The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“ ‘Well, what if I did? It was all done amicably. Would it have been better if he beat me to death?’

“ ‘He could beat you to death,’ they say, ‘and it would be nothing to him, because he’s of another faith, but you,’ they say, ‘have got to judge by Christianity. Come along,’ they say, ‘let’s go to the police.’

“Well, I think to myself: ‘All right, brothers, chase the wind in the field.’ And since, in my opinion, there’s nothing more pernicious than the police, I dodged behind one Tartar, then behind another. I whisper to them:

“ ‘Save me, princes: you saw it was all a fair fight …’

“They pressed together and pushed me from one to the other, and concealed me.”

“Excuse me … but how did they conceal you?”

“I cleared out with them all the way to their steppe.”

“To the steppe even!”

“Yes, sir, right to the Ryn Sands.”

“And did you spend long there?”

“A whole ten years: I was twenty-three when they brought me to the Ryn Sands and thirty-four when I escaped and came back.”

“So, did you like living in the steppe or not?”

“No, what could you like there? Boredom, and nothing else; only it was impossible to get away earlier.”

“Why’s that? Did the Tartars keep you in a pit or under guard?”

“No, they’re kind, they didn’t allow themselves such meanness with me as to put me in a pit or in the stocks, but simply said: ‘Be our friend, Ivan; we like you very much, and you’ll live with us in the steppe and be a useful man—treat our horses and help our women.’ ”

“And did you treat them?”

“Yes, I was like a doctor to them, and I attended to them, and all their cattle, and horses, and sheep, and most of all their wives, the Tartar women.”

“So you know how to treat people?”

“How shall I put it … Well, I mean, what’s so clever about it? When somebody was sick, I gave them aloe or galingale root, and it would go away, and they had a lot of aloe—in Saratov one of the Tartars found a whole sack of it and brought it back, but before me they didn’t know what it was meant for.”

“And you felt at home with them?”

“No, sir, I always longed to go back.”

“And can it really have been so impossible to leave them?”

“No—why? If my feet had been in good shape, I’d most likely have gone back to the fatherland long before.”

“And what happened to your feet?”

“They bristled me up after the first time.”

“How’s that? … Forgive us, please, we don’t quite understand what you mean by ‘bristled up.’ ”

“It’s a most ordinary means with them: if they like somebody and want to keep him, but the man pines away or tries to escape, they do it to him so he doesn’t get away. So with me, after I got lost trying to escape once, they caught me and said: ‘You know, Ivan, you be our friend, and to make it so you don’t leave us again, we’d better cut open your heels and stuff a few bristles in them.’ Well, they ruined my feet that way, so I had to crawl on all fours all the time.”

“Tell us, please, how do they do this terrible operation?”

“Very simply. Some ten men threw me down on the ground and said: ‘Shout, Ivan, shout louder when we start cutting. It’ll be easier for you.’ And they sat on me, and in a trice one master craftsman of theirs cut the skin open on my soles, put in some chopped-up horsehair, covered it with the skin, and sewed it up with string. After that they kept my hands tied for a few days, for fear I’d harm my wounds and the bristles would come out with the pus; but once the skin healed, they let me go: ‘Now,’ they say, ‘greetings to you, Ivan, now you’re our real friend and you’ll never go away and leave us.’

“I only just got to my feet then, when I went crashing to the ground again: the chopped-up hair sewn under the skin of my heels pricked the live flesh with such deadly pain that it was not only impossible to take a step, but there was even no way to stand on my feet. I had never cried in my life, but here I even howled out loud.

“ ‘What have you done to me, you cursed Asiatics?’ I say. ‘You’d have done better to kill me outright, you vipers, than to make me a cripple like this for all time, so that I can’t take a step.’

“But they say:

“ ‘Never mind, Ivan, never mind, don’t upset yourself over a trifle.’

“ ‘What kind of trifle is it?’ I say. ‘You ruin a man like this, and then say he shouldn’t upset himself?’

“ ‘You’ll get the knack of it,’ they say. ‘Don’t step square on your heels, but walk bowlegged on the little bones.’

“ ‘Pah, you scoundrels!’ I thought to myself and turned my back on them and didn’t talk, but made up my mind that I’d rather die than follow their advice about walking bowlegged on my anklebones; but then I went on lying there—a deadly boredom came over me, and I began to get the knack of it, and gradually hobbled around on my anklebones. But they didn’t laugh at me in the least for that, and kept saying:

“ ‘How well you walk, Ivan, see how well you walk.’ ”

“What a misfortune! And how was it you tried to escape and got caught?”