And there was quiet displeasure between my mother and my aunt on that score, because by then mama had quit the old faith entirely and read the akathist to the great martyr Barbara by the new Church calendar.6 She wanted to take a wife for me from the Orel girls, so as to renew the family.
“At least,” she said, “on the days of forgiveness before Lent, we’ll have somebody to go to with bread for forgiveness, and they’ll also have someone to bring braided loaves to.”
Mama liked to cut these loaves up afterwards for rusks and dunk them in tea with honey during Lent, but for my aunt their ancient faith had to be placed above everything.
They argued and argued, but the whole thing came out differently.
IV
A most unexpected incident suddenly occurred.
Once, during Christmastime, my aunt and I were sitting by the window after dinner, talking about something religious and eating pickled apples, and suddenly we notice a troika of hired horses standing outside in the snow by our gate. We look—a tall man gets out from under the felt flap of the kibitka, dressed in a Kalmyk coat of dark broadcloth lined with fleece, tied with a red belt, a green worsted scarf wrapped around the raised collar, its long ends twisted on his chest and tucked into his bosom, a felt hat on his head, and on his feet calfskin boots with the fur side out.
The man stood up and shook the snow off himself like a poodle, and then, together with the driver, pulled from under the flap of the kibitka another man, in a beaver hat and a wolfskin coat, and held him under the arms so that he could keep his feet, because it was slippery for him in his leather-soled felt boots.
Aunt Katerina Leontyevna was very worried, not knowing who these people were or why they had gotten out by our gate, but when she saw the wolfskin coat, she crossed herself:
“Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on us, amen!” she said. “It’s my brother Ivan Leontych, your uncle, come from Elets. What’s happened to him? He hasn’t been here for three years, not since your father’s funeral, and suddenly he turns up at Christmastime. Quick, fetch the key for the gate, run to meet him.”
I rushed to look for mama, and mama started looking for the key and finally found it in the icon chest, but by the time I ran to the gate, unlocked the lock, and drew the bolt, the troika had already gone, and the man in the Kalmyk coat had gone with the kibitka, and my uncle was standing there alone, holding on to the gate pull, and angry.
“What’s this?” he says. “You lock yourselves up in the daytime like scaredy-cats?”
Mama greeted him and replied:
“Don’t you know, brother, what a situation we have in Orel? There’s constant thievery, and we lock ourselves in day and night from the police.”
My uncle replied that the situation was the same everywhere: Orel and Kromy are thieving cronies, Karachev’s another, and Elets is their father. “We also lock ourselves in from the police,” he says, “but only at night—why in the daytime? I’m displeased that you left me outside the gate in the daytime: my felt boots have leather soles, it’s slippery to walk—and I’ve come on a church necessity, not empty-handed. God forbid some Orelian should snatch it from me and run off, and me unable to catch up with him.”
V
We all apologized to my uncle and brought him to a room where he could change his traveling clothes. Ivan Leontych changed his felt boots for leather ones, put on a frock coat, and sat down by the samovar, and mother began asking him what sort of church business he had come on, that he should go to the trouble even during the feast days, and where his companion by our gate had disappeared to.
Ivan Leontych replied:
“It’s big business. You must understand that I’m now the church warden, and our deacon tore something on the very first day of the feast.”
Mama says:
“We hadn’t heard.”
“As if you ever hear anything interesting! Your town’s such a backwater.”
“But how was it that your deacon tore something?”
“Ah, my dear, he suffered it on account of his zeal. He began serving nicely on the occasion of our deliverance from the Gauls,7 and kept singing louder, and louder, and still louder, and suddenly, as he exclaimed ‘for the salvation’—a vein burst on him. They went to take him from the ambo, and he already had a boot full of blood.”
“He died?”
“No. The merchants didn’t let that happen: they called in a doctor. Would our merchants just abandon him? The doctor says he may yet recover, but he won’t have any voice. So I came here with our foremost parishioner to make sure our deacon gets sent to the nuns in some convent or other, and here we must choose ourselves the best one from all you’ve got.”
“And who is this foremost parisher of yours and where did he go off to?”
“Our foremost parishioner is named Pavel Mironych Mukomol. He’s married to a rich Moscow woman. The wedding celebration went on for a whole week. He’s very devoted to the church and knows all the church services better than any archdeacon. So everybody begged him: go, and look, and choose; the one you like will be to our liking, too. Everybody, old and young, honors him. And he, with his enormous capital, owner of three houses, and a candle factory, and a flour mill, obeyed at once and dropped it all for the church necessity and came flying. He’ll take a room in the Repinskaya Inn now. Are they tricksters there, or honest?”
Mama replied:
“I don’t know.”
“There you have it, you live here and don’t know anything.”
“We’re afraid of inns.”
“Well, never mind. Pavel Mironych is also not easily offended: there’s no stronger fistfighter in Elets or in Livny. Whenever there’s a fight, two or three men fall by his hand. Last year, during Lent, he went on purpose to Tula, and though he’s a miller, he up and left two of the foremost samovarniks there with ruptures.”8
Mama and my aunt crossed themselves.
“Lord!” they said. “Why have you brought such a man to us at Christmastime?”
But my uncle laughs:
“What are you women afraid of?” he says. “Our parishioner’s a good man, and for this church business I can’t do without him. He and I came on the spur of the moment to snatch what suits us and leave.”
Mama and my aunt gasp again.
“What are you doing, brother, making such frightful jokes!”
My uncle laughs even more merrily.
“Eh,” he says, “you lady-crows, you Orel merchant-wives! Your town’s maybe a town, maybe a burnt-down place—it doesn’t resemble anything, and you yourselves sit in it like smoked sardines stuffed in a box! No, your town’s a far cry from our Elets, never mind that it’s a provincial capital. Our Elets is a little district town, but in a Moscow gown, and you can’t even appreciate what you’ve got that’s good here. And that’s just what we’ll take away from you.”
“What is it?”
“We need a good deacon for our parish, and they say you’ve got two deacons with voices: one at the Theophany in the marketplace, the other in the clerks’ quarter, at St. Nicetas. We’ll give them a listen in all styles, and we’ll choose whichever one Pavel Mironych decides is more suited to our Elets taste, and we’ll lure him away and make a deal with him; and the one who doesn’t suit us we’ll call number two: he’ll get money for a new cassock for his trouble. Pavel Mironych has already gone now to gather them for a tryout, and I must go at once to the Boris and Gleb cathedral; they say you’ve got an innkeeper there whose inn is always empty. So we’ll take three connecting rooms in this empty inn and hold the audition. You, Mishutka my lad, will have to come now and take me there.”
I ask:
“Are you speaking to me, uncle?”
He replies:
“Obviously. Who else but you, Mishutka? Well, if you’re offended, then allow me to call you Mikhailo Mikhailovich. Do us a family service—kindly lead your uncle through this strange land.”
I cleared my throat and answered politely:
&nbs
p; “Uncle, dear, it’s not on account of that: I’m not offended at anything, and I’m ready and glad to do it, but I’m not my own man and do as mama tells me.”
Mama didn’t like it at all:
“Why, dear brother, should you take Misha with you to such company?! You can have someone else lead you.”
“I find it more proper to go with my nephew.”
“But what does he know?!”
“He most likely knows everything. Mishutka, do you know everything?”
I got embarrassed.
“No,” I say, “I can’t know everything.”
“Why’s that?”
“Mama won’t allow it.”
“Just look at that! And what do you think: can an uncle always guide his nephew in everything, or not? Of course he can. Get dressed at once and let’s be gone before trouble comes on.”
I started to go, then stood there like a post: I listened to him, but saw that mama didn’t want to let me go for anything.
“Our Misha,” she said, “is still young, he’s not used to going out anywhere at night. Why do you insist on having him? It will be dark before you notice, and the thieves’ time will come.”
But here my uncle even yelled at them:
“Enough playing the fool, really! What are you stewing him in your women’s skirts for! The boy’s grown so big he can kill an ox, and you still coddle him like a baby. It’s all nothing but your female foolishness, and he’ll be the worse off for it because of you. He has to have his life forces developed and his character firmed up, and I need him because, God forbid, in the darkness or in some back street your Orel thieves may actually fall upon me or I may run into a police patrol—you see, I have all our money for the business with me … There’s enough to dump our torn deacon on the nuns and lure your mighty one to us … Can it be that you, my own sisters, are so unfamilial that you want me, your brother, to be bashed on the head or picked up by the police, and end up there with nothing?”
My mother says:
“God save us from that—families aren’t only respected in Elets! But take our clerk with you, or even two sturdy fullers. Our fullers are from Kromy, they’re terribly strong, they eat some eight pounds a day of bread alone, besides other things.”
My uncle didn’t want to.
“What good are your hired people to me?” he says. “You sisters even ought to be ashamed to say it, and I’d be ashamed and afraid to go with them. Kromy men! And you call them good people! They’d go with me and be the first to kill me, but Misha’s my nephew—with him at least it will be brave and proper.”
He stood his ground and wouldn’t give way:
“You can’t possibly refuse me this,” he says. “Otherwise I renounce you as my family.”
My mother and aunt became frightened at that and exchanged glances, meaning “What on earth should we do?”
Ivan Leontych persisted:
“And understand that it’s not just a family matter! Remember, I’m not taking him for my own amusement or pleasure, but on a Church necessity. Can you refuse me that? Consider well. To refuse that is the same as refusing God. The boy’s a servant of God; God’s will is upon him: you want him to stay with you, but God just won’t let him stay.”
He was an awfully persuasive one with words.
Mama became frightened.
“Enough talk, please, of such horrors.”
But my uncle again burst into merry laughter.
“Ah, you lady-crows! You don’t understand the power of words! Who isn’t a servant of God? But now I can see that you won’t decide on anything yourselves, so I’m just going to knock him from under your wing …”
And with that he seized me by the shoulder and said:
“Up you get now, Misha, and put on your visiting clothes—I’m your uncle, and a man who has lived into gray-haired old age. I have grandchildren, and I’m taking charge of you and order you to follow me.”
I looked at mama and my aunt, and I myself felt all merry inside, and this Elets free-and-easiness of my uncle’s pleased me greatly.
“Who should I listen to?” I ask.
My uncle answers:
“You must listen to the eldest one—that’s me. I’m not taking you forever, but only for an hour.”
“Mama!” I cry. “What do you tell me to do?”
Mama replies:
“Why … if it’s only for an hour, it’s all right—put on your visiting clothes and go with your uncle; but don’t stay one minute beyond an hour. If you’re a minute late—I’ll die of fear!”
“Well,” I say, “that’s a good one! How can I know so precisely that an hour has already gone by and a new minute’s beginning—and meanwhile you’ll have started worrying …”
My uncle burst out laughing.
“You can look at your watch,” he says, “and see what time it is.”
“I don’t have a watch,” I reply.
“Ah, you still don’t even have your own watch! Things are bad with you!”
But mama answers back:
“What does he need a watch for?”
“To know what time it is.”
“Well … he’s still young … he wouldn’t know how to wind it … Outside you can hear it strike the hours in the Theophany and in the Devichy Convent.”
I reply:
“Maybe you don’t know it, but a weight fell off the Theophany clock yesterday and it stopped striking.”
“Well, there’s the Devichy clock.”
“We never hear the Devichy clock.”
My uncle intervenes and says:
“Never mind, never mind: get dressed quickly and don’t worry about being late. We’ll stop at the watchmaker’s, and I’ll buy you a watch as a present for going with me. That will give you something to remember your uncle by.”
When I heard about the watch, I got all excited: I smacked a kiss on my uncle’s hand, put on my visiting clothes, and was ready.
Mama gave me her blessing and said several more times:
“Only for an hour!”
VI
My uncle was a gentleman of his word. The moment we stepped out, he said:
“Quickly whistle for a cabby, we’ll go to the watchmaker’s.”
But back then, in Orel, decent people didn’t ride around town in cabs. Only some sort of carousers did that, but most cabbies waited for the hirelings who were sent off as soldiers in place of local recruits.
I said:
“I know how to whistle, dear uncle, but I can’t, because here only hirelings ride in cabs.”
He said: “Fool!”—and whistled himself. And when a cab drove up, he said again:
“Get in without talking! On foot, we won’t make it back to your women within an hour, but I gave them my word, and my word is adamant.”
But I was beside myself with shame and kept leaning out of the cab.
“What are you fidgeting for?” he says.
“For pity’s sake,” I say, “they’re going to think I’m a hireling.”
“With your uncle?”
“They don’t know you here. They’ll say: look, he’s driving him around now, he’ll take him to all the bad places, and then whisk him away. It will bring shame on mama.”
My uncle started swearing.
No matter how I protested, I had to sit beside him to avoid a scandal. I ride along and don’t know where to turn—I’m not looking, but it’s as if I see and hear everybody around saying: “Look at that! Arina Leontyevna’s Misha is riding in a cab—must be a fine place he’s going to!” I couldn’t stand it!
“Do as you like, uncle,” I say, “but I’m jumping off.”
He held me back and laughed.
“Can it be,” he says, “that they’re a whole string of fools here in Orel, to go thinking your old uncle would take you to any bad places? Where’s your best watchmaker here?”
“Our best watchmaker is considered to be the German Kern; in his window a Moor with a clock on his head winks his e
yes in all directions. Only the way to him is across the Orlitsky Bridge to Bolkhovskaya Street, and merchants we know there will be looking out their windows. I won’t drive past them in a cab for anything.”
But my uncle wasn’t listening.
“Cabby,” he says, “drive to Kern’s on Bolkhovskaya Street.”
We arrived. I persuaded him to dismiss the cabby here at least—I said I wouldn’t drive back down those same streets again for anything. That he agreed to. He called me a fool one more time, gave the cabby fifteen kopecks, and bought me a silver watch with a gold rim and a chain.
“Such watches,” he says, “are now all the fashion among us in Elets; once you get accustomed to winding it, and I come again, I’ll buy you a gold watch with a gold chain.”
I thanked him and was very glad of the watch, only I begged him all the same not to ride in cabs with me anymore.
“Very well, very well,” he says. “Now take me quickly to the Boris and Gleb Inn; we have to have three connecting rooms there.”
I say:
“It’s a stone’s throw from here.”
“Let’s go, then. We have no time to idle away with you here in Orel. What have we come for? To choose a full-throated deacon for ourselves; and that we must do now. There’s no time to lose. Take me to the inn and go home to your mother.”
I took him there and hurried home.
I ran so quickly that an hour hadn’t passed since I left, and at home I showed them my uncle’s gift—the watch.
Mama looked and said:
“Why … it’s very nice—hang it on the wall over your bed, otherwise you’ll lose it.”
But my aunt regarded it critically:
“Why is it,” she says, “that the watch is silver, but the rim is yellow?”
“That,” I reply, “is all the fashion in Elets.”
“What silly things they think up in Elets,” she says. “The old men of Elets used to be smarter—they wore everything of the same kind: if it’s a silver watch, it’s silver; if gold, it’s gold. What’s the point of forcing together what God put separately on earth?”
The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories Page 64