The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

What did the pious worshippers have left to do? Of course, there was risk in trusting the wastrel, but they didn’t want to miss the chance, and the money he was asking wasn’t so much, especially with company … The patriarch decided to risk it and said:

“Get up a company.”

The wastrel took the down payment and ran off, having told the family to dine early and, an hour before the first bell rang for vespers, to take a new hand towel for each of them, go out of town to a designated place in the “poor train,” and wait for him there. From there they would immediately set out on their march, which, the entrepreneur assured them, no princes or kings could stop.

These “poor trains,” of larger or smaller dimensions, stood in vast camps during all such assemblies, and I myself saw and remember them in Korennaya, outside Kursk, and about the one our narrative has come upon I had heard tell from eyewitnesses to what is about to be described.

IX

The place occupied by the poor encampment was outside town, between the river and the high road, on a spacious and free common which at the end bordered on a big, meandering ravine, overgrown with thick shrubs and with a rivulet running through it. Beyond it began a mighty pine forest where eagles screamed.

On the common stood a multitude of poor carts and wagons, which, however, presented in all their indigence a rather motley diversity of national genius and inventiveness. There were ordinary bast mat hutches, canvas tents covering the whole cart, “bowers” made of fluffy feather grass, and perfectly hideous bast wagons. A whole big piece of bast from a century-old linden is bent and nailed to the sides of the wagon, leaving space enough to lie down underneath: people lie with their feet towards the inside of the vehicle and their heads towards the open air at both ends. The wind passes over them lying there, airing them out, so they don’t choke on their own breath. Right there, by the baskets and sacks of hay tied to the shafts, stood the horses, mostly skinny, all of them in collars, and some, owned by thrifty people, under matted “lids.” In some carts there were also dogs, which were not supposed to be taken on pilgrimages, but, being “zealous” dogs, had caught up with their owners at the second or third stop and, for all that they were beaten, did not want to be left behind. There was no place for them here, in true conditions of pilgrimage, but they were put up with and, sensing their contraband position, behaved very meekly; they huddled somewhere under a tar barrel by the cart wheel and maintained a grave silence. Modesty alone saved them from ostracism and from the danger posed for them by the baptized Gypsy, who would have “taken their coat off” in a minute. Here, in the poor train, under the open sky, life was merry and good, as at a fair. There was more diversity here than in hotel rooms, which only special chosen ones could get, or under the sheds of the inns, where, in eternal semidarkness, people of the second-best sort found shelter with their carts. True, fat monks and deacons did not come to visit the poor train, and there were also no real, experienced pilgrims to be seen, but instead there were jacks-of-all-trades, and a vast production of various “holy objects” went on. When I happened to read in the Kiev papers about a notorious case of faking relics from sheep bones, I was amazed at the childish methods of these fabricators, compared to the boldness of the artisans I had heard about earlier. Here it was a sort of frank negligée with valor. Even the street leading down to the common was already distinguished by a totally unrestrained freedom of the widest enterprise. People knew that such occasions do not occur often, and they didn’t waste time: little tables stood by many gateways, displaying little icons, crosses, and paper envelopes supposedly containing rotten wood dust from the old coffin, with shavings from the new one lying next to them. All these materials were, on the assurances of the sellers, of much higher quality than in the actual places, because they had been brought there by the woodworkers, diggers, and carpenters who had done the most important work. At the entrance to the camp, “hurriers and scurriers” ran around with little icons of the new saint, covered for the time being in white paper with a cross drawn on it. These icons were sold very cheaply and could be bought on the spot, but they were not supposed to be uncovered before the first prayer service was held. For many of the unworthy, who bought such icons and opened them beforehand, they turned out to be bare boards.