The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“Well,” I thought, “no, why should she do that?” and I threw my boot after her, only I missed, and she carried off my pigeon chick and no doubt ate it somewhere. My two pigeons were left childless, but they didn’t pine for long and began kissing again, and again they had a pair of children ready, but that cursed cat was there again … Deuce knows how she managed to spy it all out, only I look once, and in broad daylight she’s dragging off another pigeon chick, and just when I had nothing to fling after her. But for that I decided to pull a fast one on her and set a trap in the window, so that as soon as she showed her face at night, it slammed shut on her, and she sat there complaining and miaowing. I took her out of the trap at once, stuffed her head and front paws into a boot to keep her from scratching, held her back paws and tail in my left hand, with a mitten on it, took a whip from the wall with my right hand, and began teaching her a lesson on my bed. I think I gave her some hundred and fifty hot ones, with all my might, so that she even stopped struggling. Then I took her out of the boot, wondering: is she done in or not? How, I wonder, can I test whether she’s alive or not? And I put her on the threshold and chopped her tail off with a hatchet: she went “Mia-a-a-ow,” shuddered all over, spun around ten times or so, and then ran off.

“Good,” I thought, “now you’re sure not to come here after my pigeons again.” And to make it still scarier for her, the next morning I nailed the chopped-off tail outside over my window, and was very pleased with that. But an hour later, or two hours at the most, I look, and the countess’s maid comes running in, though she’s never set foot in our stable in all her born days, and she’s holding a parasol over herself, and she screams:

“Aha, aha! So that’s who, that’s who!”

I say:

“What’s the matter?”

“It’s you,” she says, “who mutilated Zozinka! Confess: it’s her tail you’ve got nailed over the window!”

I say:

“Well, what’s so important about a nailed-up tail?”

“How dared you?” she says.

“And how dared she eat my pigeons?”

“Well, what’s so important about your pigeons!”

“Your cat’s no great lady either.”

You see, I was already old enough for back talk.

“She’s just a crummy cat,” I say.

And the fidget says:

“How dare you speak that way: don’t you know that she’s my cat and the countess herself has petted her?” And with that she slaps me across the cheek with her hand, but I, since I had also been quick with my hands since childhood, not thinking twice, grabbed a dirty broom that was standing by the door and hit her across the waist with it …

My God, here everything blew up! I was taken to the German steward’s office to be judged, and he decided I should be given the severest possible thrashing and then be taken from the stables and sent to the English garden, to crush gravel for the paths with a hammer … They gave me a terribly severe hiding, I couldn’t even pick myself up, and they took me to my father on a bast mat, but that would have been nothing to me; but then there was this last punishment, of going on my knees and crushing stones … That tormented me so much that I kept thinking and thinking how to get out of it, and decided to put an end to my life. I provided myself with a stout cord, having begged it from a houseboy, and went for a swim in the evening, then to the aspen grove behind the threshing floor, got on my knees, prayed for all Christians, tied the cord to a branch, made a noose, and put my head in it. It only remained for me to jump, and the story would be all told … Given my character, I could have done it quite easily, but I had only just swung, jumped off the branch, and hung down, when I saw that I was lying on the ground, and in front of me stood a Gypsy with a knife, laughing—his bright white teeth flashing against his swarthy mug in the night.

“What’s this you’re up to, farmhand?” he says.

“And you, what do you want with me?”

“Or,” he persisted, “is your life so bad?”

“Seems it’s not all sweetness,” I say.

“Instead of hanging by your own hand,” he says, “come and live with us, maybe you’ll hang some other way.”

“But who are you and what do you live by? I’ll bet you’re thieves.”

“Thieves we are,” he says, “thieves and swindlers.”

“There, you see,” I say, “and, on occasion, I’ll bet you put a knife in people?”

“Occasionally,” he says, “we do that, too.”