The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

Well, here it became clear to me that she had pitied him this time and would now comfort him and heal all the anguish of his ardent soul, and I got up quietly, inconspicuously, and left.

“And it was probably then that you entered the monastery?” someone asked the storyteller.

“No, sir, not then, but later,” replied Ivan Severyanych and added that he was still to see much from that woman in this world, before all that was destined for her was fulfilled and crossed him out.

His listeners naturally fell upon him with requests that he tell them Grusha’s story, if only briefly, and Ivan Severyanych did so.

XV

You see (Ivan Severyanych began), my prince had a good heart, but a changeable one. Whatever he wanted, he had to get at all costs on the spot—otherwise he’d go out of his mind; and in that state, he wouldn’t spare anything in the world to attain it, but then, once he got it, he wouldn’t appreciate his good luck. That’s how it was with this Gypsy girl, and Grusha’s father and all the Gypsies of the camp right away understood that very well about him and asked him God knows what price for her, more than all his domestic property allowed, because though he did have a nice country estate, it was ruined. The prince did not have on hand then the kind of money the camp was asking for Grusha, and he went into debt for it and could no longer serve in the army.

Knowing all his habits, I didn’t expect much good from him for Grusha, and it came out as I thought. He kept clinging to her, endlessly gazed at her and sighed, and suddenly he started yawning and kept inviting me to keep them company.

“Sit down,” he’d say, “and listen.”

I’d take a chair, sit somewhere near the door, and listen. This happened often: he’d ask her to sing, and she’d say:

“Who am I going to sing for! You’ve turned cold, and I want my song to make someone’s soul burn and suffer.”

The prince would at once send for me again, and the two of us would listen to her; later Grusha herself started reminding him to invite me, and began to treat me very amiably, and more than once after her singing I had tea in her rooms together with the prince, though, naturally, either at a separate table or somewhere by the window, but when she was alone, she always simply sat me down beside her. Some time passed this way, and the prince was becoming more and more troubled, and once he said to me:

“You know, Ivan Severyanych, thus and so, things are very bad with me.”

I say:

“What’s so bad about them? Thank God, you live as one ought to, and you’ve got everything.”

He suddenly became offended.

“How stupid you are, my half-esteemed fellow,” he says. “I’ve ‘got everything’? And what is it I’ve got?”

“Why,” I say, “everything a man needs.”

“Not so,” he says. “I’ve become poor, I now have to calculate whether I can have a bottle of wine with dinner. Is that a life? Is that a life?”

“So,” I think, “that’s what you’re upset about,” and I say:

“Well, if there’s not wine enough, that’s still no great trouble, it can be endured, since there’s something sweeter than wine and honey.”

He understood I was hinting at Grusha and seemed to be ashamed, and he paced about, waved his arm, and said:

“Of course … of course … naturally … only … I’ve been living here for half a year now and haven’t set eyes on another human being …”

“And what do you need another human being for,” I say, “when you’ve got your heart’s desire?”

The prince flared up.

“You understand nothing, brother,” he says. “All’s well when you’ve got the one and the other.”

“Aha!” I think, “so that’s your tune, brother?”—and I say:

“What do we do now?”

“Let’s take up horse trading,” he says. “I want to have remount officers and horse breeders come to me again.”

Horse trading is a futile and ungentlemanly business, but, I think, “So long as baby’s amused and doesn’t cry,” and I say: “If you like.”

And we began to set up a corral. But we had barely started work, when the prince got carried away by this passion: whenever a little money came in, he at once bought horses, and he took them, he snatched them up senselessly; he wouldn’t listen to me … We bought a slew of them, but there were no sales … He couldn’t stand it, dropped the horses, and gave himself to whatever happened along: first he threw himself into building an extraordinary mill, then he started a saddler’s shop, and all of it brought losses and debts, and worst of all it deranged his character … He was never at home, but flew now here, now there, looking for something, and Grusha was alone and in a certain condition … expecting. She was bored. “I see little of him,” she said—but she forced herself to be tactful. The moment she noticed that he was bored at home for a day or two, she would say at once:

“My ruby-jewel, why don’t you go out and have some fun? What should you sit with me for? I’m simple and uneducated.”