Seeing myself in this desperate situation, I was ready to burst into tears, and my little brother was already crying. He was all blue and trembling from fear and cold, and, with his head bent under a little bush, was fervently praying to God.
It seems God heeded his childish prayer and invisible salvation was sent to us. At the same moment when the thunder rumbled and we were losing our last courage, we heard a crunching in the forest behind the bushes, and from the thick branches of a tall hazel the broad face of a muzhik unknown to us peeked out. That face seemed so frightening that we cried out and rushed headlong towards the stream.
Beside ourselves, we crossed the hollow, tumbled down the wet, crumbling bank, and straightaway found ourselves up to the waist in the turbid water, our legs sunk knee-deep in mire.
It was impossible to run any further. The stream further on was too deep for our small size; we couldn’t hope to cross it, and, besides, zigzags of lightning were now flashing terribly on its water—they quivered and meandered like fiery serpents, as if hiding among last year’s reeds.
Finding ourselves in the water, we seized each other’s hands and stood frozen there, while from above us heavy drops of rain were already beginning to fall. But this frozenness saved us from great danger, which we could in no way have avoided if we had gone one step further into the water.
We might easily have slipped and fallen, but fortunately we were embraced by two dark, sinewy arms, and the same muzhik who had looked at us so frighteningly from the hazel said gently:
“Ah, you silly boys, look where you’ve gotten to!”
And with that he picked us up and carried us across the stream.
Coming out on the other bank, he lowered us to the ground, took off his short jacket, which was fastened at the collar by a round brass button, and wiped our wet feet with it.
We looked at him all the while in complete bewilderment and felt ourselves wholly in his power, but—wondrous thing—the features of his face were quickly changing before our eyes. Not only did we see nothing frightening in them now, but, on the contrary, his face seemed to us very kind and pleasant.
He was a sturdy, thickset muzhik with some gray in his hair and mustache—his beard was a clump and also graying, his eyes were lively, quick, and serious, but on his lips there was something close to a smile.
Having wiped as much as he could of the dirt and slime from our feet with the skirt of his jacket, he smiled outright and spoke again:
“You just … never mind … don’t be scared …”
With that he looked around and went on:
“Never mind. There’s a big rainstorm coming!” (By then it had already come.) “You boys won’t make it on foot.”
We only wept silently in reply.
“Never mind, never mind, don’t howl, I’ll carry you!” he said and wiped my brother’s tear-stained face with his palm, which immediately left dirty streaks on it.
“See what dirty hands the muzhik’s got,” our deliverer said and passed his palm over my brother’s face again in the other direction, which didn’t decrease the dirt, but only added shading in the other direction.
“You won’t make it … I’ll take you … No, you won’t make it … and you’ll lose your little boots in the mud. Do you know how to ride?” the muzhik went on again.
I got up enough courage to utter a word and said:
“Yes.”
“Well, all right then!” he said, and in a trice he hoisted me up on one shoulder and my brother on the other, told us to hold hands behind the back of his head, covered us with his jacket, held tight to our knees, and carried us with quick, long strides over the mud, which spread and squelched under his firmly treading feet, shod in big bast shoes.
We sat on his shoulders, covered with his jacket. That must have made for a giant figure, but we were comfortable: the jacket got soaked from the downpour and turned stiff, and we were dry and warm under it. We rocked on our bearer’s shoulders like on a camel, and soon sank into some sort of cataleptic state, but came to ourselves by a spring on our farmstead. For me personally this had been a real, deep sleep, from which I did not awaken all at once. I remember that same muzhik taking us out of the jacket. He was surrounded now by all our Annushkas, and they were all tearing us from his hands and at the same time cursing him mercilessly for something, him and his jacket, which had protected us so well and which they now flung on the ground with the greatest contempt. Besides that, they also threatened him with my father’s arrival, and with running to the village at once to call out the farm people with their flails and set the dogs on him.
I decidedly did not understand the reason for such cruel injustice, and that was not surprising, because at home, under the now ruling interim government, they had formed a conspiracy not to reveal anything to us about the man to whom we owed our salvation.
“You owe him nothing,” our protectresses said. “On the contrary, it was he who caused it all.”
From those words I guessed at once that we had been saved by none other than Selivan himself!
XI
And so it was. The next day, in view of our parents’ return, the fact was revealed to us, and we swore an oath that we would say nothing to our father and mother about the incident that had occurred with us.
In those days when there were still serfs, it sometimes happened that landowners’ children nursed the most tender feelings for household serfs and kept their secrets faithfully. That was so with us. We even concealed as well as we could the sins and transgressions of “our people” from our parents. Such relations are mentioned in many works describing the landowner’s life of that time. As for me, our childhood friendship with our former serfs still constitutes my warmest and most pleasant memory. Through them we knew all the needs and cares of the poor life of their relations and friends in the village, and we learned to pity the people. But, unfortunately, those good people were not always fair themselves and were sometimes capable of casting a dark shadow on their neighbor for no important reason, regardless of the harmful consequences it might have. That is how “the people” acted with Selivan, of whose true character and principles they had no wish to know anything substantial, but boldly, not afraid of sinning against justice, spread rumors about him, which in the eyes of all made him into a spook. And, surprisingly, everything that was said about him not only seemed probable, but even had some visible tokens which could make one think that Selivan was in fact a bad man and that horrible villainies took place near his solitary dwelling.
That was what happened now, when we were scolded by those whose duty it was to protect us: not only did they shift all the blame onto Selivan, who had saved us from the storm, but they even heaped a new accusation on him. Apollinary and all the Annushkas told us that, when Apollinary noticed a pretty hill in the forest, which he thought it would be good to declaim from, he ran to that hill across a little gully filled with last year’s fallen leaves, and stumbled there over something soft. This “something soft” turned under Apollinary’s feet and he fell, and as he got up he saw that it was the corpse of a young peasant woman. He noticed that the corpse was dressed in a clean white sarafan with red embroidery, and … its throat was cut, and blood was pouring from it …
Such a terrible unexpectedness could, of course, frighten a man and make him cry out—which was what he did; but the incomprehensible and surprising thing was that Apollinary, as I said, was far from all the others and the only one to stumble over the corpse of the murdered woman, yet all the Annushkas and Roskas swore to God that they had also seen the corpse …
“Otherwise,” they said, “why would we be so frightened?”
And I’m convinced to this day that they weren’t lying, that they were deeply convinced that they had seen a murdered woman in Selivan’s forest, in a clean peasant dress with red embroidery, with her throat cut and blood flowing from it … How could that be?
Since I’m not writing fiction, but what actually happened, I must pause here and a
dd that this incident remained forever unexplained in our house. No one but Apollinary could have seen the murdered woman, who, according to his own words, was lying in a hollow under the leaves, because no one but Apollinary was there. And yet they all swore that they had all seen the dead woman appear in the twinkling of an eye wherever any of them looked. Besides, had Apollinary himself actually seen this woman? It was hardly possible, because it had happened during the thaw, when not all the snow had melted yet. The leaves had lain under the snow since autumn, yet Apollinary saw a body dressed in a clean, white, embroidered dress, and blood was still flowing from the wound … Nothing like that could actually be, and yet they all crossed themselves and swore that they had seen the woman just as she’s been described. And afterwards we were all afraid to sleep at night, and we were all horrified, as if we had committed a crime. Soon I, too, became persuaded that my brother and I had also seen the murdered woman. A general fear set in among us, which ended with the whole affair being revealed to my parents, and my father wrote a letter to the police chief—and he came to us wearing the longest saber and secretly questioned everybody in my father’s study. Apollinary was even called in twice, and the second time the police chief reprimanded him so severely that, when he came out, both his ears were fiery red and one was even bleeding.
That, too, we all saw.
But however it was, our tall tales caused Selivan much grief: his place was searched, his whole forest was combed, and he himself was kept under guard for a long time, but nothing suspicious was found, and no traces of the murdered woman we had all seen turned up either. Selivan went back home again, but that didn’t help him in public opinion: after that, everybody knew he was an undoubted, though elusive, villain, and nobody would have anything to do with him. As for me, so that I wouldn’t be exposed to the strong influence of the poetic element, I was taken to a “noble boarding school,” where I began to acquire a general education in perfect tranquillity, until the approach of the Christmas holidays, when it was time for me to go home, again inevitably passing Selivan’s inn, and seeing great horrors in it with my own eyes.
XII
Selivan’s bad repute earned me great prestige among my boarding school comrades, with whom I shared my knowledge of this horrible man. None of my schoolmates had yet experienced such horrific sensations as I could boast of, and now, when I was faced with driving past Selivan again—to that no one could remain unconcerned and indifferent. On the contrary, most of my comrades pitied me and said straight out that they wouldn’t want to be in my place, though two or three daredevils envied me and boasted that they would like very much to meet Selivan face-to-face. But two of them were inveterate braggarts, while the third could very well not fear anyone, because, according to him, his grandmother had an antique Venetian ring with a tavousi stone in it, which made a man “inaccessible to any trouble.”† In my family there was no such jewel, and, besides, I was supposed to make my Christmas journey not with our own horses, but with my aunt, who had sold her house in Orel just before the holidays and, having received thirty thousand roubles for it, was coming to us to buy an estate in our parts that my father had long ago negotiated for her.
To my vexation, my aunt’s departure had been delayed a whole two days by some important business matters, and we left Orel only on the morning before Christmas.
We traveled in a roomy bast-covered sleigh hitched to a troika, with the coachman Spiridon and the young footman Boriska. In the sleigh were my aunt, myself, my boy cousin, my little girl cousins, and the nanny Lyubov Timofeevna.
With decent horses on a good road, one could reach our estate from Orel in five or six hours. We arrived in Kromy at two o’clock and stopped at a merchant’s we knew, to have tea and feed the horses. This was a usual stopover for us, and it was also necessary for the toilette of my little cousin, who was still in diapers.
The weather was good, close to being a thaw; but while we were feeding the horses, a slight chill set in, and then it began to “smoke”—that is, a fine snow blew low over the ground.
My aunt hesitated whether to wait until it was over or, on the contrary, to hurry up and start sooner, so as to get home before the real storm broke.
We had some fourteen miles left to go. The coachman and the footman, who wanted to see in the holiday with their families and friends, assured us that we had time to make it safely, as long as we didn’t dawdle and set out soon.
My own wishes and my aunt’s also corresponded fully to what Spiridon and Boriska wanted. No one wanted to see in the holiday in a strange house in Kromy. Besides, my aunt was mistrustful and suspicious, and she now had a considerable sum of money with her, placed in a little mahogany box, covered with a slipcase of thick green frieze.
To spend the night in a strange house with such a large sum of money seemed very unsafe to my aunt, and she decided to heed the advice of our faithful servants.
At a little past three, our sleigh was hitched up and left Kromy in the direction of the schismatic village of Kolchevo;8 but we had only just crossed the river Kroma over the ice when we felt as if we suddenly didn’t have enough air to take a deep breath. The horses ran quickly, snorting and wagging their heads, which was a sure sign that they also felt a lack of air. Meanwhile the sleigh raced along with a peculiar lightness, as if it were being pushed from behind. The wind was at our backs, and seemed to be urging us on with redoubled speed towards some predestined boundary line. Soon, however, our brisk path began to “stammer”; soft snowdrifts already appeared along the road—they became more and more frequent, and soon enough our former brisk path couldn’t be seen at all.
My aunt peeked worriedly out of the window to ask the coachman whether we had kept to the right road, but drew back at once, all showered with fine, cold dust, and before we managed to catch the attention of the men on the box, snow came rushing past in thick flakes, the sky turned dark in an instant, and we found ourselves in the grip of a real blizzard.
XIII
To go back to Kromy was as dangerous as to go on. It was probably more dangerous behind us, because there was the river, with several ice holes near the town, and we might easily not see them in the snowstorm and fall through the ice, while ahead there was the level steppe and only Selivan’s forest at the fifth mile, which was no more dangerous in a storm, because it must even have been quieter in the forest. Besides, the road didn’t go deep into the forest, but ran along the edge of it. The forest could only serve us as an indication that we were halfway home, and therefore the coachman Spiridon drove the horses more quickly.
The road kept getting more difficult and snowy: the former merry noise of the runners was forgotten; on the contrary, the sleigh crawled over crumbly snowdrifts and soon began lurching now this way, now that.
We lost our calm state of mind and began asking the footman and the coachman all the time about our situation, receiving uncertain and hesitant replies from them. They tried to instill in us a confidence in our safety, while feeling no such confidence themselves.
After half an hour of quick driving, with Spiridon whipping up the horses more and more often, we were cheered by the outcry:
“There’s Selivan’s forest coming in sight!”
“Is it far off?” asked my aunt.
“No, we’ve almost reached it.”
That was as it should have been—we had already been driving for about an hour since Kromy, but another good half hour went by—we kept driving, and the whip snapped over the horses more and more often, but there was no forest.
“What’s wrong? Where’s Selivan’s forest?”
No reply from the box.
“Where’s the forest?” my aunt asked again. “Have we passed it?”
“No, we haven’t,” Spiridon replied in a muffled voice, as if from under a pillow.
“What does it mean?”
Silence.
“Come down here! Stop! Stop!”
My aunt stuck herself out from behind the flap, desperately cried �
��Stop!” with all her might, and fell back into the sleigh, bringing with her a whole cloud of snowy swirls, which, under the influence of the wind, did not settle at once, but trembled like hovering flies.
The coachman stopped the horses, and it was well he did, because their bellies were heaving heavily and they were staggering from fatigue. If they hadn’t been given a rest at that moment, the poor animals would probably have collapsed.
“Where are you?” my aunt asked Boris, who had climbed down from the box.
He was unrecognizable. Before us stood not a man, but a pillar of snow. The collar of Boris’s wolfskin coat was turned up and tied with a scrap of something. All this was plastered with snow and stuck together in a single lump.
Boris did not know the road and replied timidly that it seemed we had lost our way.
“Call Spiridon here.”
To call vocally was impossible: the blizzard shut all mouths and itself roared and howled abroad with terrible violence.
Boriska climbed up on the box to pull Spiridon by the arm, but … he spent a very long time there, before he appeared beside the coach again and explained:
“Spiridon is not on the box!”
“Not on the box! Where is he then?”
“I don’t know. He must have gone looking for the way. Let me go, too.”
“Oh, Lord! No, don’t—don’t go. You’ll both perish, and we’ll all freeze to death.”
On hearing those words, my cousin and I started to cry, but just then another pillar of snow appeared by the carriage beside Borisushka, still bigger and scarier.
This was Spiridon, who had put on a spare bast bag, which stood up around his head all packed with snow and frozen.
“Where did you see the forest, Spiridon?”
“I did see it, madam.”
“Then where is it now?”
“You can see it now, too.”
My aunt wanted to look, but she didn’t see anything, it was all dark. Spiridon assured her that that was because her eyes were “unfamiliarized,” but that he had seen the forest looming up for a very long time, but … the trouble was that, as we moved towards it, it moved away from us.
The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories Page 59
