The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

Panka decided to try it himself. He stepped onto the gate, took the pole, and, for a lark, crossed to the other side, got off on the bank there to have a look at Golovan’s house, because it was already good and bright, and meanwhile Golovan cried out just then from the other side: “Hey! Who made off with my gate! Bring it back!”

Panka was a lad of no great courage and was not used to counting on anybody’s magnanimity, and therefore he got frightened and did a foolish thing. Instead of bringing Golovan his raft, Panka went and hid himself in one of the clay pits, of which there were a multitude there. Panka lay in the pit and, no matter how Golovan called from the other side, he did not show himself. Then, seeing that he couldn’t get his boat back, Golovan threw off his coat, stripped naked, tied his whole wardrobe up with his belt, put it on his head, and swam across the Orlik. The water was still very cold.

Panka’s only care was that Golovan shouldn’t see him and give him a beating, but soon his attention was drawn to something else. Golovan crossed the river and began to get dressed, but suddenly he squatted down, looked under his left knee, and paused.

This was so close to the pit Panka was hiding in that he could see everything from behind the hummock that shielded him. And it was already quite light by then, dawn was blushing, and though most of the citizens were still asleep, a young fellow with a scythe appeared by the city garden and started mowing the nettles and putting them in a basket.

Golovan noticed the mower and, standing up in nothing but his shirt, shouted loudly to him:

“Hey, boy, give me that scythe, quick!”

The boy brought him the scythe, and Golovan said to him:

“Go and pick me a big burdock leaf.” And when the fellow turned away from him, he took the blade off the handle, squatted down again, pulled at his left calf with one hand, and with one stroke cut it off. He hurled the cut-off hunk of flesh, the size of a peasant flat-cake, into the Orlik, pressed the wound with both hands, and collapsed.

Seeing that, Panka forgot everything, jumped out, and started calling the mower.

The two fellows picked Golovan up and carried him to his house. There he came to his senses, and told them to take two towels from a trunk and bind the wound as tight as they could. They tightened it with all their might, and it stopped bleeding.

Then Golovan told them to set a bucket of water and a dipper beside him, go about their business, and not tell anybody what had happened. They went, shaking with horror, and told everybody. Those who heard about it figured out at once that Golovan hadn’t done it just like that, but, out of heartache for the people, had thrown the hunk of his body to the pest, so that this sacrificed hunk would pass down all the Russian rivers from the little Orlik to the Oka, from the Oka to the Volga, all across Great Russia to the wide Caspian Sea, and in that way Golovan suffered for all, and he himself would not die from it, because he possessed the pharmacist’s living stone and was a “deathless” man.

This story suited everybody’s thinking, and the prophecy also came true. Golovan did not die of his terrible wound. The evil sickness actually stopped after this sacrifice, and days of tranquillity set in: the fields and meadows were lush with green growth, and young St. George, bright and brave, could now freely ride over them, his arms in red gold to the elbows, his legs in pure silver to the knees, on his brow the sun, on his nape the crescent moon, and around him the moving stars. Canvas was bleached by the fresh St. George’s dew, and instead of the hero St. George, the prophet Jeremiah rode out to the field with a heavy yoke, dragging ploughs and harrows, nightingales whistled on St. Boris’s day, comforting the martyr, sturdy seedlings, owing to the efforts of St. Mavra, showed their bluish sprouts, St. Zosima passed with a long cane bearing a queen bee on its head; the day of St. John the Theologian, “father of St. Nicholas,” passed, and Nicholas himself was celebrated, and then came Simon the Zealot, when the earth celebrates its own day.¹⁸ On the earth’s day Golovan crept outside to sit by the wall, and after that he began little by little to walk and take up his business again. His health, evidently, hadn’t suffered in the least, only he began to “hitch”—hopping on his left leg.

Of the touchingness and courage of his bloody act upon himself people probably had a high opinion, but they judged it as I’ve said: they did not seek natural causes for it, but, wrapping it all in their own fantasy, from a natural event composed a fabulous legend, and of simple, magnanimous Golovan made a mythical personage, something like a magician or sorcerer, who possessed an invincible talisman and could venture upon anything and would perish nowhere.