He arrived in Orel, summoned the town barbers, and said:
“If any of you can make me look like my brother, Count Kamensky, I’ll give him two gold pieces, but if he cuts me, I’m putting two pistols here on the table. If you do a good job—take the gold and go, but if you cut a single pimple or shave the side-whiskers wrong by a hair—I’ll kill you on the spot.”
He was just scaring them, because the pistols were loaded with blanks.
In Orel at that time there were few town barbers, and those mostly went around to the bathhouses with bowls, to apply cupping glasses and leeches, but had neither taste nor fantasy. They realized that themselves, and they all refused to “transfigure” Kamensky. “God be with you,” they thought, “and with your gold.”
“We can’t do what you want,” they say, “because we’re not worthy even to touch a person like you, and we don’t have the right razors, because ours are simple Russian razors, and for your face English razors are needed. Only the count’s Arkady can do it.”
The count ordered the town barbers thrown out on their ears, and they were glad to escape to freedom, while he himself goes to his older brother and says:
“Thus and so, brother, I’ve come to you with a big request: let me have your Arkashka before evening, so that he can get me into shape good and proper. I haven’t shaved for a long time, and the local barbers can’t do it.”
The count answers his brother:
“The local barbers are sure to be vile. I didn’t even know there were any here, because my dogs, too, are clipped by my own people. But as for your request, you’re asking an impossible thing, because I gave an oath that, as long as I live, Arkashka will tend to nobody but me. What do you think—can I change my word given before my own slave?”
The other says:
“Why not? You decreed it, you can also repeal it.”
The count-master replies that for him such an opinion is even strange.
“If I start acting that way myself,” he says, “what can I demand of my people after that? Arkashka has been told that I’ve decided so, and everybody knows it, and for that he’s kept better than any of them, and if he ever dares to touch anyone else but me with his art—I’ll have him flogged to death and sent for a soldier.”
His brother says:
“It’ll be one or the other: either flogged to death or sent for a soldier, you can’t do both.”
“All right,” says the count, “let it be as you say: not to death, but half to death, and then sent.”
“And that,” the other says, “is your last word?”
“Yes, my last.”
“And that’s all there is to it?”
“Yes, that’s all.”
“Well, in that case it’s fine, otherwise I’d have thought you hold your own brother cheaper than a bonded serf. Don’t change your word, then, but send me Arkashka to clip my poodle. And there it’s my business what he does.”
The count felt awkward denying him that.
“All right,” he says, “I’ll send him to clip your poodle.”
“Well, that’s all I need.”
He shook the count’s hand and left.
VIII
It was that time before evening, at dusk, in winter, when the lamps are lit.
The count summons Arkady and says:
“Go to my brother’s house and clip his poodle for him.”
Arkady asks:
“Will that be your only order?”
“Nothing more,” says the count. “But come back quickly to make up the actresses. Lyuba has to be made up for three roles today, and after the theater present her to me as St. Cecilia.”
Arkady staggered.
The count says:
“What’s the matter?”
Arkady replies:
“Sorry, I tripped on the rug.”
The count hints:
“Look out, that doesn’t bode well!”
But Arkady’s soul was in such a state that it was all the same to him whether it boded well or ill.
He had heard himself ordered to bring me as St. Cecilia, and, as if seeing and hearing nothing, he took his instruments in their leather case and left.
IX
He comes to the count’s brother, who already has candles lit by the mirror and again the two pistols next to it, and there are already not two gold pieces, but ten, and the pistols are loaded, not with blanks, but with Circassian bullets.
The count’s brother says:
“I haven’t got any poodle, but here’s what I want: do me up in the bravest fashion and you get ten gold pieces, but if you cut me, I’ll kill you.”
Arkady looked and looked, and suddenly—God knows what got into him—started clipping and shaving the count’s brother. In one minute he did it all in the best way, poured the gold into his pocket, and said:
“Good-bye.”
The other replies:
“Go, only I’d like to know: what made you so reckless that you dared to do it?”
Arkady says:
“Why I dared—only my breast and what’s inside it know.”
“Or maybe you’ve got a spell on you against bullets, so that you’re not afraid of pistols?”
“Pistols are nothing,” Arkady replies. “I wasn’t even thinking about them.”
“How is that? Did you dare think the count’s word is firmer than mine and I wouldn’t shoot you for cutting me? If there’s no spell on you, your life would have been over.”
At the mention of the count, Arkady gave another start, and as if in half sleep, said:
“There’s no spell on me, but there’s understanding from God: while you were raising your hand with a pistol to shoot me, I’d have cut your throat first with a razor.”
And with that he rushed out and came to the theater just on time and began doing my hair, and he was shaking all over. Each time he curled a lock of my hair, he bent down to blow on it, and whispered:
“Don’t be afraid, I’ll carry you off.”
X
The performance went well, because we were all like stone, used to fear and torment: whatever was in our hearts, we did our job so that nothing could be noticed.
From the stage we saw the count and his brother—the one resembling the other. When they came backstage, it was even hard to tell them apart. Only ours was very, very quiet, as if he’d grown kind. That always happened to him before the greatest ferocity.
And we all went numb and crossed ourselves. “Lord, have mercy upon us and save us! Whoever his bestiality falls upon!”
We didn’t know yet about the insanely desperate thing Arkasha had done, but Arkady himself, of course, understood that there would be no merciness for him, and he turned pale when the count’s brother glanced at him and quietly murmured something to our count. But I had very keen hearing, and I made it out.
“I advise you as a brother: beware of him when he shaves you.”
Ours only smiled quietly.
It seems Arkasha himself heard something, because, when he began making me up as the duchess for the last performance, he—something that never happened to him—put on so much powder that the French costumier started shaking me and said:
“Trop beaucoup, trop beaucoup!”†—and brushed off the excess.
XI
But once the performance was over, they took the dress of the duchesse de Bourblan off of me and dressed me as Cecilia, in a simple white dress with no sleeves and only caught up in knots at the shoulders—we couldn’t stand this costume. And then Arkady comes to do my hair in the innocent way it’s done in pictures of St. Cecilia, and to fix a thin coronet around it, and he sees six men standing by the door of my little closet.
That meant that as soon as he does me up and goes back out the door, he’ll be seized at once and led off somewhere to be tortured. And the tortures with us were such that it would be a hundred times better to be condemned to death. Racking and drawing and squeezing the head with a twisted rope: there was all that. Pu
nishment by the state authorities was nothing compared to it. There were secret cellars under the whole house where people lived chained up like bears. Going past, you could sometimes hear the chains clank and the fettered people moan. They probably wanted news of them to reach us or for the authorities to hear it, but the authorities did not dare even to think of intervening. And people languished there for a long time, sometimes all their lives. One man sat and sat and made up verses:
Snakes—he says—will come slithering and suck out your eyes,
Scorpions will pour poison on your face.7
Sometimes you whisper these verses to yourself and get terrified.
And others were even chained with bears, so the bear was only within an inch of getting his paws on them.
Only they didn’t do any of that with Arkady Ilyich, because as soon as he sprang into my little closet, he instantly seized the table and smashed out the whole window, and I don’t remember anything more after that …
I began to come to myself because my feet were very cold. I moved my legs and felt that I was all wrapped up in a wolfskin or bearskin coat, and it was pitcher-dark around, and the troika of horses is dashing along, and I don’t know where. And by me are two men in a heap, sitting in a wide sled—one holding me, that was Arkady Ilyich, and the other urging the horses on with all his might … Snow sprays from under the horses’ hooves, and the sled tilts every second to one side, then to the other. If we hadn’t been sitting right in the middle on the floor and holding each other with our arms, nobody could possibly have stayed whole.
And I hear their worried conversation, in agictation as always—all I can understand is:
“They’re coming, they’re coming! Faster, faster!” and nothing more.
Arkady Ilyich, when he noticed that I was coming to myself, bent over to me and said:
“Lyubushka, my dove! We’re being pursued … Do you agree to die if we can’t get away?”
I replied that I even agreed with joy.
He was hoping to get to Turkish Rushchuk,8 where many of our people had escaped from Kamensky.
And suddenly we flew cross the ice of some river, and ahead something like dwellings showed gray and dogs were barking; and the driver whipped up the troika, and the sled all at once heaved to one side, and Arkady and I tumbled out onto the snow, but he, and the sled, and the horses all vanished from sight.
Arkady says:
“Don’t be afraid, it has to be this way, because I don’t know the driver who brought us here, and he doesn’t know us. He hired out for three gold pieces to take you away, and he’s saved his own life. Now we’re in the hands of God: this is the village of Dry Orlitsa—a brave priest lives here who marries desperate couples and has helped many of our people. We’ll give him a gift, he’ll hide us till next evening and marry us, and in the evening the driver will come back, and then we’ll disappear.”
XII
We knocked at the door and went into the front hall. The priest himself opened, old, stocky, one front tooth missing, and his little old wife lit a candle. We both fell down at his feet.
“Save us, let us get warm and hide till next evening.”
The priest asks:
“What is it, my bright lights, have you come with stolen goods or are you just fugitives?”
Arkady says:
“We haven’t stolen anything, we’re running away from Count Kamensky’s ferocity and want to escape to Turkish Rushchuk, where not a few of our folk are living already. And we have our own money with us, and if we’re not found, we’ll give you a gold piece for one night’s lodging and three for marrying us. Marry us if you can, and if you can’t, we’ll get hitched in Rushchuk.”
The priest says:
“No, what do you mean, can’t? I can. Why do it in Rushchuk? Give me five gold pieces in all—I’ll hitch you here.”
Arkady gave him the money, and I took the camarine earrings from my ears and gave them to his wife.
The priest took the money and said:
“Ah, my bright lights, it would all be nothing—I’ve happened to hitch all sorts, what’s bad is that you’re the count’s. Though I’m a priest, his ferocity frightens me. Well, all right, let it be as God grants—just add one more, even if it’s a clipped one, and hide here.”
Arkady gave him a sixth gold piece, a whole one, and the priest then said to his wife:
“Why stand there, old woman? Give the girl a skirt at least, or some coat, it’s shameful to look at her—she’s all but naked.”
And then he wanted to take us to the church and hide us in a trunk of vestments. But the priest’s wife had just started dressing me behind a screen, when we suddenly heard someone ring the bell.
XIII
Our hearts both froze. But the priest whispered to Arkady:
“Well, my bright light, you clearly won’t get as far as the trunk of vestments, but quickly get under the featherbed.”
And to me he says:
“And you, my bright light, go here.”
He took and put me into the case of the clock, and locked it, and put the key in his pocket, and went to open the door. And we can hear there are many folk, and some are standing by the door, and two are already looking in the windows from outside.
Seven of the pursuers came in, all from the count’s hunters, with bludgeons, and hunting crops, and rope leashes in their belts, and with them an eighth one, the count’s majordomo, in a long wolfskin coat and a high peaked cap.
The case I was hiding in was all lattice-like openwork in front, hung with thin old cambric, and I could see through it.
And the old priest was in a fright, seeing how bad things were. He trembled before the majordomo, crossing himself and crying out all in a patter:
“Ah, my bright lights, oh, my shining lights! I know, I know what you’re looking for, only I’m not guilty of anything before the most serene count, truly, not guilty, not guilty!”
And he crosses himself and points his finger over his left shoulder at the clock case where I’m locked up.
“I’m done for,” I thought, seeing him perform this wonder.
The majordomo also saw it and says:
“It’s all known to us. Give me the key to that clock there.”
But the priest waved his hands again:
“Oh, my bright lights, oh, my shining ones! Forgive me, have mercy: I forget where I put the key, I forget, by God, I forget!”
And all the while he’s patting his pocket with the other hand.
The majordomo noticed that wonder as well, took the key from his pocket, and unlocked me.
“Get out, my dove,” he says, “and your mate will soon show himself.”
But Arkasha already showed himself: he threw the priest’s blanket on the floor and stood up.
“Yes,” he says, “there’s clearly nothing to do, the game is yours—take me to be tortured, but she’s not to blame for anything: I abducted her.”
As for the priest, all Arkady did was turn and spit in his face.
The priest says:
“Do you see, my bright lights, what profanation is done to my dignity and my fidelity? Report it to the most serene count.”
The majordomo replies:
“Never mind, don’t worry, it will all be accounted to him,” and he ordered that Arkady and I be led away.
We were put in three sleds, in the first the bound Arkady and some hunters, and me under the same escort in the last, and the rest of them went in the middle one.
Wherever we met folk, they all made way for us, thinking maybe it was a wedding.
XIV
We galloped very quickly, and when we spilled into the count’s courtyard, I couldn’t even see the sled Arkasha was taken in, but me they took to my former place and kept putting question after question to me about how long a time I had found myself alone with Arkady.
To all of them I said:
“Oh, no time at all!”
Then what had been assigned to me by fate—not
with my dear, but with my worst fear—I did not avoid, but when I came to my little closet and had just buried my head in the pillow to weep over my misfortune, I suddenly heard terrible moaning from under the floor.
In our wooden building it was arranged that we, the girls, lived on the second floor, and downstairs was a big, high-ceilinged room where we studied singing and dancing, and everything from there could be heard upstairs. And the fiendish king Satan put it into those cruel men’s heads to torture Arkasha right under my room …
When I realized that it was him they were torturing … I rushed … threw myself against the door, so as to run to him … but the door was locked … I don’t know myself what I wanted to do … I fell down, but on the floor I could hear still more clearly … And there was no knife, no nail, nothing to finish myself off with somehow … I took my own braid and wound it around my throat … I kept twisting and twisting, and only began to hear a ringing in my ears and to see circles, and then it all stopped … And I came to my senses in an unfamiliar place, in a big, bright shed … There were little calves there … many little calves, as much as ten—they’d come and lick my hand with their cold lips, thinking they were sucking at their mother … I woke up because it tickled … I looked around, wondering “Where am I?” I see a woman come in, an older woman, tall, all in blue calico, with a clean calico kerchief on her head, and her face is gentle.
The woman noticed that I was showing signs of life, and she was gentle with me and told me that I was in the calves’ shed on the count’s estate …
“It was there,” Lyubov Onisimovna explained, pointing towards the farthest corner of the half-dilapidated gray fence.
XV
She wound up in the cattle yard, because there were suspicions that she might have gone a bit crazy. People who became like beasts were tested among beasts, because cattlemen were elderly and sedate, and it was thought they could “look after” psychoses.
The old woman in calico with whom Lyubov Onisimovna had recovered herself was very kind, and her name was Drosida.
When she was ready for bed in the evening (my nanny continued), she herself made my bed from fresh oat chaff. She fluffed it up soft as down and says: “I’ll reveal everything to you, my girl. What will be will be, if you tell on me, but I’m just like you, and I didn’t dress in this calico all my life, but saw other things, only God forbid I should remember it, but I’ll tell you: don’t be distressed that you’re exiled to the cattle yard—it’s better in exile, only beware of this terrible falask.”
The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories Page 51
