The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

My father, Severyan Ivanych, drove a Kirghiz six, and when I grew up, they set me on that same six as a postillion. They were cruel horses, not like some of the cavalry horses taken for officers nowadays. We called these officer’s horses Kaffeeschenks,¹⁵ because there was no pleasure in riding them, since even officers could sit them, but ours were simply beasts, asps and basilisks at once: their muzzles alone were worth something, or their bared teeth, or else their legs, or their manes … that is, to put it simply, sheer terror! They never knew fatigue; to do not only fifty, but even seventy or eighty miles from the village to Orel and back again without a rest was nothing to them. Once they got going, you had to watch out that they didn’t fly right by. At the time when they sat me in the postillion’s saddle, I was all of eleven years old, and my voice was just the kind that, by the custom of that time, was required of a nobleman’s postillion: most piercing, resounding, and so long-drawn-out that I could keep that “hhhi-i-i-ya-a-ahhh” ringing for half an hour; but my strength of body wasn’t great enough yet for me to keep myself freely sitting up for long journeys, and they would tie me to the saddle and harness with straps, so that I was all twined around and couldn’t fall. I was jolted to death, and even passed out and lost consciousness more than once, but still rode in my upright position, and, sick of dangling, would come to my senses again. It was no easy duty; on the way, these changes would occur several times, I’d grow faint, then straighten up, and at home they’d untie me from the saddle like a dead man, lay me out, and make me sniff horseradish. Well, but later I got used to it, and it all became like nothing to me. I even kept aiming to give some passing peasant a hot one over the shirt as we drove—that’s a well-known postillion’s prank. So, once we were taking the count visiting. The weather was beautiful, summery, and the count and his dog were sitting in the open carriage, father was driving a four-in-hand, and I was blowing about in front, and here we turned off the main road and went along a special byway for some ten miles to a monastery called the P—— hermitage. This little road was tended by the monks, to make it more enticing to go to them: naturally, on the state road there were weeds and broom and twisted branches sticking out everywhere; but the monks kept the road to the hermitage clean, all swept and cleared, with young birches planted along both sides, and these birches were so green and fragrant, and the wide view of the fields in the distance … In short—it was so good, I was about to cry out to it all, but, of course, I couldn’t cry out for no reason, so I controlled myself and galloped on. Then suddenly, two or three miles before the monastery, the road began to slope downwards a bit, and I suddenly saw a little speck ahead of me … something was creeping along the road like a little hedgehog. I was glad of the chance and struck up with all my might: “Hhhhi-i-i-i-ya-a-a-ahh!” and kept it going for almost a mile, and got so fired up that when we began to overtake the hay wagon I was shouting at, I rose in the stirrups and saw a man lying on the hay in the wagon, and it was probably so pleasant for him, warmed by the sun in the fresh breeze, that he lay there fast asleep, fearing nothing, sweetly sprawled facedown, and even with his arms spread wide, as if embracing the wagon. I could see he wasn’t going to pull over, so I went alongside, and, drawing even with him, stood up in the stirrups, gnashed my teeth for the first time in my life, and hit him across the back as hard as I could with my whip. His horses lunged forward down the hill, and he gave a start—he was a little old man in a novice’s cap, like the one I’m wearing now, and his face was pitiful, like an old woman’s, all frightened, with tears running down, and he thrashed on the hay like a gudgeon in a frying pan, and suddenly, probably half-asleep, not knowing where the edge was, he tumbled off the wagon under the wheels, and went sprawling in the dust … his legs tangled in the reins … At first my father and I, and even the count himself, found it funny the way he tumbled off, but then I saw that, down there by the bridge, the horses had caught one of the wheels on a post and stopped, but he didn’t get up and didn’t move … We came closer, I looked, he was all gray, covered with dust, and on his face there was no nose to be seen, only a crack, and blood coming from it … The count ordered us to stop, got out, looked, and said: “Dead.” He threatened to give me a good thrashing for that at home and ordered us to drive quickly to the monastery. From there people were sent down to the bridge, and the count talked things over with the father superior, and in the fall a whole train of gifts went there from us, with oats, and flour, and dried carp, and father gave me a whipping behind a shed in the monastery, not a real thrashing, but over the trousers, because it was my duty to mount up again right away. The matter ended there, but that same night the monk I had whipped to death comes to me in a vision and again weeps like a woman. I say: