The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“Do it, then. I’ve prepared everything at the Boris and Gleb Inn. All the doors between the rooms will be open. There are no other guests—shout as much as you like, there’s nobody to get annoyed. An excellent inn: only government clerks come there with petitioners during office hours; but in the evening there’s nobody at all, and there are shafts and bast sleighs standing like a forest blocking the windows on Poleshskaya Square.”

The unknown man replies:

“That’s what we need, because they’ve also got some brazen amateurs, and they’ll undoubtedly gather to hear my voice and make fun of it.”

“You don’t mean you’re afraid?”

“I’m not afraid, but their insolence will make me angry, and I’ll beat them.”

He himself has a voice like a trumpet.

“I’ll freely explain to them,” he says, “all the examples of what’s liked in our town. We’ll listen to what they can do and how they perform in all tones: a low growl when vesting a bishop, middle and upper notes when singing ‘Many Years,’ how to let out a cry for ‘In the blessed falling asleep …’ and a howl for ‘Memory Eternal.’⁹ That’s the long and short of it.”

My uncle agreed.

“Yes,” he says, “we must compare them and then quite inoffensively make a decision. Whichever of them suits our Elets fashion better we’ll work on and lure over to us, and to the one who comes out weaker we’ll give a cassock for his trouble.”

“Keep your money on you—they’ve got thieves here.”

“And you keep yours on you.”

“All right.”

“Well, and now you go and set out some refreshments, and I’ll fetch the deacons. They asked to do it in the evening—‘because,’ they say, ‘our people are rascals, they may get wind of it.’ ”

My uncle answers in the affirmative, only he says:

“It’s these evenings here in Orel that I’m afraid of, and soon now it will be quite dark.”

“Well,” the unknown man says, “I’m not afraid of anything.”

“And what if one of these Orelian priggers strips your fur coat off you?”^*

“Oh, yes! As if he’ll strip it off me! He’d better not cross paths with me, or I may just strip everything off him!”

“It’s a good thing you’re so strong.”

“And you go with your nephew. Such a fine lad, he could fell an ox with his fist.”

Mama says:

“Misha’s weak—how can he protect him!”

“Well, have him put some copper coins in his gloves, that’ll make him strong.”

My aunt says:

“What an idea!”

“Why, did I say something bad?”

“Well, it’s clear you have your own rules for everything in Elets.”

“And what else? You’ve got a governor for setting up rules, but we haven’t got one—so we make our own rules.”

“On how to beat people?”

“Yes, we also have rules on how to beat people.”

“Well, you’d better come back before the thieves’ time, that way nothing will happen to you.”

“And when is the thieves’ time in your Orel?”

My aunt answered from some book:

“ ‘Once folk have their dinner and, after praying, go to sleep, that is the time when thieves arise and set about to rob.’ ”

My uncle and the unknown man burst out laughing. Everything mama and my aunt said seemed unbelievable or unreasonable to them.

“In that case,” they say, “where are your police looking?”

My aunt again answers from the scriptures:

“ ‘Except the Lord guard the house—the watchman waketh but in vain.’¹⁰ We have a police chief by the name of Tsyganok. He looks after his own business, he wants to buy property. And when somebody gets robbed, he says: ‘Why weren’t you asleep at home? You wouldn’t have been robbed.’ ”

“He’d do better to send out patrols more often.”

“He already did.”

“And what happened?”

“The robberies got worse.”

“Why is that?”

“Nobody knows. The patrol goes by, the priggers follow after it and rob.”

“Maybe it’s not the priggers, but the patrolmen themselves who rob?”

“Maybe it is.”

“Call in the constable.”

“With the constable it’s even worse—if you complain about him, you have to pay him for the dishonor.”

“What a preposterous town!” cried Pavel Mironych (I figured it was him), and he said good-bye and left, but my uncle went on pacing and reasoning:

“No, truly,” he says, “it’s better with us in Elets. I’ll take a cab.”

“Don’t go in a cab! The cabby will bilk you and dump you out of the sleigh.”

“Well, like it or not, I’ll take my nephew Misha with me again. Nobody will harm the two of us.”

At first mama wouldn’t even hear of letting me go, but my uncle began to take offense and said:

“What is this: I give him a watch with a rim, and he won’t show gratitude by rendering me a trifling family service? I can’t upset the whole business now. Pavel Mironych left with my full promise that I’d join him and prepare everything, and now, what, instead of that I should listen to your fears and stay home, or else go alone to a certain death?”

My aunt and mama quieted down and said nothing.

And my uncle persists: