The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“What is this! My little sisters, my dear ones! Misha and I have robbed somebody!”

Mama’s legs gave way under her: she cried out as she stood there and sat down on the floor right where she was.

I rushed to pick her up, but she said wrathfully:

“Away, robber!”

My aunt just made crosses in all directions and muttered:

“Holy God, holy God, holy God!”

But mama clutched her head and whispered:

“They beat somebody, they robbed somebody, and they don’t know who!”

My uncle picked her up and tried to calm her:

“Calm yourself now, it wasn’t a good man we beat.”

“How do you know? Maybe he was; maybe it was somebody going to fetch a doctor for a sick man.”

My uncle says:

“And what about my hat? Why did he snatch my hat?”

“God knows about your hat and where you left it.”

My uncle was offended, but mama paid no attention to him and turned to me again.

“I’ve kept my boy in the fear of God for so many years, and this is what he prepared himself for: thief or none, but he looks like one … After this no sensible girl in Orel will marry you, because now everybody, everybody, will know you’re a prigger.”

I couldn’t help myself and said loudly:

“For pity’s sake, mama, what kind of a prigger am I? It’s all a mistake!”

But she didn’t want to listen, and kept rapping me on the head with her knuckles and wailing woefully:¹³

“I taught you: my child, live far from wickedness, do not go gambling and merrymaking, do not drink two cups in a single gulp, do not fall asleep in a secluded place, lest your costly trousers be taken off you, lest great shame and disgrace overtake you, and through you your family suffer idle reproach and revilement. I taught you: my child, do not go to dicers and taverners, do not think how to steal and rob, but you did not want to heed your mother. Now take off your fine clothes and put on pot-house rags, and wait till the watchmen knock at our gates and Tsyganok himself comes barging into our honest house.”

She kept wailing like that and rapping me on the head with her knuckles.

But when my aunt heard about Tsyganok, she cried out:

“Lord, save us from bloody men and from Arid!”¹⁴

My God! In other words, our house turned into a veritable hell.

My aunt and mama embraced each other and, in that embrace, withdrew weeping. Only my uncle and I remained.

I sat down, leaned on the table, and I don’t remember how many hours I went on sitting there. I kept thinking: who was it that I robbed? Maybe it was the Frenchman Saint-Vincent coming from a lesson, or the secretary from the office who lives in the house of Strakhov, the marshal of the nobility¹⁵ … I was sorry for each of them. And what if it was my godfather Kulabukhov coming from the other side after visiting the treasury secretary! … He wanted to pass by quietly, so as not to be seen with a little sack, and I up and worked him over … A godson! … his own godfather!

“I’ll go to the attic and hang myself. There’s nothing else left for me.”

And my uncle was just fiercely drinking tea, and then he comes up to me somehow—I didn’t even see how—and says:

“Enough sitting and moping, we must act.”

“Why, yes,” I reply, “of course, if we can find out whose watch I took …”

“Never mind. Get up quickly, and we’ll go together and declare everything ourselves.”

“Who are we going to declare it to?”

“To your Tsyganok himself, naturally.”

“How shameful to confess it!”

“What can we do? Do you think I’m eager to go to Tsyganok? … But all the same, it’s better to own up to it ourselves than to have him come looking for us: take both watches and let’s go.”

I agreed.

I took both my own watch, which my uncle had given me, and the one I had brought home that night, and, without saying good-bye to mama, we left.

XIV

We went to the police station, and Tsyganok was already sitting in his office before the zertsalo,¹⁶ and at his door stood a young constable, Prince Solntsev-Zasekin. The family was notable, the talent unremarkable.

My uncle saw that I bowed to this prince, and said:

“Is he really a prince?”

“By God, it’s true.”

“Flash something at him in your fingers, so that he’ll pop out to the stairs for a minute.”

And that’s just how it went: I held up a twenty-five-kopeck piece—the prince popped out to the stairs.

My uncle put the coin in his hand and asked that we be let in to the office as soon as possible.

The constable started telling us that a great many incidents had taken place here in town last night.

“And with us an incident also occurred.”

“Well, but what sort? You both look yourselves, but down on the river there’s a man sunk under the ice; two merchants on Poleshskaya Square scattered all the shafts, frames, and sleigh bodies about; a man was found unconscious under a tub, and two had their watches stolen. I’m the only one left on duty, all the rest are running around looking for the priggers …”

“All right, all right, you go and report that we’ve come to explain a certain matter.”

“Have you had a fight or some family trouble?”