The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

Waiting for the governor in those times was long and agonizing. There were as yet no railroads, with trains coming on schedule at an appointed hour, delivering the governor along with all other mortals, but a high road was specially prepared, and after that no one knew with certainty either the day or the hour when the dignitary would be pleased to appear. Therefore the weary waiting was prolonged and filled with a special, solemn anxiety, at the very zenith of which stood the guard on duty, who had to watch the high road from the tallest belfry in town. He was not supposed to doze off, protecting the town from an unexpected arrival, but of course it happened that he would doze and even sleep, and on such unfortunate occasions there would be various unpleasantnesses. Sometimes the negligent watchman rang the little bell when the governor was already at too close a distance, so that the officials did not all have time to uniform themselves and rush out, nor the archpriest to vest himself and come out with the cross, and sometimes the mayor even had no time to ride out to the town gates standing on a cart. To avoid this, the sentry was obliged to walk around the belfry and on each side make a bow in the corresponding direction.

This served the sentry as a diversion and the general public as a guarantee that the one keeping vigil over them was not sleeping or dozing. But this precaution did not always help; it would happen that the sentry mastered the ability of the albatross: he would sleep while walking and bowing, and, half-awake, would ring a false alarm, having taken a landowner’s carriage for the governor’s, and then a useless commotion would arise in town, ending with the officials un-uniforming themselves again and the mayor’s troika being unharnessed, while the imprudent watchman would get a light or not so light whipping.

Suchlike difficulties occurred frequently and were not easy to overcome, and, besides, their whole weight lay chiefly on the mayor, who had to go galloping off to the meeting ahead of them all, was the first to take upon himself the superior’s glares and growls, and then again, standing up, galloped ahead of the governor’s carriage to the cathedral, where the fully vested archpriest, with the cross and a sprinkler in a bowl of holy water, was waiting by the porch. Here the mayor, unfailingly with his own hand, flipped down the governor’s footboard and in that way, so to speak, with his own hand let the arriving exalted personage out of his traveling ark onto our native soil. Nowadays this is all no longer so, it has all been spoiled, and that not without the participation of the governors themselves, among whom there were those eager to “sell themselves short.” Now they may even repent of it, but what’s slipped away can’t be brought back: no one flips down footboards for them except lackeys and policemen.

But the mayor of old fulfilled his duty unabashedly and served as a first touchstone for everyone; he was the first to find out whether the arriving governor was ferocious or benign. And, truth to tell, much depended on the mayor: he could spoil things straight off, because one awkwardness of any sort on his part could anger the governor and throw him into a rage; but with one nimble leap, turn, or other fitting caper he could also bring his excellency to a benign disposition.

Now every reader, even one ignorant of these patriarchal customs, can judge how natural was the anxiety of the Soligalich officialdom, who came to have as their representative such an original, awkward, and stubborn mayor as Ryzhov, who, besides all his inconvenient personal qualities, had a wardrobe consisting of nothing but a beshmet of striped ticking and a shaggy peasant hat.

These would be the first things to strike the eye of the “haughty bearing,” of whom idle tongues had already brought the most terrible news to Soligalich … What good could come of it?

IX

Alexander Afanasyevich could indeed drive anyone you like to despair; he did not worry about anything, and, in waiting for the governor, behaved as if the impending terrible event did not concern him at all. He did not demolish a single fence of a single citizen, did not paint anything either with chalk or with ochre, and generally took no measures not only towards beautifying the town, but also towards changing his incongruous costume, and continued to go about in his beshmet. To all projects proposed to him, he replied:

“Folk mustn’t be put to any loss: is the governor to lay waste the land? Let him pass through, and let the fence remain.” The requests concerning his uniform Ryzhov parried by saying that he had no means, and, he said, “I appear in what I have: before God I’ll stand completely naked. The point isn’t in clothes, it’s in reason and conscience—in clothes they find you, in thought they mind you.”