The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

In this last stipulation there was an extraordinary amount of inconvenient complexity, which filled everything around with uneasy anxiety—something the self-possessed Ryzhov disliked very much. He decided “to be always in his place”: he moved the troika from his fence to the town gates, and sat right there himself on the painted bar of the tollgate, in full dress—tunic and white breeches—with a report in his breast pocket, installing himself like a saint on a pillar, while the curious gathered around him, whom he did not send away, but, on the contrary, conversed with, and in the midst of this conversation it was granted him to see a cloud of dust billowing up on the road, in which the lead pair and postillion, adorned with brass plates, outlined themselves. It was the governor rolling along.

Ryzhov quickly leaped into the cart and was about to gallop off, when he was suddenly struck by the general moan and gasp of the crowd calling out to him:

“Dear man, take off your trousers!”

“What’s that?” asked Ryzhov.

“Your trousers, take off your trousers,” the people replied. “Look at your white behind, the whole tollgate’s printed on it.”

Ryzhov looked over his shoulder and saw that all the undried stripes of the national colors from the tollgate were indeed printed on his breeches with astonishing distinctness.

He winced, but then sighed at once and said: “No need for superiors to go looking there,” and sent the troika galloping to meet the “haughty personage.”

The people just waved their hands:

“Desperate man! What’s he in for now?”

XI

Runners from that same crowd quickly managed to inform the clergy and superiors in the cathedral of the ambiguous guise in which Ryzhov would be meeting the governor, but by then it was each man for himself.

The archpriest was the most frightened of all, because the officials were lurking in the church, while he stood on the steps with the cross in his hands. He was surrounded by a very small number of clergy, among whom two figures stood out: a squat deacon with big head and a lanky beadle in a vestment, who was holding holy water in an “applicated” bowl, which tossed and trembled in his timorous hands. But now the quaking of fear turned to petrifaction: on the square, drawn by a briskly galloping troika, appeared the post cart, on which Ryzhov’s gigantic figure towered up with remarkable dignity. He was wearing a hat, a tunic with a red collar, and white breeches with linen sewn over the gap, which from a distance decidedly spoiled nothing. On the contrary, he appeared to everyone like something majestic, and indeed that was how he ought to have appeared. Standing firmly on the galloping cart, on the box of which the driver bounced up and down, Alexander Afanasyevich swayed neither right nor left, but sailed on his chariot like a triumphator, his mighty arms folded on his chest, and sending a whole cloud of dust onto the coach-and-six and the light tarantass that followed him. In the tarantass rode the officials. Lanskoy sat alone in the coach and, despite the grave importance he was noted for, was evidently much intrigued by Ryzhov, who flew ahead of him, standing up, in a short, tight tunic, not concealing in the least the pattern of the national colors on his white breeches. It is very likely that a considerable portion of the gubernatorial attention was drawn precisely to that oddity, the meaning of which was not at all easy to understand and determine.

In due course the cart pulled up to one side, and in due course Alexander Afanasyevich jumped off and opened the door of the governor’s carriage.

Lanskoy stepped out, having, as always, his invariable “haughty bearing,” which, however, enclosed a rather kind heart. The archpriest, raising the cross over him, said: “Blessed be he that cometh in the name of the Lord,”²¹ and then sprinkled him slightly with holy water.

The dignitary planted a kiss on the cross, wiped away the drops that had landed on his haughty brow with a cambric handkerchief, and entered the church first. All this went on right in front of Alexander Afanasyevich and displeased him in the extreme—it was all “haughty.” The unfavorable impression was intensified still more when, having entered the church, the governor did not cross himself or bow to anyone—neither the altar, nor the people—but walked straight as a pole right to the front, without bending his head.

This was against all of Ryzhov’s rules regarding reverence for God and the obligation of the superior to set an example for their inferiors—and his pious spirit was stirred and rose to an incredible height.

Ryzhov went on walking behind the governor and, as Lanskoy approached the front, Ryzhov shortened the distance between them more and more and suddenly seized him unexpectedly by the arm and uttered in a loud voice:

“Servant of God Sergius! Enter the church of the Lord not haughtily but humbly, presenting yourself as the greatest of sinners—like this!”