Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov (Penguin Classics) (12 page)

The rich brother felt envious. ‘I’ll go out into the steppe myself,’ he thought. ‘I’ll lift the stone up and set Misery free.
Let him ruin my brother completely. How dare my brother boast to me of his riches?’ And so he sent his wife home and drove out into the steppe. He drove up to the big stone, moved it to one side, then bent down to see what was there. But barely had he looked down before Misery had jumped out of the pit and onto his shoulders. ‘Ah!’ he yelled. ‘You thought you could starve me to death, did you? Well, I won’t leave you now for anything in the world!’ ‘No, Misery, it wasn’t me! It wasn’t me who imprisoned you beneath the stone!’ ‘Who was it then? Who else could it have been?’ ‘It was my brother. It was my brother imprisoned you, and now I’ve come to set you free.’ ‘You’re lying. You tricked me once, but you’re not going to trick me a second time.’ Misery sat fast on the rich man’s neck. The rich man took Misery back home with him, and everything in his life began to go wrong. Every morning Misery was hard at it, doing the work he did best. Every morning he took the merchant along to the tavern with him, so the two of them could drink away their hangovers. Very soon, the merchant was a great deal poorer and the tavern-keeper a great deal richer. In the end, though, the merchant understood that this was no way to live. ‘I’ve been giving Misery too good a time,’ he said to himself. ‘I really must send him on his way now – but how?’

The merchant thought and thought. In the end he thought his way to an answer. He went out into his yard, made himself two oak wedges, took a new wheel and knocked one of the wedges into the hub. Then he went up to Misery. ‘What’s up, Misery? Why are you just lying about all the time?’ ‘What else have I got to do?’ ‘What else? Let’s go out into the yard together and play hide-and-seek.’ Misery was only too glad. Out they went into the yard. The merchant hid first. Misery found him at once, and then it was his turn to hide. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘You’re going to find this difficult. I can hide myself inside the very tiniest of cracks.’ ‘Nonsense!’ said the merchant. ‘You couldn’t get inside this wheel, let alone into a crack.’ ‘What do you mean? Just watch me!’ Misery crept into the wheel. The merchant took the other oak wedge and drove it into the hub from the other side. Then he threw the wheel into the river, along with Misery. Misery drowned, and the merchant returned to his former life.

Two brothers were travelling together. One was poor, and the other rich. Each had a horse. The poor brother had a mare; the rich brother a gelding. They stopped somewhere for the night. During that night the poor man’s mare bore a foal, and this foal rolled under the rich man’s cart. In the morning the rich man woke his poor brother with the words, ‘Get up, brother! My cart’s foaled during the night!’ The poor brother got up and said, ‘How can a cart bear a foal? The foal belongs to my mare!’ The rich man said, ‘If it were your mare’s foal, it would be lying there beside her!’ They argued and argued, then went to the authorities. The rich man gave the judges money; the poor man made his case with words.

The tsar himself got to hear of this lawsuit. He summoned both brothers before him and asked them four riddles: ‘What is the strongest and swiftest thing in the world? What is richer and fatter than anything in the world? What is the softest thing in the world? And what is the sweetest thing?’ He gave them three days: on the fourth day they were to return to him with their answers.

The rich man thought and thought, remembered his godmother and went to ask her advice. She sat him down at her table, gave him something to eat and drink and asked, ‘Why are you so sad, my godson?’ ‘Because the sovereign has asked me four riddles and I have only three days to answer them.’ ‘What are the riddles? Tell me!’ ‘Well, godmother, this is the first riddle: “What is the strongest and swiftest thing in the world?” ’ ‘Call that a riddle? My husband has a dark bay mare. There’s nothing swifter than her in the world. You only have to
show her the whip and she can outrun a hare!’ ‘And this is the second riddle: “What is richer and fatter than anything in the world?” ’ ‘We’ve been feeding a spotted boar for over two years now. He’s grown so fat he can barely stand.’ ‘And this is the third riddle: “What is the softest thing in the world?” ’ ‘Everyone knows the answer to that. Nothing in the world is softer than down.’ ‘And this is the fourth riddle: “What is the sweetest thing in the world?” ’ ‘The sweetest thing in the world is my grandson Ivanushka.’ ‘Thank you, godmother! You have spoken good sense. I shan’t forget it.’

As for the poor brother, he wept bitter tears and then set off back home. He was met by his seven-year-old daughter; this daughter was all the family he had. ‘Why are you sighing and shedding tears, father?’ ‘How can I not sigh and shed tears? The tsar has asked me four riddles and I wouldn’t be able to answer them even if I had a million years.’ ‘Tell me – what are these riddles?’ ‘These are the riddles, my daughter: what is the strongest and swiftest thing in the world? What is richer and fatter than anything in the world? What is the softest thing in the world? And what is the sweetest thing?’ ‘Go to the tsar, father, and tell him that the strongest and swiftest thing in the world is the wind. The richest and fattest thing is the earth – there’s nothing that lives and grows that the earth doesn’t feed. The softest thing in the world is a hand – no matter what a man sleeps on, he will put his hand under his head. And the sweetest thing in the world is sleep!’

The poor brother and the rich brother went to the tsar. The tsar heard their answers, then asked the poor brother, ‘Did you guess the riddles yourself? Or did someone teach you?’ The poor brother answered, ‘your Majesty, I have a seven-year-old daughter. It was she who taught me.’ ‘If your daughter is so wise, then here is a silken thread for her. Let her weave me a patterned towel by tomorrow morning.’ The brother took the silken thread and went back home, sad and grieving. ‘We’re in trouble,’ he said to his daughter. ‘The tsar orders you to weave a towel out of this little thread.’ ‘Don’t be sad, father,’ said the seven-year-old girl. She broke off a little twig from a broom, gave it to her father and said, ‘Go to the tsar and tell him to find a master craftsman
who can make a loom from this little twig. Then I’ll be able to weave him his towel!’ Her father did as she said. The tsar gave him 150 eggs. ‘Give these eggs to your daughter,’ he said. ‘Let her hatch 150 chicks for me by tomorrow.’

The father went back home, now sadder than ever. ‘Oh my daughter,’ he said, ‘barely do we see off one trouble before another is upon us.’ ‘Don’t be sad, father,’ said the seven-year-old girl. She baked the eggs, put them aside for their lunch and their supper and sent her father back to the tsar. ‘Tell him,’ she said, ‘that the chickens need one-day grain. Let a field be ploughed, and the millet sown, harvested and milled in a single day. That’s the only grain our chickens will eat!’ The tsar heard this answer and said, ‘If your daughter’s so wise, let her appear before me tomorrow morning. Let her come neither on foot nor on horseback, neither naked nor clothed, and let her come neither gifted nor giftless.’ ‘Now we’re well and truly undone,’ thought the father. ‘Not even my daughter can unriddle this.’ ‘Don’t be sad, father,’ said the seven-year-old girl. ‘Go to the hunters and buy me a live hare and a live quail.’ And so the father bought her a hare and a quail.

The following morning the seven-year-old girl took off her clothes and put on a net. She took the quail in her hands, mounted the hare and rode to the palace. The tsar met her at the gate. She bowed to the tsar and said, ‘Here’s a little gift for you, your Majesty!’ – and held out the quail to him. The tsar reached out his hand but – flap, flap, went the quail, and away it flew. ‘Very good,’ said the tsar. ‘You have done as I said. Tell me now. Your father is very poor – what do you live on?’ ‘My father goes fishing on a dry bank. He never puts his traps in the water. And I make fish soup in the hem of my skirt.’ ‘Don’t be so stupid! When did fish ever live on a dry bank? Fish swim about in the water.’ ‘And are you so very clever yourself? Whoever heard of a cart bearing a foal? Foals come from mares, not from carts!’

The tsar awarded the foal to the poor brother. As for the seven-year-old daughter, he took her into his palace. And when she had grown up, he married her and she became the tsaritsa.

(1842–76)

The life of Ivan Khudyakov, Afanasyev’s brilliant younger contemporary, is still more tragic than that of Afanasyev himself. For Khudyakov, learning from the people (by collecting and studying their folklore) and educating them (by teaching them both basic literacy and revolutionary ideas) were inseparable parts of a single social and artistic enterprise.

In 1860, while still only an eighteen-year-old student at Moscow University, Khudyakov published a collection of historical folksongs and the first volume of a collection of folktales; he published the second and third volumes in 1861 and 1862. He also published a collection of riddles, the first volume in 1861 and the second in 1864.

In 1861, however, Khudyakov was one of several students excluded from Moscow University after lodging a complaint about one of the teachers. This pushed Khudyakov towards the revolutionary opposition, and in 1866 he was arrested (members of the commission that searched his apartment were apparently amused by his manuscript collection of obscene and anti-clerical folktales – a collection later lost in a fire).
¹
Convicted of complicity in a plot to assassinate Tsar Alexander II, Khudyakov was exiled to eastern Siberia – to Verkhoyansk, which is probably the coldest town on Earth. Initially undaunted, he studied the language and folklore of the native Yakut people, compiled a Yakut–Russian dictionary and wrote a number of articles, but in 1869 he began to suffer from what was probably clinical depression and by 1874, when he was transferred to a psychiatric hospital in Irkutsk, he had lost his reason. He died a year later.

Khudyakov’s contribution to the study of Russian folklore was, of course, far smaller than it might have been. In two respects, however, his collection marks an advance on Afanasyev’s; all his transcripts are verbatim, and he included information about individual storytellers. He may also have been the first of many exiled revolutionaries to study the languages and culture of the native peoples of Siberia. His
Verkhoyansk Anthology
was finally published by the Eastern Siberian Section of the Geographical Society in 1899, and his
Brief Description of the Verkhoyansk Region
, long considered lost, was published in Leningrad in 1969. Khudyakov evidently came to a deep understanding of the nature of oral poetry. After only a few years in Verkhoyansk, and in spite of the terrible conditions of his exile, he was reaching conclusions that Western scholars reached only a century later. ‘During my student days,’ he writes, ‘I thought it improbable that a single popular singer could have known and sung by heart such a long tale as the
Iliad
or the
Odyssey
, remembering a large number of proper names and not omitting even such details as a nail in a ship. Yakut storytellers sing and tell stories of no less a length and go into still finer details.’
²

Once there lived a lady. She had three daughters and a little son. She took very great care of her son and wouldn’t let him out of the house. One splendid summer day the daughters came to their mother and asked her to let them take their brother to walk in the garden. For a long time the mother wouldn’t agree, then finally she let him go. They walked for a long time in the garden. Suddenly a strong wind came up. The sand and dust rose up in a cloud, and the child was torn out of the nanny’s arms and carried off to who knows where. They looked and looked for him in the garden, but they couldn’t find him. They cried a bit, then went and told their mother that their little brother had disappeared.

The mother sent the oldest daughter to look for him. She went out into a meadow, where three paths were in front of her. She set off along the one that went straight ahead. She walked and walked, until she came to a birch tree. ‘Birch tree, birch tree! Tell me, where’s my little brother?’

‘Pick leaves from me, take half of them for yourself, and leave half for me. I’ll come in handy to you in time!’

The girl didn’t listen. She said, ‘I don’t have time!’ and she went on further. She came to an apple tree. ‘Apple tree, apple tree! Did you happen to see my little brother?’

‘Pick all the apples off me; take half for yourself, and leave half for me. I’ll come in handy to you in time.’

She said, ‘No, I don’t have time! How can I pick fruit? I’m going to look for my very own blood brother!’ She walked and walked. She came to a stove. And the stove had been lit; it was
very hot. ‘Stove, stove! Did you happen to see my own little brother?’

‘Fair maiden! Sweep out the stove, bake a wafer, take half for yourself, and leave half for me. I’ll come in handy to you in time.’

‘How can I sweep and bake? I’m on my way to take care of my brother!’

She went on further. A house was standing on chicken legs, on spindle heels; it stood there and spun around. She said, ‘Little house, little house! Stand with your back to the woods, your front to me!’ The house turned around, and she went up into it. She said a prayer to God and bowed in all four directions.

A baba yaga was lying on the bench, with her head in the wall, her legs sticking up into the ceiling, and with her teeth on the shelf. The baba yaga said, ‘Fie, fie, fie! Until now there was no smell or sight of a Russian soul. You, maiden, are you doing a deed or fleeing a deed?’

She said, ‘Granny! I’ve walked over mosses and over swamps. I got all soaked through, and I’ve come to you to warm up.’

‘Sit down, fair maiden! Look for things on my head!’

She sat down to look and saw her brother sitting on a chair, while the tomcat Yeremey told him stories and sang songs. The old woman, the baba yaga, fell asleep. The girl took her brother and ran off to take him home.