The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“There was no special story, only he said: ‘Reveal your secret to me, brother—I’ll pay you a lot and take you to be my conosoor.’ But since I was never able to deceive anybody, I answered: ‘What secret? It’s just foolishness.’ But he looked at everything from his English, learned point of view, and didn’t believe me. He says: ‘Well, if you don’t want to reveal it, have it your way, let’s go and drink rum together.’ After that we drank a lot of rum together, so much that he turned all red and said, as well as he was able: ‘Well, go on and tell me now, what did you do to the horse?’ And I answered: ‘Here’s what …’—and I threw him as scary a look as I could and gnashed my teeth, and since I had no pot of batter around just then, I took a glass, as an example, and swung it, but seeing that, he suddenly ducked his head, got under the table, and then made a dash for the door, and that was it, and there was no going looking for him. We haven’t set eyes on each other since.”

“That’s why you didn’t go to work for him?”

“That’s why, sir. How could I work for him, when from then on he was even afraid to meet me? And I was quite willing to go to him then, because, while we were competing over that rum, I got to like him very much, but, right enough, there’s no sidestepping your path, and I had to follow a different calling.”

“And what do you consider your calling?”

“I really don’t know how to tell you … I’ve done all kinds of things, had occasion to be on horses, and under horses, and was taken prisoner, and made war, and beat people myself, and was made a cripple, such that maybe not everybody could have stood it.”

“And when did you go to the monastery?”

“That wasn’t long ago, sir, just a few years after all my past life.”

“And you also felt a calling for that?”

“Mm … I … I don’t know how to explain it, sir … though it must be assumed I did.”

“How is it that you speak of it as … as if you’re not certain?”

“Because how can I say for certain, when I can’t even embrace all my extensive past living?”

“Why is that?”

“Because much that I did wasn’t even by my own will.”

“And by whose, then?”

“By a parental promise.”

“And what happened to you by this parental promise?”

“I kept dying all my life, and could never die.”

“Really?”

“Precisely so, sir.”

“Then please tell us your life.”

“What I remember, I can tell you if you like, only I can’t do it otherwise than from the very beginning.”

“Do us the favor. That will be all the more interesting.”

“Well, I don’t know if it will be of any interest at all, but listen if you like.”

II

The former connoisseur Ivan Severyanych, Mr. Flyagin, began his story thus: