The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

People started calling Golovan “deathless” in the first year, when he settled by himself above the Orlik with his Ermolov cow and her calf. The occasion for it was the following wholly trustworthy circumstance, which nobody remembered about in the time of the recent “Prokofy” plague. It was the usual hard times in Orel, and in February, on the day of St. Agafya the Dairymaid,⁸

the “cow death” fittingly swept through the villages. It went as it usually does and as it is written in the universal book known as The Cool Vineyard

:⁹

“As summer comes to an end and autumn draws near, the pestilential infection soon begins. And during that time it is needful that every man place his hope in almighty God and in His most pure Mother, and protect himself with the power of the honorable Cross, and hold back his heart from grief, and dread, and painful thoughts, for through these the human heart is diminished, and sores and cankers soon stick to it—seize the brain and heart, overcome the man, and he dies forthwith.” All this also went according to the usual pictures of the nature around us, “when the mists in autumn set in thick and dark, with wind from the meridian lands, followed by rain, and the earth steams in the sun, and then it is needful not to go out in the wind, but to sit in the warmth of the cottage and not open the windows, and best would be not to stay in that town, but to leave it and go to clean places.” When, that is, in what precise year, the pestilence occurred that gave Golovan his fame for being “deathless,” I don’t know. There was no great interest then in such trifles, and no noise was made on account of them, as there was on account of Naum Prokofiev.¹⁰

Local woes used to end locally, appeased by hope in God and His most pure Mother alone, and perhaps only in cases of the strong predominance of the sensible “intellectuals” in certain locales were unusual sanitary measures taken: “Build clean bonfires in the yards, of oak wood, so that the smoke disperses, and in the cottages burn wormwood and juniper and rue leaves.” But all that could be done only by intellectuals, and only well-to-do ones at that, while death carried off “forthwith” not the educated, but those who had no time to sit in warm cottages and were not up to burning oak wood in open yards. Death went arm in arm with famine, and they supported each other. The famished begged from the famished, the sick died “forthwith,” that is, quickly, which was more advantageous for peasants. There was no lengthy languishing, no rumors of recoveries were heard. Whoever fell sick, died “forthwith,” except for one man. What illness it was has not been scientifically determined, but it was popularly known as “bosom,” or “boil,” or “oilcake carbuncle,” or even just “carbuncle.” It started in grain-producing districts, where, for lack of bread, they ate hempseed oilcakes. In the districts of Karachev and Bryansk, where peasants mixed unsifted flour with ground bark, the illness was different, also deadly, but not “carbuncle.” “Carbuncle” first appeared in cattle, and was then transmitted to people. “A red sore breaks out on a man’s bosom or neck, and he gets stitches all over his body, and an unquenchable burning inside, or a sort of chill in his limbs and heavy breathing, and he cannot breathe—he tries to draw a breath, but lets it out at once; he gets sleepy, cannot stop sleeping; feels a bitterness or sourness in the mouth and starts to vomit; the man’s countenance changes, a claylike look comes over him, and he dies forthwith.” Maybe it was anthrax, maybe it was some other pest, but in any case it was pernicious and merciless, and its most widespread name, I repeat again, was “carbuncle.” A pimple breaks out on your body, a “carbuncle” as simple folk called it, turns yellow-headed, reddens all around, and by morning the flesh begins to rot, and then it’s death forthwith. A quick death was seen, however, “in a good light.” The end was quiet, not painful, most peasant-like, only the dying all wanted to drink till the last minute. That constituted all the brief and unwearisome care demanded, or, better to say, begged for by the sick. Though caring for them even in this form was not only dangerous, but almost impossible—a man who gave a sick relation a drink today, would fall sick with “carbuncle” himself tomorrow, and it was not rare in a house to have two or three dead people lying next to each other. The last person in these orphaned houses died without help—without that one help our peasant cared about, “that someone give him a drink.” Such an orphan would first put a bucket of water by his head and drink from a dipper as long as he could raise his arm, and then he would twist a sleeve or shirttail, wet it, put it in his mouth, and go stiff like that.