The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories by Nikolai Leskov

Author:Nikolai Leskov
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780307962362
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-03-26T04:00:00+00:00

* Bodice. Trans.

Deathless Golovan

Perfect love casteth out fear.

1 JOHN 4:18

I

He himself is almost a myth, and his story a legend. To tell about him, one should be French, because only the people of that nation manage to explain to others what they don’t understand themselves. I say all this with the aim of begging my reader’s indulgence beforehand for the overall imperfection of my story of a person whose portrayal is worth the efforts of a far better master than I. But Golovan may soon be quite forgotten, and that would be a loss. Golovan is worthy of attention, and though I did not know him well enough to be able to draw his full portrait, I will select and present some features of this mortal man of no high rank who was reputed to be deathless.

The nickname “deathless,” given to Golovan, did not express mockery and was by no means an empty, meaningless sound—he was nicknamed “deathless” as a result of the strong conviction that he was a special man, a man who did not fear death. How could such an opinion of him have been formed among people who walk under God and are always mindful of their mortality? Was there a sufficient reason for it, which subsequently turned into a convention, or was this sobriquet given him by a simplicity akin to foolishness?

It seemed to me that the latter was more probable, but how others considered it I don’t know, because in my childhood I didn’t think about it, and when I grew up and could understand things, “deathless” Golovan was no longer in the world. He had died, and in a none-too-tidy manner at that: he perished during the so-called “big fire” in Orel,1 drowned in a boiling pit, which he fell into saving someone’s life or someone’s goods. However, “a big part of him, escaping corruption, went on living in grateful memory,”2 and I want to try to put down on paper what I knew and heard about him, so that his memory, which is deserving of attention, may be prolonged in the world.

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