The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

“This one was lighter”—and after that I took the decanter myself, and treated him, and poured for myself, and went on drinking. He didn’t hinder me in that, only he wouldn’t let me drink a single glass simply, without waving over it. The moment I put my hand to it, he’d take it from me and say:

“Hush, s’il vous plaît … attendez,” and would first wave his hands over it, and then say:

“Now it’s ready, you can take it as prescribed.”

And I went on curing myself in that fashion with that gentleman there in the tavern right until evening, and I was quite at peace, because I knew I was drinking not for the fun of it, but in order to stop. I patted the money in my breast pocket, and felt that it was all lying there safely in its place, as it should be, and went on.

The gentleman who was drinking with me told me all about how he had caroused and reveled in his life, and especially about love, and after all that he started to quarrel, saying that I didn’t understand love.

I say:

“What can I do if I’m not attracted to these trifles? Let it be enough for you that you understand everything and yet go around as such a scallywag.”

And he says:

“Hush, s’il vous plaît! Love is sacred to us!”

“Nonsense!”

“You,” he says, “are a clod and a scoundrel, if you dare laugh at the sacred feelings of the heart and call them nonsense.”

“But nonsense it is,” I say.

“Do you understand,” he says, “what ‘beauty nature’s perfection’ is?”

“Yes,” I say, “I understand beauty in horses.”

He jumps up and goes to box my ear.

“Can a horse,” he says, “be beauty nature’s perfection?”

But since the hour was rather late, he couldn’t prove anything to me about it, and the barman, seeing that we were both drunk, winked to his boys, and some six of them made a rush at us and begged us to “kindly clear out,” while holding us both under the arms, and they put us outside and locked the door tightly behind us for the night.

Here such bedevilment began that, though it was many, many years ago, to this day I cannot understand what actually happened and by what power it must have been worked on me, but it seems to me that such temptations and happenings as I endured then are not to be found in any saint’s life in the Menaion.²⁸

XII

First thing, as I came flying out the door, I put my hand into my breast pocket to make sure that my wallet was there. It turned out that I had it on me. “Now,” I think, “the whole concern is how to bring it home safely.” The night was the darkest imaginable. In summer, you know, around Kursk, we have such dark nights, but very warm and very mild: the stars hang like lamps all across the sky, and the darkness under them is so dense that it’s as if someone in it is feeling and touching you … And there’s no end of bad people at the fairs, and occasions enough when people are robbed and killed. And though I felt myself strong, I thought, first of all, that I was drunk, and second of all, that if ten or more men fell upon me, even with my great strength I couldn’t do anything against them, and they would rob me, and, despite my bravado, I remembered that more than once, when I got up to pay and sat down again, my companion, that little gentleman, had seen that I had a fat lot of money with me. And therefore, you know, it suddenly came to my head: wasn’t there some sort of treachery on his part that might be to my harm? Where was he, in fact? We had been chucked out together. Where had he gotten to so quickly?

I stood there quietly looking around, and, not knowing his name, quietly called to him like this:

“Do you hear me, magnetizer? Where are you?”

And suddenly, like some devil, he rises up right before my eyes and says:

“I’m here.”

But it seemed to me that it wasn’t his voice, and in the dark even the mug didn’t look like his.

“Come closer,” I said. And when he did, I took him by the shoulders and began to examine him, and for the life of me I couldn’t make out who he was. The moment I touched him, suddenly, for no reason at all, my entire memory was blotted out. All I could hear was him jabbering something in French: “Di-ka-ti-li-ka-tipé,” and I didn’t understand a word of it.

“What’s that you’re jabbering?” I say.

And he again in French:

“Di-ka-ti-li-ka-tipé.”

“Stop it, you fool,” I say. “Answer me in Russian who you are, because I’ve forgotten you.”

He answers:

“Di-ka-ti-li-ka-tipé: I’m the magnetizer.”

“Pah,” I say, “what a little rogue you are!”—and for a moment I seemed to recall that it was him, but then I took a good look and saw he had two noses! … Two noses, that’s what! And reflecting on that—I forgot all about who he was …

“Ah, curse you,” I think, “what makes you stick yourself to me, you rascal?”—and I ask him again:

“Who are you?”

He says again:

“The magnetizer.”

“Vanish from me,” I say. “Maybe you’re the devil?”

“Not quite,” he says, “but close to it.”

I rap him on the forehead, and he gets offended and says: