The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“Where do I go now?” And in truth, so much time had passed since I ran away from my masters and started rambling, and yet nowhere had I warmed up a place for myself … “That’s it,” I think, “I’ll go to the police and turn myself in, only,” I think, “again it’s awkward now that I have money, the police will take it all away: why don’t I spend at least some of it, have tea and sweet rolls in a tavern for my own good pleasure?” So I went into a tavern at the fair, asked for tea and sweet rolls, and drank it for a long time, but then I saw that I couldn’t drag it out any longer, and went for a stroll. I went across the river Sura to the steppe, where herds of horses stood, and here there were also Tartars in kibitkas.²¹ The kibitkas were all identical, but one was multicolored, and around it there were many different gentlemen occupied with trying out saddle horses. Civilians, military, landowners come for the fair—these different men all stood smoking their pipes, and in the midst of them, on a multicolored rug, sat a tall, dignified Tartar, thin as a rail, in a fancy robe and a golden skullcap. I look around and, seeing a man who was having tea when I was in the tavern, I ask him who this important Tartar is, to be the only one sitting down among them all. And he replies:

“Don’t you know him? He’s Khan Dzhangar.”

“Who is this Khan Dzhangar?”

And the man says:

“Khan Dzhangar is the foremost horse breeder of the steppe, his herds go from the Volga all the way to the Ural over the whole Ryn Sands, and he himself, this Khan Dzhangar, is the same as a tsar of the steppe.”²²

“Isn’t that steppe ours?” I say.

“Yes,” he replies, “it’s ours, but we can’t have any hold on it, because all the way to the Caspian it’s either salt marshes or just grass and birds wheeling under the heavens, and there’s nothing for an official to get out of it,” he says, “and that’s the reason why Khan Dzhangar rules there, and there in the Ryn Sands he’s got his own sheikhs, and sheikh-zadas, and malo-zadas, and imams, and dervishes, and uhlans, and he orders them around as he likes, and they gladly obey him.”

I was listening to those words, and at the same time I saw a Tartar boy bring a small white mare before this khan and start to babble; and the man stood up, took a long-handled whip, placed himself right in front of the mare’s head, put the whip to her forehead, and stood there. But how did the brigand stand there? I’ll describe to you: a magnificent statue, that’s how, you couldn’t have enough of looking at him, and you see at once that he spies out all that’s in a horse. And since I’ve been observant in these matters from childhood, I could see that the mare herself perceived the expert in him and stood at attention before him: here, look at me and admire! And this dignified Tartar looked and looked at the mare like that, without walking around her the way our officers do, who bustle and fidget around a horse, but kept gazing at her from one point, and suddenly he lowered the whip and silently kissed his fingertips, meaning perfect!—and again sat cross-legged on the rug, and the mare at once twitched her ears, snorted, and began to act up.