The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

The nickname “deathless,” given to Golovan, did not express mockery and was by no means an empty, meaningless sound—he was nicknamed “deathless” as a result of the strong conviction that he was a special man, a man who did not fear death. How could such an opinion of him have been formed among people who walk under God and are always mindful of their mortality? Was there a sufficient reason for it, which subsequently turned into a convention, or was this sobriquet given him by a simplicity akin to foolishness?

It seemed to me that the latter was more probable, but how others considered it I don’t know, because in my childhood I didn’t think about it, and when I grew up and could understand things, “deathless” Golovan was no longer in the world. He had died, and in a none-too-tidy manner at that: he perished during the so-called “big fire” in Orel,¹

drowned in a boiling pit, which he fell into saving someone’s life or someone’s goods. However, “a big part of him, escaping corruption, went on living in grateful memory,”² and I want to try to put down on paper what I knew and heard about him, so that his memory, which is deserving of attention, may be prolonged in the world.

II

Deathless Golovan was a simple man. His face, with its extraordinarily large features, was stamped in my memory early on and remained in it forever. I met him at an age when they say children cannot receive lasting impressions and carry the memory of them all their lives, but it happened otherwise with me. This incident was recorded by my grandmother in the following way:

“Yesterday [May 26, 1835], I came from Gorokhov to see Mashenka [my mother], did not find Semyon Dmitrich [my father] at home, him having been sent on a mission to Elets for an inquest into a frightful murder. In the whole house there were just us women and the serving girls. The coachman went with him [my father], there was only the yard porter Kondrat left, and in the evening a watchman came from the office [the government office, where my father was a councilor] to spend the night in the front hall. Today between eleven and twelve Mashenka went to the garden to look at the flowers and water her costmary, and took Nikolushka [me] along with her, carried by Anna [now an old woman, still living]. And when they came back for lunch, Anna was just opening the garden gate when the dog Ryabka tore free of her chain and flung herself straight onto Anna’s breast, but at the very moment that Ryabka, raising her paws, threw herself on Anna’s breast, Golovan seized her by the scruff of the neck, held her tight, and threw her through the trapdoor into the cellar. There she was shot, but the child was saved.”

The child was me, and however accurate the proofs may be that an infant of one and a half cannot remember what happens to him, I nevertheless remember this occurrence.

Of course, I don’t remember where the rabid Ryabka came from and what Golovan did with her, after he held her high up in his iron grip, wheezing, flailing her legs, her whole body squirming; but I do remember that moment … only that moment. It was like a flash of lightning amidst the dark of night, when for some reason you suddenly see an extraordinary multitude of things at once: the bed canopy, the folding screen, the window, the canary fluttering on its perch, and a glass with a silver spoon in it and spots of magnesium on its handle. It is probably the quality of fear to have big eyes. In that one moment I can see before me, as now, a dog’s enormous muzzle with little speckles, dry fur, completely red eyes, a gaping maw filled with cloudy foam in a bluish, as if pomaded, gullet … bared teeth that already want to snap shut, but suddenly the upper lip is wrenched back over them, the mouth is stretched to the ears, and the thrust-out throat below moves convulsively, like a bared human elbow. Above it all stood an enormous human figure with an enormous head, and he took the rabid dog and carried it off. And the man’s face was smiling all the while.

The figure I’ve described was Golovan. I’m afraid I’m quite unable to paint his portrait, precisely because I see him very well and clearly.