The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

Alexashka himself, whom this concerned most of all, was on good terms with the world and had no bone to pick with it: with a bold hand he hoisted the mail bag, slung it over his shoulder, and began carrying it from Soligalich to Chukhloma and back. Working in the foot mail was perfectly suited to his taste and to his nature: he walked alone through forests, fields, and swamps, and thought to himself his orphan’s thoughts, as they composed themselves in him under the vivid impression of everything he met, saw, and heard. In such circumstances a poet the likes of Burns or Koltsov⁵ might have come of him, but Alexashka Ryzhov was of a different stamp—not poetical but philosophical—and all that came of him was a remarkably odd “Singlemind.” Neither the length of the tiring way, nor the heat, nor the cold, nor wind or rain frightened him;⁶ the mail bag was so negligible for his powerful back that, besides that bag, he always carried another gray canvas bag with him, in which lay a thick book of his, which had an irresistible influence on him.

This book was the Bible.

II

It is not known to me how many years he performed his job in the foot mail, constantly toting his bag and Bible, but it seems it was a long time and ended when the foot mail was replaced by horse mail, and Ryzhov was “upped in rank.” After these two important events in our hero’s life, a great change took place in his destiny: an eager walker with the mail, he had no wish to ride with it and started looking for another job—again nowhere else but there in Soligalich, so as not to part from his mother, who by then had become old and, with dimming eyesight, now baked worse pies than before.

Judging by the fact that promotions for low-ranking postal work did not come along very often—for instance, once in twelve years—it must be thought that Ryzhov was by then about twenty-six or even a little more, and in all that time he had only walked back and forth between Soligalich and Chukhloma, and, while walking or resting, had read nothing but his Bible in its well-worn binding. He read it to his heart’s content and acquired a great and firm knowledge of it, which laid the foundation for all his subsequent original life, when he started to philosophize and to apply his biblical views in practice.

Of course, there was considerable originality in all this. For instance, Ryzhov knew by heart whole writings by many of the prophets and especially loved Isaiah, whose vast knowledge of God answered to his own state of soul and made up all his catechesis and all his theology.

An elderly man, who in the time of his youth had known the eighty-five-year-old Ryzhov, when he was already famous and had earned the name of “Singlemind,” told me how the old man recalled some “oak tree in the swamp,” where he had especially liked to rest and “cry out to the wind.”

“I’d stand,” he said, “and howl into the air:

“ ‘The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib, but my people doth not consider. A seed of evildoers, children that are corruptors! Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats. When ye come to appear before me, bring no vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth. And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear. Wash you; put away the evil of your doings; learn to do well. Come now, and let us reason together: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Thy princes are rebellious, and companions unto thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards. Therefore saith the Lord, the Lord of hosts: woe to the mighty—mine enemies will not stand against my fury.’ ”⁷

And the orphan boy cried out this “woe, woe to the mighty” over the deserted swamp, and he imagined to himself that the wind would take Isaiah’s words and carry them to where the “dry bones” of Ezekiel’s vision lie without stirring;⁸ living flesh does not grow on them, and the decayed heart does not come to life in their breast.

The oak and the reptiles of the swamp listened to him, while he himself became half mystic, half agitator in a biblical spirit—in his own words, “breathed out love and daring.”

All this had ripened in him long ago, but it revealed itself in him when he obtained rank and started looking for another job, not over the swamp. Ryzhov’s development was now completely finished, and the time for action was coming, in which he could apply the rules he had created for himself on a biblical ground.