The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

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:

“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.