The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

It is not superfluous to recall once again that, in those recent but deeply vanished times to which the story of Ryzhov dates, governors were not at all as in our evil days, when the grandeur of these dignitaries has fallen significantly, or, in the expression of a certain ecclesiastical chronicler, has “cruelly deteriorated.” Back then governors traveled “fearsomely,” and were received “tremblingly.” Their progress was accomplished in a grandiose bustle, to which not only all the lesser principalities and powers,¹⁸ but even the rabble and the four-footed brutes contributed. By the time of the governor’s arrival, towns would have received an anointing with chalk, soot, and ochre; the tollgates would be newly adorned with the national motley of official tricolors; the sentries in their booths and the invalids would be admonished to “wax their heads and mustaches,” the hospitals would set about intensifying the discharge of the “healthified.” Everything to the ends of the earth took part in the general animation; peasant men and women were driven from their villages to the roadways, shifting about for months repairing swamped roads, log roads, and bridges; at the posting stations even special couriers and various lieutenants hurrying on countless official errands were detained. During such periods stationmasters revenged themselves on these restless people for their insufferable offenses and with steadfast inner firmness made them drag along on any old nags, because the good horses were “kept resting” for the governor. In short, no one could walk or drive anywhere without feeling with some one of his senses that in the nature of all things something extraordinary was going on. Thanks to that, back then, without any empty babble from the garrulous press, each person, old or young, knew that the one than whom there was none greater in the province was passing through, and on that occasion, each as he was able, they all expressed to their intimates their manifold feelings. But the most exalted activity went on in the central nests of the district lordship—in the court offices, where things began with the tedious and boring checking of lists, and ended with the merry operation of dusting the walls and scrubbing the floors. The floor scrubbing was something like the classical orgies in the days of the grape harvest, when everything was intensely exultant, having only one concern: to live, before the hour of death comes. Following a small convoy of crooked invalids, female prisoners, bored with a deadly boredom, were delivered from jail to the offices, where, snatching at a brief moment of happiness, they enjoyed the captivating rights of their sex—to delight the lot of mortals. The décolletés

and manches courtes^*

with which they set about their work had such an arousing effect on the young clerks busy with their papers that the consequence in the jails, as is known, was not infrequently the coming into the world of so-called “floor-scrubbing children”—of unacknowledged but undoubtedly noble origin.

At home during those same days dress boots were blackened, breeches were whitened, and long-folded-away, moth-eaten tunics were spruced up. This, too, enlivened the town. The tunics were first hung out on a hot day in the sun, on lines stretched across the yard, which attracted multitudes of the curious to every gate; then the tunics were laid on pillows or felt and beaten out

with rods; after that they were shaken out, then darned, ironed

, and, finally, spread out on an armchair in a drawing room or some other reception room, and at the conclusion of it all—in the final end, they were surreptitiously sprinkled with Theophany water from holy bottles, which, if kept near an icon in a wax-sealed vessel, does not go bad from one year to the next, and does not lose a bit of the wonderworking power imparted to it at the moment when the cross is immersed in it, to the singing of “O, Lord, save Thy people and bless Thine inheritance.”¹⁹

Stepping forth to meet the personages, the officials vested themselves in their besprinkled uniforms and, in their quality as the Lord’s inheritance, would be saved. Many reliable stories are told about this, but given the present-day universal lack of faith and the particularly Offenbachian mood²⁰ that reigns in the bureaucratic world, all this has by now been discredited in the general opinion, and, among many other things sanctified by time, is light-mindedly called into question; but to our forefathers, who had genuine, firm faith, it was given according to their faith.