The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“How not be bored, mistress, with such a life! Even if you had somebody on the side, as others do, it would be impossible for you to see him.”

“Well, there you’re … it’s not that at all. For me, if I’d had a baby, I think it would be cheerful with the two of us.”

“As for that, if you’ll allow me to explain to you, mistress, a baby also happens for some reason, and not just so. I’ve lived among masters for so many years now, and seen what kind of life women live among merchants, don’t I also understand? As the song goes: ‘Without my dearie, life’s all sad and dreary,’ and that dreariness, let me explain to you, Katerina Lvovna, wrings my own heart so painfully, I can tell you, that I could just cut it out of my breast with a steel knife and throw it at your little feet. And it would be easier, a hundred times easier for me then …”

Sergei’s voice trembled.

“What are you doing talking to me about your heart? That’s got nothing to do with me. Go away …”

“No, please, mistress,” said Sergei, trembling all over and taking a step towards Katerina Lvovna. “I know, I see very well and even feel and understand, that it’s no easier for you than for me in this world; except that now,” he said in the same breath, “now, for the moment, all this is in your hands and in your power.”

“What? What’s that? What have you come to me for? I’ll throw myself out the window,” said Katerina Lvovna, feeling herself in the unbearable power of an indescribable fear, and she seized hold of the windowsill.

“Oh, my life incomparable, why throw yourself out?” Sergei whispered flippantly, and, tearing the young mistress from the window, he took her in a firm embrace.

“Oh! Oh! Let go of me,” Katerina Lvovna moaned softly, weakening under Sergei’s hot kisses, and involuntarily pressing herself to his powerful body.

Sergei picked his mistress up in his arms like a child and carried her to a dark corner.

A hush fell over the room, broken only by the measured ticking of her husband’s pocket watch, hanging over the head of Katerina Lvovna’s bed; but it did not interfere with anything.

“Go,” said Katerina Lvovna half an hour later, not looking at Sergei and straightening her disheveled hair before a little mirror.

“Why should I leave here now?” Sergei answered her in a happy voice.

“My father-in-law will lock the door.”

“Ah, my soul, my soul! What sort of people have you known, if a door is their only way to a woman? For me there are doors everywhere—to you or from you,” the young fellow replied, pointing to the posts that supported the gallery.

IV

Zinovy Borisych did not come home for another week, and all that week, every night till dawn, his wife made merry with Sergei.

During those nights in Zinovy Borisych’s bedroom, much wine from the father-in-law’s cellar was drunk, and many sweetmeats were eaten, and many were the kisses on the mistress’s sugary lips, and the toyings with black curls on the soft pillow. But no road runs smooth forever; there are also bumps.

Boris Timofeich was not sleepy: the old man wandered about the quiet house in a calico nightshirt, went up to one window, then another, looked out, and the red shirt of the young fellow Sergei was quietly sliding down the post under his daughter-in-law’s window. There’s news for you! Boris Timofeich leaped out and seized the fellow’s legs. Sergei swung his arm to give the master a hearty one on the ear, but stopped, considering that it would make a big to-do.

“Out with it,” said Boris Timofeich. “Where have you been, you thief you?”

“Wherever I was, I’m there no longer, Boris Timofeich, sir,” replied Sergei.

“Spent the night with my daughter-in-law?”

“As for where I spent the night, master, that I do know, but you listen to what I say, Boris Timofeich: what’s done, my dear man, can’t be undone; at least don’t bring disgrace on your merchant house. Tell me, what do you want from me now? What satisfaction would you like?”

“I’d like to give you five hundred lashes, you serpent,” replied Boris Timofeich.

“The guilt is mine—the will is yours,” the young man agreed. “Tell me where to go, and enjoy yourself, drink my blood.”

Boris Timofeich led Sergei to his stone larder and lashed him with a whip until he himself had no strength left. Sergei did not utter a single moan, but he chewed up half his shirtsleeve with his teeth.

Boris Timofeich abandoned Sergei to the larder until the mincemeat of his back healed, shoved a clay jug of water at him, put a heavy padlock on the door, and sent for his son.

But to go a hundred miles on a Russian country road is not a quick journey even now, and for Katerina Lvovna to live an extra hour without Sergei had already become intolerable. She suddenly unfolded the whole breadth of her awakened nature and became so resolute that there was no stopping her. She found out where Sergei was, talked to him through the iron door, and rushed to look for the keys. “Let Sergei go, papa”—she came to her father-in-law.