The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

Once, when Svinyin happened to be at the bishop’s to receive his blessing, his reverend host began talking with him “incidentally about that shot.” Svinyin told him the whole truth, in which, as we know, there was nothing resembling the story made up “incidentally about that shot.”

The bishop heard out the true story in silence, slightly moving his white prayer beads and not taking his eyes off the storyteller. When Svinyin finished, the bishop uttered in softly burbling speech:

“Wherefore it is incumbent upon us to conclude that not always and everywhere has this affair been set forth in accordance with the full truth?”

Svinyin faltered and then answered evasively that the report was made not by him, but by General Kokoshkin.

The bishop ran his beads through his waxen fingers several times in silence, and then said:

“A distinction must be made between what is a lie and what is an incomplete truth.”

Again the beads, again the silence, and, finally, the softly flowing speech:

“An incomplete truth is not a lie. But the less said …”

“That is indeed so,” began the encouraged Svinyin. “For me, of course, the most disturbing thing is that I had to subject that soldier to punishment, for, though he violated his duty …”

The beads and then a softly flowing interruption:

“The duties of the service must never be violated.”

“Yes, but he did it out of magnanimity, out of compassion, and with such a struggle and such danger besides: he realized that, by saving another man’s life, he was destroying himself … This was a lofty, a holy feeling!”

“The holy is known to God, while punishment of the flesh is never injurious for the simple man and contradicts neither national custom nor the spirit of the Scriptures. The rod is far easier for the coarse body to bear than refined suffering is for the soul. In this justice has not suffered from you in the least.”

“But he was also deprived of the reward for saving a life.”

“Saving a life is not a merit, but rather a duty. He who could save a life and does not is punishable by law, and he who does has performed his duty.”

A pause, the beads, and the soft flow:

“For a soldier to suffer humiliation and wounds for his exploit may be far more salutary than to be exalted by some mark. But the major thing here is—to observe caution about this whole affair and by no means mention anywhere those to whom by some chance or other it has been recounted.”

Evidently the bishop was also pleased.

XVIII

If I had the daring of those lucky ones chosen by heaven, to whom, for the greatness of their faith, it is given to penetrate the mysteries of divine providence, I might be so bold as to allow myself to suppose that God himself was probably pleased with the behavior of Postnikov’s humble soul, which He created. But I have little faith; it does not give my mind the power to contemplate such loftiness: I am of the earth, earthy.¹⁰ I am thinking of those mortals who love the good simply for the sake of the good itself and expect no reward for it anywhere. These straightforward and reliable people, it seems to me, should also be perfectly pleased by the holy impulse of love and the no less holy patience of the humble hero of my faithful and artless story.

* The dots on the i’s. Trans.

A Robbery

I

The conversation got onto the embezzlement in the Orel bank, the case of which was tried in the fall of 1887. It was said that this one was a good man, and that one seemed like a good man, but, nevertheless, they all turned out to be thieves.

An old Orel merchant, who happened to be in the company, said:

“Ah, gentlemen, when the thieves’ time comes, even honest people turn robber.”

“Well, there you’re joking.”

“Not in the least. Otherwise why is it said: ‘With the pure thou wilt show thyself pure; and with the froward thou wilt show thyself froward’?¹ I know of an occasion when an honest man robbed another man in the street.”

“That can’t be.”

“On my word of honor—he robbed him, and if you like, I can tell you about it.”

“Please be so kind.”

Then the merchant told us the following story, which had taken place some fifty years ago in that same Orel, not long before the famous fires that devastated the town. It happened under the late governor of Orel, Prince Pyotr Ivanovich Trubetskoy.²

Here is how he told it.

II

I’m an Orel old-timer. Our whole family—we weren’t among the least of people. We had our own house on Nizhnaya Street, by the Plautin Well, and our own granaries, and our own barges; we kept a fulling works, traded in hemp, and handled the grain collection. Our fortune wasn’t desperately big, but we never pinched pennies, and we passed for being honest people.