The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“It was impossible, sir; the steppe is flat, there are no roads, and you get hungry … I walked for three days, grew feeble as a fox, caught some sort of bird barehanded and ate it raw, then got hungry again, and there was no water … How could I go on? … So I fell down, and they found me and took and bristled me up.”

One of the listeners remarked, apropos of this bristling up, that it must have been devilishly awkward to walk on your anklebones.

“At the outstart it was even very bad,” Ivan Severyanych replied, “and later on, though I managed better, all the same I couldn’t go far. But then again, I’ll tell you no lies, those Tartars took good care of me after that.

“ ‘Now, Ivan,’ they say, ‘it’s going to be pretty hard for you to fetch water, and to cook for yourself will also be awkward. Take yourself a Natasha now, brother,’ they say, ‘we’ll give you a nice Natasha, choose whichever one you like.’

“I say:

“ ‘What’s there to choose: they’re the same use one and all. Give me whichever you like.’ Well, so they married me off at once without any argument.”

“What? Married you to a Tartar woman?”

“Yes, naturally, to a Tartar woman. First to one who’d been the wife of that Savakirey that I outwhipped, only she, this Tartar woman, wasn’t to my taste at all: she was a bit off and always seemed very afraid of me and didn’t delight me in the least. She missed her husband, maybe, or had something weighing on her heart. Well, so they noticed that I began to feel burdened by her and right away brought me another, this one a young little girl, no more than thirteen years old … They said to me:

“ ‘Take this Natasha, too, Ivan, this one will be more fun.’

“So I took her.”

“And was she really more fun for you?” the listeners asked Ivan Severyanych.

“Yes,” he replied, “this one turned out to be more fun, only sometimes she amused me, and sometimes she annoyed me with her pranks.”

“What sort of pranks?”

“All sorts … Whatever she happened to think up; she’d jump onto my knees; or I’d be asleep, and she’d flick the skullcap off my head with her foot and throw it away somewhere and laugh. I’d start scolding her, and she’d laugh loud, merrily, running around like a nymph, and I couldn’t catch her on all fours—I’d fall down and burst out laughing myself.”

“So you shaved your head there on the steppe and wore a skullcap?”

“That I did, sir.”

“What for? Most likely you wanted to please your wives?”

“No, more for cleanliness, because there are no bathhouses there.”

“So you had two wives at once?”

“Yes, sir, two in that steppe; and then with another khan, with Agashimola, who stole me from Otuchev, they gave me two more.”

“Excuse me,” one of the listeners inquired again, “but how could they steal you?”

“By trickery, sir. I ran away from Penza with the Tartars of Chepkun Emgurcheev, and for some five years on end I lived in Emgurcheev’s horde, and all the princes, and uhlans, and sheikh-zadas, and malozadas used to get together with him there for festivities, and Khan Dzhangar would be there, and Bakshey Otuchev.”

“The one Chepkun whipped?”

“Yes, sir, the very same.”

“But how’s that … Wasn’t Bakshey angry with Chepkun?”

“What for?”

“For outwhipping him and winning the horse away from him?”

“No, sir, they never get angry with each other for that: whoever wins out by amicable agreement takes it, and that’s all; though once, in fact, Khan Dzhangar reproached me … ‘Eh, Ivan,’ he says, ‘eh, you numbskull, Ivan, why did you sit down for the whipping with Savakirey in place of the Russian prince? I wanted to have a laugh,’ he says, ‘seeing a Russian prince take his shirt off.’

“ ‘You’d have had a long wait,’ I replied to him.

“ ‘How so?’

“ ‘Because,’ I say, ‘our princes are fainthearted and unmanly, and their strength is quite negligible.’

“He understood.

“ ‘I could see,’ he says, ‘that they had no real passion, and if they wanted to get something, they’d pay money for it.’

“ ‘True enough: they can’t do anything without money.’ Well, but Agashimola, he was from a far-off horde, his herds roamed about somewhere near the Caspian; he loved medical treatment and invited me to cure his wife and promised Emgurchey many head of cattle for it. Emgurchey let me go with him: I took along a supply of aloe and galingale root and went. But as soon as Agashimola took me, he hied himself off with his whole band, and we galloped for eight days.”

“And you rode on horseback?”

“That I did, sir.”

“But what about your feet?”

“What about them?”

“The chopped-up horsehair that was in your heels didn’t bother you?”

“Not at all. They’ve got it worked out nicely: when they bristle a man up like that, he can’t walk very well, but such a bristled-up man sits a horse better than anybody, because, walking on his anklebones all the time, he’s used to being bowlegged and grips the horse so tight he can’t be knocked off for anything.”

“Well, and how was it for you afterwards in the new steppe with Agashimola?”

“I was dying again even more cruelly.”

“But you didn’t die?”

“No, sir, I didn’t.”