slave’s pall, living under the wall.”

  Others said to Golovan: “The merch
ants brought him from the saint … He’s the Fotey who got healed.”

  Golovan smiled and was starting to say:

  “What kind of Fotey is he!” but at that very moment Fotey snatched a pie from him and with the other hand gave him a deafening slap in the face and shouted:

  “Don’t shoot your mouth off!” and with that sat down at the table. And Golovan suffered it without saying a word. Everybody understood that it had to be so, that the healed man was obviously playing the holy fool, and Golovan knew that it had to be suffered. Only “by what reckoning did Golovan deserve such treatment?” That was a mystery that lasted for many years and established the opinion that Golovan was concealing something very bad, because he was afraid of Fotey.

  And there really was something mysterious here. Fotey, who soon fell so low in the general opinion that they called after him “Stole a tassel from the saint and drank it away in the pot-house,” treated Golovan with extreme impudence.

  Meeting Golovan anywhere at all, Fotey would stand in his way and shout: “Pay your debt.” And Golovan, without the least objection, would go to his breast pocket and take out a ten-kopeck piece. If he happened not to have ten kopecks, but had less, Fotey, who was called the Polecat because his rags were so motley, would fling the insufficient money back at Golovan, spit at him, and even beat him, throwing stones, mud, or snow.