The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

Again she doesn’t reply, and the prince starts painting it on, saying: “I want to buy a fulling mill, but I don’t have a penny. If I buy it, though, I’ll be a millionaire. I’ll redo the whole thing,” he says. “I’ll throw all the old stuff out and start making bright-colored fabrics and sell them to the Asiatics in Nizhny.³³ From the most trashy materials,” he says, “but dyed bright colors, and it will sell well, and I’ll make big money, but now I need only twenty thousand in down payment for the mill.”

Evgenia Semyonovna says:

“Where are you going to get it?”

The prince says:

“I don’t know myself, but I must get it, and then my calculations are quite correct: I have a man, Ivan Golovan, an army connoisseur, not very bright, but a solid gold muzhik—honest, and zealous, and he was held captive for a long time by the Asiatics and knows all their tastes very well, and now there’s the Makary fair, I’ll send Golovan there to take orders and bring samples, and there’ll be down payments … then … first thing, I’ll immediately pay back the twenty thousand …”

And he fell silent, and the lady said nothing for a moment, then sighed and began:

“Your calculations are correct, Prince.”

“Aren’t they, though?”

“Correct,” she says, “correct. Here’s what you’ll do: you’ll pay the down payment for the mill, after which you’ll be considered a mill owner; there’ll be talk in society that your affairs have improved …”

“Right.”

“Right. And then …”

“Golovan will take a lot of orders and down payments at the fair, and I’ll return my debt and become rich.”

“No, please, don’t interrupt me: first, you’ll use all that to flimflam the marshal of the nobility,³⁴ and, while he thinks you’re rich, you’ll marry his daughter, and then, having taken her dowry along with her, you’ll indeed become rich.”

“You think so?” the prince says.

And the lady replies:

“And do you think otherwise?”

“Ah, well, if you understand everything,” he says, “then God grant we see it all come true.”

“We?”

“Of course,” he says, “then it will be good for all of us: you’ll mortgage the house for me now, and I’ll give our daughter ten thousand in interest on the twenty thousand.”

The lady replies:

“The house is yours: you gave it to her, take it if you need it.”

He starts saying: “No, the house isn’t mine; you’re her mother, I ask you … of course, only in the event that you trust me …”

But she replies:

“Ah, enough, Prince, I trusted you with more than that! I entrusted you with my life and honor.”

“Ah, yes,” he says, “you mean that … Well, thank you, thank you, excellent … So, then, tomorrow I can send you the mortgage papers for signing?”

“Send them,” she says, “I’ll sign them.”

“You’re not afraid?”

“No,” she says, “after what I’ve already lost, I’m not afraid of anything.”

“And you’re not sorry? Tell me: you’re not sorry? It must be that you still love me a tiny bit? What? Or you simply pity me? Eh?”

She merely laughs at these words and says:

“Stop babbling nonsense, Prince. Wouldn’t you like it better if I served you some steeped cloudberries with sugar? Mine came out very tasty this year.”

He must have been offended: he had clearly expected something else. He gets up and smiles:

“No,” he says, “you eat your cloudberries yourself, I can’t be bothered with sweets now. Thank you and good-bye”—and he started kissing her hands, and just then the carriage came back.

Evgenia Semyonovna gave him her hand in farewell and said:

“And how are you going to deal with your dark-eyed Gypsy girl?”

He suddenly slapped himself on the forehead and cried out:

“Ah, true! What a smart one you’ve always been! Believe it or not, I always remember your intelligence, and I thank you for reminding now of that ruby!”

“And you had forgotten her just like that?” she says.

“By God,” he says, “I had. She’d gone clean out of my head, but I really do have to set the foolish girl up.”

“Set her up,” Evgenia Semyonovna replies, “only good and proper: she’s got no cool Russian blood half mixed with milk, she won’t be meekly pacified, and she won’t forgive anything for the sake of the past.”

“Never mind,” he says, “she’ll be pacified somehow.”

“She loves you, doesn’t she, Prince? They say she even loves you very much?”

“I’m awfully sick of her; but, thank God, luckily for me, she and Golovan are great friends.”

“What do you gain by that?” asks Evgenia Semyonovna.

“Nothing. I’ll buy them a house and register Ivan as a merchant, they’ll get married and start a life.”

But Evgenia Semyonovna shakes her head, smiles, and says:

“Ah, dear Prince, dear Prince, dear muddleheaded Prince: where is your conscience?”

But the prince replies:

“Kindly leave my conscience out of it. By God, I can’t be bothered with it now: I’ve somehow got to bring Ivan Golovan here today.”

The lady told him that Ivan Golovan was in town and was even staying with her. The prince was very gladdened by that, told her to send me to him as soon as possible, and left her house at once.