The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“If I had my former youth,” he says, “when I was, say, forty years old, I wouldn’t fear the priggers, but I’m an elderly man, going on sixty-five, and if they strip my fur coat off me when I’m far from home, then, while I’m walking back without my fur coat, I’m bound to catch an inflammation in my shoulders, and then I’ll need a young leech to draw the blood off, or else I’ll croak here with you. Bury me here, then, in your church of John the Baptist, and people can remember over my coffin that in your town your Mishka let his own uncle go without a family service and didn’t accompany him this one time in his life …”

Here I felt such pity for him and such shame that I jumped out at once and said:

“No, mama, say what you like, but I won’t leave my uncle without this family service. Am I to be ungrateful like Alfred, whom the soldier mummers perform in people’s houses?¹¹ I bow down to your feet and beg your permission, don’t force me to be ungrateful, allow me to accompany my uncle, because he’s my relation and he gave me the watch and I will be shamed before all people if I leave him without my service.”

Mama, however put out, had to let me go, but even so she ordered me very, very strictly not to drink, and not to look to the sides, and not to stop anywhere, and not to come home late.

I reassured her in all possible ways.

“Really, mama,” I say, “why look to the sides when there’s a straight path? I’ll be with my uncle.”

“All the same,” she says, “though you’re with your uncle, come back before the thieves’ time. I won’t sleep until you’re back home.”

Outside the door she started making crosses over me and whispered:

“Don’t look too much to your uncle Ivan Leontyevich: they’re all madcaps in Elets. It’s even frightening to visit them at home: they invite officials for a party, and then force them to drink, or pour it behind their collars; they hide their overcoats, lock the gate, and start singing: ‘He who won’t drink—stays in the clink.’ I know my brother on that score.”

“All right, mama,” I reply, “all right, all right. Rest easy about me in everything.”

But mama goes on with her refrain:

“I feel in my heart,” she says, “that you’ll both come to no good.”

VIII

At last my uncle and I went out the gate and set off. What could the priggers do to the two of us? Mama and my aunt were notorious homebodies and didn’t know that I alone used to beat ten men with one fist in a fistfight. And my uncle, too, though an elderly man, could also stand up for himself.

We ran here and there, to the fish stores and wine cellars, bought everything, and sent it to the Boris and Gleb Inn in big bags. We ordered the samovars heated at once, laid out the snacks, set up the wine and rum, and invited the innkeeper of the Boris and Gleb to join our company:

“We won’t do anything bad, our only desire and request is that no outsiders hear or see us.”

“That I grant you,” he said. “A bedbug on the wall may hear you, but nobody else.”

And he was so sleepy himself, he kept yawning and making crosses over his mouth.

Soon Pavel Mironych arrived and brought both deacons with him: the one from the Theophany and the one from Nicetas. We had a little snack to begin with, a bit of sturgeon and caviar, then crossed ourselves and straightaway got down to the business of the tryout.

In three upstairs rooms, all the connecting doors stood open. We put our coats on the bed in one, in another, the far one, the snacks were set up, and in the middle one we tried out the voices.

First, Pavel Mironych stood in the middle of the room and showed what the merchants in Elets liked most from a deacon. His voice, as I said to you, was quite terrifying, as if it beat us on the face and shattered the glass in the windows.

Even the innkeeper woke up and said:

“You yourself should be the first deacon.”

“Tell me another!” Pavel Mironych replied. “With my capital, I can get along as I am. It’s just that I like to hear loudness in holy services.”

“Who doesn’t!”