The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“Or even worse than that was on the salt marshes near the Caspian: the sun glows, bakes, and the salt marsh glitters, and the sea glitters … You get befuddled by that glitter even worse than by the feather-grass, and you don’t know anymore what part of the world you’re in, that is, whether you’re still alive or dead and suffering for your sins in hopeless hell. Where there’s more feather-grass on the steppe, all the same it’s more heartening; at least you find gray-blue sage here and there on a low rise, or small clusters of wormwood and thyme, colorful in all that whiteness, but here there’s nothing but glitter … If fire runs scorching through the grass somewhere, there’s a great bustle: bustards, kestrels, steppe snipe fly up, and the hunt for them begins. We’d overtake the bustards on horseback, surround them, and bring them down with long whips; but then we and our horses would have to flee from the fire ourselves … All this was a diversion. And then strawberries would grow again on the old burnt places; birds of all sorts would come flying, mostly small ones, and there’d be chirping in the air … And then you’d occasionally come upon a little bush: meadowsweet, wild peach, or broom. And when the mist falls as dew at sunrise, it’s as if there’s a breath of coolness, and the plants give off their scents … Of course, it’s boring even with all that, but still you can endure it, but God keep anyone from staying long on a salt marsh. A horse is content there for a while: he licks the salt, which makes him drink a lot and get fat, but for a man it’s the end. There’s not a living thing there, there’s only, as if in mockery, one little bird, the redbill, like our swallow, quite unremarkable, only it has a red edging on its bill. Why it comes to that seashore, I don’t know, but since there’s nothing for it to light on, it drops onto the salt, lies there for a while on its behind, and then flutters up and flies off again, but you’re deprived even of that, for you’ve got no wings, and so here you are again, and you’ve got neither death, nor life, nor repentance, and if you die, they’ll put you in the salt like mutton, and you can lie there salted till the end of the world. And it’s still more wearisome in winter; it snows a little, just enough to cover the grass, and hardens. Then the Tartars all sit by the fire in their yurts and smoke … And here, out of boredom, they often have whipping contests among themselves. Then you go out, and there’s nothing to look at: the horses are all sullen and go around hunched up, so skinny that only their tails and manes flutter in the wind. They can barely drag their feet and dig through the snowy crust with their hooves to nibble on the frozen grass, which is all they feed on … Unbearable. The only distraction is when they notice one of the horses has grown very weak and can no longer break the snow with his hoof and get at the frozen roots with his teeth, so they slit his throat with a knife at once, skin him, and eat the meat. It’s vile-tasting meat, though: sweet, like cow’s udder, but tough; you eat it, of course, because you have to, but it turns your stomach. Thankfully, one of my wives knew how to smoke horse ribs; she’d take a rib with meat on both sides, put it in the large intestine, and smoke it over the fire. That wasn’t too bad, you could eat it more readily, because at least it smelled something like ham, but even so the taste was vile. So here you are gnawing on this foul thing, and you suddenly think: Ah, at home now in the village they’re plucking ducks and geese for the feast, slaughtering pigs, cooking cabbage soup with the nice, fatty necks, and soon now Father Ilya, our priest, a most kindly old man, will lead the procession glorifying Christ, and the deacons and their wives walk with him, and the seminarians, and they’re all tipsy, but Father Ilya himself can’t drink much; the butler in the manor house offers him a little glass; the steward sends the nanny with a bit more from the office; Father Ilya goes limp, he can barely drag his feet to us in the yard from drunkenness: he’ll manage to sip another little glass at the first cottage on his way, but after that he can’t take any more and pours it all into a bottle under his chasuble. He does it all in a family-like way, even with regard to food. If he sees something that looks appetizing, he asks: ‘Wrap it up in newspaper for me, I’ll take it along.’ They usually reply: ‘We have no newspaper, Father’—he doesn’t get angry, but takes it as it is, unwrapped, gives it to his wife, and goes on just as peaceably. Ah, gentlemen, when all that life remembered since childhood comes to mind, and it suddenly weighs on your soul and suddenly begins to press on your liver that you’ve been perishing in this place, separated from all that happiness, and haven’t been to confession for so many years, and are living without a Church marriage, and will die without a Church funeral, you’re overcome with anguish and … you wait for night, quietly crawl outside the camp, so that neither your wives, nor the children, nor any of the infidels can see you, and you begin to pray … and you pray … pray so hard that the snow even melts under your knees, and where your tears fall you see grass the next morning.”