The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

With all that, let me remind you, gentlemen, that since this affair began, no little time had passed, and Christmas was at the door. But don’t compare Christmas in those parts with ours here: the weather there is capricious, and one time this feast is celebrated in the winter way, but another time who knows how: in rain, in wetness. One day there’s a light frost, on the next it all melts away; now the river’s covered with sheet ice, then it swells and carries off the broken ice, as in the high water of spring … In short, the most inconstant weather, and in those parts it’s not called weather, but simply snow-slush—and snow-slush it is.

In the year my story belongs to, this inconstancy was most vexing. Since I returned with the icon painter, I can’t even count for you the number of times our crew set themselves up now for winter, now for summer conditions. And that was the hottest time, in terms of work, because we already had seven piers done and were putting up chains from one bank to the other. Our bosses, naturally, would have liked very much to have those chains linked up quickly, so that by the high water some sort of temporary bridge could be hung for the delivery of materials, but that didn’t work out: we had just stretched the chains across, when we were hit by such a frost that we couldn’t lay any planks. And so it remained: the chains were hung, but there was no bridge. Instead God made another bridge: the river froze over, and our Englishman crossed the Dniepr on the ice to see about our icon, and he comes back from there and says to me and Luka:

“Tomorrow, lads, just wait, I’ll bring you your treasure.”

Lord, how that made us feel then! At first we wanted to keep it a secret and only tell the icon painter, but how could the human heart endure it! Instead of keeping the secret, we ran around to all our people, knocking on all the windows and whispering it to each other, running from cottage to cottage not knowing why, helped by the bright, magnificent night, the frost scattering precious stones over the snow, and Hesperus blazing in the clear sky.

Having spent the night in such joyful rushing about, we greeted the day in the same delighted expectation, and from morning on never left our icon painter’s side and couldn’t do enough to please him, because the hour had come when everything depended on his artistry. If he told us to give him or fetch him something, ten of us flew off together, and so zealously that we knocked each other down. Even old Maroy ran around so much that he tripped over something and tore off his boot heel. Only the icon painter himself was calm, because it wasn’t the first time he’d done such work, and therefore he prepared everything without any fuss: diluted the egg with kvass, inspected the varnish, prepared the primed canvas, set out some old boards to see which was the right size for the icon, tuned up a little saw like a string in its sturdy bow, and sat by the window, rubbing in his palm the pigments he foresaw would be necessary. And we all washed ourselves in the stove, put on clean shirts, and stood on the bank, looking at the city refuge from where our light-bearing guest was to visit us; and our hearts now trembled, now sank …

Ah, what moments those were, and they went on from early dawn until evening, and suddenly we saw the Englishman’s sleigh racing across the ice from the city and straight towards us … A shudder went through us all, we all threw our hats at our feet and prayed:

“God, father of spirits and angels: have mercy on Thy servants!”

And with that prayer we fell on our faces in the snow, eagerly stretching out our arms, and suddenly we hear the Englishman’s voice above us:

“Hey, you Old Believers! See what I’ve brought you!”—and he handed us a little bundle in a white handkerchief.

Luka took the bundle and froze: he felt it was something small and light! He opened a corner of the handkerchief and saw it was just our angel’s casing, and the icon itself wasn’t there.

We flung ourselves at the Englishman and said to him in tears:

“Your Honor’s been deceived, there’s no icon, they just sent the silver casing.”

But the Englishman was no longer the one he had been to us till then. This long affair must have vexed him, and he yelled at us:

“You confuse everything! You yourselves told me to ask for the casing, and so I did: you just don’t know what you want!”

We saw that he was seething, and were carefully beginning to explain to him that we needed the icon in order to make a copy, but he no longer listened to us, drove us out, and only showed us one mercy, that he ordered the icon painter sent to him. The icon painter Sevastian came to him, and he treated him in the same seething manner.