The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

And they all joined in and looked at Grusha, and I looked and joined in: “You must feel!” And then the Gypsies struck up “Dance, cottage, dance, stove; the master has nowhere to go”—and suddenly they all started dancing … The Gypsy men danced, and the Gypsy women danced, and the gentlemen danced: all together in a whirl, as if the whole cottage really were dancing. The Gypsy women flit about before the gentlemen, who try to keep up with them, the young ones with a whistle, the older ones with a groan. I look: no one has stayed seated. Even dignified men, from whom you’d never in your life expect such clowning, all rose to it. One of the more staid ones would sit and sit, and, obviously very ashamed at first, go and only follow with his eyes, or pull at his mustache, and then it was as if a little imp would get him to twitch his shoulder, another to move his leg, and see, suddenly he jumps up and, though he doesn’t know how to dance, starts cutting such capers as you’ve never seen. A police chief, fat as can be, and with two married daughters, is there with his two sons-in-law, huffing and puffing like a catfish and kicking up his heels, but a hussar captain, a remount officer, a fine fellow and a rich one, a rollicking dancer, is the most brilliant of all: hands on hips, stamping his heels, going out in front of everybody, saluting, scraping the floor—and when he comes face-to-face with Grusha, he tosses his head, drops his hat at her feet, and shouts: “Step on it, crush it, my beauty!”—and she … Oh, she too was a dancer! I’ve seen how actresses in theaters dance, and it’s all, pah, the same as when an officer’s horse, without any fantasy, prances at a parade just to show off, grandstanding for all he’s worth, but with no fire of life. This beauty, once she sets off, goes floating like some pharaoh, smooth as can be, and inside her, the snake, you hear the cartilage crunch and the marrow flow from bone to bone, then she stands, curves her body, heaves a shoulder, and brings her brow into line with the point of her toe … What a picture! Simply from the sight of her dancing, they all seem to lose their minds: they rush to her madly, obliviously; one has tears in his eyes, another bares his teeth, but they all cry out:

“We’ll spare nothing: dance!” They simply fling money under her feet, one gold, another banknotes. And here everything starts whirling thicker and thicker, and I’m the only one sitting, and I don’t know how long I can bear it, because I can’t look at how she steps on the hussar’s hat … She steps on it, and a devil gives me a tweak; she steps on it again, and he gives me another tweak, and finally I think: “Why should I torment myself uselessly like this! Let my soul revel all it wants”—and I jump up, push the hussar away, and break into a squatting dance before Grusha … And to keep her from stepping on the hussar’s hat, I invent this method, thinking, “So you all shout that you’ll spare nothing, that doesn’t surprise me: but that I will spare nothing, I’ll prove by my true deeds”—and I leap over and fling a swan from my breast pocket under her feet and shout: “Crush it! Step on it!” She didn’t care … Though my swan was worth more than the hussar’s hat, she wasn’t even looking at the swan, but kept aiming at the hussar; only the old Gypsy, bless him, noticed it and stamped his foot at her … She understood and went after me … She’s sailing towards me, her eyes lowered, burning the ground with her anger like the dragon Gorynych,³²

and I’m capering before her like some sort of demon, and each time I leap, I fling a swan under her feet … I respect her so much that I think: “Was it you, cursed thing, who created earth and heaven?”—and I brazenly shout at her: “Move faster!” and go on flinging down the swans, and then I put my hand into my breast pocket to get one more, and I see that there are only about a dozen left … “Pah!” I think, “devil take you all!” I crumpled them all into a bunch and threw them under her feet, then took a bottle of champagne from the table, broke the neck off, and shouted:

“Step aside, my soul, you’ll get wet!” and I drank it off to her health, because after that dancing I was terribly thirsty.

XIV

“Well, and what then?” we asked Ivan Severyanych.

“Then everything actually followed as he promised.”

“Who promised?”

“Why, the magnetizer who put it on me: he promised to make the demon of drink leave me, and so he did, and I’ve never drunk a single glass since. He made a very good job of it.”

“Well, sir, and how did you and the prince finish this business of the loosed swans?”