The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

The man went out, but timidly came back.

“Ivan Stepanovich asked me to tell you,” he says, “that he very humbly begs.”

“Never mind, I don’t want to.”

Others said: “Let him pay a fine.”

“No! Drive him away. No need for a fine.”

But the man reappears and says still more timidly:

“He agrees to pay any fine, because at his age, he says, it’s very sad for him to be excluded from your company.”

My uncle rose and flashed his eyes, but at the same moment Ryabyka rose to his full height between him and the lackey: with his left hand he flung the servant away, somehow with one tweak, like a chicken, and with his right hand he seated my uncle in his place.

From among the guests voices were heard in favor of Ivan Stepanovich, asking to let him in—take a hundred-rouble fine from him for the musicians and let him in.

“He’s one of us, a pious old man, where is he to go now? If he’s driven away, he may make a scandal in front of the small fry. We should take pity on him.”

My uncle heeded them and said:

“If it won’t be my way, it won’t be yours either, it will be God’s way: I grant Ivan Stepanovich admittance, only he must beat the kettledrum.”

The messenger came back:

“He begs to pay a fine instead.”

“Devil take him! If he doesn’t want to drum, he doesn’t have to—let him go wherever he likes.”

A little while later Ivan Stepanovich yielded and sent to tell them he agreed to beat the kettledrum.

“Let him come here.”

A man of great height and respectable appearance enters: stern aspect, extinct eyes, bent spine, and tufty, greenish beard. He tries to joke and greet them all, but is put in his place.

“Later, later, all of that later,” my uncle shouts at him. “Now beat the drum.”

“Beat the drum!” others join in.

“Music! For the kettledrum!”

The orchestra strikes up a loud piece—the staid old man takes the wooden drumsticks and starts banging on the kettledrum in time and out of time.

Infernal noise and shouting; everybody’s pleased and cries out:

“Louder!”

Ivan Stepanovich puts more into it.

“Louder, louder, still louder!”

The old man bangs with all his might, like the Black King in Freiligrath,⁵ and finally the goal is achieved: the kettledrum gives out a desperate crack, the skin splits, everybody laughs, the noise is unimaginable, and for breaking through the kettledrum Ivan Stepanovich is relieved of a five-hundred-rouble fine to benefit the musicians.

He pays, wipes his sweat, sits down, and while everybody drinks his health, he, to his own no small horror, notices his son-in-law among the guests.

Again laughter, again noise, and so it goes until I lose my senses. In rare moments of lucidity I see Gypsy women dancing, see my uncle pumping his legs while sitting in place; then he gets up in front of someone, but Ryabyka at once appears between them, and somebody goes flying to one side, and my uncle sits down, and before him stand two forks stuck into the table. Now I understand Ryabyka’s role.

But here the freshness of a Moscow morning breathed through the window. Once more I was conscious of something, but as if only so as to doubt my own reason. There was combat and the chopping of wood: I heard crashing, thunder, trees were swaying, virgin, exotic trees, behind them some swarthy faces huddled in a corner, and here, at the roots, terrible axes flashed and my uncle chopped, and old Ivan Stepanovich chopped … Right out of a medieval picture.

This was the “taking captive” of the Gypsy women hiding in the grotto beyond the trees. The Gypsy men did not defend them and left them to their own devices. There was no sorting out joke from seriousness here: plates, chairs, stones from the grotto flew through the air, yet the cutting of trees went on, and Ivan Stepanovich and my uncle performed most valiantly of all.

At last the fortress was taken: the Gypsy women were seized, embraced, kissed, and each of them had a hundred-rouble note stuck behind her corsage,^* and that was the end of it …

Yes, all at once everything quieted down … everything ended. No one had interfered, but enough was enough. The feeling was that, as there had been “no life” without it, so now there was enough of it.

There had been enough for everyone, and everyone had had enough. Maybe it was also of importance that the teacher had said it was “time for classes,” but anyhow it was all the same: Walpurgisnacht⁶ was over, and “life” was beginning again.

The public did not go driving off, did not say good-bye, but simply vanished; there was no longer any orchestra or Gypsies. The restaurant was a picture of total devastation: not a single drape, not a single intact mirror, even the overhead chandelier lay all in pieces on the floor, and its crystal prisms crunched under the feet of the barely stirring, exhausted waiters. My uncle sat alone on the sofa and drank kvass; now and then he recalled something and pumped his legs. Beside him stood the hurrying-to-class Ryabyka.

They were brought the bill—a short one: “rounded off.”