Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov (Penguin Classics)

by Unknown

  That night the mother gave her warrior husband the milk of the lioness, and in the morning she told Ivan to go and fetch from the eagle an egg that she had not yet sat on. Whoever ate such an egg, she said, was sure to become strong. The milk of the lioness hadn’t, after all, made her any better.

  Ivan set off to find the eagle. The two beasts went with him. Ivan came to where the lioness lived and said to her, ‘I’ve brought you your son. Tell me now, for you’ve wandered a long way over the earth: where does the eagle live in her nest?’

  The mother lioness instructed her little lion-cub son where to go in the mountains. Then she sent him off with Ivan.

  Ivan came to the hill. The hill was steep, but Ivan was agile and patient. He climbed to the top of the hill, and the wolf cub and the lion cub scrambled up after him. But on top of the hill stood a stone mountain, tall and smooth as a wall, and on top of the mountain stood a sheer cliff – and it was there on that cliff that the eagle had her nest. Ivan looked at the mountain of rock and saw that agility was not enough; no degree of agility would help him climb to the top if there were no handholds or footholds. The only way to the top was by flying – but Ivan had no wings. Ivan stood and thought for a while, but he did not grow sad. Instead, he smiled. He had grown quickly in strength, but his good sense and goodness of heart had grown still more quickly. Through work, he understood, the impossible can be made possible.

  Then Ivan told the wolf cub and the lion cub that they should each gnaw off one sharp stone. The beasts began gnawing away at the mountain, but they couldn’t gnaw their way through the stone; they were still children and their teeth had not grown properly. They ran back down, found some stones in a stream, took them in their jaws and brought them to Ivan.

  Ivan began hitting the mountain with these stones and breaking it up. At first only little crumbs broke away, but then bigger pieces came off and soon Ivan had destroyed a whole slab. And with that slab he began knocking big cliffs out of the mountain – and the mountain began to subside until, in the end, Ivan had taken the whole of it apart. When the peak of the mountain was level with Ivan’s shoulders, he caught sight of the eagle in a cleft up in the very highest cliff of all. She was sitting there in her nest.

  ‘What is it you want, Ivan the Warrior?’ asked the eagle.

  ‘Give me an egg that you haven’t sat on,’ said Ivan.

  ‘I don’t have any,’ said the eagle, ‘but my sister does. Wait here. I’ll fly to my sister on the other mountain and borrow an egg for you. Otherwise you’ll be knocking down all our mountains.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ivan, ‘I will.’

  The eagle flew to her sister on the other mountain and brought Ivan an egg that hadn’t been sat on. But her eagle sister hadn’t given her one of her own eggs – she had given her the egg of a poisonous snake. She was miserly and she wanted eaglet children to be born from every one of her eggs.

  Ivan took the egg from the eagle and set off back towards his mother. And the two beasts, the wolf cub and the lion cub, ran along behind him.

  ‘Go back now to your parents,’ said Ivan.

  But the two wild beasts replied, ‘No, we’re not going to. You’re kind and good, and we’ve grown used to you.’

  Ivan brought his mother the eagle’s egg.

  His mother took the egg and said, ‘I got better, my son. But now I’ve gone and caught a chill from the wind and I’ve fallen ill once more.’

  And then, following her husband’s instructions, she told Ivan to go to a certain distant tsardom: ‘I’ve heard that everybody there has died. Maybe the tsardom can be yours now.’

  Ivan was surprised that his mother should say this: what did he want with someone else’s tsardom? But he was afraid of disobeying his mother. He called the wolf cub and the lion cub and set off to this strange tsardom. No sooner had he left his own home than the cowardly warrior got out of his bag and ate the egg of the poisonous snake. He thought that it was the egg of an eagle.

  The cowardly warrior had instructed Ivan’s mother to send him to this strange, unpeopled tsardom in order that he should die there. Where everyone had already died, he said, there Ivan would be sure to die too.

  Ivan walked for a long time, not knowing how to find this strange tsardom. But on the way, his beasts grew up, and their teeth and claws became strong as they walked to this unknown place.

  Ivan came to the strange tsardom. In those days, this tsardom lay by the shore of a great sea. Ivan saw sky and sea. He saw rivers, forests and ploughed fields. Everything he saw was good, only there were no people anywhere.

  Ivan sat on the shore and wondered what he should do. But there was a deed to be done there and then.

  Walking along the shore was a beautiful maiden in a gold brocade dress. She was walking along the shore and weeping. Never in his life had Ivan seen such a maiden, nor had he ever been in a place where such beauty was to be seen. He had loved only his mother and looked only at her.

  ‘Why are you weeping?’ Ivan asked the beautiful maiden.

  ‘I’m afraid of dying,’ answered the maiden. ‘Get away from here quickly or you’ll die too!’

  Ivan looked troubled and said, ‘No, what you say is not true. I shan’t die and I shan’t give you up to death. But who are you? And who are your parents?’

  The maiden wiped away her tears and replied, ‘I’m the tsar’s daughter. Once we had a tsardom, and once there were people, but a sea monster has eaten all the people. No one is left – only my mother, my father and me. Now the monster’s going to eat me, and before the day’s over my mother and father will have died of grief, and then there won’t be anyone left at all.’

  And the beautiful maiden began weeping again.

  Just then a terrible sea monster came out of the water. It had three heads and three jaws, and a thousand teeth in each jaw. It had a belly like a hog’s and a tail like a snake’s.

  The monster saw Ivan standing by the young tsarevna. It saw the lion cub and the wolf cub, and it said, ‘I was only counting on a little snack, but it seems I can have a full meal.’

  The monster rushed at the tsarevna. It wanted to seize her in one of its jaws, but Ivan stood in front of the tsarevna. He put his arms right around the stout monster and began to squeeze. The monster began to wheeze. Straight away it opened two other jaws full of teeth, in order to bite Ivan’s head off. The wolf cub leaped on one of the monster’s heads, and the lion cub on the other. They began gnawing at the monster. The damp, stout monster was still wheezing, but it was now trying to seize Ivan’s head in its third jaw. But at that moment an eagle swooped down from the sky. She perched on the monster’s third head and began pecking its eyes until the eyes had quite flowed away. Meanwhile Ivan went on squeezing the monster. Black blood began to stream from it; it grew weak and fell down dead.

  The eagle settled on Ivan’s shoulder and said, ‘Forgive me, Ivan the Good! My sister deceived me. She didn’t give me an eagle’s egg – she gave me the egg of a poisonous snake. I’ve been searching for you all over the earth, so I could warn you. Don’t break open that egg! If you break it open, you will turn from kind to cruel, from brave to cowardly, from generous to greedy.’

  Then the beautiful tsarevna embraced Ivan and began to weep clear, happy tears, for Ivan had saved her from a terrible death in the jaw of the beast.

  Ivan felt sad now that he had fulfilled his work. He was longing to see his mother and he began to make ready to go home. But the beautiful tsarevna asked Ivan to remain forever in their tsardom. She was afraid some other insatiable monster might rise up out of the deep sea.

  Ivan looked at the tsarevna and saw that she had become dear to him now. He could have looked at her forever, never taking his eyes off her.

  Then he said to her, ‘I’ll go and see how things are with my mother and then I’ll come back to you. But the wolf and the lion and the eagle can stay with you. No one can harm you while they’re here.’

  And Ivan set off back home.

  He
caught sight of the hut where his mother lived, and his heart jumped for joy. His mother, however, was sitting at table, opposite her warrior husband who had been in the bag on the wall. They were eating various delicacies and drinking sweet wine; Yashka-Red-Shirt was serving them.

  The warrior looked out of the window and saw Ivan. This time the beaten warrior did not hide away in the bag on the wall. The wolf’s milk had made him more vicious, the lion’s milk had given him strength, and the egg of the poisonous snake had engendered in him an evil fury.

  The warrior went out to greet Ivan. He went up close to Ivan and took a swing with one arm, meaning to smash Ivan’s head off his shoulders and send it far into the distance – but he himself fell dead. Ivan had got in first: while the warrior was raising his arm, Ivan had knocked his heart out of him.

  The mother saw from the hut what had become of her warrior. She came down from the porch, fell onto the chest of her fallen husband and wept for him. She did not greet her son or look at him.

  Ivan walked away from his mother and sank into sad thought. He had recognized the warrior he had defeated and stuffed into the bag, and he now understood that his mother loved this warrior with all her soul.

  Ivan felt pity for his mother.

  He picked up the warrior’s heart from the ground and inserted it into his chest. The warrior breathed a long breath.

  Then the mother fell at her son’s feet. She began to beg his forgiveness, and she told him all that had happened. Ivan turned away from his mother and walked off where his eyes looked. But his eyes could not see anything then; they were full of tears.

  Ivan came back to himself only after he had walked a long, long way. Then he looked around him, saw the great sea in the distance and made his way to the unpeopled tsardom where the beautiful tsarevna lived.

  Very soon, as was right and just, Ivan married this tsarevna. Her name was Lukerya. Their wedding was merry, but there were few people: there were no revellers, no one to celebrate the day other than the beautiful Lukerya’s mother and father, the bride and bridegroom themselves, and the eagle, the wolf and the lion.

  And, in due course, plenty of children were born to Ivan and Lukerya – and from the children came grandchildren, and so the nation got going again.

  And then Ivan grew old. He remembered about his mother: was she still alive? Did she have bread?

  Ivan left his home and his family. He said goodbye to Lukerya and set off on a long journey, to the hut where his mother lived.

  But there was nothing there. There was only open steppe, and there was no sign on the earth of where the hut had stood.

  ‘What about Yashka-Red-Shirt?’ Ivan wondered. ‘Where’s he gone?’ And he shouted out to him, ‘Answer my call, Yashka! As you used to do!’

  And there was Yashka, walking along towards him, the same as ever, neither young nor old, neither living nor dead – yet obedient as always. And he was leading by the hand a frail old woman, so bent that her face was almost touching the ground.

  Ivan saw that this was his mother.

  ‘Greetings, dearest mother!’ he said.

  His mother stretched out her hands to him – but to the wrong side, not towards where he was standing.

  Then Yashka-Red-Shirt said, ‘She went blind. She cried her eyes out over you. She can’t see anything at all.’

  Ivan went down on his knees before his mother, embraced her and kissed her blind eyes.

  ‘Forgive me, mother,’ he said. ‘Forgive me for getting cross and upset then and putting you out of my mind.’

  Ivan lifted his old mother up in his strong arms and carried her back to his own home. There his beautiful wife Lukerya was waiting for him. There his children and grandchildren were all living, and there happiness had been prepared for his poor mother.

  Yashka followed Ivan there and asked him, ‘And what about me? What are your orders?’

  ‘You can entertain the children!’ Ivan said to Yashka.

  No-Arms

  There was once an old peasant who lived in a village with his wife and their two children. He came to the end of his life and he died. Then it was his old woman’s turn to get ready to die – her time had come, too. She called the children to her, her son and her daughter. The daughter was the elder, the son the younger.

  She said to her son, ‘Obey your sister in everything, as you have obeyed me. Now she will be a mother to you.’

  The mother gave a last sigh – she was sorry to be parting from her children forever – and then died.

  After the death of their parents, the children lived as their mother had told them to live. The brother obeyed his sister, and the sister took care of her brother and loved him.

  And so they lived on without their parents, perhaps many years, perhaps few. One day the sister said to her brother, ‘It’s hard for me to keep house on my own, and it’s time you were married. Marry – then there’ll be a mistress to look after the home.’

  But the brother did not want to marry. ‘The home has a mistress already,’ he said. ‘Why do we need a second mistress?’

  ‘I’ll help her,’ said his sister. ‘With two of us the work will be easier.’

  The brother didn’t want to marry, but he didn’t dare disobey his elder sister. He respected her as if she were his mother.

  The brother married and began to live happily with his wife. As for his sister, he loved and respected her just as before, obeying her in everything.

  At first his wife seemed not to mind her sister-in-law. And the sister-in-law, for her part, did all she could to be obliging.

  Only soon the wife began to feel upset. She wanted to be first in the home; she wanted her word to count for more than her sister-in-law’s. The young master would go off to plough, or to market, or maybe into the forest. And when he came back, he would find trouble. His wife would start complaining to him about his sister: she didn’t know how to do anything properly, she had a wicked temper, she’d broken the new pot …

  The husband said nothing. ‘I go out,’ he thought, ‘and trouble comes in. That’s not good at all.’

  But a man can’t stay at home all the time.

  Once more the brother left home; once more he found trouble when he came back.

  ‘It’s none of my business – but that sister of yours will make beggars of us all. Just look in the barn! Our cow Zhdanka died yesterday. Your hateful sister fed her something and the cow’s fallen down dead.’

  His wife didn’t say that she’d fed the cow poisonous herbs herself, just to be rid of her husband’s sister.

  The brother spoke to his sister. ‘So you’ve poisoned the cow, sister. We’ll have to earn a lot of money to buy another.’

  The sister was innocent, but she took the blame on herself. She didn’t want her brother to think ill of his wife.

  ‘I’ve slipped up, brother,’ she said. ‘It won’t happen again.’

  ‘Well then,’ said her brother, ‘give me your blessing. I must go and work in the forest and earn a few kopeks. Look after everything at home, sister, make sure nothing goes wrong. When my wife gives birth, help the child into the world.’

  Off he rode to the forest – and it was a long time before he returned. While he was away, his wife gave birth to a little son, and his sister helped the boy into the world and took him into her heart. But the boy was not to live long in the world: one night his mother lay on him inadvertently in her sleep, and he died.

  Just then the brother came back from the forest. At home he found sorrow. His wife was weeping and howling: ‘It’s that sister of yours, the snake in the grass. She’s smothered our little son, next she’ll be the death of me too.’

  The brother heard his wife’s words and was filled with fury. He called his sister: ‘I thought you were to be a mother to me. I’ve grudged you nothing, neither bread nor clothes, and I’ve always obeyed you. And now you’ve taken away my only son. If he’d lived, he’d have been a comfort to me, a hope to me when I’m old. He’d have fed you,
too, when you can no longer work. And you’ve killed him.’

  And he added, ‘Never again will you see the light of the world.’

  The sister tried to say something in answer, but in his grief and fury the brother didn’t listen, and he looked at his sister as if he were a stranger, as if he didn’t know her.

  Early next morning the brother woke his sister.

  ‘Get ready,’ he said. ‘We’re leaving.’

  ‘But it’s early, brother,’ said the sister. ‘The sky’s still dark.’

  The brother wasn’t listening. ‘Get ready,’ he repeated, ‘and put on your best dress.’

  ‘But, brother, dear brother, today’s not even a holiday,’ the sister said in answer.

  But the brother didn’t hear her at all; he was already harnessing the horses.

  He took her into the forest and then he stopped the horses. It was still early, barely light.

  In the forest stood a tree-stump. The brother told his sister to kneel down and lay her head on it.

  The sister laid her arms on the tree-stump, and her head on her arms.

  ‘Forgive me, brother,’ she managed to say, and she wanted to add that she was not to blame for anything; maybe he would hear her now.

  But the brother had already raised his axe high in the air. He had no time to listen to his sister.

  Just then a little bird called out from a branch, and its voice was merry and ringing. The sister wanted to listen to the bird, and she lifted her head, leaving her arms on the tree-stump.1

  The brother brought his axe down and chopped off both her arms at the elbow. He could have forgiven no one the death of his son, not even his own mother.

  ‘Quick!’ he said. ‘Be off with you. Go where your eyes look. I’d wanted to cut off your head, but it seems your fate is to live.’

  The brother looked at his sister and wept. ‘Why is it,’ he thought, ‘that happiness is just happiness, while one sorrow always becomes two? Now I have no son, and no sister.’