The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

They all had a great deal to do there: the “deathless” himself had work at the boil from morning till late at night. He was a herdsman, and a deliveryman, and a cheese-maker. At dawn he drove his herd into the dew beyond our fences, and he kept moving his stately cows from ledge to ledge, choosing where the grass was lusher. When people were just getting up in our house, Golovan would already appear with the empty bottles he had taken from the club in place of the new ones he had brought there that day; with his own hands he would hollow out the ice in our ice house for his jugs of freshly drawn milk, while talking something over with my father, and when I went out to the garden after finishing my lessons, he would already be sitting outside our fence again, tending his cows. There was a small gate in the fence, through which I could go out to Golovan and talk with him. He was so good at telling the hundred and four sacred stories that I knew them from him without ever learning them from a book.⁵ Some simple folk also used to come to him there—always seeking advice. One of them would come and begin like this:

“I’ve been looking for you, Golovan. Give me some advice.”

“What is it?”

“This and that: something’s going wrong in the household, or there’s family discord.”

Most often they came with matters of this second category. Golovan would listen, while plaiting osier or shouting to the cows, and smiling all the while, as if paying no attention, and then he would raise his blue eyes to his interlocutor and reply:

“I’m a poor adviser, brother! Ask God’s advice.”

“How can I do that?”

“Oh, very simple, brother: pray and then do as you would if you had to die at once. Tell me: what would you do in that case?”

The man would think and reply.

Golovan would agree, or else say:

“And if I was the one to die, brother, I’d rather do this.”

And he usually said it all quite cheerfully, with his customary smile.

His advice must have been very good, because people always listened to it and thanked him very much.

Could there be a “sin” for such a man in the person of the most meek Pavlageyushka, who at that time, I think, was a little over thirty, a limit she was not to go beyond? I didn’t understand that “sin” and in my innocence did not insult her and Golovan by rather general suspicions. Yet there were grounds for suspicion, and very strong grounds, even irrefutable, judging by appearances. Who was she to Golovan? A stranger. Not only that: he had known her once, they had belonged to the same masters, Golovan had wanted to marry her, but it hadn’t taken place. He had been sent to serve the hero of the Caucasus, Alexei Petrovich Ermolov,⁶

and meanwhile Pavla had been given in marriage to the horse-master Ferapont, or “Khrapon,” as the locals said. Golovan had been a needed and useful servant, because he could do everything—he was not only a good cook and confectioner, but a keen-witted and ready servant on campaign. Alexei Petrovich had paid what he owed to his landowner for Golovan, and besides, they say, had lent Golovan the money to buy himself out. I don’t know if that’s true, but soon after he returned from serving Ermolov, Golovan did indeed buy himself out and always called Alexei Petrovich his “benefactor.” And once Golovan was free, Alexei Petrovich gave him a good cow and calf for his farm, from which came Golovan’s “Ermolov breed.”

IV

Precisely when Golovan settled in the shed on the landslip I don’t know at all, but it coincided with the first days of his “freemanship”—when he was faced with major concerns about his kin, who remained in servitude. Golovan bought himself out personally, but his mother, his three sisters, and his aunt, who later became my nanny, remained “in bondage.” And their tenderly beloved Pavla, or Pavlageyushka, was in the same position. Golovan made it his first concern to buy them all out, and for that he needed money. His expertise qualified him to become a cook or a confectioner, but he preferred something else, namely dairy farming, which he started with the help of the “Ermolov cow.” There was an opinion that he chose that because he himself was a molokan.⁷ Maybe that simply meant that he always busied himself with milk, but maybe the title aimed directly at his faith, in which he appeared as odd as in his many other doings. It’s very possible that he had known molokans in the Caucasus, and had borrowed something from them. But that has to do with his oddities, which we will touch upon below.