The Fool
Once upon a time in a certain kingdom there lived an old man, and he had three sons. Two of them were clever, the third was a fool. The father died, and the sons drew lots for his property: the clever sons won every kind of useful thing; the fool only received an old ox, and that was a lean and bony one.
The time of the fair came, and the clever brothers made themselves ready to go and do a deal. The fool saw them doing this, and said:
“I also, brothers, shall take my ox to the market.”
And he led his ox by a rope tied to its horn, towards the town. On the way to the town he went through a wood, and in the wood there stood an old dried-up birch tree. The wind blew and the birch tree groaned.
“Why does the birch tree groan?” thought the fool. “Does it perhaps wish to bargain for my ox? Now tell me, birch tree, if you wish to buy. If that is so, buy. The price of the ox is twenty roubles: I cannot take less. Show your money.”
But the birch tree answered nothing at all, and only groaned, and the fool was astonished that the birch tree wished to receive the ox on credit.
“If that is so, I will wait till to-morrow,” said the fool.
He tied the ox to the birch tree, said good-bye to it, and went home.
The clever brothers came to him and began to question him.
“Well, fool,” they said, “have you sold your ox?”
“I have sold it.”
“Did you sell it dear?”
“I sold it for twenty roubles.”
“And where is the money?”
“I have not yet got the money. I have been told I shall receive it to-morrow.”
“Oh, you simpleton!” said the clever brothers.
On the next day, early in the morning, the fool got up, made himself ready, and went to the birch tree for his money. He arrived at the wood; the birch tree was there, swaying in the wind, but the ox was not there any more,—the wolves had eaten him in the night.
“Now, countryman,” said the fool to the birch tree, “pay me the money. You promised you would pay it to-day.”
The wind blew, the birch tree groaned, and the fool said:
“Well, you are an untrustworthy fellow! Yesterday you said, ‘I will pay the money to-morrow,’ and to-day you are trying to get out of it. If this is so I will wait yet another day, but after that I shall wait no longer, for I shall need the money myself.”
The fool went home, and his clever brothers again asked him: “Well, have you received your money?”
“No, brothers,” he answered, “I shall have to wait still another little day.”
“Whom did you sell it to?”
“A dried old birch tree in the wood.”
“See what a fool!” said the brothers.
On the third day the fool took an axe and set out for the wood. He arrived and demanded the money.
The birch tree groaned and groaned.
“No, countryman,” said the fool, “if you always put off everything till the morrow, I shall never get anything from you at all. I do not like joking, and I shall settle matters with you at once and for all.”
He took the axe and struck the tree, and the chips flew on all sides.
Now in the tree was a hollow, and in this hollow some robbers had hidden a bag of gold. The tree was split into two parts, and the fool saw a heap of red gold; and he gathered the gold together in a heap and took some of it home and showed it to his brothers.
And his brothers said to him:
“Where did you get such a lot of money, fool?”
“A countryman of mine gave it to me for my ox,” he said, “and there is still a great deal left. I could not bring half of it home. Let us go, brothers, and get the rest of it.”
They went into the wood and found the money, and brought it home.
“Now look you, fool,” said the clever brothers, “do not tell any one that we have so much money.”
“Of course not,” said the fool, “I will not tell any one, I promise you.”
But soon after this they met a deacon.
“What are you bringing from the wood, children?” said the deacon.
“Mushrooms,” said the clever brothers.
But the fool interrupted and said: “They are not telling the truth—we are bringing gold. Look at it if you will.”
The deacon gasped with astonishment, fell upon the gold, and took as much as he could and stuffed his pockets full of it.
But the fool was annoyed at this, and struck him with an axe and beat him till he was dead.
“Oh fool, what have you done?” said his brothers. “You will be ruined, and ruin us also. What shall we do now with this dead body?”
They thought and they thought, and then they took it to an empty cellar and threw it into the cellar.
Late in the evening the eldest brother said to the second: “This is a bad business. As soon as they miss the deacon the fool is certain to tell them all about it. Let us kill a goat and hide it in the cellar and put the dead body in some other place.”
They waited until the night was dark; then they killed a goat, threw it into the cellar, and took the body of the deacon to another place and buried it in the earth.
A few days passed; people looked for the deacon everywhere, and asked everybody they could about him. And the fool said to them:
“What do you want of him? I killed him with an axe, and my brothers threw the body into the cellar.”
They at once seized the fool and said to him:
“Take us and show us.”
The fool climbed into the cellar, took out the head of the goat, and said:
“Was your deacon black?”
“Yes,” they said.
“And had he got a beard?”
“Yes, he had a beard.”
“And had he got horns?”
“What sort of horns, you fool?”
“Well, look!” And he threw down the head.
The people looked and saw that it was a goat, and they spat at the fool and went home.
This story, more than pages of analysis and more than chapters of argument, illustrates what I mean: namely, that if the Russian poet and the Russian peasant, the one in his verse, the other in his folk tales and fairy stories, are matter-of-fact, alien to flights of exaggerated fancy, and above all things enamoured of the truth; if by their closeness to nature, their gift of seeing things as they are, and expressing these things in terms of the utmost simplicity, without fuss, without affectation and without artificiality,—if, I say, all this entitles us to call them realists, then this realism is not and must never be thought of as being the fad of a special school, the theory of a limited clique, or the watchword of a literary camp, but it is rather the natural expression of the Russian temperament and the Russian character.
I will try throughout this book to attempt to illustrate this character and this temperament as best I can, by observing widely different manifestations of it; but all these manifestations, however different they may be, contain one great quality in common: that is, the quality of reality of which I have been writing. And unless the student of Russian literature realises this and appreciates what Russian realism consists of, and what it really means, he will be unable to understand either the men or the literature of Russia.