The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

And with that he quietly flung the door wide open before me … My dear sirs, a wave of something poured over me, I don’t know what, but it was something so akin to me that I suddenly found myself all the way inside. The room was spacious but low, the ceiling all uneven, hanging belly down, everything was dark, sooty, and the tobacco smoke was so thick that the light from the chandelier above was barely visible. And below, in this great smoke, there were people … very many, terribly many people, and before them a young Gypsy girl was singing with that voice I had heard. Just as I came in, she was finishing the last piece on a high, high note, tenderly drawn out and trailing off, and her voice died away … Her voice died away, and with it at the same instant everything seemed to die … Yet a moment later everyone jumped up like mad, clapping their hands and shouting. I was simply amazed: where did all these people come from, and aren’t there more and more of them emerging from the smoke? “Oh-oh,” I thought, “maybe they’re some kind of wild things instead of people?” Only I saw various gentlemen acquaintances, remount officers and stud-farm owners, or rich merchants and landowners I recognized, who were horse fanciers, and amidst all this public such a Gypsy girl goes walking … she can’t even be described as a woman, but just like a bright-colored snake, moving on her tail and flexing her whole body, and with a burning fire coming from her dark eyes. A curious figure! And in her hands she held a big tray, with many glasses of champagne standing around the edge, and in the middle an awful heap of money. There was no silver, but there was gold, and there were banknotes: blue titmice, gray ducks, red heath cocks—only white swans were missing.²⁹ Whoever she offered a glass to drank the wine at once and flung money on the tray, gold or banknotes, as much as his zeal prompted him to; and she would then kiss him on the lips and bow to him. She went along the first row, and the second—the guests seemed to be sitting in a semicircle—and then passed along the last row, where I was standing behind a chair, and was about to turn back without offering me wine, but the old Gypsy who came behind her suddenly cried: “Grusha!”—and indicated me with his eyes. She fluttered her eyelashes at him … by God, what eyelashes they were, long, long and black, and as if they had a life of their own and moved like some sort of birds, and in her eyes I noticed that, when the old man gave her that order, it was as if wrath breathed all through her. Meaning she was angry that she had been ordered to serve me, but nevertheless did her duty, went behind the last row to where I was standing, bowed, and said:

“Drink to my health, dear guest!”

And I couldn’t even reply to her: that’s what she had made of me all at once! All at once, that is, as she bent before me over the tray, and I saw how, amidst the black hair on her head, the parting ran like silver and dropped down her back, I got bedeviled and all reason left me. I drank what she offered me, and looked through the glass at her face, and I couldn’t tell whether she was dark or fair, but I could see how color glowed under her fine skin, like a plum in sunlight, and a vein throbbed on her tender temple … “Here’s that real beauty,” I think, “which is called nature’s perfection. The magnetizer was telling the truth: it’s not at all like in a horse, a beast for sale.”

And so I drained the glass to the bottom and banged it down on the tray, and she stood there waiting to see what she’d get for her attention. To that end I quickly put my hand in my pocket, but in my pocket all I found were twenty- and twenty-five-kopeck pieces and other small change. Too little, I think; not enough to give such a stinging beauty, and it would be shameful in front of the others! And I hear the gentlemen say none too softly to the Gypsy:

“Eh, Vassily Ivanovich, why did you tell Grusha to serve this muzhik? It’s offensive to us.”

And he replies:

“With us, gentlemen, every guest finds grace and a place, and my daughter knows the customs of her own Gypsy forefathers; and there’s nothing for you to take offense at, because you don’t know as yet how a simple man can appreciate beauty and talent. Of that there are various examples.”

And hearing that, I think:

“Ah, let the old wolf eat you all! Can it be that if you’re richer than I am, you have more feeling? No, what will be, will be: afterwards I’ll earn it back for the prince, but now I’m not going to disgrace myself and humiliate this incomparable beauty by stinginess.”

And with that I thrust my hand into my breast pocket, took a hundred-rouble swan from the wad, and slapped it down on the tray. And the Gypsy girl, holding the tray in one hand, at once took a white handkerchief in the other, wiped my mouth, and with her lips did not even kiss so much as lightly touch my lips, and it was as if she smeared them with some poison, and then stepped away.