“Well, there you are!” exclaimed the police chief, glad of the correctness of his experienced reasoning. “You put the box there for him yourself! … But all the same I’m surprised that neither you, nor your people, nor anybody missed it when it came time for you to leave.”
“My God, we were all so frightened!” my aunt moaned.
“That’s true, that’s true, too; I believe you,” said the police chief. “There was reason to be afraid, but still … such a large sum … such good money. I’ll gallop there, I’ll gallop there right now … He’s probably hiding out somewhere already, but he won’t get away from me! It’s lucky for us that everybody knows he’s a thief, and nobody likes him: they’re not going to hide him … Although—he’s got money in his hands now … he can divvy it up … I’ll have to hurry … People are plain scoundrels … Good-bye, I’m going. And you calm yourself, take some drops … I know their thievish nature, and I assure you he’ll be caught.”
And the police chief was buckling on his saber, when suddenly an unusual stir was heard among the people in the front hall and … Selivan stepped across the threshold into the big room where we all were, breathing heavily and holding my aunt’s box.
Everybody jumped up and stood as if rooted to the spot …
“You forgot your little coffer—here it is,” Selivan said in a muffled voice.
He couldn’t say any more, because he was completely out of breath from the excessively quick pace and, perhaps, from strong inner agitation.
He put the box on the table and, without being invited, sat down on a chair and lowered his head and arms.
XIX
The box was perfectly intact. My aunt took a little key from around her neck, unlocked it, and exclaimed:
“All, all just as it was!”
“Kept safe …” Selivan said softly. “I ran after you … tried to catch up … couldn’t … Forgive me for sitting down in front of you … I’m out of breath.”
My father went to him first, embraced him, and kissed his head.
Selivan didn’t move.
My aunt took two hundred-rouble notes from the box and tried to put them into his hands.
Selivan went on sitting and staring as if he understood nothing.
“Take what’s given you,” said the police chief.
“What for? There’s no need!”
“For having honestly saved and brought the money that was forgotten at your place.”
“What else? Shouldn’t a man be honest?”
“Well, you’re … a good man … you didn’t think of keeping what wasn’t yours.”
“Keeping what wasn’t mine! …” Selivan shook his head and added: “I don’t need what isn’t mine.”
“But you’re poor—take it to improve things for yourself!” my aunt said tenderly.
“Take it, take it,” my father tried to persuade him. “You have a right to it.”
“What right?”
They told him about the law according to which anyone who finds and returns something lost has a right to a third of what he has found.
“What kind of law is that?” he replied, again pushing away my aunt’s hand with the money. “Don’t profit from another’s misfortune … There’s no need! Good-bye!”
And he got up to go back to his maligned little inn, but my father wouldn’t let him: he took him to his study, locked himself in with him, and an hour later ordered a sleigh hitched up to take him home.
A day later this incident became known in town and all around it, and two days later my father and aunt went to Kromy, stopped at Selivan’s, had tea in his cottage, and left a warm coat for his wife. On the way back they stopped by again and brought him more presents: tea, sugar, flour.
He accepted it all politely, but reluctantly, and said:
“What for? It’s three days now that people have begun stopping here … money’s coming in … we made cabbage soup … They’re not afraid of us like they used to be.”
When I was taken back to boarding school after the holidays, things were again sent with me for Selivan, and I had tea at his place and kept looking in his face and thinking:
“What a beautiful, kind face he has! Why is it that for so long he looked to me and others like a spook?”
This thought pursued me and would not leave me in peace … Why, this was the same man whom everyone had found so frightening and considered a sorcerer and an evildoer. And for so long it had seemed that all he did was plot and carry out evil deeds. Why had he suddenly become so good and nice?
XX
I was very lucky in my childhood, in the sense that my first lessons in religion were given me by an excellent Christian. This was the Orel priest Ostromyslenny9—a good friend of my father’s and a friend to all of us children, who was able to teach us to love truth and mercy. I told my comrades nothing of what had happened to us on Christmas Eve at Selivan’s, because there was nothing in it all that flattered my courage, while, on the contrary, they might have laughed at my fear, but I revealed all my adventures and doubts to Father Efim.
He stroked me with his hand and said:
“You’re very lucky. Your soul on Christmas Day was like a manger for the holy infant, who came to earth to suffer for the unfortunate. Christ lit up for you the darkness in which the empty talk of dark-minded folk had shrouded your imagination. It was not Selivan who was the spook, but you yourselves—your suspiciousness of him, which kept all of you from seeing his good conscience. His face seemed dark to you, because your eye was dark.10 Take note of that so that next time you won’t be so blind.”
This was intelligent and excellent advice. In later years of my life I became close with Selivan and had the good fortune to see how he made himself a man loved and honored by everyone.
On the new estate which my aunt bought there was a good inn at a much-frequented point on the high road. She offered this inn to Selivan on good terms, and Selivan accepted and lived there until his death. Then my old childhood dreams came true: I not only became closely acquainted with Selivan, but we felt full confidence and friendship for each other. I saw his situation change for the better—how peace settled into his house and he eventually prospered; how instead of the former gloomy expressions on the faces of people who met Selivan, everyone now looked at him with pleasure. And indeed it happened that, once the eyes of the people around Selivan were enlightened, his own face also became bright.
Among my aunt’s servants, it was the footman Borisushka who disliked Selivan the most—the one whom Selivan had nearly strangled on that memorable Christmas Eve.
This story was sometimes joked about. That night’s incident could be explained by the fact that, as everyone suspected that Selivan might rob my aunt, so Selivan himself had strong suspicions that the coachman and the footman might have brought us to his inn on purpose in order to steal my aunt’s money during the night and then conveniently blame it all on the suspicious Selivan.
Mistrust and suspicion on one side provoked mistrust and suspicion on the other, and it seemed to everyone that they were all enemies of each other and they all had grounds for considering each other as people inclined towards evil.
Thus evil always generates more evil and is defeated only by the good, which, in the words of the Gospel, makes our eye and heart clean.
XXI
It remains, however, to see why, ever since Selivan left the baker, he became sullen and secretive. Had anyone back then wronged and spurned him?
My father, being well disposed towards this good man, nevertheless thought that Selivan had some secret, which he stubbornly kept to himself.
That was so, but Selivan revealed his secret only to my aunt, and that only after he had lived for several years on her estate and after his ever-ailing wife had died.
When I came to see my aunt once, already as a young man, and we started recalling Selivan, who had died himself not long before then, my aunt told me his secret.
The thing was that Selivan, in the tender
goodness of his heart, had been touched by the woeful fate of the helpless daughter of the retired executioner, who had died in their town. No one had wanted to give this girl shelter, as the child of a despised man. Selivan was poor, and besides he didn’t dare to keep the executioner’s daughter with him in town, where everyone knew them both. He had to conceal her origin, which was not her fault, from everyone. Otherwise she could not avoid the harsh reproaches of people who were incapable of mercy and justice. Selivan concealed her, because he constantly feared she would be recognized and insulted, and this secretiveness and anxiety pervaded his whole being and partly left their mark on him.
Thus everyone who called Selivan a “spook” was in fact far more of a “spook” for him.
* Kuliga—a place where the trees have been cut down and burned, a clearing, a burn. Author.
† A “tavousi stone”—a light sapphire with peacock feather reflections, in olden times considered a lifesaving talisman. Ivan the Terrible had such a stone in a ring. “A gold finger-ring, and in it a tavousi stone, and in that a look of cloudiness and a sort of effervescence.” Author. (Tavousi is Persian for “peacock.” Trans.)
The Man on Watch
1839
I
The event an account of which is offered to the reader’s attention below is touching and terrible in its significance for the main heroic character of the piece, and the denouement of the affair is so original that its like is even hardly possible anywhere but in Russia.
It consists in part of a court, in part of a historical anecdote, which characterizes rather well the morals and tendencies of the very curious, though extremely poorly chronicled, epoch of the thirties of the current nineteenth century.
There is no trace of fiction in the following story.
II
In the winter of 1839, around Theophany, there was a big thaw in Petersburg. The weather was so sodden, it was as if spring were coming: the snow melted, drops fell from the roofs all day, and the ice on the rivers turned blue and watery. On the Neva, there were deep pools just in front of the Winter Palace. A warm but very strong wind was blowing from the west: it drove the water back from the sea, and warning cannon were fired.
The guard at the palace was mounted by a company of the Izmailovsky Regiment, commanded by a young officer of brilliant education and very good standing in society, Nikolai Ivanovich Miller (later a full general and director of the lycée).1 He was a man of the so-called “humane” tendency, a fact which had long been noted by his superiors and which had been slightly detrimental to his career.
In fact, Miller was a good and trustworthy officer, and the palace guard at that time presented no danger. It was a most quiet and untroubled period. Nothing was required of the palace guard except a punctual standing at their posts, and yet right then, during Captain Miller’s turn on guard at the palace, there took place a highly extraordinary and alarming incident, which is now barely remembered by its few surviving contemporaries.
III
At first everything went well in the guard: the posts were distributed, people were placed in them, and everything was in perfect order. The sovereign, Nikolai Pavlovich,2 was in good health, took a drive in the evening, returned home, and went to bed. The palace, too, fell asleep. A most quiet night set in. The guardroom was silent. Captain Miller pinned his white handkerchief to the high and always traditionally greasy morocco back of the officer’s chair and sat down to while away the time over a book.
N. I. Miller had always been a passionate reader, and therefore he was not bored, but read and did not notice how the night slipped by; but suddenly, towards two o’clock in the morning, he was roused by a terrible disturbance: before him the sergeant on duty appears, all pale, gripped by fear, and babbles rapidly:
“Disaster, sir, disaster!”
“What is it?!”
“A terrible misfortune has befallen us!”
N. I. Miller leaped up in indescribable alarm and was barely able to find out clearly what the “disaster” and “terrible misfortune” consisted in.
IV
The matter consisted in the following: a sentry, a private of the Izmailovsky Regiment by the name of Postnikov, standing watch outside of what is now the Jordan entrance,3 heard a man drowning in a pool filled by the Neva just opposite that place and desperately calling for help.
Private Postnikov, a former house serf, was a very nervous and very sensitive man. He had long been listening to the distant cries and moans of the drowning man and was petrified by them. In terror he looked this way and that over the whole expanse of the embankment visible to him, and neither here, nor on the Neva, as ill luck would have it, did he catch sight of a single living soul.
There was no one who could help the drowning man, and he was sure to go under …
And yet the sinking man was putting up a terribly long and stubborn struggle.
It seemed there was only one thing left for him—not to waste his strength, but to go to the bottom—and yet no! His exhausted moans and cries for help first broke off and ceased, then began to ring out again, and each time closer and closer to the palace embankment. It was clear that the man was not lost yet and was moving in the right direction, straight towards the light of the streetlamps, though, of course, all the same he would not save himself, because the Jordan ice hole lay precisely in his way. There he would duck under the ice and—the end … Now he is quiet again, and a moment later he is splashing and moaning once more: “Help, help!” And now he is already so close that you can even hear the lapping of the waves as he splashes …
Private Postnikov began to realize that it would be extremely easy to save this man. If he runs out onto the ice now, the drowning man is sure to be right there. Throw him a rope, or reach him a pole, or hand him his gun, and he’s saved. He’s so close that he can take hold of it and climb out. But Postnikov remembers his duty and his oath: he knows that he is a sentry, and a sentry dare not desert his sentry box for anything or under any pretext.
On the other hand, Postnikov’s heart is very recalcitrant: it aches, it pounds, it sinks … He’d like to tear it out and throw it under his own feet—so troubled he is by the moans and howls … It is a dreadful thing to hear another man perishing, and not give the perishing one help, when, as a matter of fact, it is perfectly possible to do so, because the sentry box is not going to run away and nothing else harmful is going to happen. “Shouldn’t I run down there, eh? … They won’t see me … Ah, Lord, only let it be over! Again he’s moaning …”
During the half hour that this went on, Private Postnikov’s heart was quite torn, and he began to feel “doubt of his reason.” He was an intelligent and disciplined soldier, with a clear mind, and he understood perfectly well that for a sentry to leave his post is such an offense that it would lead at once to court-martial, and to running the gauntlet of rod-wielders, and then to hard labor and maybe even the firing squad. But from the direction of the swollen river the moaning again comes drifting closer and closer, and a spluttering and desperate floundering can be heard.
“I’m drowning! … Help, I’m dro-o-owning!”
The Jordan ice hole is right there now … The end!
Postnikov glanced around once or twice more. Not a soul anywhere, only the streetlamps shaking in the wind and glimmering, and the wind intermittently carrying this cry … maybe the last cry …
There was another splash, another brief howl, and a gurgling in the water.
The sentry could not bear it and deserted his post.
V
Postnikov rushed to the gangway, ran with a violently beating heart down onto the ice, then to the water-filled pool and, quickly spotting where the drowning man was still struggling to stay afloat, held out the stock of his gun to him.
The drowning man seized the butt, and Postnikov pulled him by the bayonet and dragged him out onto the bank.
The saved man and his savior were thoroughly soaked, and since of the two of them the saved man was in a st
ate of extreme exhaustion and kept trembling and falling down, his savior, Private Postnikov, could not bring himself to abandon him on the ice, but led him to the embankment and began looking around for someone to hand him over to. And meanwhile, as all this was going on, a sleigh appeared on the embankment, in which sat an officer of the then-existing Palace Invalid Command (later abolished).
This gentleman arriving at just the wrong moment for Postnikov was, it must be supposed, a man of very light-minded character, and somewhat muddleheaded besides, and also a rather impudent fellow. He leaped out of the sleigh and began asking:
“Who is this man … Who are these people?”
“He was drowning, going under,” Postnikov tried to begin.
“Drowning? Who was drowning? You? Why in such a place?”
The other man only spluttered, and Postnikov was no longer there: he had shouldered his gun and gone back to the sentry box.
Whether or not the officer grasped what had happened, he did not go into it any further, but at once picked up the saved man and drove with him to the Admiralty police station on Morskaya Street.
There the officer made a declaration to a policeman that the wet man he had brought in had been drowning in a pool opposite the palace and he, mister officer, had saved him at the risk of his own life.
The man who had been saved was all wet, chilled, and worn out. From fright and terrible exhaustion he fell into unconsciousness, and it made no difference to him who had saved him.
Around him bustled a sleepy police doctor, and in the office they were writing up a report from the verbal declaration of the invalid officer, and, with the suspiciousness peculiar to policemen, were wondering how he had come out of the water perfectly dry. The officer, who was itching to get himself the medal for lifesaving, explained it by a lucky concurrence of circumstances, but his explanation was incoherent and incredible. They went to awaken the police chief and sent to make inquiries.
The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories Page 61