The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

I fell silent and watched: the gentlemen who had been haggling for the mare had already quit and were only looking on, and the two Tartars keep pushing each other aside and slapping Khan Dzhangar’s hands and taking hold of the mare, and they’re shaking and shouting. One shouts:

“Besides the coins, I also give five head for her” (meaning five horses)—and the other screams:

“You lying gob—I give ten.”

Bakshey Otuchev shouts:

“I give fifteen head.”

And Chepkun Emgurcheev:

“Twenty.”

Bakshey:

“Twenty-five.”

And Chepkun:

“Thirty.”

And evidently neither of them had any more … Chepkun shouted thirty, and Bakshey also offered only thirty, and no more; but then Chepkun offers a saddle on top, and Bakshey a saddle and a robe, so Chepkun also takes off his robe, and again they have nothing to outbid each other with. Chepkun cries: “Listen to me, Khan Dzhangar: when I get home, I’ll send you my daughter”—and Bakshey also promises his daughter, and again they have nothing to outvie each other with. Here suddenly all the Tartars who had been watching the haggling started yelling, yammering in their own language; they parted them, so that they wouldn’t drive each other to ruin, pulled them, Chepkun and Bakshey, to different sides, poked them in the ribs, trying to persuade them.

I ask my neighbor:

“Tell me, please, what’s going on with them now?”

“You see,” he says, “these princes who are parting them feel sorry for Chepkun and Bakshey, that they overdid the haggling, so now they’ve separated them, so they can come to their senses and one of them can honorably yield the mare to the other.”

“But,” I ask, “how can one of them yield her to the other, if they both like her so much? It can’t be.”

“Why not?” he replies. “Asiatic folk are reasonable and dignified: they’ll reason that there’s no use losing all they’ve got, and they’ll give Khan Dzhangar as much as he asks, and agree on who gets the horse by flogging it out.”

I was curious:

“What does ‘flogging it out’ mean?”

And the man replies:

“No point asking, look, it’s got to be seen, and it’s beginning right now.”

I look and see that Bakshey Otuchev and Chepkun Emgurcheev seem to have quieted down, and they tear free of those peace-making Tartars, rush to each other, and clasp hands.

“Agreed!”—meaning, it’s settled.

And the other one says the same thing:

“Agreed: it’s settled.”

And at once they both throw aside their robes and beshmets and shoes, take off their cotton shirts, and remain in nothing but their wide striped trousers; they plop down on the ground facing each other, like a pair of steppe ruffs, and sit there.

This was the first time I’d had occasion to see such a wonder, and I watched for what would come next. They gave each other their left hands and held them firmly, spread their legs and placed them foot to foot, and shouted: “Bring ’em on!”

What it was they wanted “brought on,” I couldn’t guess, but the Tartars from the bunch around them replied:

“At once, at once.”

And a dignified old man stepped from this bunch of Tartars, and he had two stout whips in his hands and held them up together and showed them to the public and to Chepkun and Bakshey: “Look,” he says, “they’re the same length.”

“The same length,” the Tartars cried, “we all see it’s honorably done, the lashes are the same length! Let them sit up and begin.”

Bakshey and Chepkun were just dying to get hold of those whips.

The dignified Tartar said “Wait” to them, and gave them the whips himself, one to Chepkun and the other to Bakshey, and then quietly clapped his hands, one, two, and three … And just as he clapped for the third time, Bakshey, with all his might, lashed Chepkun with the whip over the shoulder on his bare back, and Chepkun replied to him in the same way. And they went on regaling each other like that: they look each other in the eye, their foot soles are pressed together and their left hands firmly clasped, and with their right hands they deal out lashes … Oh, how expertly they whipped! One gives a good stroke, the other still better. The eyes of both became glassy, and their left hands didn’t move, and neither of them would yield.

I ask my new acquaintance:

“So what they’re doing is like when our gentlemen fight a duel?”

“Yes,” he says, “it’s a kind of duel, only not for the sake of honor, but so as not to spend their money.”

“And can they keep whipping each other like this for a long time?” I ask.

“As long as they like,” he says, “and as long as they have the strength.”

And they go on lashing each other, and an argument starts among the people around them. Some say, “Chepkun will outflog Bakshey,” and others argue, “Bakshey will outwhip Chepkun,” and they place bets, if they want to—some for Chepkun, others for Bakshey, whoever they think is stronger. They look knowingly in their eyes, in their teeth, at their backs, and seeing by some tokens which one is surer, they stake on him. The man I had been talking with was also an experienced spectator and began by staking on Bakshey, but then said: