Aleksandr Grin (1880–1932) was born Aleksandr Stepanovich Grinevsky in Kirov Oblast, Russia. With his first publication in 1906, Grin began publishing mainly poetry and short stories. His work was exotic and romantic at a time when most Russian writers used satire to dissect the political climate. A domovoi is a protective, typically unseen house spirit and in Slavic culture is sometimes called the “master” of the house. And as in many Slavic folktales, a family could bribe this spirit with milk. “Talkative Domovoi” is reminiscent of Scarlet Sails, Grin’s most iconic novel, because it is also set in an unnamed fantasy land.
I stood by the window, whistling a song about Annie.
—E. W. Hornung
THE DOMOVOI SUFFERING a toothache—doesn’t it seem like libeling the being whose services are sought by so many witches and miracle-workers that you’d think he could scarf sugar by the barrel? But it was so, it was the truth—small and sad domovoi sat by the cold stove, its fire long forgotten. He shook his head rhythmically, held onto his bandaged cheek and moaned pitifully, like a child, and suffering pulsed in his red and cloudy eyes.
The rain was pouring outside, and I entered this abandoned house to wait out the weather and saw him…he forgot to disappear as would be proper.
“It doesn’t even matter,” he told me in a voice resembling a combative parrot, “no one will believe that you saw me anyway.”
Just in case, I folded my fingers into the sign of a snail’s horns, and said, “Don’t worry. You won’t receive neither a silver coin shot nor a spell from me. But the house is empty.”
“And yet how hard is it to leave it despite that,” the little domovoi argued. “Just listen. I’ll tell you but only because my teeth hurt—I feel better when I talk…much better, oy. My dear friend, it was just one hour—and this is why I got stranded here. You see, it is important to understand the whys and the hows. Mine—my kin…” He signed plaintively. “Mine—I mean, ours—they all are already brushing horses’ tails on the other side of the mountains, they all left here. But I cannot, because I have to understand.
“Look around—there are holes in the walls and the ceiling, but imagine that everything is aglow with warmest, shiniest copperware, the curtains are white and gauzy, and there are as many flowers inside as in the meadows and the forest; the floor is polished, the cold stove you are sitting on like it’s a grave marker is red-hot, and the dinner bubbling in pots is exhaling scrumptious steam.
“There used to be mines not far from here—granite pits. And in this house, there used to live a husband and a wife—a rarest pair. His name was Philipp, and hers—Annie. She was twenty years old, and he was twenty-five. Look, look, do you like this?” The domovoi grabbed at a tiny flower that sprang in the dirt that accumulated over the years in the crack of the windowsill, and ceremoniously handed it to me. “This is what she was like. I loved her husband too, but I liked her better—she was so domestic…and we like people who are just like us, we find charm in that. Sometimes she would go to the nearby creek and try to catch fish with her bare hands, or strike a great stone at the crossroads and listen how long it would take to go silent, and laughed at the yellow sun dapples on the wall. Don’t think her strange—there is magic in things like that, a great knowledge, but only us, goat-legged can read the signs of a great soul; people are not insightful.
“ ‘Annie!’ the husband would call joyfully when he came home for lunch from the mine where he was a bookkeeper. ‘I am not alone—I brough Ralph with me.’ He made this joke so often that Annie smiled and without hesitation set the table for two. And they would meet as if they were just discovering each other—she ran to meet him, and he brought her back in his arms.
“At night, he would take out Ralph’s letters—Ralph was his friend he spent many years of his youth with before he met Annie, and he read them out loud. Annie would rest her head on her folded arms and half-listen to the familiar words about the sea and the shining of miraculous rays on the other side of our enormous earth, about volcanoes and pearl-divers, storms and great battles in the shade of gigantic forest trees. And every word resonated like a heavy singing stone at the crossroads, which makes a drawn-out peal every time it is struck.
“ ‘He will arrive soon,’ Philipp would say. ‘He will visit us when his three-masted Sinbad sails to Gres. From there, it is just an hour by train and another hour from the train station to our house.’
“Sometimes Annie would ask a question about Ralph’s life, and then Philipp would launch into tales of Ralph’s bravery and oddness and generosity, and his fate resembling a fairy tale: poverty and striking gold, how he bought his ship, the lace of the legends spun from ship’s rigging, seafoam, games and trade, danger and surprises. Eternal game. Eternal excitement.
Eternal music of the sea and the shore.
“I never heard them fight—and I hear everything. I never saw them look at each other coldly—and I see everything. ‘I’m sleepy,’ she would say at night, and he would wrap her up in a blanket and carry her to bed like a child. As she was falling asleep, she would ask, ‘Phil, who’s whispering in the treetops? Who’s walking on the roof? Whose face do I see reflected in the creek next to yours?’ And he would answer, looking into her half-closed eyes with worry,
“ ‘There’s a crow on the roof, the wind blowing through the trees, stones are shining in the creek—go to sleep, and don’t walk around barefoot.’
“He would then sit at his desk to finish his latest report, wash his face, prepare the logs for the morning fire, and when he went to bed he fell asleep immediately and always forgot his dreams. And he never went to the crossroads to strike the singing stone, where fairies spin magnificent carpets from dust and moonrays.”
All right, so listen. There isn’t much left of this story of three people who so perplexed the domovoi.
“It was a sunny day, a full blooming of the earth, when Philipp, his ledger in hand, was taking stock of the granite pit daily output, and Annie, coming home from the station where she did her shopping, stopped by her stone and made it sing with the strikes of her house keys. Now, the stone was a shard from a great mountain, taller than your waist. When you strike it, it rings for a long time, quieter and quieter, and just when you think it went silent, you can press your ear against it and still hear its almost silent voice inside.
“Our forest roads are gardens. Their beauty grasps your heart, the flowers and boughs over your head are watching the sun through their fingers. The sun changes color and your eyes too get tired of it and wander about aimlessly, as its yellow and lilac and dark-green colors dapple the white sand. There is nothing better on such a day than cold water.
“Annie stopped and listened to the forest singing in her very chest, and struck the stone again, smiling every time the new wave of sound caught up and drowned the previous, dying one. She never thought she was being watched, but a man came around the turn of the road and approached her. His steps grew slower until he stopped; she was still smiling when she looked up and saw him—she didn’t start or step back, as if he always was there.
“He was tanned—very tanned, and the sea has carved his face into sharpness, like a running wave. And it was beautiful because it reflected an untamed and gentle soul, and his dark eyes looked into Annie’s, growing darker and brighter, and her pale eyes looked mildly back.
“You would be correct in thinking that I always followed her—there are snakes in the forest.
“The stone had fallen silent some time ago and they still looked, smiling, wordless, silent. He stretched his hand toward her and she—slowly—extended hers to meet his. He took her head into his hands carefully, so carefully that I was afraid to breathe, and kissed her lips. Her eyes closed.
“Then they stepped away from each other, the stone separating them. Annie turned to see Philipp, coming their way. ‘Look, Philipp! Ralph’s finally here.’
“Philipp couldn’t get a word out at first. Finally, he tossed his hat into the air and shouted, ‘Ralph! I see you already met Annie. Look, it’s her!’ His kind, rough face shone with excitement. ‘Ralph, you’ll stay with us, we’ll show you around. And finally we’ll talk and catch up. Look, my friend, my wife…she also was waiting for you.’
“Annie rested her hand on her husband’s shoulder and looked at him with her warmest, most generous expression, and then looked at their visitor with the same gaze, as if both were equally dear to her.
“ ‘Phil, I’ll have to go back,’ Ralph said. ‘I mixed up your address and thought I was taking the wrong road…this is why I left my luggage at the station. I have to go get it.’
“They made plans to meet later and each went their own way. And that’s all, hunter, murderer of my friends, I know about it. And I don’t understand. Maybe you can explain this to me.”
“Did Ralph come back?”
“They waited for him but he wrote from the station that he ran into an acquaintance who offered him a lucrative opportunity he could not turn down.”
“What about them?”
“Died…Died a long time ago, maybe thirty years. Cold water on a hot day—she was the first, caught a cold. He walked behind her coffin, half-gray, and then disappeared. Locked himself in the room with the firepit, I hear. But before that—what happened? My teeth hurt and I cannot understand.”
“And it will be so,” I said, politely, shaking his hairy unwashed paw good-bye. “Only we, five-fingered, can read the signs of the heart; domovois are not insightful.”