Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov (Penguin Classics) (31 page)

Well, Stepan didn’t know what to reply. He had a betrothed. A good lass, an orphan. Needless to say, though, she was nowhere near as beautiful as the malachite girl! She was just a simple ordinary person. Stepan hemmed and hawed, then said: ‘You’ve a dowry fit for a tsar, but I’m just a simple worker.’

‘My dear friend,’ she said, ‘please don’t beat about the bush.
Tell me straight, will you take me in marriage or not?’ And this time she knitted her brows a little more.

‘Well,’ Stepan answered bluntly, ‘I cannot, because I’m promised to another.’

He said this and thought, Now she’ll really flare up. But she seemed quite delighted.

‘Well done,’ she said, ‘Stepanushka, I praised you for your speech to the steward, but for this you get double the praise. You didn’t covet my riches, you didn’t give your Nastasya away in exchange for a girl of stone.’ The lad’s betrothed was, indeed, called Nastasya. ‘Here’s a present for your betrothed,’ she went on – and she gave him a large malachite casket. Inside it was every sort of feminine finery. Rings, earrings, bracelets and the like, items that not even the wealthiest of brides would have possessed.

‘But how can I climb up out of here carrying this great chest?’ the lad asked.

‘Don’t you fret about that. It will all be taken care of. I’ll rescue you from the steward, and you and your young wife will need for nothing, but listen now – you must heed what I say: do not, ever again, remember me. This is the third test I’m setting you. And now you must have something to eat.’

She clapped her hands again, and the lizards came running – they set the table full of dishes. She fed him with good cabbage soup, fish pie, mutton, buckwheat and the like, everything that graces the Russian table. Then she said, ‘Well, farewell, Stepan Petrovich. Be sure not to remember me.’ And she was in tears. She put out her hand, and the tears drip-dripped, and on her palm they hardened into grains. There was a good handful of them. ‘Here – may these bring you profit. People pay huge sums for these stones. You will be rich.’ And she gave them to him.

The stones were cold, but her hand was hot, just like a living hand, and it was trembling a little. Stepan took the stones, bowed low and asked, ‘Where am I to go?’ He too was cheerless. She pointed the way with one finger and a tunnel opened before him. Inside the tunnel it was as light as day. Stepan walked through the tunnel, and once again he saw all manner
of earthly treasures. He emerged right at the stope. He stepped out, the tunnel closed up, and everything was as it had been before. A lizard ran up and fitted the chain to his foot, and the casket with the gifts suddenly became small; Stepan hid it in his bosom. Soon the overseer appeared. He had come to have a laugh, but he saw Stepan with a huge heap of malachite, far more than his quota – and all of it the very finest grade. ‘What’s all this?’ he thought. ‘Where’s it all come from?’ He clambered into the stope where Stepan had been working, inspected it all and said: ‘In a stope like this, anybody could hew all the malachite he liked.’ He led Stepan to another stope, and he put his nephew where Stepan had been.

Stepan went back to work again the next day. Once again, the malachite was tumbling down, and he also began coming across nodules and nuggets of copper, while the other lad – the nephew – well what do you know, he didn’t find anything at all, it was all just dead rock and blende. At this point the overseer realized what was up. He ran to the steward and said, ‘No doubt about it. Stepan has sold his soul to an evil spirit.’

The steward replied, ‘Who he sells his soul to is his affair, but we need to make our profit. Promise him that we’ll grant him his freedom if he finds a two-ton malachite boulder.’

The steward told them to unchain Stepan. And he ordered them to stop all work at Krasnogorsk.

‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘Perhaps the fool was talking sense. In any case, the iron ore we’re striking now is all mixed up with copper – it mucks up the pig iron.’

The overseer explained to Stepan what was required of him, and the lad answered, ‘Who would say no to freedom? I’ll do my best, but whether I find it – that depends on what my luck will bring me.’

Soon Stepan did indeed find them the boulder they wanted. It was hauled up to the surface. They congratulated themselves for being so clever, but they did not give Stepan his freedom. They wrote about the boulder to the squire, and he arrived from that San Petersburgh itself. After hearing the whole story, he called Stepan over.

‘Tell you what,’ he said, ‘I give you my word as a nobleman
to set you free if you can find me a malachite mass that can … well, be hewn into pillars no less than thirty feet high.’

Stepan answered, ‘I’ve already been duped once. Now I’ve learnt my lesson. First write me a manumission paper, then I’ll do my best and we’ll see what happens.’

The squire, of course, started shouting and stamping his feet, but Stepan would not budge: ‘Oh I nearly forgot – write my betrothed a paper too. Else what kind of a muddle would that be – me free, but my wife still in bondage.’

The squire saw that the lad was not going to yield. He wrote him a certificate.

‘Here,’ he said. ‘But be sure to do your very best!’

Stepan just said the same as before: ‘Now that depends on what my luck will bring me.’

Stepan found the malachite, of course. No wonder, seeing as he knew all the insides of the mountain like the back of his hand and the Mistress herself was helping him. They hewed this malachite into tall pillars, hauled the pillars up to the surface, and the squire sent them to the top church in San Petersburgh itself.
¹
And the first boulder which Stepan found sits in our city to this day, so they say. They preserve it as a marvel.

Stepan was now a free man, but the riches in Gumeshki quite disappeared. They struck plenty of lapis lazuli, and even more blende. But nobody found so much as a trace of nuggets or nodules of copper, the malachite came to an end and water began to take over the mine. Well, from that time onwards Gumeshki fell into decline, and then it was entirely flooded. They said it was the Mistress, furious about the pillars, that they’d been put in a church. She didn’t like that at all.

Stepan did not have a happy life either. He married, started a family and built a house, all good and proper. He might have lived there in comfort and been happy, but he became downhearted and his health started failing. He was pining away by the minute.

The ailing man took it into his head to get a fowling piece and take up hunting. It was always the Krasnogorsk mine he went to, and he always came home empty-handed. One autumn day he left and didn’t return. His family waited and waited for
him … Where had he vanished to? They got together a search party, of course. And there at the mine they found him, lying dead near a tall stone, with a sort of smile on his face, and his little rifle close by on the ground, still loaded. The people who first found him described how, not far away from him, they’d seen a huge green lizard the likes of which just aren’t found in our parts. It was sitting as if keeping watch over the dead man; it had raised its head and tears were dripping down. As the people ran closer, it leapt up onto a stone, then disappeared. And when they got the dead man home and started to wash him, they saw one hand was closed into a fist, and inside the fist they could just make out some little green grains. A whole handful of them. There happened to be someone knowledgeable there. He peered at these grains from an angle and said, ‘But it’s copper emerald! That’s a rare stone, and precious. What a fortune you’ve been left, Nastasya. Only where did he get such stones from?’

Nastasya, his wife, said that the dead man had never mentioned any such stones. He had given her a casket when they were still engaged. A large casket made of malachite. There had been plenty of fine things in it, but no stones like that. No, she had never seen any like that.

They tried to release those stones from Stepan’s dead hand, but the stones crumbled to dust. No one had any idea where Stepan had got them from. Later they did some digging at Krasnogorsk. Well, there was nothing but ore, just plain brown ore, with a coppery shine. Only later did someone realize that Stepan’s stones had been the tears of the Mistress of the Copper Mountain. He had not sold them to anybody; he had kept them and hidden them from his family; he had had them with him when he met his death. Well, what do you make of that?

So that is what she’s like, the Mistress of the Copper Mountain!

A bad man who meets her will have nothing but woe, and there will be little joy for a good man.

Mramorskoye was not the only place renowned for its stoneworkers. They say that our towns too had their share of craftsmen. The only difference being that our men worked mostly with malachite, as it was plentiful enough, and scarce a higher grade to be found. Now, out of this malachite they produced some beautiful pieces. Such rare trinkets that you’d be struck with wonder: how ever did they manage that?

There was at that time a master craftsman called Prokopich. The best in the trade; no one could surpass him. But he was getting on in years.

And so the squire went and ordered his steward to send some young lads to train with this Prokopich: ‘Let him hand them down his art, to the finest detail.’

Only Prokopich – perhaps loath to share his skills, perhaps for some other reason – taught poorly indeed. He was nothing but roughness and wallops. He would plaster a lad’s head with bumps, he’d fair rip off his ears, and then he’d say to the steward, ‘This one’s no good … His eye is poor, he has a clumsy hand. He’s not got it in him.’

The steward evidently had orders to keep Prokopich happy.

‘If he’s no good, then he’s no good … We’ll give you another.’ And he’d send him a new boy.

The kids got to hear about Prokopich’s teaching methods. Early in the morning they’d start wailing away, desperate to avoid being sent to him. Nor did the fathers and mothers much like handing over their beloved children to such vain torment, and they began to cover for them as best they could. And besides, this malachite craft was an unhealthy business. The
malachite was sheer poison. It was no surprise that people tried to shield their kids.

The steward, nevertheless, minded the squire’s instructions and kept on sending apprentices to Prokopich. And Prokopich would torture the lads in his usual way, then send them back to the steward: ‘This one’s no good …’

The steward started to get mad at him: ‘How much longer is this going to go on? This one’s no good, that one’s no good, when will you find one who
is
any good? Take the lad on!’

Prokopich stuck to his guns: ‘What’s it to me? Were I to teach the kid for ten years, nothing would come of it.’

‘Look, which lad do you want?’

‘I wouldn’t complain if you sent me none at all, I wouldn’t miss them.’

And so Prokopich and the steward got through one kid after another, all with the same result: their heads were covered in bumps, and all they thought about was escape. Some even spoiled their work on purpose so that Prokopich would send them away.

And then it was the turn of Danilko the Scrawny. An outright orphan was this little lad. Twelve years old he would have been, perhaps more. He stood tall and thin as can be; it was a wonder he kept body and soul together. Well, he had a pleasant face. His hair was lovely and curly, his eyes sparkled blue. First they had taken him in as a servant in the squire’s house, for fetching the tobacco box or a handkerchief, running errands and the like. Only the little orphan had no talent for such work. Other kids would do everything at the double. At the snap of a finger they would stand to attention and ask: ‘What is your bidding?’ But this Danilko was always hiding away in a corner; standing stock still, he’d be staring wide-eyed at some picture or ornament. They’d shout for him, but he wouldn’t move an inch. To start with, of course, they used to give him a beating, but then they gave up on him: ‘What a holy fool! A real slowpoke! You’ll never make a decent servant out of
that
lad.’

They didn’t bother sending him to the factory or to the mines in the mountain: he was frail and skinny, he wouldn’t have lasted a week. The steward put him to work as a herdboy, but
Danilko wasn’t cut out for that. The lad tried mighty hard, but he always made a mess of things. He seemed to be constantly thinking about something or other. He’d fix his gaze on a blade of grass – and the cows would all wander off! The old herdsman he’d been put with was a gentle soul. He pitied the orphan, yet at times even
he
scolded him: ‘Whatever will come of you, Danilko? You will ruin yourself, and you’ll bring my old back under the whip too. Now, where’s the good in that? Tell me what it is you’re brooding over, at least.’

‘I don’t really know myself, Grandad … Nothing special … I got a bit lost in looking. There was a wee insect crawling across a leaf. It was bluish-grey, and peeping out from under its wings was a bit of yellow. The leaf was a nice broad one … Its edges were jagged, like curved little frills. The outside was darker, but in the middle it was green as can be, as if freshly painted … And this wee bug was crawling along.’

‘Sometimes I wonder if you’re a fool, Danilko. Is it your business to examine insects? If it crawls, let it crawl – your job is to watch the cows. Look, now, get this folly out of your head, else I’ll have to tell the steward!’

There was just one thing that came naturally to Danilushko. He had learnt to play the cow horn – a thousand times better than the old man! Sounded just like proper music. In the evenings, as they herded the cows, the girls and women would beg, ‘Play us a tune, Danilushko.’

And he would start playing away. His tunes were unfamiliar. Almost like the rustling of the trees, or the babbling of the river, or all manner of birds calling to one another – in any case, they sounded good. On account of these songs the women began to be mighty well-inclined to Danilushko. One would darn his kaftan, another would cut him some canvas for foot cloths, or sew him a new shirt. As for feeding him, this went without saying – each would give him as much as they could of whatever was sweetest and tastiest. The old herdsman also took a liking to Danilushko’s tunes. Only this is where things began to go a little wrong. Danilushko would start playing and he’d forget everything – it was as if the cows weren’t there at all. And this playing brought him misfortune.