Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov (Penguin Classics) (48 page)

Then Semyon came in and wished her good morning. Everything, she realized, was for real. ‘What’s happened, son?’ she asked. ‘Where have all these goods come from?’

‘From one good,’ he replied, ‘comes another good. Now you’ll be able to live in comfort and I’ll be able to marry whomever I like. No one can look down on us now.’

‘Well,’ thought his mother, ‘what a bold, quick-witted son I’ve got!’

The son then returned to his same request: ‘Go on, mother, now you must go to the tsar and tsaritsa. You must ask on my behalf for the hand of their daughter.’

The mother looked all around her. She walked about the mansion. She thought how rich and splendid everything looked.

‘All right,’ she decided. ‘I’ll go to the tsar and tsaritsa and ask for the hand of their daughter. We may not be their equals, but we’re not far beneath them.’

Off she went.

She walked straight into the imperial hut, into the tsar’s front room. The tsar and tsaritsa were drinking tea. They’d poured a little into their saucers and were blowing on it to cool it down. The tsarevna was in her maiden’s room, sorting through the chests that contained her dowry.

The tsar and tsaritsa went on blowing into their saucers. They didn’t even notice Semyon’s mother. Some of the tea splashed onto the tablecloth. And it wasn’t just tea – it was tea with sugar! A tsar – and he didn’t even know how to drink tea!

‘That’s tea, you know, not water,’ said Semyon’s mother. ‘Why splash it about?’

The tsar looked at her. ‘And what’s brought you here?’ he asked.

Semyon’s mother stepped forward into the centre of the room.
As a matchmaker should, she stood beneath the roof beam – beneath the mother beam of the hut.

‘Good day, Sir Sovereign Tsar,’ she said. ‘You’ve got stock for sale and we’ve got a buyer. Allow my son to marry your daughter.’

‘Who is this son of yours? Where are his estates and what is his lineage?’

‘He’s from peasant stock and he’s from a village some way away. His name is Semyon Yegorovich. Have you not heard of him?’

The tsaritsa gaped in astonishment. ‘What’s got into you, woman? We’re knee-deep in suitors – we can pick and choose. What do we want with the son of a peasant?’

Semyon’s mother took offence at this. ‘My son’s no ordinary peasant, thank you. He’s worth more than ten tsareviches. And as for a mere tsarevna, a mere girl-daughter …’

The tsar thought up a cunning ruse. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘tell your son to construct a crystal bridge from our palace hut to his front door. In the morning we’ll ride over and take a look at his rooms. Yes indeed!’

Semyon’s mother went back home. As she went in, she nearly tripped up over the cat and dog. They had grown very sleek.

She shooed them angrily out of the way. ‘Eating and sleeping all day,’ she said to herself. ‘A fat lot of use those two are!’

Then she spoke to her son: ‘It’s no good, my son. They didn’t agree.’

‘What do you mean? How could they not agree?’

‘What did you expect, son? Did you think they were going to jump for joy? The tsar just made fun of us. He said, “Let him construct a crystal bridge from our palace to his front door. Then we can ride over to you across crystal.” ’

‘That’s all right, mother. That’s child’s play.’

That night Semyon cast his ring from one hand to the other hand. He summoned his young men and ordered them to construct a crystal bridge by the following morning. The bridge was to go from his own porch to the imperial palace hut, it was to cross over all the rivers and gullies, and there was to be a
carriage that would travel the length of the bridge under its own power.

Everywhere round about, from midnight until dawn, could be heard the ring of hammers and the rasping of saws. In the morning Semyon went out onto the porch to have a look. The bridge was ready; it was made of crystal and a self-powered carriage was travelling along it.

‘Go on, mother,’ he said. ‘Go and speak to the tsar now. Tell him and the tsaritsa to get ready to come and visit. Say I’ll be rolling up any moment to collect them in the self-powered carriage.’

His mother set off.

Crystal is slippery and it was a windy day. The moment she stepped onto the bridge, there was a gust of wind from behind her. She fell down in fright, then slid all the way to the tsar’s porch on her backside.

‘I called by yesterday,’ she said to the tsar, ‘and you ordered my son to construct a bridge. Have a look through the window – your bridge is now ready.’

The tsar looked out through the window.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘A real bridge – who’d have thought it? Your son certainly knows a thing or two!’

The tsar put on his crown and his gold brocade trousers. He called the tsaritsa and went out onto the porch. He tested the railings: were they firm? He ran the palm of his hand over the crystal bricks: were they the real thing? ‘Well, well, well,’ he said to himself. ‘Goodness knows how, but the bridge has certainly been built good and proper.’

Just then Semyon rolled up in a wonderful, self-powered carriage. He opened one of the doors and said, ‘Greetings to you, Sovereign Tsar, and to your Sovereign Tsaritsa-Wife! Please be seated. Come and be our guests!’

‘I’ll be only too glad,’ said the tsar, ‘but my wife may be a little timid.’

Semyon looked at the tsaritsa. She threw up her hands in horror.

‘I’m not going. It’s awful. It’ll drop us down into the river.’

Then the tsar’s courtiers and magnates appeared. The eldest
pronounced, ‘You must set an example, your Highness. You have to go. The people mustn’t think you’re afraid.’

The tsar and the tsaritsa climbed into the carriage – what else could they do? The courtiers all crowded onto the footboards or hung from the door handles.

The bell rang. The carriage whistled, hummed and roared and began to shake. In a cloud of smoke and steam it jerked forward – and then off it went. It rocked and rolled all the way. The tsar and tsaritsa were glad there was only one bridge to cross.

They reached Semyon’s palace. Semyon got out to open the tsar’s door, but the courtiers were there first. They were dragging the tsar and tsaritsa out of the carriage, fanning them and trying to bring them back to their senses.

The tsaritsa was shouting and screaming. The tsar was quite silent, but you could see he felt the same as his wife.

‘My!’ said the tsaritsa. ‘I’ve never been so jolted and shaken in all my life. Where’s that suitor gone – the devil take him! Yes, young man, you can have the girl – do what you like with her! And we’ll be going back home on foot.’

Everything went as Semyon wished. The tsarevna was given to him in marriage and they began to live together as man and wife. Their life began well, there was no gainsaying it.

But then one day something happened. Semyon and his wife went for a walk in the forest. They walked a long way. They felt tired, lay down under a tree and dozed off.

Just then Aspid, the adopted son of the snake tsar, happened to pass by. He saw the ring on Semyon’s finger and turned into a viper from envy. He had hankered after that ring for many years; he knew its magic power and had kept asking the snake tsar to give it to him. But the snake tsar had always refused, and he had never told him the secret of the magic ring’s action.

Aspid turned himself into a beautiful maiden. He was even more beautiful than Semyon’s young wife. He woke Semyon and beckoned to him. ‘In a moment,’ Aspid was saying to himself, ‘that ring will be mine.’

Semyon looked at the unknown beauty who was making signs to him. ‘Be off with you,’ he said. ‘Wherever you’re going, get going there! You may be comely, you may even be comelier
than my wife, but my wife’s dearer to me. No, you won’t catch
me
going anywhere with you!’

And Semyon went back to sleep.

Then Aspid turned himself into a handsome young man, a prince of princes. He woke up the tsarevna, Semyon’s wife, and began strutting about in front of her.

‘What a man!’ thought the tsarevna. ‘Far more handsome than my husband! A pity he wasn’t around earlier – I could have done with a suitor like him!’

Aspid went right up to Semyon’s wife and held out his hand to her. The tsarevna got to her feet and glanced down at Semyon. There was dirt on his face and he was blowing it about as he breathed.

‘Who are you?’ the tsarevna asked Aspid.

‘I’m the son of the tsar. They call me the Prince of Princes.’

‘And I’m a tsar’s daughter!’

‘Come along with me then. I’ll look after you well.’

‘Let’s go, my prince!’ said Semyon’s wife, and gave him her hand.

Aspid whispered something in the tsarevna’s ear – and she nodded in agreement. Then he went off alone. What he had instructed her to do was to find out from Semyon the secret of the magic ring’s action. Then she was to bring him the ring.

She and Semyon went back home. She took Semyon by the hand and asked if it was true that he had a magic ring on his finger. If he really loved her, he should tell her about this magic ring: how did the ring act?

Semyon was kind and good. He told his wife everything. ‘My wife loves me,’ he thought, ‘so why shouldn’t she know about the ring? She’s not going to do me any harm.’

And Semyon put his magic ring on his wife’s finger: after all, he could always take it back again when he needed it.

During the night the tsarevna transferred the ring from one finger to another.

The twelve young men appeared straight away. ‘Here we are,’ they said. ‘What can we do for you, new mistress?’

‘Here’s what you can do for me. Take this mansion and the
crystal bridge and move them to where the Prince of Princes lives.’

And that was that; no longer did Semyon Yegorovich have a wife.

He and his mother awoke in the morning to find everything gone. All they had was a poor hut and an empty barn; everything was as it had been before. There were just the four of them, Semyon and his mother, and the cat and the dog – and there was nothing at all for any of them to eat.

Semyon did not let out a word of complaint, not even a sigh. He recalled what his mother had said: ‘Don’t marry a tsarevna – it won’t bring you happiness.’ Why hadn’t he listened to his mother?

In his sorrow Semyon looked out of the window. A carriage was approaching; inside it he could see the tsar. Just opposite Semyon’s window the carriage stopped and the tsar got out. He looked around: where had everything gone? There was no mansion and no crystal bridge. Nowhere was there anything that gleamed or glittered – only a poor old hut and Semyon watching the tsar through the window.

‘What’s all this?’ shouted the tsar. ‘Where’s my daughter the tsarevna? What have you done with her, you cheat and deceiver?’

Semyon went out to the tsar and told him the truth: that the tsarevna had taken his magic ring and deceived him.

The tsar did not believe the truth. He got into a rage and ordered Semyon to be thrown into prison until he confessed what he’d done with the tsarevna.

Semyon’s mother was left without her son and breadwinner – and very soon she was left with nothing to eat. She called to the cat and the dog and set off begging. She would beg for a crust of bread beneath one window and eat it beneath the next. But it was turning cold and dark. Summer had grown old, too. Winter was drawing near.

The cat said to the dog, ‘We won’t last much longer like this. We must find the tsarevna and get the magic ring back. Our master saved us from death. Now it’s our turn to save him.’

The dog agreed. He sniffed at the ground and ran off. The cat followed.

They had to run a long, long way. And what’s quick to say can take many a day.

They ran and ran until they saw the crystal bridge and the mansion that had once been a home to them and Semyon.

The dog waited outside while the cat went in. She stole into the bedchamber of the tsarevna who had deceived Semyon. The tsarevna was asleep. The cat saw the ring glittering between the tsarevna’s teeth. Yes, she was keeping it in her mouth; she must have been afraid the ring would be stolen.

The cat caught a mouse, gave him a bite on the ear and told him what he must do to stay alive. The mouse climbed up onto the bed, crept silently over the tsarevna and tickled her in the nostril with his tail. The tsarevna sneezed and her mouth opened. Out fell the ring – and off it rolled across the floor.

The cat seized the ring and leaped through the window. The tsarevna awoke. But by the time she had begun searching her room, the ring was already far away and the mouse that had tickled the tsarevna’s nose was quietly gnawing a crust of bread in the kitchen: what would a little mouse know about what had just happened?

The cat and the dog made for home. They ran and ran. They didn’t eat or sleep – there was no time. They ran over mountains and they ran through deep forests. They swam across rivers and they crossed open steppe. All the way the cat kept the magic ring under her tongue. She never once opened her mouth.

There before them lay the very last river. Beyond it they could see their own village. They could see Semyon’s hut.

The dog said to the cat, ‘Sit on my back and I’ll swim. And be sure to keep your teeth tight together. Don’t drop the ring.’

They began to swim the river. They were half way across. The dog said, ‘Careful, puss. Don’t speak or you’ll drown the ring.’

The cat didn’t say a word. They swam a little further. Then the dog said:

‘Don’t say a word, puss!’

The cat hadn’t said anything at all. And then the dog spoke again:

‘Don’t drop the ring, puss! Keep your mouth shut!’

‘But my mouth is shut!’ said the cat – and dropped the ring into the river.

As soon as they’d reached the bank, they started cursing and fighting.

‘It’s all your fault, you stupid chatterbox of a cat!’ whined the dog.

‘No, it’s all
your
fault, you barking blabbermouth,’ replied the cat. ‘Why did you keep talking when I wasn’t saying a word?’

Just then some fishermen dragged in their net and began gutting their catch. They saw the cat and the dog quarrelling and thought they must be quarrelling because they were hungry. They threw them some fish guts.