The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

by Nikolai Leskov

  The sovereign did not want to listen to that for long, and Platov, seeing as much, did not insist. So they drove on in silence, only Platov got out at every posting station and in vexation drank a glass of vodka, ate a salty pretzel, smoked his tree-root pipe, which held a whole pound of Zhukov tobacco at once,7 then got back into the carriage and sat silently beside the tsar. The sovereign looked out one side, and Platov stuck his pipe out the other window and smoked into the wind. In this way they reached Petersburg, and the sovereign did not take Platov to the priest Fedot at all.

  “You,” he says, “are intemperate before spiritual conversation and smoke so much that I’ve got soot in my head because of it.”

  Platov was left offended and lay at home on a vexatious couchment, and went on lying like that, smoking Zhukov tobacco without quittance.

  IV

  The astonishing flea of burnished English steel stayed in Alexander Pavlovich’s chest inlaid with fish bone until he died in Taganrog, having given it to the priest Fedot, to be given later to the empress when she calmed down. The empress Elisaveta Alexeevna looked at the flea’s veritations and smiled, but did not become interested in it.

  “My business now,” she says, “is to be a widow, and no amusement holds any seduction for me”—and, on returning to Petersburg, she handed over this wonder, with all the other valuables, to the new sovereign as an heirloom.

  The emperor Nikolai Pavlovich also paid no attention to the flea at first, because there were disturbances at his ascension,8 but later one day he began to go through the chest left him by his brother and took out the snuffbox, and from the snuffbox the diamond nut, and in it he found the steel flea, which had not been wound up for a long time and therefore did not work, but lay quietly, as if gone stiff.

  The sovereign looked and wondered.

  “What’s this gewgaw, and why did my brother keep it here so carefully?”

  The courtiers wanted to throw it out, but the sovereign says:

  “No, it means something.”

  They invited a chemist from the opposing pharmacy by the Anichkov Bridge, who weighed out poisons in very small scales, and showed it to him, and he took it, put it on his tongue, and said: “I feel a chill, as from hard metal.” Then he nipped it slightly with his teeth and announced:

  “Think what you like, but this is not a real flea, it’s a nymphosoria, and it’s made of metal, and it’s not our Russian workmanship.”

  The sovereign gave orders at once to find out where it came from and what it meant.

  They rushed and looked at the files and lists, but there was nothing written down in the files. Then they began asking around—nobody knew anything. But, fortunately, the Don Cossack Platov was still alive and was even still lying on his vexatious couchment smoking his pipe. When he heard that there was such a stir in the palace, he got up from his couchment at once, abandoned his pipe, and appeared before the sovereign in all his medals. The sovereign says:

  “What do you need of me, courageous old fellow?”

  And Platov replies:

  “Myself, Your Majesty, I need nothing from you, because I eat and drink what I like and am well pleased with it all, but,” he says, “I’ve come to report about this nymphosoria that’s been found: it happened thus and so, and it took place before my eyes in England—and there’s a little key here, and I’ve got a meagroscope you can see it through, and you can wind up the nymphosoria’s belly with the key, and it will leap through any space you like and do veritations to the sides.”

  They wound it up, and it started leaping, but Platov said:

  “This,” he says, “is indeed a very fine and interesting piece of work, Your Majesty, only we shouldn’t get astonished at it with rapturous feeling only, but should subject it to Russian inspection in Tula or Sesterbeck”—Sestroretsk was still called Sesterbeck then—“to see whether our masters can surpass it, so that the Englishmen won’t go putting themselves above the Russians.”

  The sovereign Nikolai Pavlovich was very confident in his Russian people and did not like yielding to any foreigners, and so he answered Platov:

  “You’ve put it well, courageous old fellow, and I charge you with seeing to this matter. With my present troubles, I don’t need this little box anyway, so take it with you, and don’t lie on your vexatious couchment anymore, but go to the quiet Don and start up an internecine conversation with my Cossacks there concerning their life and loyalty and likings. And when you pass through Tula, show this nymphosoria to my Tula masters and let them think about it. Tell them from me that my brother marveled at this thing and praised the foreign people who made this nymphosoria more than all, but that I’m relying on our people, that they’re no worse than any others. They won’t let my word drop and will do something.”

  V

  Platov took the steel flea and, on his way through Tula to the Don, showed it to the Tula gunsmiths, passed on the sovereign’s word to them, and then asked:

  “What are we to do now, my fellow Orthodox?”

  The gunsmiths replied:

  “We are sensible of the sovereign’s gracious words, good sir, and can never forget that he relies on his people, but what we are to do in the present case we cannot say this minute, because the English nation is also not stupid, but even rather clever, and there is a lot of sense in their craftsmanship. To vie with them,” they said, “calls for reflection and God’s blessing. But you, if Your Honor trusts in us as the sovereign does, go on your way to the quiet Don, and leave us this flea as it is, in its case and in the tsar’s golden snuffbox. Have a good time on the Don, let the wounds heal that you received for the fatherland, and on your way back through Tula, stop and send for us: by that time, God willing, we’ll have come up with something.”

  Platov was not entirely pleased that the Tula masters were asking for so much time and yet did not say clearly just what they hoped to bring off. He questioned them this way and that, and talked in all the manners of a wily Don Cossack, but the Tula men were no less wily than he, because they at once hit on such a scheme that there was even no hope of Platov’s believing them, and they wanted to carry out their bold fancy directly, and then give the flea back.

  They said:

  “We ourselves don’t know yet what we’re going to make, we’ll just trust in God, and maybe the tsar’s word won’t be disgraced on account of us.”

  So Platov dodged mentally and the Tula men did likewise.

  Platov dodged and dodged, then saw that he could not out-dodge the Tula men, gave them the snuffbox with the nymphosoria, and said:

  “Well, no help for it, go on,” he said, “have it your way; I know how you are; well, anyhow, no help for it—I trust you, only see that you don’t go replacing the diamond, and don’t spoil the fine English workmanship, and don’t fuss too long, because I travel fast: before two weeks are up, I’ll be on my way back from the quiet Don to Petersburg—and then I’ll have to have something to show the sovereign.”

  The gunsmiths fully reassured him:

  “We will not spoil the fine workmanship,” they said, “and we will not replace the diamond, and two weeks are enough for us, and by the time you go back, you’ll have something to present worthy of the sovereign’s magnificence.”

  But precisely what, they still did not say.

  VI

  Platov left Tula, and three of the gunsmiths, the most skillful of them, one of them cross-eyed, left-handed, with a birthmark on his cheek and the hair on his temples pulled out during his apprenticeship, bid farewell to their comrades and families, and, saying nothing to anyone, took their bags, put into them what eatables they needed, and disappeared from town.

  The only thing people noticed was that they did not go out by the Moscow Gate, but in the opposite direction, towards Kiev, and it was thought that they were going to Kiev to venerate the saints resting there or to consult some of the living holy men, who are always to be found in Kiev in abundance.

  But that was only a near truth, not th
e truth itself. Neither time nor space would allow the Tula masters to spend three weeks walking to Kiev, and then also manage to do work that would cover the English nation with shame. They might better have gone to pray in Moscow, which was only “twice sixty” miles away, and where there were not a few saints resting as well. While to Orel, in the opposite direction, it was the same “twice sixty,” and from Orel to Kiev a good three hundred miles more. Such a journey cannot be made quickly, and once it is made, one is not soon rested—the feet will be swolt and the hands will go on shaking for a long time.

  Some even thought that the masters had boasted before Platov, and then, thinking better of it, had turned coward, and had now fled for good, carrying off the tsar’s golden snuffbox, and the diamond, and, in its case, the English steel flea that had caused them so much trouble.

  However, this conjecture was also totally unfounded and unworthy of such skillful people, in whom the hope of our nation now rested.

  VII

  The Tula men, intelligent and experienced in metalwork, are equally well known as foremost connoisseurs in religion. Their native land is filled with their glory in this regard, and it has even reached holy Athos:9 they are not only masters of singing with flourishes, but they know how to paint out the picture of “Evening Bells,”10 and once one of them devotes himself to greater service and becomes a monk, such a one is reputed to make the best monastery treasurer and most successful collector of money. On holy Athos they know that Tula men are the most profitable people, and if it weren’t for them, the dark corners of Russia would probably never have seen a great many holy relics from the distant East, and Athos would have been deprived of many useful offerings from Russian generosity and piety. Nowadays the “Tula-born Athonites” carry holy relics all over our native land and masterfully collect money even where there’s none to be had. A Tula man is filled with churchly piety and is a great practitioner in these matters, and therefore the three masters who undertook to uphold Platov, and the whole of Russia along with him, made no mistake in heading, not for Moscow, but for the south. They didn’t go to Kiev at all, but to Mtsensk, the district capital of Orel province, where the ancient “stone-hewn” icon of St. Nicholas is kept, which came floating there in the most ancient times on a big cross, also of stone, down the river Zusha. The icon has a “dread and most fearsome” look—the bishop of Myra in Lycea is portrayed “full-length,” all dressed in gilded silver vestments; his face is dark, and in one hand he holds a church and in the other a sword—“for military conquest.” This “conquest” was the meaning of the whole thing: St. Nicholas is generally the patron of mercantile and military affairs, and the “Nicholas of Mtsensk” is particularly so, and it was him that the Tula men went to venerate. They held a prayer service before the icon itself, then before the stone cross, and finally returned home “by night” and, telling nobody anything, went about their business in terrible secrecy. All three of them came together in Lefty’s house, locked the door, closed the shutters, lit the lamp in front of the icon of St. Nicholas, and set to work.

  One day, two days, three days they sat and went nowhere, tapping away with their little hammers. They were forging something, but of what they were forging—nothing was known.

  Everybody was curious, but nobody could learn anything, because the workmen didn’t say anything and never showed themselves outside. Various people went up to the house, knocked at the door under various pretexts, to ask for a light or for salt, but the three artisans did not open to any demand, and nobody even knew what they fed on. People tried to frighten them, saying that the neighbors’ house was on fire, to see if they would get scared and come running out, and whatever they had forged there would be revealed, but nothing worked with these clever masters. Only once Lefty stuck his head out and shouted:

  “Burn yourselves up, we have no time,” and pulled his plucked head in again, slammed the shutter, and they went back to business.

  Through small chinks you could only see that lights were shining in the house and you could hear fine little hammers ringing on anvils.

  In short, the whole affair was conducted in such terrible secrecy that it was impossible to find anything out, and it went on like that right up to the Cossack Platov’s return from the quiet Don to the sovereign, and in all that time the masters neither saw nor talked with anyone.

  VIII

  Platov traveled in great haste and with ceremony: himself in the carriage, and on the box two Cossack odorlies with whips sitting on either side of the driver and showering him mercilessly with blows to keep him galloping. And if one of the Cossacks dozed off, Platov poked him with his foot from the carriage, and they would race on even more wickedly. These measures of inducement succeeded so well that the horses could not be reined in at the stations and always overran the stopping place by a hundred lengths. Then the Cossacks would apply the reverse treatment to the driver, and they would come back to the entrance.

  And so they came rolling into Tula—at first they also flew past the Moscow Gate by a hundred lengths, then the Cossacks applied their whips to the driver in the reverse sense, and they started hitching up new horses by the porch. Platov did not leave the carriage, and only told an odorly to bring him the masters with whom he had left the flea as quickly as possible.

  Off ran one odorly, to tell them to come as quickly as possible and bring the work with them that was to shame the English, and that odorly had not yet run very far, when Platov sent more behind him one after the other, to make it as quick as possible.

  He sent all the odorlies racing off and had already started sending simple people from the curious public, and was even impatiently sticking his own legs out of the carriage and in his impatience was about to run off himself, and kept gnashing his teeth—so slow it all seemed to him.

  Because at that time it was required that everything be done with great punctuality and speed, so that not a minute would be lost for Russian usefulness.

  IX

  The Tula masters, who were doing their astonishing deed, were just then finishing their work. The odorlies came running to them out of breath, and as for the simple people from the curious public—they did not reach them at all, because, being unaccustomed, their legs gave out on the way and they collapsed, and then, for fear of facing Platov, they hied themselves home and hid wherever they could.

  The odorlies came running, called out at once, and, seeing that they did not open, at once unceremoniously tore at the bolts of the shutters, but the bolts were so strong that they did not yield in the least; they pulled at the door, but the door was held shut from inside by an oaken bar. Then the odorlies took a log from the street, placed it fireman-fashion under the eaves of the roof, and ripped off the whole roof of the little house at one go. But on taking off the roof, they themselves collapsed at once, because the air in the cramped little chamber where the masters had been working without respite had turned into such a sweaty stuffage that for an unaccustomed man, fresh from outdoors, it was impossible to take a single breath.

  The envoys shouted:

  “What are you blankety-blank scum doing, hitting us with such stuffage! There’s no God in you after that!”

  And they replied:

  “We’re just now hammering in the last little nail and, once we’re done, we’ll bring our work out to you.”

  And the envoys say:

  “He’ll eat us alive before that and won’t leave enough to pray over.”

  But the masters reply:

  “He won’t have time to swallow you, because while you were talking, we hammered that last nail in. Run and tell him we’re bringing it.”

  The odorlies ran, but not confidently: they thought the masters would trick them, and therefore they ran and ran and then looked back; but the masters came walking behind them, and so hurriedly that they were not even fully dressed as was proper for appearing before an important person and were fastening the hooks of their kaftans as they went. Two of them had nothing in their hands, and the t
hird, Lefty, was carrying under a green cover the tsar’s chest with the English steel flea.

  X

  The odorlies came running to Platov and said:

  “Here they are!”

  Platov says at once to the masters:

  “Is it ready?”

  “Everything’s ready,” they say.

  “Give it here.”

  They gave it to him.

  And the carriage was already hitched up, and the driver and postillion were in place. The Cossacks were right there beside the driver and had their whips raised over him and held them brandished like that.

  Platov tore off the cover, opened the chest, unwrapped the cotton wool, took the diamond nut out of the snuffbox and looked: the English flea was lying there as before, and there was nothing else besides.

  Platov says:

  “What is this? Where is your work, with which you wanted to hearten our sovereign?”

  The gunsmiths reply:

  “Our work is here, too.”

  Platov asks:

  “What does it consist in?”

  And the gunsmiths reply:

  “Why explain? It’s all there in front of you—see for yourself.”

  Platov heaved his shoulders and shouted:

  “Where’s the key for the flea?”

  “Right there,” they reply. “Where the flea is, the key is—in the same nut.”

  Platov wanted to pick up the key, but his fingers were clubbsy; he tried and tried, but could not get hold either of the flea or of the key to its belly-winding, and suddenly he became angry and began to abuse them Cossack-fashion.

  He shouted:

  “So, you scoundrels, you did nothing, and you’ve probably ruined the whole thing besides! Your heads will roll!”

  The Tula masters replied:

  “You needn’t abuse us like that. You being the sovereign’s emissary, we must suffer all your offenses, but because you have doubted us and thought that we’re even likely to let down the sovereign’s name, we will not tell you the secret of our work, but kindly take it to the sovereign—he’ll see what sort of people he has in us and whether he should be ashamed of us or not.”