The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

They guessed that he was mute. “Never mind,” they said, “never mind, servant of God, don’t thank us, it’s God you must thank,” and they started pulling him from the wagon, the men taking him under the shoulders and legs, but the women only held up his weak arms, and became still more frightened by the man’s dreadful condition, because his arms were completely “loose” in the shoulder joints and were only held on somehow by horsehair ropes.

The litter stood right there. It was a little old bed, the corners thickly covered with bedbug eggs; on the bed lay a sheaf of straw and a piece of flimsy cloth with the cross, the spear, and the reed crudely painted on it.³¹ The guide fluffed up the straw with a deft hand, so that it hung over the edges on all sides; they put the yellow paralytic on it, covered him with the cloth, and carried him off.

The guide went ahead with a little clay brazier, censing them crosswise.

Even before they left the train, people began to cross themselves at the sight of them, and as they went down the streets, the attention directed at them became more and more serious: seeing them, everyone realized that this was a sick man being carried to the wonderworker, and they joined in. The merchants hastened on, because they heard the bells ringing for the vigil, and they arrived with their burden just in time, as they started singing: “Praise the name of the Lord, ye servants of the Lord.”³²

The church, of course, had no room for even a hundredth part of the assembled crowd; untold numbers of people stood in a packed mass around it, but as soon as they saw the litter and the bearers, everyone started buzzing: “They’re bearing a paralytic, there’ll be a miracle,” and the crowd parted.

They made a living passageway up to the door of the church, and then everything went as the guide had promised. Even the firm hope of his faith was not put to shame: the paralytic was healed. He stood up and walked on his own feet, “glorifying and giving thanks.”³³ Someone took notes about it all, in which the healed paralytic, in the words of the guide, was called a “relative” of the Orel merchant, which made many people envious, and the healed man, owing to the late hour, did not go to his poor train, but spent the night under the shed with his new relatives.

This was all very nice. The healed man was an interesting person, and many came to look at him and left “donations.”

But he still spoke little and indistinctly—he mumbled badly from lack of habit and mostly pointed to the merchants with his healed hand, meaning, “Ask them, they’re my relatives, they know everything.” And willy-nilly they had to say they were his relatives; but suddenly amidst all this an unexpected unpleasantness stole up on them: during the night following the healing of the yellow paralytic, it was noticed that a gold cord with a gold tassel had disappeared from the velvet cover on the saint’s coffin.

Discreet inquiries were made, and the Orel merchant was asked if he had noticed anything when he came close, and who were the people who had helped him to bear his sick relative. He answered in good conscience that they were all strangers from the poor train and had helped him out of zeal. He was taken there to identify the place, the people, the nag, and the wagon with the scrofulous boy who was playing with the chamomile, but only the place was in its place, while of the people, the cart, and the boy with the chamomile there was no trace.

The inquiry was abandoned, “so there would be no rumors among the people.” A new tassel was attached, and the merchants, after such unpleasantness, quickly made ready to go home. But here the healed relative gratified them with a new joy: he insisted that they take him with them, threatening to make a complaint otherwise, and reminding them of the tassel.

And therefore, when the time came for the merchants to leave for home, Fotey was found on the box beside the driver, and it was impossible to throw him off before they came to the village of Krutoe, which was on their way. In those days there was a very dangerous descent there and a difficult ascent up the other side, and all sorts of incidents occurred with travelers: horses fell, carriages overturned, and other things of that sort. One had to pass through the village of Krutoe while it was light, or else spend the night there. Nobody risked the descent in the dark.

Our merchants also spent the night there, and while ascending the hill in the morning found themselves “at a loss,” that is, they had lost their healed relative Fotey. They had “given him a good taste of the flask” in the evening, and in the morning had left without waking him up. But some other good people were found who set this loss to rights and, taking Fotey with them, brought him to Orel.