The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

by Nikolai Leskov

  He recognized this vagabond, and it turned out he was none other than Selivan.

  The merchant Selivan had saved was not the sort to be insensitive to a service rendered him: to avoid being accused of ingratitude at the Last Judgment, he wished to do the vagabond a good turn.

  “I want to be your benefactor,” he said to Selivan. “I have a vacant inn at the fork: go and settle there as the innkeeper, sell oats and hay, and pay me only a hundred roubles a year in rent.”

  Selivan knew that four miles from town on an abandoned road was no place for an inn, and whoever kept it could not possibly expect any travelers; but all the same, since this was the first time he had been offered a place of his own, he accepted.

  The merchant let him have it.

  V

  Selivan arrived at the inn with a small, one-wheeled dung cart in which he had placed his belongings, and on top of which a sick woman, dressed in pitiful rags, lay with her head thrown back.

  People asked Selivan:

  “Who is she?”

  He replied: “She’s my wife.”

  “What parts is she from?”

  Selivan meekly replied:

  “God’s parts.”

  “What ails her?”

  “Her legs hurt.”

  “What caused the hurt?”

  Frowning, Selivan grunted:

  “The cold earth.”

  He didn’t say another word, picked up the ailing cripple in his arms, and carried her inside.

  There was no talkativeness or general social affability in Selivan; he avoided people and even seemed afraid of them; he never appeared in town, and nobody saw his wife at all after he brought her there in the dung cart. Since then many years had gone by, the young people of that time had already aged, and the inn at the fork had fallen further into decrepitude and ruin; but Selivan and his poor cripple still lived in it and, to the general amazement, paid some rent to the merchant’s heirs.

  Where did this strange man earn all that was necessary for his own needs and what he had to pay for the completely ruined inn? Everybody knew that not one traveler had ever stopped at it, that not one driver had fed his horses there, and yet Selivan, while he lived in want, had not yet died of hunger.

  That was the question the neighboring peasants puzzled over, though not for very long. Soon they all realized that Selivan kept company with the unclean powers … These unclean powers set up all sorts of profitable deals for him, which for ordinary people were even impossible.

  It’s a known thing that the devil and his helpers have a great eagerness to do people all sorts of evil; but they especially like taking people’s souls out of them unexpectedly, so that they have no time to purify themselves by repentance. If some human being helps them in their schemes, all the unclean powers—that is, all the wood demons, water demons, and kikimoras—willingly do him various favors, though on very stiff conditions. A man who helps demons must follow them to hell himself—sooner or later, but inevitably. Selivan found himself precisely in that fatal situation. In order to live somehow in his ruined little house, he had long since sold his soul to several devils at once, and after that they had begun to use the strongest measures to drive travelers to his inn. No one ever came out of Selivan’s again. It was done in such a way that the wood demons, in collusion with the kikimoras, would suddenly raise a storm or blizzard towards evening, so that the man on the road would get confused and hurry to hide wherever he could from the raging elements. Selivan would at once pull a clever trick: he would put a light in his window, and by that light would draw in merchants with fat moneybags, noblemen with secret strongboxes, and priests in fur hats all lined with banknotes. It was a trap. Of those who went through Selivan’s gates, not one ever came back out. What Selivan did with them nobody knew.

  Grandpa Ilya, having come to that point, would just move his hand through the air and say imposingly:

  “The owl flies, the hawk glides … nothing to be seen: storm, blizzard, and … mother night—all’s out of sight.”

  Not to lower myself in Grandpa Ilya’s opinion, I pretended to understand what the words “The owl flies and the hawk glides” meant, but I understood only one thing, that Selivan was some sort of all-around spook, whom it was extremely dangerous to meet … God forbid it should happen to anybody.

  I tried, nevertheless, to verify the terrible stories about Selivan with other people, but they all said the same thing word for word. They all looked upon Selivan as a fearful spook, and, like Grandpa Ilya, they all sternly warned me “not to tell anybody about Selivan at home.” Following the miller’s advice, I observed this muzhik commandment until one especially frightening occasion when I myself fell into Selivan’s clutches.

  VI

  In winter, when the storm windows were put up, I couldn’t see Grandpa Ilya and the other muzhiks as often as before. I was protected from the frosts, while they were all left to work in the cold, during which one of them got into an unpleasant episode that brought Selivan onstage again.

  At the very beginning of winter, Ilya’s nephew, the muzhik Nikolai, went to celebrate his name day in Kromy and didn’t come back, and two weeks later he was found at the edge of Selivan’s forest. Nikolai was sitting on a stump, his chin propped on his stick, and, by the look of it, resting after such great fatigue that he didn’t notice how a blizzard had buried him up to the knees in snow and foxes had taken bites from his nose and cheeks.

  Nikolai had obviously lost his way, gotten tired, and frozen to death; but everybody knew it had happened with some hidden purpose and Selivan was behind it. I learned of it from the maids, of whom there were many in our house, almost all of them named Annushka. There was big Annushka, little Annushka, pockmarked Annushka, round Annushka, and also another Annushka nicknamed “Snappy.” This last one was a sort of journalist and reporter among us. She received her pert nickname for her lively and playful character.

  There were only two maids who weren’t called Annushka—Neonila and Nastya, whose position was somewhat special, because they were specially educated in Madame Morozova’s fashion shop in Orel; and there were also three errand girls in the house—Oska, Moska, and Roska. The baptismal name of one was Matrena, of another Raïssa, and what Oska’s real name was I don’t know. Moska, Oska, and Roska were still in their nonage and were therefore treated scornfully by everybody. They ran around barefoot and had no right to sit on chairs, but sat low down, on footstools. Their duties included various humiliating tasks, such as cleaning basins, taking out wash-tubs, walking the lapdogs, and running errands for the kitchen staff and to the village. Nowadays there is no such superfluous servantry in country households, but back then it seemed necessary.

  All our maids and errand girls, naturally, knew a lot about the fearful Selivan, near whose inn the muzhik Nikolai froze to death. On this occasion they now remembered all of Selivan’s old pranks, which I hadn’t known about before. It now came to light that once, when the coachman Konstantin had gone to town to buy beef, he had heard a pitiful moaning coming from the window of Selivan’s place and the words: “Aie, my hand hurts! Aie, he’s cutting my finger off!”

  Big Annushka, the maid, explained that during a blizzard Selivan had seized a carriage with a whole family of gentlefolk, and he was slowly cutting off the fingers of all the children one by one. This horrible barbarism frightened me terribly. Then something still more horrible, and inexplicable besides, happened to the cobbler Ivan. Once, when he was sent to town for shoemaking supplies and, having tarried, was returning home in the evening darkness, a little blizzard arose—and that gave Selivan the greatest pleasure. He immediately got up and went out to the fields, to blow about in the darkness together with Baba Yaga,3 the wood demons, and kikimoras. And the cobbler knew it and was on his guard, but not enough. Selivan leaped out right in front of his nose and barred the way … The horse stopped. But the cobbler, luckily for him, was brave by nature and highly resourceful. He went up to Selivan, as if amiably, and said, “Hi t
here,” and at the same time stuck him right in the stomach with his biggest and sharpest awl, which he had in his sleeve. The stomach is the only place where a sorcerer can be mortally wounded, but Selivan saved himself by immediately turning into a stout milepost, in which the cobbler’s sharp tool stuck so fast that the cobbler couldn’t pull it out, and he had to part with the awl, much though he needed it in his work.

  This last incident was even an offensive mockery of honest people, and everyone became convinced that Selivan was indeed not only a great villain and a cunning sorcerer, but also an impudent fellow, who must be given no quarter. They decided to teach him a harsh lesson; but Selivan was also no slouch and learned a new trick: he began to “shapeshift,” that is, at the slightest danger, even simply at each encounter, he would change his human look and turn before everyone’s eyes into various animate and inanimate objects. True, thanks to the general uprising against him, he suffered a bit despite all his adroitness, but to eradicate him proved impossible, and the struggle against him even assumed a somewhat ridiculous aspect, which offended and angered everyone still more. Thus, for instance, after the cobbler pierced him as hard as he could with his awl, and Selivan saved himself only by managing to turn into a milepost, several people saw the awl stuck into a real milepost. They even tried to pull it out, but the awl broke off, and they brought the cobbler only the worthless wooden handle.

  After that, Selivan walked about the forest as if he hadn’t been stuck at all, and turned himself so earnestly into a boar that he ate acorns with pleasure, as if such fruit were suited to his taste. But most often he came out on his tattered black roof in the guise of a red rooster and from there crowed “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” Everybody knew, naturally, that he was not interested in crowing “Cock-a-doodle-doo,” but was spying out whether anyone was coming, so as to prompt the wood demon or kikimora to stir up a good storm and worry him to death. In short, the local people figured out all his tricks so well that they never got caught in the villain’s nets and even took good revenge on Selivan for his perfidy. Once, having turned himself into a boar, he ran into the blacksmith Savely, who was returning on foot from a wedding in Kromy, and they had a real fight, but the blacksmith came out victorious, because, luckily, he happened to have a heavy cudgel in his hand. The were-boar pretended he had no wish to pay the slightest attention to the blacksmith and, grunting heavily, chomped his acorns; but the keen-witted blacksmith saw through his stratagem, which was to let him go by and then attack him from the rear, knock him down, and eat him instead of the acorns. The blacksmith decided to forestall trouble; he raised his cudgel high above his head and whacked the boar on the snout so hard that it squealed pitifully, fell down, and never got up again. And when, after that, the blacksmith began making a hasty getaway, Selivan assumed his human form again and looked at him for a long time from his porch—obviously having the most unfriendly intentions towards him.

  After this terrible encounter, the blacksmith even came down with a fever, and only cured himself by taking the quinine powder sent to him from our house as a treatment and scattering it to the winds.

  The blacksmith passed for a very reasonable man and knew that neither quinine nor any other pharmaceutical medication could do anything against magic. He waited it out, tied a knot in a thick string, and threw it onto the dung heap to rot. That put an end to it all, because as soon as the string and the knot rotted, Selivan’s power was supposed to end. And so it happened. After this incident, Selivan never again turned into a pig, or at least decidedly no one since then ever met him in that slovenly guise.

  With Selivan’s pranks in the form of a red rooster things went even more fortunately: the cross-eyed mill hand Savka, a most daring young lad, who acted with great foresight and adroitness, took up arms against him.

  Having been sent to town once on the eve of a fair, he went mounted on a very lazy and obstinate horse. Knowing his character, Savka brought along on the sly, just in case, a good birch stick, with which he hoped to imprint a souvenir on the flanks of his melancholy Bucephalus. He had already managed to do something of the sort and had broken the character of his steed enough so that, losing patience, he began to gallop a little.

  Selivan, not expecting Savka to be so well armed, jumped out on the eaves as a rooster the moment he arrived and began turning around, rolled his eyes in all directions, and sang “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” Savka wasn’t cowed by the sorcerer, but, on the contrary, said to him: “Eh, brother, never fear—you won’t get near,” and without thinking twice he deftly hurled the stick at him, so that he didn’t even finish his “cock-a-doodle-doo” and fell down dead. Unfortunately, he didn’t fall outside, but into the courtyard, where, once he touched the ground, it cost him nothing to go back to his natural human form. He became Selivan and, running out, took off after Savka brandishing the same stick with which Savka had given him the treatment when he sang as a rooster on the roof.

  According to Savka, Selivan was so furious this time that it might have gone badly for him; but Savka was a quick-witted fellow and knew very well one extremely useful trick. He knew that his lazy horse forgot his laziness at once the moment he was turned towards home, to his trough. That was what he did. The moment Selivan rushed at him armed with the stick, Savka turned the horse around and vanished. He came galloping home, his face distorted by fear, and told about the frightful incident that had befallen him only the next day. And thank God he started to speak, because they feared he might be left mute forever.

  VII

  Instead of the cowed Savka, another braver ambassador was dispatched, who reached Kromy and came back safely. However, this one, too, on completing the trip, said it would have been easier for him to fall through the earth than to go past Selivan’s inn. Other people felt the same: the fear became general; but to make up for it they all combined their efforts to keep an eye on Selivan. Wherever and whatever shape he took, he was always found out, and they strove to cut off his harmful existence in all its guises. Let Selivan appear by his inn as a sheep or a calf—he was recognized and beaten anyway, and he couldn’t manage to hide in any of his guises. Even when he rolled out to the road one time as a new, freshly tarred cart wheel and lay in the sun to dry, his ruse was discovered and smart people smashed the wheel to bits, so that both the hub and the spokes flew in all directions.

  Of all these incidents that made up the heroic epopee of my childhood, I promptly received quick and highly trustworthy intelligence. The swiftness of the news was owing in large part to the fact that there was always an excellent itinerant public that came to do their grinding at our mill. While the millstones ground the grain, their mouths with still greater zeal ground out all sorts of drivel, and from there all the interesting stories were brought to the maids’ room by Moska and Roska, and were then conveyed to me in the best possible versions, and I would set to thinking about them all night, creating very amusing situations for myself and Selivan, for whom, despite all I had heard about him, I nursed in the depths of my soul a most heartfelt attraction. I believed irrevocably that the time would come when Selivan and I would meet in some extraordinary way—and would even love each other far more than I loved Grandpa Ilya, in whom I disliked it that one of his eyes, namely the left one, always laughed a little.

  I simply couldn’t believe for long that Selivan had done all his supernatural wonders with evil intent towards people, and I liked very much to think about him; and usually, as soon as I began to doze off, I dreamed about him—quiet, kind, and even hurt. I had never yet seen him, and was unable to picture his face to myself from the distorted descriptions of the talebearers, but I saw his eyes as soon as I closed my own. They were big eyes, perfectly blue and very kind. And while I slept, Selivan and I were in the most pleasant harmony: we found various secret little burrows in the forest, where we kept a lot of bread and butter and warm children’s coats stashed away, which we would take, run to cottages we knew in the village, place them in a dormer window, knock to get somebody’s atte
ntion, and run away.

  I think those were the most beautiful dreams of my life, and I always regretted that when I woke up, Selivan turned back into a brigand, against whom every good man had to take every measure of precaution. I admit, I had no wish to lag behind the others, and while I had the warmest friendship with Selivan in my dreams, on waking I considered it not superfluous to protect myself from him even at a distance.

  To that end, by way of no little flattery and other humiliations, I talked the housekeeper into giving me my father’s old and very big Caucasian dagger, which she kept in the larder. I tied it to the chinstrap I had taken from my uncle’s hussar shako and cleverly hid this weapon under the mattress at the head of my little bed. If Selivan had appeared at night in our house, I would certainly have confronted him.

  Neither my father nor my mother knew of this secret armory, and that was absolutely necessary, otherwise the dagger would, of course, have been taken from me, and then Selivan would have disturbed my peaceful sleep, because I was still terribly afraid of him. And meanwhile he was already making approaches to us, but our pert young girls recognized him at once. Selivan dared to appear in our house as a big red-brown rat. At first he simply made noise in the larder at night, but then he got down into a big tub made from a hollowed linden trunk, at the bottom of which, covered by a sieve, lay sausages and other good things set aside for receiving guests. Here Selivan wanted to cause us serious domestic trouble—probably to pay us back for the troubles he had suffered from our muzhiks. Turning into a red-brown rat, he jumped to the bottom of the tub, pushed aside the stone weight that lay on the sieve, and ate all the sausages. But then there was no way he could jump back out of the high tub. This time, by all appearances, Selivan couldn’t possibly escape the well-deserved punishment that Snappy Annushka, the quickest of the girls, volunteered to mete out to him. For that she appeared with a kettle full of boiling water and an old fork. Annushka’s plan was first to scald the were-rat with the boiling water, and then stab him with the fork and throw the dead body into the weeds, to be eaten by crows. But in carrying out the execution, Round Annushka made a clumsy move: she splashed boiling water on Snappy Annushka’s hand. The girl dropped the fork from pain, and at the same moment the rat bit her finger and, running up her sleeve with remarkable agility, jumped out, and, having put a general fright into all those present, made himself invisible.