The gates opened and several police officers came out; after them two soldiers led out the fettered Kirdjali.
He seemed to be about thirty years old. The features of his swarthy face were regular and stern. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and gave a general impression of extraordinary physical strength. A multicolored turban covered his head at an angle, a broad belt girded his slender waist; a dolman of thick blue broadcloth, the wide folds of a shirt falling to his knees, and beautiful shoes completed his attire. His look was proud and calm.
One of the officers, a red-faced little old man in a faded uniform with three buttons dangling from it, pinched a pair of tin-rimmed spectacles to the purple bump that served him as a nose, unfolded a document, and, with a nasal twang, began to read in Moldavian. From time to time he glanced haughtily at the fettered Kirdjali, to whom the document apparently referred. Kirdjali listened to him attentively. The official finished his reading, folded the document, shouted menacingly at the people, commanded them to make way, and ordered the karutsa brought. Then Kirdjali turned to him and spoke a few words in Moldavian; his voice trembled, his face changed; he wept and fell at the feet of the police officer, clanking his chains. The police officer, frightened, jumped back; the soldiers were about to pick Kirdjali up, but he got up by himself, gathered his shackles, stepped into the karutsa, and shouted “Haida!”*6 A gendarme sat beside him, the Moldavian cracked his whip, and the karutsa rolled off.
“What did Kirdjali say to you?” the young official asked the policeman.
“You see, sir,” the policeman replied, laughing, “he begged me to take care of his wife and child, who live in a Bulgarian village not far from Kilia. He’s afraid they may suffer on account of him. Stupid folk, sir.”
The young official’s account moved me deeply. I felt sorry for poor Kirdjali. For a long time I knew nothing of his fate. It was several years later that I ran into that young official. We got to talking of past times.
“And what about your friend Kirdjali?” I asked. “Do you know what’s become of him?”
“That I do,” he replied, and told me the following:
Kirdjali, having been brought to Jassy, was presented to the pasha, who condemned him to be impaled. The execution was put off until some holiday or other. Meanwhile he was locked up in prison.
The prisoner was guarded by seven Turks (simple people and at heart just as much bandits as Kirdjali); they respected him and listened to his wondrous tales with an eagerness common to the whole of the East.
Close relations developed between the guards and the prisoner. One day Kirdjali said to them: “Brothers, my hour is near! No one can escape his fate. Soon I shall part with you. I would like to leave you something to remember me by.”
The Turks were all ears.
“Brothers,” Kirdjali went on, “three years ago, when the late Mikhailaki and I were bandits, we buried a pot of galbeni*7 on the steppe not far from Jassy. It looks like neither of us is going to have that pot. So be it: take it yourselves and divide it up amicably.”
The Turks nearly lost their minds. A discussion went on about how to find the secret spot. They thought and thought, and decided that Kirdjali himself should take them there.
Night came. The Turks removed the fetters from the captive’s feet, tied his hands with a rope, and set off with him from town to the steppe.
Kirdjali led them, keeping to the same direction, from one burial mound to another. They walked for a long time. Finally, Kirdjali stopped by a wide stone, counted off twenty paces to the south, stamped his foot, and said: “Here.”
The Turks arranged themselves. Four drew their yatagans and began to dig. Three remained on guard. Kirdjali sat down on a stone and watched them work.
“Well, so? Soon now?” he asked. “Have you found it?”
“Not yet,” replied the Turks, working so hard that the sweat poured off them.
Kirdjali began to show impatience.
“What people,” he said. “You don’t even know how to dig. I’d have done it in two minutes. Untie my hands, boys, give me a yatagan.”
The Turks pondered and started talking it over.
“Why not?” they decided. “Let’s untie his hands and give him a yatagan. Where’s the harm? There’s one of him and seven of us.”
And the Turks untied his hands and gave him a yatagan.
At last Kirdjali was free and armed. What he must have felt!…He promptly started digging, the guards were helping him…Suddenly he stabbed one of them with his yatagan and, leaving the steel in his chest, snatched two pistols from behind his belt.
The remaining six, seeing Kirdjali armed with two pistols, took to their heels.
Nowadays Kirdjali does his banditry around Jassy. He recently wrote to the gospodar, demanding five thousand levi*8 from him and threatening, in case of failure to pay, to set fire to Jassy and get as far as the gospodar himself. The five thousand levi were conveyed to him.
That’s Kirdjali!
*1 Albanian (Turkish)
*2 governor’s
*3 cavalrymen of the Turkish army
*4 long, curved Turkish sabers
*5 Turkish silver coins
*6 “Let’s go!” (Tatar)
*7 Romanian gold coins
*8 Bulgarian currency, from the word for lion (lev)
Egyptian Nights
CHAPTER ONE
–Quel est cet homme?
–Ha, c’est un bien grand talent, il fait de sa voix tout ce qu’il veut.
–Il devrait bien, madame, s’en faire une culotte.*1
Charsky was a native of Petersburg. He was not yet thirty; he was not married; he was not burdened by government service. His late uncle, who had been a vice-governor in better days, had left him a decent inheritance. His life could have been very pleasant; but he had the misfortune to write and publish verses. In the magazines he was called a poet, and in the servants’ quarters a penman.
Despite the enormous privileges enjoyed by verse writers (to tell the truth, apart from the right to use the accusative case instead of the genitive, and some other so-called poetic licenses, no special privileges of Russian verse writers are known to us)—be that as it may, despite all their possible privileges, these people are subject to great disadvantages and discomforts. The most bitter, most unbearable ill for a poet is his title and label, with which he is branded and which never wears off. The public look at him as their property; in their opinion, he was born for their benefit and pleasure. If he comes back from the country, the first person he meets asks him: “Have you brought us some new little thing?” If he starts thinking about his disorderly affairs, about the illness of someone dear to him, at once a trite smile accompanies a trite exclamation: “You must be composing something!” If he falls in love?—his beauty buys an album1 in the English shop and is already waiting for an elegy. If he comes to someone he barely knows to discuss important business, the man at once calls his little boy and makes him recite some verses by so-and-so; and the boy treats the poet to a distortion of his own verses. And these are still the flowers of the trade! What about the adversities? Charsky confessed he was so sick of greetings, requests, albums, and little boys that he had constantly to refrain from some sort of rudeness.
Charsky made every possible effort to rid himself of the intolerable label. He avoided the company of his fellow litterateurs and preferred society people, even the most vapid of them. His conversation was the most banal and never touched on literature. In his dress he always observed the latest fashion with the shyness and superstition of a young Muscovite arriving in Petersburg for the first time in his life. In his study, decorated like a lady’s bedroom, there was nothing reminiscent of a writer; no books were scattered over and under the tables; the sofa was not spattered with ink; there was no disorder betraying the presence of the muse and the absence of a broom and brush. Charsky was in despair if one of his society friends found him with pen in hand. It was hard to believe what trifles a man could sink to, one who was, incidentally, endowed with talent and soul. He pretended to be now a passionate fancier of horses, now a desperate gambler, now a refined gastronome; though he was unable to tell a mountain breed from an Arabian, could never remember trumps, and secretly preferred baked potatoes to all possible concoctions of French cuisine. He led a most dissipated life; hung around at all the balls, overate at all the diplomatic dinners, and was as unavoidable at every soirée as Rezanov’s ice cream.