The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

The gentlemen who were standing there got into a haggling match for her: one offered a hundred roubles, another a hundred and fifty, and so on, raising the price higher and higher against each other. The mare was, in fact, wonderful—of smallish stature, like an Arabian, but slender, with a small head, a full, apple-like eye, pricked-up ears; her flanks were ringing, airy, her back straight as an arrow, and her legs light, finely shaped, swift as could be. As I was a lover of such beauty, I simply couldn’t tear my eyes off this mare. And Khan Dzhangar, seeing that a hankering for her has come over them all, and the gentlemen are inflating the price for her like they’re possessed, nods to the swarthy little Tartar, and the boy leaps on her, the little she-swan, and starts her off—sits her, you know, in his own Tartarish way, working her with his knees, and she takes wing under him and flies just like a bird and doesn’t buck, and when he leans down to her withers and whoops at her, she just soars up in one whirl with the sand. “Ah, you serpent!” I think to myself, “ah, you kestrel of the steppe, you little viper! Wherever could you have come from?” And I feel that my soul yearns for her, for this horse, with a kindred passion. The Tartar came riding back, she puffed at once through both nostrils, breathed out, and shook off all fatigue, and didn’t snort or sniff anymore. “Ah, you darling,” I think, “ah, you darling!” If the Tartar had asked me not just for my soul, but for my own father and mother, I’d have had no regrets—but how could I even think of getting such a wingèd thing, when who knows what price had been laid down for her by the gentlemen and the remount officers, but even that would have been nothing, the dealing still wasn’t over, and no one had gotten her yet, but suddenly we see a swift rider come racing on a black horse from beyond the Sura, from Seliksa, and he waves his broad-brimmed hat and comes flying up, jumps off, abandons his horse, goes straight to the white mare, stands by her head, like that first statue, and says:

“It’s my mare.”

And the khan replies:

“She’s not yours: the gentlemen are offering me five hundred coins for her.”

And that rider, an enormous, big-bellied Tartar, his mug sunburned and all peeling, as if the skin had been torn off, his eyes small, like slits, bawls at once:

“I give a hundred coins more!”

The gentlemen flutter themselves up, promise still more, and the dry Khan Dzhangar sits and smacks his lips, and from the other side of the Sura another Tartar horseman comes riding on a long-maned sorrel horse, this time a skinny and yellow one, his bones barely holding together, but a still greater rascal than the first one. This one slips off his horse and sticks himself like a nail in front of the white mare and says:

“I tell you all: I want this mare to be mine!”

I ask my neighbor what this business depends on for them. And he replies:

“This business depends on Khan Dzhangar’s very great understanding. More than once,” he says, “and maybe each time, he has pulled this trick at the fair: first he sells all the ordinary horses, the horses he brings here, but then, on the last day, he produces, devil knows from where, as if pulling it out of his sleeve, such a horse, or two, that the connoisseurs don’t know what to do; and he, the sly Tartar, watches it and amuses himself, and makes money as well for all that. Knowing this habit of his, everybody expects this last twist from him, and that’s what’s happened now: everybody thought the khan would leave today, and, in fact, he will leave tonight, but just see what a mare he’s brought out …”

“It’s a wonder,” I say, “such a horse!”

“A real wonder, and they say he drove her to the fair in the middle of the herd, so that nobody could see her behind all the other horses, and nobody knew about her except the Tartars who came with him, and them he told that the horse wasn’t for sale, she’s too precious, and during the night he separated her from the others and drove her to a forest near a Mordovian village and had her pastured there by a special herdsman, and now he suddenly brought her and put her up for sale, and you just watch what antics go on here and what that dog will make from her. Want to wager on who’s going to get her?”

“But what’s the point in us betting on it?”

“The point is,” he says, “that passions are going to break loose, the gentlemen are all sure to back out, and the horse will be bought by one of these two Asians.”

“Are they very rich or something?” I ask.

“They’re both rich,” he replies, “and shrewd horse fanciers: they’ve got their own big herds, and never in their lives will either of them yield a fine, precious horse to the other. Everybody knows them: this big-bellied one with the peeling mug, his name is Bakshey Otuchev, and the skinny one, nothing but bones, is Chepkun Emgurcheev—they’re both wicked horse fanciers. Just watch what a show they’ll put on.”