Fifty-Two Stories

“Our boys wanted to kill him then, but the old men wouldn’t allow it. It was forbidden to kill him; he knew where the treasure was. Apart from him, not a single soul knew. Around here treasures have a spell on them, so that even if you happen on it, you don’t see it—but he saw it. He’d go along a riverbank or through a wood, and there would be little fires, fires, fires under the bushes or rocks…Little fires, as if from sulfur. I saw them myself. Everybody waited for Zhmenya to point the places out to people, or dig them up himself, but he—a real dog in the manger—went and died: didn’t dig it up himself, didn’t show anybody else.”

The overseer lit his pipe and for a moment revealed his big moustache and a sharp, stern, respectable-looking nose. Small circles of light jumped from his hands to his visored cap, flitted across the saddle over the horse’s back, and disappeared in the mane by its ears.

“In these parts there are many treasures,” he said.

And, slowly drawing on his pipe, he looked around, rested his gaze on the brightening east, and added:

“There must be treasures.”

“What’s there to talk about,” sighed the old man. “By the looks of it there are, brother, only there’s nobody to dig them up. Nobody knows the real places, and nowadays, most likely, all the treasures have a spell on them. To find them and see them, you’ve got to have a talisman, and without a talisman, my lad, you can’t do anything. Zhmenya had talismans, but was there any wheedling them out of him? The bald devil held on to them so nobody could get them.”

The young shepherd crept a couple of paces toward the old man, and, propping his head on his fists, fixed his unmoving gaze on him. A childlike expression of fear and curiosity lit up in his dark eyes and, as it seemed in the twilight, stretched and flattened the large features of his coarse young face. He listened intently.

“And in writings it’s written that there are many treasures here,” the old man went on. “What’s there to talk about…there’s nothing to say. An old soldier from Novopavlovsk was shown a tag in Ivanovka, and printed on this tag was the place, and even how many pounds of gold, and in what sort of vessel; this treasure could have been found long ago, only there’s a spell on it so you can’t get to it.”

“Why can’t you get to it, grandpa?” asked the young one.

“Must be there’s some reason, the soldier didn’t say. There’s a spell…You need a talisman.”

The old man spoke with enthusiasm, as if he were pouring out his soul before the passerby. Being unused to speaking much and quickly, he maundered, stammered, and, sensing the deficiency of his speech, tried to make up for it by gesticulating with his head, hands, and scrawny shoulders. With each movement, his sackcloth shirt crumpled, pulled up to the shoulders, and bared his back, blackened from sunburn and old age. He pulled it down, but it pulled up again at once. Finally, as if driven beyond all patience by the disobedient shirt, he jumped up and said bitterly:

“There is luck, but what’s the use of it if it’s buried in the ground? And so the good will perish for nothing, uselessly, like chaff or sheep dung! Yet there’s a lot of luck out there, such a lot, boy, that it would be enough for the whole district, but not a soul sees it! If people go on waiting, the masters will dig it up or the government will take it. The masters have already started digging up the barrows⁵…They’ve sniffed it out! They envy the peasants’ luck! The government also keeps its own counsel. In the law it’s written that if a peasant finds a treasure, he must report it to the authorities. Well, they’ll have a good wait! There’s stew, but not for you.”

The old man laughed contemptuously and sat down on the ground. The overseer listened with attention and nodded, but from the expression of his whole figure and from his silence it was obvious that nothing the old man was telling was new to him, that he had been thinking about it for a long time and knew much more than the old man did.

“In my lifetime, I must confess, I’ve sought out luck maybe a dozen times,” the old man said, scratching himself bashfully. “I searched in the right places, but it must be I kept hitting on treasures with a spell on them. My father also searched, and my brother—didn’t even find a blessed thing, so they just died luckless. A certain monk revealed to my brother Ilya, may he rest in peace, that in Taganrog, in the fortress, in a place under three stones, there is a treasure, and that the treasure has a spell on it, and back then—I remember, it was the year ’thirty-eight—there was an Armenian living in the Matveev Barrow who sold talismans. Ilya bought a talisman, took two lads with him, and went to Taganrog. Only he, my brother, comes to the place in the fortress, and in that same place stands a soldier with a gun.”