The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

Alexander Afanasyevich’s treatment of his wife was most simple, but original: he addressed her informally, and she addressed him formally; he called her “woman,” and she called him Alexander Afanasyevich; she served him, and he was her master; when he spoke to her, she replied—when he was silent, she did not dare ask. At the table, he sat and she served, but they shared a common bed, and that was probably the reason why their marriage bore fruit. There was just one fruit—an only son, whom the “woman” reared, and in whose education she did not interfere.

Whether the “woman” loved her biblical husband or not is not clear from anything in their relations, but that she was faithful to her husband was unquestionable. Besides that, she feared him as a person placed above her by divine law and having a divine right over her. That did not disturb her peaceful life. She was illiterate, and Alexander Afanasyevich did not wish to fill this gap in her education. They lived, naturally, a Spartan life, of the strictest moderation, but they did not consider it a misfortune; in that, perhaps, they were much helped by the fact that many others around them lived in no greater prosperity. They did not drink tea and kept none at home, and they ate meat only on days of major feasts—the rest of the time they lived on bread and vegetables, preserved or fresh from their kitchen garden, and most of all on mushrooms, which grew abundantly in their forested area. In summertime the “woman” picked these mushrooms in the forest herself and prepared them for keeping, but, to her regret, the only way of preparing them was by drying. There was nothing to salt them with. The expense for salt in the necessary amount for such a supply was not included in Ryzhov’s calculations, and when the “woman” once prepared a small barrel of mushrooms with a little sack of salt given to her by a tax farmer, Alexander Afanasyevich, on learning of it, gave the “woman” a patriarchal beating and took her to the archpriest to have a penance laid on her for disobeying her husband’s precepts; and he rolled the whole barrel of mushrooms to the tax farmer’s yard with his own hands and told them to “take it wherever they liked,” and he gave the tax farmer a reprimand.

Such was this odd fellow, of whom for all the length of his days there is also not much to say; he sat in his place, did his little job, which did not enjoy anyone’s special sympathy, nor did he ever seek any special sympathy; the Soligalich ringleaders considered him “deranged by the Bible,” and simple people judged that he was simply “this-that-and-the-other.”

Which rather unclear definition had for them a clear and plain meaning.

Ryzhov did not care in the least what people thought of him: he served everyone honestly and did not play up to anyone in particular; in his thoughts he gave his accounting to the one he believed in immutably and firmly, calling him the author and master of all that exists. Ryzhov’s pleasure consisted in fulfilling his duty, and his highest spiritual comfort in philosophizing about the highest questions of the spiritual world and about the reflection of the laws of that world in phenomena and in the destinies of particular persons and of entire kingdoms and peoples. Whether Ryzhov shared the common weakness of many self-taught men in considering himself more intelligent than anyone else is not known, but he was not proud, and he never thrust his beliefs and views on anyone or even shared them, but only wrote them into big blue-paged notebooks, which he filed under one cover with the significant inscription: Singlemind

.

What was written in this whole enormous manuscript by the policeman-philosopher remained hidden, because at Alexander Afanasyevich’s death his Singlemind perished, and no one can say much about it from memory. Only a bare two or three passages from the whole of Singlemind were shown by Ryzhov to an important person on an extraordinary occasion in his life, which we are now approaching. The rest of

Singlemind’s pages, the existence of which almost all Soligalich knew about, were used to paper walls, or perhaps were even burned to avoid unpleasantness, because these writings contained much incoherent raving and religious fantasy, for which, in those times, both the author and his readers might have been sent to pray in the Solovetsky Monastery.¹⁴

The spirit of this manuscript became known with the following incident, so memorable in the annals of Soligalich.

VII

I cannot recall for certain and do not know where to find out in precisely what year Sergei Stepanovich Lanskoy, later a count and a well-known minister of the interior, was named governor of Kostroma.¹⁵ This dignitary, according to the apt observation of a contemporary, “was of strong mind and haughty bearing,” and this brief characterization is correct and perfectly sufficient for the notion our reader needs to have of him.