The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

Grusha told me how, “when you,” she says, “went and disappeared,” that is, when I went off to the fair, “the prince stayed away from home for a long time, and rumors reached me that he was getting married … These rumors made me cry terribly, and my face got all pinched … My heart ached and the child turned over in me … I thought: it’s going to die in my womb. Then suddenly I hear them say: ‘He’s coming!’ … Everything inside me trembled … I rushed to my rooms in the wing to dress up the best I could for him, put on my emerald earrings, and pulled from under a sheet on the wall his favorite blue moiré dress, trimmed with lace, with an open neck … I was in a hurry, I put it on, but couldn’t get it buttoned in the back … so I didn’t button it, but quickly threw a red shawl over it so that you couldn’t see it was unbuttoned, and ran out to meet him on the porch … Trembling all over and forgetting myself, I cried out:

“ ‘My golden one, my ruby-jewel!’—threw my arms around his neck, and went numb …”

She had fainted.

“When I came to in my room,” she says, “I lay on the sofa and tried to remember: was it in a dream or awake that I embraced him? Only,” she says, “there was a terrible weakness in me”—and she didn’t see him for a long time … She kept sending for him, but he didn’t come.

At last he shows up, and she says:

“Why have you abandoned me and forgotten me so completely?”

And he says:

“I have things to do.”

“What things?” she replies. “Why didn’t you have any before? Oh, my ruby-diamond!”—and she held out her arms again to embrace him, but he frowned and pulled the string of the cross on her neck with all his might …

“Luckily for me,” she says, “the silk string on my neck wasn’t strong, it was worn out and broke, because I’d been wearing an amulet on it for a long time, otherwise he’d have strangled me; and I suppose that’s precisely what he wanted to do, because he went all white and hissed:

“ ‘Why do you wear such a dirty string?’

“And I say:

“ ‘What’s my string to you? It used to be clean, but it has turned black on me from the heavy sweat of grief.’

“And he spat—‘Pah, pah, pah’—spat and left, but before evening he came back angry and said:

“ ‘Let’s go for a carriage ride!’ And he pretended to be tender and kissed my head, and, fearing nothing, I got in with him and went. We drove for a long time and changed horses twice, yet I couldn’t get out of him where we were going, but I saw we’d come to a place in the forest—swampy, unlovely, wild. And we arrived at some beehives, and beyond the beehives—a yard, and there we were met by three strapping young peasant wenches in red linen skirts, and they called me ‘lady.’ As soon as I got out of the carriage, they took me under the arms and hustled me straight to a room that was all prepared.

“Something about all this, and especially about these wenches, made me sick at once, and my heart was wrung.

“ ‘What kind of stopping place is this?’ I asked him.

“And he replied:

“ ‘You’re going to live here now.’

“I began to weep, to kiss his hands, so that he wouldn’t abandon me there, but he had no pity: he pushed me away and left …”

Here Grushenka fell silent and looked down, then sighed and said:

“I wanted to escape, tried a hundred times—impossible: those peasant wenches were on guard and never took their eyes off me … I languished, then I finally got the notion to pretend I was carefree, merry, as if I wanted to go for a walk. They took me for a walk in the forest, watched me all the time, and I watched the trees, noticing by the treetops and the bark which way was south, and I planned how I’d escape from these wenches, and yesterday I did it. Yesterday after lunch I went to a clearing with them, and I said:

“ ‘Come, my sweet ones, let’s play blind man’s buff in the clearing.’

“They agreed.

“ ‘But instead of our eyes,’ I say, ‘let’s tie each other’s hands behind our backs and play catch from behind.’

“They agreed to that, too.

“And so we did. I tied the first one’s hands very tightly behind her back, and with the second one I ran behind a bush, and that one I hobbled there, and the third one came running at her cries, and I trussed her up by force before the eyes of the other two. They shouted, but I, heavy with child as I am, started running faster than a frisky horse through the forest, right through the forest, and I ran all night and in the morning I fell down by some old beehives in the dense second growth. There a little old man came up to me and mumbled something I couldn’t understand, and he was all covered with wax and smelled of honey, and bees were crawling in his yellow eyebrows. I told him that I wanted to see you, Ivan Severyanych, and he says: