The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

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 eyes 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?”

But mama said peaceably that you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, and told me again:

“Go to your room and hang it over your bed. On Sunday I’ll tell the nuns to make you a little cushion for it embroidered with beads and fish scales, so that you won’t somehow crush the glass in your pocket.”

I said cheerfully:

“That can be repaired.”

“When it needs repairing, the watchmaker will replace the magnetized needle with a stone one inside, and the watch will be ruined. Better go quickly and hang it up.”

So as not to argue, I hammered in a nail over my bed and hung up the watch, and I lay back on the pillow and looked at it admiringly. I was very pleased to have such a noble thing. And how nicely and softly it ticked: tick, tick, tick, tick … I listened and listened, and fell asleep. I was awakened by loud talk in the drawing room.

VII

I hear my uncle’s voice and some other unknown voice behind the wall; and I also hear that mama and my aunt are there.

The unknown man tells them that he has already been to the Theophany and heard the deacon there, and he has also been to St. Nicetas, but, he says, “they must be placed on an equal level and listened to under our own tuning fork.”

My uncle replies: