The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“No, that’s trifles,” he says, “trifles: I see you can be a nanny; otherwise I’m in a bad way, because my wife, out of boredom, ran off with a remount officer and left me a baby daughter at the breast, and I’ve got no time and no way to feed her, so you’ll nurse her, and I’ll pay you a salary of two roubles a month.”

“For pity’s sake,” I reply, “it’s not a matter of two roubles, but how am I to manage that kind of work?”

“Trifles,” he says. “Aren’t you a Russian? Russians can manage anything.”

“Well, all right, so I’m a Russian, but I’m also a man, and what’s needed for nursing a baby at the breast, I’m not endowed with.”

“But,” he says, “to help you in that regard, I’m going to buy a goat from a Jew: you’ll milk her and nurse my daughter with the milk.”

I thought it over and said:

“Of course, why not nurse a baby with a goat,” I say, “only it seems to me you’d be better off having a woman do this work.”

“No, kindly don’t talk to me about women,” he replies. “All the scandals here are caused by women, and there’s nowhere to get them, and if you don’t agree to nurse my baby, I’ll call the Cossacks at once and order you bound and taken to the police, and you’ll be sent back under convoy. Choose now what’s better for you: to crush stones again on the count’s garden path or nurse my baby?”

I thought: no, I won’t go back, and agreed to stay on as a nanny. That same day we bought a white goat with a kid from a Jew. The kid I slaughtered, and my master and I ate it with noodles, and I milked the goat and started giving her milk to the baby. The baby was little, and so wretched, so pathetic: she whined all the time. My master, her father, was a Pole, an official, and the rogue never stayed home, but ran around to his comrades to play cards, and I stayed alone with this charge of mine, this little girl, and I began to be terribly attached to her, because it was unbearably boring for me, and having nothing to do, I busied myself with her. I’d put her in the tub and give her a good washing, and if she had a rash somewhere, I’d sprinkle it with flour; or I’d brush her hair, or rock her on my knees, or, if it got very boring at home, I’d put her on my bosom and go to the estuary to do laundry—and the goat, too, got used to us and would come walking behind us. So I lived until the next summer, and my baby grew and began to stand on her feet, but I noticed that she was bowlegged. I pointed it out to the master, but he wasn’t much concerned and only said:

“What’s that got to do with me? Go and show her to the doctor: let him look her over.”

I took her, and the doctor says:

“It’s the English disease, she must sit in the sand.”

I began doing that. I chose a little spot on the bank of the estuary where there’s sand, and whenever the day was nice and warm, I took the goat and the girl and went there with them. I’d rake up the warm sand with my hands and cover the girl with it up to the waist and give her some sticks and pebbles to play with, and our goat walks around us, grazing on the grass, and I sit and sit, my arms around my knees, and get drowsy, and fall asleep.