Here I slapped myself on the forehead as hard as I could and started, not crying, but howling …
“Lord God! Who have I robbed?”
XIII
Mama, my aunt, my uncle—everybody got frightened, came running, shook me.
“What’s the matter? What’s the matter? Calm down!”
“Please,” I say, “leave me alone! How can I calm down if I’ve robbed a man?”
Mama started crying.
“He’s gone mad,” she says. “He must have seen something horrible!”
“I certainly did, mama! … What do I do now!!”
“What was it that you saw?”
“That there. Look for yourself.”
“What? Where?”
“That, that there! Look! Don’t you see what it is?”
They looked at the wall where I was pointing and saw the silver watch with the gold rim that my uncle had given me, hanging on the wall and ticking away quite calmly …
My uncle was the first to recover his reason.
“Holy God,” he says, “isn’t that your watch?”
“Yes, of course it is!”
“So it must be you didn’t take it with you, but left it here?”
“You can see I did.”
“And that one … that one … Whose is that one you took?”
“How should I know?”
“What is this! My little sisters, my dear ones! Misha and I have robbed somebody!”
Mama’s legs gave way under her: she cried out as she stood there and sat down on the floor right where she was.
I rushed to pick her up, but she said wrathfully:
“Away, robber!”
My aunt just made crosses in all directions and muttered:
“Holy God, holy God, holy God!”
But mama clutched her head and whispered:
“They beat somebody, they robbed somebody, and they don’t know who!”
My uncle picked her up and tried to calm her:
“Calm yourself now, it wasn’t a good man we beat.”
“How do you know? Maybe he was; maybe it was somebody going to fetch a doctor for a sick man.”
My uncle says:
“And what about my hat? Why did he snatch my hat?”
“God knows about your hat and where you left it.”
My uncle was offended, but mama paid no attention to him and turned to me again.
“I’ve kept my boy in the fear of God for so many years, and this is what he prepared himself for: thief or none, but he looks like one … After this no sensible girl in Orel will marry you, because now everybody, everybody, will know you’re a prigger.”
I couldn’t help myself and said loudly:
“For pity’s sake, mama, what kind of a prigger am I? It’s all a mistake!”
But she didn’t want to listen, and kept rapping me on the head with her knuckles and wailing woefully:13
“I taught you: my child, live far from wickedness, do not go gambling and merrymaking, do not drink two cups in a single gulp, do not fall asleep in a secluded place, lest your costly trousers be taken off you, lest great shame and disgrace overtake you, and through you your family suffer idle reproach and revilement. I taught you: my child, do not go to dicers and taverners, do not think how to steal and rob, but you did not want to heed your mother. Now take off your fine clothes and put on pot-house rags, and wait till the watchmen knock at our gates and Tsyganok himself comes barging into our honest house.”
She kept wailing like that and rapping me on the head with her knuckles.
But when my aunt heard about Tsyganok, she cried out:
“Lord, save us from bloody men and from Arid!”14
My God! In other words, our house turned into a veritable hell.
My aunt and mama embraced each other and, in that embrace, withdrew weeping. Only my uncle and I remained.
I sat down, leaned on the table, and I don’t remember how many hours I went on sitting there. I kept thinking: who was it that I robbed? Maybe it was the Frenchman Saint-Vincent coming from a lesson, or the secretary from the office who lives in the house of Strakhov, the marshal of the nobility15 … I was sorry for each of them. And what if it was my godfather Kulabukhov coming from the other side after visiting the treasury secretary! … He wanted to pass by quietly, so as not to be seen with a little sack, and I up and worked him over … A godson! … his own godfather!
“I’ll go to the attic and hang myself. There’s nothing else left for me.”
And my uncle was just fiercely drinking tea, and then he comes up to me somehow—I didn’t even see how—and says:
“Enough sitting and moping, we must act.”
“Why, yes,” I reply, “of course, if we can find out whose watch I took …”
“Never mind. Get up quickly, and we’ll go together and declare everything ourselves.”
“Who are we going to declare it to?”
“To your Tsyganok himself, naturally.”
“How shameful to confess it!”
“What can we do? Do you think I’m eager to go to Tsyganok? … But all the same, it’s better to own up to it ourselves than to have him come looking for us: take both watches and let’s go.”
I agreed.
I took both my own watch, which my uncle had given me, and the one I had brought home that night, and, without saying good-bye to mama, we left.
XIV
We went to the police station, and Tsyganok was already sitting in his office before the zertsalo,16 and at his door stood a young constable, Prince Solntsev-Zasekin. The family was notable, the talent unremarkable.
My uncle saw that I bowed to this prince, and said:
“Is he really a prince?”
“By God, it’s true.”
“Flash something at him in your fingers, so that he’ll pop out to the stairs for a minute.”
And that’s just how it went: I held up a twenty-five-kopeck piece—the prince popped out to the stairs.
My uncle put the coin in his hand and asked that we be let in to the office as soon as possible.
The constable started telling us that a great many incidents had taken place here in town last night.
“And with us an incident also occurred.”
“Well, but what sort? You both look yourselves, but down on the river there’s a man sunk under the ice; two merchants on Poleshskaya Square scattered all the shafts, frames, and sleigh bodies about; a man was found unconscious under a tub, and two had their watches stolen. I’m the only one left on duty, all the rest are running around looking for the priggers …”
“All right, all right, you go and report that we’ve come to explain a certain matter.”
“Have you had a fight or some family trouble?”
“No, just report that we’re here on a secret matter; we’re ashamed to explain it in front of people. Here’s another.”
The prince pocketed the fifty-kopeck piece and five minutes later called us:
“Come in, please.”
XV
Tsyganok was a thickset Ukrainian—exactly like a black cockroach; bristling mustaches, and the crudest Ukrainian-style conversation.
My uncle, in his own way, his Elets way, wanted to go up to him, but he shouted:
“Speak from a distance.”
We stopped.
“What’s your business?”
My uncle says:
“First of all—this.”
And he placed a sweetener on the table, wrapped in paper. Tsyganok covered it up.
Then my uncle began his story:
“I’m a merchant and a church warden from Elets, I came here yesterday on a church necessity; I’m staying with my relations beyond the Plautin Well …”
“So it was you who got robbed last night, was it?”
“Exactly. My nephew and I were on our way home at eleven o’clock, and an unknown man was following us, and as we started to cross the ice between the barges, he …”
&nb
sp; “Wait a minute … And who was the third one with you?”
“There was no third one with us, besides this thief, who rushed …”
“But who got drowned there last night?”
“Drowned?”
“Yes!”
“We know nothing about that.”
The police chief rang and said to the constable:
“Take them to the clink!”
My uncle pleaded:
“For pity’s sake, Your Honor! Why? … We ourselves came to tell …”
“Wasn’t it you who drowned the man?”
“We never even heard anything about any drowning. Who got drowned?”
“Nobody knows. A mucked-up beaver hat was found by a hole in the ice, but who was wearing it—nobody knows.”
“A beaver hat!?”
“Yes. Show him the hat, let’s see what he says.”
The constable took my uncle’s hat from the closet.
My uncle says:
“That’s my hat. A thief snatched it off me yesterday on the ice.”
Tsyganok batted his eyes.
“What thief? Stop blathering! The thief didn’t take a hat, the thief stole a watch.”
“A watch? Whose watch, Your Honor?”
“The Nicetas deacon’s.”
“The Nicetas deacon’s!”
“Yes, and he was beaten badly, this Nicetas deacon.”
We were simply astounded.
So that’s who we worked over!
Tsyganok says:
“Must be you know these crooks.”
“Yes,” my uncle replies, “it’s us.”
And he told how it all happened.
“Where is this watch now?”
“If you please—here’s the one watch, and here’s the other.”
“And that’s all?”
My uncle slips him another sweetener and says:
“Here’s more for you.”
He covers it up and says:
“Bring the deacon here!”
XVI
The lean deacon comes in, all beaten up and his head bandaged.
Tsyganok looks at me and says:
“See?!”
I bow and say:
“Your Honor, I’m ready to endure anything, only please don’t send me to some far-off place. I’m my mother’s only son.”
“No, tell me, are you a Christian or not? Is there any feeling in you?”
I see the conversation isn’t going right and say:
“Uncle, give him a sweetener for me, they’ll pay you back at home.”
My uncle gives it.
“How did this happen to you?”
The deacon began telling how “the whole company of us were in the Boris and Gleb Inn, and everything was very good and noble, but then, for a bribe, the innkeeper put strangers under the bed so they could listen, and one of the Elets merchants got offended, and a fight came of it. I quietly put my coat on and left, but when I went around the office building, I see two men on the lookout ahead of me. I stop to let them go further, and they stop; I go on—so do they. And suddenly I hear somebody else from far away overtaking me from behind … I got completely frightened, rushed ahead, and the first two turned towards me in the narrow passage between the barges and blocked my way … And the one from the hill behind had almost caught up with me. I prayed in my mind: ‘Lord bless me!’ and bent down to slip between these two, and so I did, but they ran after me, knocked me down, beat me, and snatched my watch … Here’s what’s left of the chain.”
“Show me the chain.”
He put the piece of chain together with the one attached to the watch and said:
“There you are. Look, is this your watch?”
The deacon says:
“It’s mine all right, and I’d like to have it back.”
“That’s impossible, it has to stay here till the investigation.”
“And what did I get beaten for?” he says.
“That you can ask them.”
Here my uncle intervened.
“Your Honor! There’s no point in asking us. We are indeed to blame, it was we who beat the father deacon, and we’ll make up for it. We’re taking him to Elets with us.”
But the deacon was so offended that he didn’t see things that way at all.
“No,” he says, “God forbid I ever agree to go to Elets. Forget it! I was just about to accept, and right off you give me this treatment.”
My uncle says:
“Father deacon, this is all a matter of a mistake.”
“A fine mistake, when I can’t turn my head anymore.”
“We’ll get you cured.”
“No,” he says, “I don’t want your cures, I always go to the attendant at Finogeich’s bathhouse to get cured, but you can pay me a thousand roubles to build a house.”
“That we’ll do.”
“It’s no joke. I’m not to be beaten … I have my clerical dignity.”
“We’ll satisfy your dignity, too.”
And Tsyganok also started helping my uncle:
“The Elets merchants will satisfy you …,” he says. “Is there anybody else there in the clink?”
XVII
They brought in the Boris and Gleb innkeeper and Pavel Mironych. Pavel Mironych’s frock coat was in shreds, and so was the innkeeper’s.
“What was the fight about?” asks Tsyganok.
They both lay sweeteners on the desk for him and reply:
“It was nothing, Your Honor. We’re on perfectly good terms again.”
“Well, splendid, if you’re not angry about the beating, that’s your business; but how dared you cause disorder in town? Why did you scatter all the troughs and sleighs and shafts on Poleshskaya Square?”
The innkeeper said it was accidental.
“I wanted to take him to the police last night, and he me; we pulled each other by the arm, but the butcher Agafon supported me; we got lost in the snow, wound up on the square—no way to get through … everything got scattered … We started shouting from fear … The patrol picked us up … a watch got lost …”
“Whose?”
“Mine.”
Pavel Mironych says:
“And mine, too.”
“What proofs have you got?”
“Why proofs? We’re not looking for them.”
“And who put the butcher Agafon under the washtub?”
“That we can’t say,” says the innkeeper. “The tub must have fallen on him and knocked him down, and he, being drunk, fell asleep under it. Let us go, Your Honor, we’re not looking for anything.”
“Very well,” says Tsyganok, “only we’ve got to finish with the others. Bring in the other deacon.”
The swarthy deacon comes in.
Tsyganok says to him:
“Why did you smash up the sentry box last night?”
The deacon replies:
“I was very frightened, Your Honor.”
“What were you frightened of?”
“Some people on the ice started shouting ‘Help’ very loud. I rushed back and asked the sentry to hide me from the priggers, and he chased me away: ‘I can’t stand up, I sent my boot soles to be mended.’ Then I pressed myself against the door in fright, and it broke. It’s my fault—I forced my way into the box and fell asleep there, and in the morning I got up, looked: no watch, no money.”
Tsyganok says:
“So you see, Eletsians? This deacon also suffered through you, and his watch disappeared.”
Pavel Mironych and my uncle replied:
“Well, Your Honor, we’ll have to go home and borrow from acquaintances, we’ve got nothing more on us.”
So we all went out, but the watch stayed there, and soon we were all consoled for that, and there was a lot of joking and laughing, and I drank with them then in the Boris and Gleb Inn till I got drunk for the first time in my life, and I rode down the street in a cab, waving my handkerchief. After that they borrowed money in Orel and left, but they di
dn’t take the deacon along with them, because he was too afraid of them. Insist as they might—he wouldn’t go.
“I’m very glad,” he says, “that the Lord granted that I get a thousand roubles from you for my offense. I’ll build myself a little house now, and talk the secretary into giving me a good post here. You Eletsians, I can see, are just too brassy.”
For me, however, a terrible trial began. Mama got so ill from her anger at me that she had one foot in the grave. There was dejection all through the house. Doctor Dépiche was not called in: they were afraid he would ask all kinds of questions about her health. They turned to religion. Mother Evnikeya was living in the convent then, and she had a Jordanian sheet, which she had wiped herself with after bathing in the Jordan River. They wrapped mama in this sheet. It didn’t help. They blessed the water with seven crosses in seven churches every day. That didn’t help. There was a layabout peasant, Esafeika—he lay about all the time and never worked. They sent him a hatful of cut-up apples and asked him to pray. That didn’t help either. Only when she and her sister finally went to Finogeich’s bathhouse and had her blood let with leeches, only then did she pull herself together somewhat. She ordered the Jordanian sheet sent back to Evnikeya and started looking for an orphan to raise at home.
This was the matchmaker’s teaching. The matchmaker had many children of her own, but she was also very fond of orphans—she kept taking them in, and so she started saying to my mother:
“Take some poor people’s child into your home. Everything at home will change for you at once: the air will become different. Gentlefolk set out flowers for the air—of course, there’s nothing wrong with that; but the main thing for the air is children. There’s a spirit that breathes from children, and the angels rejoice at it, but Satan gnashes his teeth … There’s a girl now in the Pushkarny quarter: she’s had such a hard time with her baby, she even took her to the Orlik mill to drown her.”
Mama said:
“Tell her not to drown her, but to leave her with me.”
That same day the little girl Mavrutka started squealing in our house and sucking her little fist. Mama busied herself with the girl, and a change came over her. She became caustic with me.
“You don’t need any new clothes for the feast day: now that you’re a drunkard, pot-house rags are enough for you.”
The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories Page 67
