The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

Ryabyka read the bill attentively and demanded a reduction of fifteen hundred roubles. They didn’t argue much with him and totted it up: it came to seventeen thousand, and Ryabyka, after a second look, declared it fair. My uncle said monosyllabically: “Pay,” and then put his hat on and motioned for me to follow him.

To my horror, I saw that he had not forgotten anything and that it was impossible for me to escape from him. I found him extremely frightening and couldn’t imagine remaining alone with him in this state. He had taken me along without saying even two reasonable words, and now he was dragging me with him and I couldn’t get away. What would become of me? All my drunkenness disappeared. I was simply afraid of this dreadful wild beast, with his incredible fantasy and terrifying scope. And meanwhile we were already leaving: in the front hall we were surrounded by a throng of lackeys. My uncle dictated, “Five to each”—and Ryabyka paid it out; less was paid to the porters, watchmen, policemen, gendarmes, who had all been of some service to us. That was all satisfied. But it all made up quite a sum, and there were also cabbies standing over the whole visible expanse of the park. There was no end of them, and they were also all waiting for us—waiting for dear old Ilya Fedoseich, “in case His Honor needs to send for something.”

We found out how many they were, handed them each three roubles, and my uncle and I got into the carriage, where Ryabyka gave him his wallet.

Ilya Fedoseich took a hundred-rouble bill from the wallet and gave it to Ryabyka.

Ryabyka turned the bill over in his hands and said rudely:

“Too little.”

My uncle added two more twenty-fives.

“That’s still not enough: there wasn’t a single scandal.”

My uncle added a third twenty-five, after which the teacher handed him his stick and bowed out.

V

The two of us were left alone and racing back to Moscow, while all that cabby riffraff came whooping and rattling at full speed behind us. I didn’t understand what they wanted, but my uncle did. It was outrageous: they wanted to grab some smart money as well, and so, in the guise of paying special honor to Ilya Fedoseich, they exposed his highly esteemed self to shame before the whole world.

Moscow was on our noses and all in view—all in the beautiful morning brightness, in the light smoke of hearths and the peaceful ringing of church bells summoning to prayer.

To right and left of the city gate there were grocery stores. My uncle stopped at the first of them, went to a linden barrel that stood by the door, and asked:

“Honey?”

“Honey.”

“How much for the barrel?”

“We sell it by the pound for small change.”

“Sell me the whole thing: come up with a price.”

I don’t remember, I think he came up with seventy or eighty roubles.

My uncle threw him the money.

And our cortège closed in.

“Do you love me, my fine city cabbies?”

“Sure enough, we’re always at Your Honor’s …”

“You feel an attachment?”

“A strong attachment.”

“Take the wheels off.”

They were puzzled.

“Quickly, quickly!” my uncle commanded.

The most light-footed of them, some twenty men, climbed under the boxes, took out wrenches, and began unscrewing the nuts.

“Good,” said my uncle. “Now spread honey on them.”

“But sir!”

“Spread it.”

“Such a good thing … more interesting in the mouth.”

“Spread it.”

And, without further insistence, my uncle got back into the carriage, and we raced on, and they, many as they were, were all left standing with their wheels off over the honey, which they probably did not spread on the wheels, but just appropriated or sold back to the grocer. In any case they abandoned us, and we found ourselves in a bathhouse. Here I expected my end had come, and I sat neither dead nor alive in the marble bath, while my uncle stretched out on the floor, but not simply, not in an ordinary pose, but somehow apocalyptically. The whole enormous mass of his stout body rested on the floor only by the very tips of his toes and fingers, and on these fine points of support his red body trembled under the spray of the cold water showered on him, and he roared with the restrained roar of a bear tearing the ring from its nose. This lasted for half an hour, during which he went on trembling like jelly on a shaky table, until he finally jumped up all at once, asked for kvass, and we got dressed and went “to the Frenchman” on Kuznetsky.⁷

Here we both had a slight trim, a slight curling and brushing up, and then we crossed the city on foot—to his shop.

With me there was still no talk, no release. Only once he said:

“Wait, not all at once. What you don’t understand—you’ll understand with the years.”

In the shop he prayed, looked everybody over with a proprietary eye, and stood at the counter. The outside of the vessel was clean, but inside there still lurked a deep foulness seeking its own cleansing.

I saw it and now stopped being afraid. It interested me. I wanted to see how he was going to deal with himself: by abstinence or some sort of grace?