The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“What do you want from me? Get out!”

But he replies:

“You took my life before I could confess.”

“Well, it happens,” I reply. “What am I to do with you now? I didn’t do it on purpose. And what’s so bad for you now?” I say. “You’re dead, and it’s all over.”

“It’s all over,” he says, “that’s true enough, and I’m very grateful to you for it, but I’ve come now from your own mother to ask you, do you know you’re her prayed-for son?”

“Of course, I’ve heard that,” I say. “My grandmother Fedosya has told me so more than once.”

“But do you know,” he says, “that you’re also a promised son?”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning,” he says, “that you’re promised to God.”

“Who promised me to Him?”

“Your mother.”

“Well,” I say, “then let her come and tell me that herself, because maybe you’re making it up.”

“No,” he says, “I’m not making it up, but she can’t come herself.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” he says, “here with us it’s not like with you on earth: here not everybody can speak or go places, but each of us does what he has a gift for. But if you like,” he says, “I can give you a sign to confirm it.”

“I’d like,” I say, “only what sort of sign?”

“Here is the sign for you,” he says, “that you’ll be dying many times, but you won’t die until real death comes for you, and then you’ll remember your mother’s promise and go to be a monk.”

“Wonderful,” I say. “I accept and I’ll be waiting.”

He disappeared, and I woke up and forgot all about it and didn’t foresee that all these deaths would begin right away one after another. But a short while later I went with the count and countess to Voronezh—to the newly revealed relics there,¹⁶ to cure the little countess, who had been born pigeon-toed—and we stopped in the Elets district, in the village of Krutoe, to feed the horses, and I fell asleep again by the trough, and I see—again that little monk comes, the one I did in, and says:

“Listen, Golovan, I feel sorry for you, quickly ask your masters to go to the monastery—they’ll let you.”

I answer:

“Why should I?”

And he says:

“Well, look out, you’re going to suffer a lot of evil.”

I thought, all right, you’ve got to caw about something, since I killed you, and with that I got up, hitched the horses with my father, and we drove out, and the mountain here was steep as could be, with a sheer drop on one side, where who knows how many people had perished by then. The count says:

“Watch out, Golovan, be careful.”

I was good at it, and though the reins of the shaft horses, which had to make the descent, were in the coachman’s hands, I could do much to help my father. His shaft horses were strong and reliable: they could make the descent simply by sitting on their tails, but one of them, the scoundrel, was into astronomy—you only have to rein him in hard, and straightaway he throws his head up and starts contemplating deuce knows what in the sky. There’s no worse harness horses than these astronomers—and they’re most dangerous especially between the shafts, a postillion always has to watch out for horses with that habit, because an astronomer doesn’t see where he puts his feet, and who knows where they’ll land. Naturally, I knew all about our astronomer and always helped my father: I’d hold the reins of my saddle horse and his mate under my left elbow, and place them so that their tails were just in front of the shaft horses’ muzzles and the shafts were between their croups, and I always held the whip ready in front of the astronomer’s eyes, and the moment I see him looking up in the sky, I hit him on the nose and he lowers his head, and we make the descent perfectly well. So it was this time: we’re taking the carriage down, and I’m fidgeting around in front of the shaft and controlling the astronomer with the whip, when suddenly I see that he no longer feels either my father’s reins or my whip, his mouth is all bloody from the bit and his eyes are popping, and behind me I suddenly hear something creak and crack, and the whole carriage lurches forward … The brakes have snapped! I shout to my father: “Hold up! Hold up!” And he also yells: “Hold up! Hold up!” But what is there to hold up, when all six are racing like lunatics and don’t see a thing, and something suddenly goes whizzing before my eyes, and I see my father fly off the box—a rein has broken … And ahead is that terrible abyss … I don’t know whether I felt sorry for my masters or for myself, but seeing death was inevitable, I threw myself off of the lead horse right onto the shaft and hung from the end of it … Again I don’t know how much weight was in me then, only I must have been much heavier in the overbalance, and I choked the two shaft horses till they wheezed and … I see my lead horses aren’t there, as if they’ve been cut off, and I’m hanging over the abyss, and the carriage is standing propped against the shaft horses that I had throttled with the shaft.