The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

Pah, what a noise she made! She’s barely recovered from the delivery when she summons our empty fellow and honors him as if he was a wonderworker, and he accepts that as well. Such was the vanity of the man, and the darkening of his mind, and the freezing of his feelings. A year later, the lady again had a request for our God, that her husband should rent her a summer house—and again everything was done according to her wishes, and Pimen got more offerings for candles and oil, and he disposed of those offerings as he saw fit, without sending them our way. And incomprehensible wonders indeed got done: this lady’s elder son was in school, and he was the foremost hooky player, and a lazy dunce, and didn’t study at all, but when it came time for examinations, she sent for Pimen and gave him a commission to pray that her son pass to the next class. Pimen says:

“That’s hard. I’ll have to get all our men together to pray all night and call out by candlelight till morning.”

But she didn’t bat an eye. She handed him thirty roubles—only pray! And what do you think? This wastrel son of hers runs into such luck that he passes to the upper class. The lady nearly went out of her mind with joy that our God showed her such kindness! She started giving Pimen commission after commission, and he had already petitioned God and obtained health for her, and an inheritance, and high rank for her husband, and so many decorations that there was no more room on his chest and they say he carried one in his pocket. Wondrous, that’s all, and we knew nothing about it. But the time came for all that to be revealed and for some wonders to be exchanged for others.

V

Trouble was brewing in the commercial dealings among the Jews in one of the Jewish towns of that province. I can’t tell you for sure whether it was about some wrong money or some duty-free trading, but it had to be looked into by the authorities, and here there was the prospect of a mighty reward. So the lady sends for our Pimen and says:

“Pimen Ivanovich, here’s twenty roubles for oil and candles; tell your people to pray as zealously as they can that my husband gets sent on this mission.”

Nothing to it! He’s already acquired a taste for collecting this oil tax and replies:

“Very well, my lady, I’ll tell them.”

“And they should pray good and proper,” she says, “because it’s very necessary for me!”

“As if they dare to pray badly on me, my lady, when I order them,” Pimen reassured her. “I’ll have them go hungry till their prayer’s answered.” He took the money and was off, and that same night the lady’s husband got the job she wished for him.

Well, this time the blessing went to her head so much that she wasn’t satisfied with having us pray, but absolutely desired to go and pray to our holy images herself.

She said so to Pimen, but he turned coward, because he knew our people wouldn’t let her go near our holy images. But the lady wouldn’t leave off.

“Say what you like,” she said, “but I’ll take a boat towards evening today and come to you with my son.”

Pimen tried to talk her out of it. “It’s better,” he says, “if we pray by ourselves. We have this guardian angel, you donate for the oil to burn before him, and we’ll entrust him with safeguarding your spouse.”

“Ah, splendid,” she replies, “splendid. I’m very glad there’s such an angel. Here’s for the oil. Be sure to light three lamps before him, and I’ll come and look.”

Trouble caught up with Pimen. He came to us and started saying, “Thus and so, it’s my fault, I didn’t contradict this vile heathen woman in her wishes, because her husband is somebody we need.” And so he told us a cock-and-bull story, but still didn’t tell us all he’d done. Well, unpleasant as it was for us, there was nothing else to do. We quickly took our icons off the walls and hid them away in the trunks, and replaced them with some substitutes we kept for fear the authorities might come and inspect us. We put them on the shelves and waited for the visitor. And she came, spiffed up something awful, sweeping around with her long, wide skirts, looking at our substitute icons through a lorgnette and asking: “Tell me, please, which one is the wonderworking angel?” We didn’t even know how to get her off the subject:

“We have no such angel,” we said.

And no matter how she insisted and complained to Pimen, we didn’t show her the angel and quickly took her away to have tea and whatever little treats we could give her.

We disliked her terribly, and God knows why: her look was somehow repulsivous, for all that she was considered beautiful. Tall, you know, with such spindly legs, thin as a steppe goat, and straight-browed.

“You don’t like that kind of beauty?” the bearskin coat interrupted the storyteller.

“Good grief, what’s likeable in such snakiness?” he replied.

“Do your people consider it beautiful if a woman looks like a hump or something?”