The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

Alexashka’s parents owned their own house—one of those little houses which in that forest area were worth nothing, but, anyhow, provided a roof. Apart from Alexashka, the clerk Ryzhov had no other children, or at least I was told nothing about them.

The clerk died soon after the birth of this son and left his wife and son with nothing except that little house, which, as we said, was “worth nothing.” But the clerk’s widow herself was worth a lot: she was one of those Russian women who “in trouble helps and does not fear, stops a horse that gallops off, boldly enters a hut on fire”³

—a simple, sensible, sober-minded Russian woman, strong of body, valiant of soul, and with a tender capacity for ardent and faithful love.

When she was widowed, there were still pleasing qualities in her, suitable for an unpretentious everyday life, and people sent matchmakers to her, but she declined any new matrimony and busied herself with the baking of savory pies. On non-fast days her pies were stuffed with cottage cheese or liver, on fast days with kasha or peas; the widow carried them on trays to the town square and sold them for five copper kopecks apiece. On the earnings from her pie production she fed herself and her son, whom she sent to a “tutoress” for lessons; the tutoress taught Alexashka what she knew herself. Further, more serious lessons were taught him by a scribe with a braid and a leather pouch in which he kept snuff for a known use without any snuffbox.

The scribe, having “taught up” Alexashka, took a pot of kasha for his labors, and with that the widow’s son went among people to earn his keep and all the worldly blessings allotted to him.

Alexashka was then fourteen, and at that age he can be introduced to the reader.

The young Ryzhov took after his mother’s kind: he was tall, broad-shouldered—almost an athlete, of boundless strength and indestructible health. In his adolescent years he was already among the foremost strongmen, and so successfully took the lead in the “wall” during fistfights that whichever side Alexashka Ryzhov was on was considered invincible. He was capable and hardworking. The scribe’s schooling had given him an excellent, rounded, clear, beautiful handwriting, in which he wrote a multitude of memorial notices for old women⁴

and with that commenced his self-subsistence. But more important were the qualities given him by his mother, whose living example imparted a strict and sober disposition to his healthy soul, dwelling in a strong and healthy body. He was moderate in everything, like his mother, and never resorted to any outside help.

At the age of fourteen he already considered it a sin to eat his mother’s bread; memorial notices brought in little, and besides, this income, dependent on chance, was not steady; Ryzhov had an inborn aversion to trade, and he did not want to leave Soligalich, so as not to part from his mother, whom he loved very much. And therefore he had to provide himself with an occupation here, and provide it he did.

At that time permanent postal communication was only beginning to take shape in Russia: weekly runners were established between neighboring towns, who carried

a bag of mail. This was known as the foot mail. The pay fixed for this job was not big: around a rouble and a half a month, “on your own grub and with your own boots.” But those for whom even such maintenance was attractive hesitated to take up carrying mail, because for the sensitive Christian conscience of Russian piety it seemed dubious: did such a futile undertaking as carrying paper not contain something heretical and contrary to true Christianity?

Anyone who happened to hear of it pondered to himself whether he might destroy his soul that way and for an earthly recompense lose eternal life. And it was here that common compassion arranged things for Alexashka Ryzhov.

“He’s an orphan,” they said. “The Lord will forgive him more—especially on account of his young years. If while he’s carrying he gets mauled to death on the road by a bear or a wolf, and he appears at the Judgment, he’ll answer just one thing: ‘Lord, I didn’t understand,’ and that’s all. At his age no more could be asked of him. And if he stays whole and in time grows up, he can perfectly well go to a monastery and most excellently pray it away, with no expenses for candles or incense. What better can be expected for his orphanhood?”