The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

At around ten o’clock he became terribly restless, kept waiting and looking for a neighbor, so that the three of us could go for tea—with three it’s a whole five kopecks cheaper. The neighbor didn’t come: he had died a galloping death.

My uncle crossed himself and said:

“We’ll all die.”

This did not disconcert him, despite the fact that for forty years they had gone to have tea together at the Novotroitsky Tavern.

We invited a neighbor from across the street and went more than once to sample this or that, but all in a sober way. For the whole day I sat and went about with him, and towards evening my uncle sent for the carriage to go to the All-Glorious.⁸

There they also knew him and met him with the same respect as at the Yar.

“I want to fall down before the All-Glorious and weep for my sins. And this—allow me to introduce him—is my nephew, my sister’s son.”

“Welcome,” said the nuns, “welcome. From whom else if not you should the All-Glorious accept repentance—ever our cloister’s benefactor. Now is a very good moment … the vigil.”

“Let it finish—I like it without people, and so you can make a blessed darkness for me.”

They made darkness for him; put out all the icon lamps except one or two and the big green lamp in front of the All-Glorious herself.

My uncle did not fall, but crashed to his knees, then prostrated himself, beat his brow against the floor, sobbed, and lay stock still.

I sat with two nuns in a dark corner by the door. There was a long pause. My uncle went on lying there, unspeaking, unheeding. It seemed to me that he was asleep, and I even said so to the nuns. The more experienced sister thought a little, shook her head, and, lighting a thin candle, clutched it in her fist and went very, very quietly to the penitent. She quietly tiptoed around him, shook her head negatively, and whispered:

“It’s working … and with a twist.”

“What makes you say so?”

She bent down, gesturing for me to do the same, and said:

“Look straight through the light, where his feet are.”

“I see.”

“Look, what a struggle!”

I peer closely and indeed notice some sort of movement: my uncle is lying reverently in a prayerful position, but in his feet it’s as if there are two cats fighting—now one, now the other attacking, and so rapidly, with such leaps.

“Mother,” I say, “where did these cats come from?”

“It only seems to you that they are cats,” she replies, “but they are not cats, they are temptation: see, in spirit he burns towards heaven, but his feet are still moving towards hell.”

I see that with his feet my uncle is indeed still dancing last night’s trepak,⁹ but in spirit is he now really burning towards heaven?

As if in reply to that, he suddenly sighs and cries out loudly:

“I will not rise until thou forgivest me! Thou only art holy, and we are all accursed devils!”—and bursts into sobs.

He sobbed so that the three of us began to weep and sob with him: Lord, do unto him according to his prayer.

And we don’t notice that he is already standing next to us and saying to me in a soft, pious voice:

“Let’s go—we’ll manage.”

The nuns ask:

“Were you granted, dear man, to see the gleam?”

“No,” he says, “I was not granted the gleam, but here … here’s how it was.”

He clenched his fist and raised it, as one raises a boy by his hair.

“You were raised?”

“Yes.”

The nuns started crossing themselves, and so did I, and my uncle explained:

“Now,” he says, “I’m forgiven! Right from above, from under the coopola, the open right hand gathered all my hair together and lifted me straight to my feet …”

And now he’s not outcast and is happy. He gave a generous gift to the convent where he had prayed and had been granted this miracle, and he felt “life” again, and he sent my mother her full share of the dowry, and me he introduced to the good faith of the people.

Since then I have become acquainted with the people’s taste for falling and rising … And this is what’s known as the devil-chase, “which drives out the demon of wrong-mindedness.” One can be granted this, I repeat, only in Moscow, and then only through special luck or the great patronage of the most venerable old men.

* Bodice. Trans.

Deathless Golovan

Perfect love casteth out fear.

1 JOHN 4:18

I

He himself is almost a myth, and his story a legend. To tell about him, one should be French, because only the people of that nation manage to explain to others what they don’t understand themselves. I say all this with the aim of begging my reader’s indulgence beforehand for the overall imperfection of my story of a person whose portrayal is worth the efforts of a far better master than I. But Golovan may soon be quite forgotten, and that would be a loss. Golovan is worthy of attention, and though I did not know him well enough to be able to draw his full portrait, I will select and present some features of this mortal man of no high rank who was reputed to be deathless.