The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

One may, it seems, add only that Lanskoy respected honesty and fairness in people and was kind himself, and he also loved Russia and the Russian man, but understood him in a lordly way, as an aristocrat, having a foreign view and a Western measure for everything.

The appointment of Lanskoy as governor of Kostroma occurred at the time of Alexander Afanasyevich Ryzhov’s eccentric service as Soligalich’s constable, and under certain peculiar circumstances besides.

On entering into his duties as governor, Sergei Stepanovich, following the example of many functionaries, first of all made a “clean sweep of the province,” that is, threw out of office a great many negligent civil servants who abused their positions, among them the mayor of Soligalich, under whom Ryzhov was constable.

In throwing unsuitable persons out of office, the new governor did not rush to replace them with others, so as not to fall upon the same sort, and maybe on still worse. To select worthy people, he wanted to have a look around, or, as we now say in Russian, to “orient himself.”

With that aim, the duties of the removed persons were entrusted temporarily to substitutes from among the junior officials, and the governor soon undertook a tour of the whole province, which trembled with a strange trembling at the mere rumors of his “haughty bearing.”

Alexander Afanasyevich assumed the duties of mayor. What he did in this substitution that differed from the former “standing” order, I don’t know; but, naturally, he did not take bribes as mayor, just as he had not taken bribes as constable. Ryzhov also did not change his manner of living or his relations with people—he did not even sit in the mayor’s chair before the zertsalo,¹⁶ but signed “for the mayor” seated at his ink-stained little desk by the front door. For this last obstinacy Ryzhov had an explanation, which was connected with the apotheosis of his life. After many years of service, just as in the first days of his constableship, Alexander Afanasyevich had no uniform, and he governed “for the mayor” wearing the same greasy and much-mended beshmet. And therefore, to all the appeals of the chief clerk that he take the mayor’s seat, he replied:

“I can’t: my garment betrays me as unfit for the wedding feast.”¹⁷

This was all duly written down in his own hand in his Singlemind, with the addition that the chief clerk suggested that he “take the seat in his beshmet, but remove the eagle from the zertsalo.” However, Alexander Afanasyevich “ignored this indecency” and went on sitting in the former place in his beshmet.

This non-uniformity did not interfere with the business of policing the town, but the question became completely different when news arrived of the coming of the “haughty bearing.” In his quality as the town’s mayor, Alexander Afanasyevich was supposed to meet the governor, receive him, and report to him on the welfare of Soligalich, and also to answer all the questions Lanskoy was going to ask him and introduce him to all the town’s points of interest, from the cathedral to the prison, the vacant lots, the ravines, which nobody knew what to do with.

Ryzhov indeed had a problem: how was he to perform all that in his beshmet? But he did not worry about that in the least; instead all the others worried about it, because Ryzhov, by his unsightliness, might anger the “haughty bearing” from the first step. It did not occur to anyone that it was precisely Alexander Afanasyevich who was going to astonish and even delight the all-terrifying “haughty bearing” and even prophesy his promotion.

The generally conscientious Alexander Afanasyevich was not embarrassed in the least by how he looked, and did not share the general bureaucratic fear at all, on account of which he was subject to disapproval and even hatred and fell in the opinion of his compatriots, but he fell in order to rise afterwards higher than all and leave behind him a heroic and almost legendary memory.

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