Information about the computer file:

Title: Prince Desire
Author: Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin
Translator: John Albert Barnstead
Edition: Version 1 of the ETC Kuzmin Collection edition of
Responsibility: John Barnstead, chief editor
Responsibility: Vivien Hannon, editor
Publisher: Electronic Text Centre, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada: Kuzmin Collection, May 2002
Source: Translated from
Encoding: Encoded in TEI-conformant SGML by Patricia Prodaniuk.

Long, long ago, so long that not only I, but my grand- mother and my grandmother's grandmother don't remember it, in the times which we may know about only from old books, nibbled at by mice and bound in pigskin, there was a country called China. Of course, it exists now as well and is even little different from the way it was about two thousand years ago, but the story which I am about to tell happened very long ago. There is no need to name the town in which it took place, or to mention the name of the large river which flowed there. These names are very difficult and you would forget them anyway, just as you forget a geography lesson. It is enough to recall that this river emptied into a sea, and that right by its mouth a rich and populous city was situated, in which there lived a poor fisherman by the name of Don-drin-ti.

He spoke as freely in Chinese as you and I do in Russian; he possessed a boat, nets, had slanting eyes and a blue nankeen shirt. His parents had died long ago, he had no wife or children, he didn't even have a brother or a sister, only nets and the boat, in which he even slept during the summer, so as not to spend anything for lodging. He was very poor and careless as well, so that everything he was paid for his daily catch he ran through that very same day; and thus it is not at all surprising that he was as poor as a mouse. But even mice have stores of cheese, stearin candle stubs and so forth, while Don-drin-ti had absolutely nothing.

Once his nets ripped and all the fish went back into the sea. This meant goodbye to any money and the evening portion of rice with beans! Don-drin-ti became very upset and grumbled: "Other people have a home, a father and mother, or at least friends, who they can go to in case of misfortune, but where will I go? Others have a godfather and godmother but what do I have? Only a boat full of holes and ragged nets!"

He kicked the boat, spat on the sand and fell into thought. But he had no sooner done so when a fog rose from the sea higher and higher and floated onto the shore right to where the unhappy Don-drin-ti was. When it reached him the fog scattered and before our fisherman there appeared a strange figure like a giant frog, but with a human head and six pairs of human arms . Don-drin-ti was not too frightened, because the Chinese like to set up images of all sorts of monsters, and the fisherman was used to them, but he was very surprised when the sea creature, opening its broad maw, began to speak in Chinese: "What do you need? What are you grumbling about?"

"My grumbling doesn't have anything to do with you. I was bewailing my fate, that I have no family to help me."

"You moaned that you had no godfather, apparently without suspecting that I am your godfather."

"Oh, is that so? Very happy to meet you. But why haven't you shown up before this and what can you do?"

The monster smiled and scratched with a hand behind its ear, which was the size of a large clover. "I did not appear because up until now Don-drin-ti did not express a desire to become acquainted with me. But I can do everything."

"Absolutely everything?"

"Absolutely everything."

"Can you make my nets sturdy again?"

"I can."

"Can you get me a new boat, perhaps?"

"I can."

"Perhaps you could arrange for me not to have to cast nets and labour at all, but to have my own house, a wife, to trade in silk, to sit peacefully in a cool shop and drink tea all day, and in the evenings play checkers on the balcony with my friends?"

Don-Drin-Ti asked such questions without any thought that the fat frog could fulfil even this, but the monster replied unchangingly: "That's not at all difficult to do, but do you have any further desires? When you have need of me, come to this place, and call out `Godfather, oh godfather'."

"All right. Goodbye, have a good sleep!" Once again the fog rose and cloaked the godfather; then it began to move in the direction of the sea and disappeared in the moonlight. Don-drin-ti thought that he had been dreaming after sleeping from hunger far into the night, but if he hadn't been sleeping, at any rate he did not believe that the godfather would keep his promise, because nothing changed: the boat full of holes continued to pitch, the ripped nets were falling apart, and the fisherman himself sat as before on a rock in his blue nankeen shirt.

Suddenly he saw several men walking along the shore as if they were searching for something; noticing the fisherman they came up to him, bowed respectfully and said: "Lord, return home; does it not pain you to upset your wife, your relatives and us, your faithful servants, with your incomprehensible caprices?"

Don-drin-ti thought that they had mistaken him for someone else in the uncertain light of the moon and answered them: "Probably you have taken me for someone else, because I have no home, no wife, no relatives, let alone servants. I am a simple poor fisherman."

"You are still pleased to be stubborn, respected Vi-hai-pi?"

"My name is not Vi-hai-pi and I have never been respected since the day I was born. I repeat: I am no more than an impoverished fisherman and I am called Don- drin-ti."

"We shall not argue with you, but do not refuse to follow us, and, perhaps, memory will return to your reason."

The fisherman wondered if the godfather's promise might not be being fulfilled, and asked: "Well all right then, if I am Vi-hai-pi, then tell me, where is my house and what do I occupy myself with?"

"You know quite well yourself: you are a rich silk trader, you have two cool shops at the bazaar and a house on the shore of the sea, where during the evenings you sit on the balcony and play checkers with your friends; you have a beautiful young wife who has two of the tiniest feet in the entire town; your respected relatives and faithful servants are always extremely upset and worried when this illness attacks you and you lose your memory and do not recognize them."

"And has this happened to me often before?"

"For some time it's been every full moon: of course, this is the action of the moon, nothing more."

Now Don-drin-ti not only became convinced that all this was the work of the godfather's hands, but even began to wonder if he weren't really Vi-hai-pi.

He willingly followed the men, who led him to a well-laid-out house with a garden and balconies, where he was met by the remaining servants, the respected gentlefolk who had turned out to be his relatives and at last a young woman in a rich dress came out. She was tiny in build, heavily powdered and roughed after the Chinese fashion; her eyes slanted, her bound feet on wooden platforms barely moved, and her miniature hands fluttered a painted fan with difficulty. So are Chinese beauties - and therefore it is not surprising that to our fisherman she seemed a miraculous vision.

She threw herself on his neck and trilled in a fine voice like a ten year old girl: "Vi-hai-pi, my honey, star of my heart, at last you have come back to me, to your little Miao-Miao. Now you will stay with us always, and when sad thoughts descend upon you, I will play songs of the golden mosquitoes for you on my flute."

Don-drin-ti did not make himself ask and settled in the little house with the garden by the sea, leading exactly the sort of life he had wanted. During the day he sat in the cool shop and drank tea, listening to news from the bazaar; in the evenings he either played checkers on the balcony with his friends or strolled through the almond grove, or listened as Miao-Miao played songs of the golden mosquitoes softly on the flute, while the fish in the pool, thrusting their heads out into the moonlight, listened to her music and seemed to dance.

So he lived a certain time in peace, but then again began to be troubled by desires. Of course, now it was easier for him to fulfill them than when he had been a lowly fisherman, but nevertheless he frequently resorted to the godfather's assistance who never refused him.

At first he wanted to keep getting richer; he started eight shops, bought another four houses in which he lived in turn, he planted wild gardens in which the flowers bloomed in precisely those months when they were not supposed to, melons and pineapples ripened in winter, and in February, when the snow had not yet abandoned the fields, cherries, almonds and peaches bloomed.

He grew tired of hearing his wife play the flute and he started a whole choir of lady flautists who played in the evenings and during dinners. They all had awkward names: Han-ki, Pan-ki, Splash-di-flor and others. They could play songs so gay that not only the fish in the pool but the bronze images of frogs would begin to dance, and so sad that all the trees and bushes lowered their leaves and from them silver tears dropped, while the roses and tulips thoughtfully shook their heads - and these flautists knew many other songs as well, so many that if you listened to one song every day there would be enough of them to last three years.

The roofs and balconies of his houses he hung with bells, which rang gaily in the morning and sadly in the evening. In his aviary there were pheasants from across the sea and particoloured peacocks you couldn't tear your eyes away from. He had dwarves, a mass of precious stones and gold sedan chairs with green chairs with green curtains on which he was carried from house to house, from shop to shop, because he went on foot only in his garden.

Finally he grew tired of all this and he took a fancy to see how people live in foreign lands. He went on seven journeys and circled the entire world. He visited Japan, and India, and Persia where wonderful roses grow and hunters gallop after tigers in the wild mountains; he was in Egypt where crocodiles slumber in the reeds like wet logs; he even travelled to England, where for half the year nothing can be seen for the fog, and canaries become grey from the soot that constantly flies out the chimneys. But having circled the whole earth Don-drin-ti found that people are the same everywhere and that it is still better where you were born.

Then he began to seek power. With the godfather's help he became a civil servant, who have the most power in China. We will not describe how he ascended from rank to rank and gathered ever more pine- cones. In China they judge the dignity and respectability of civil servants by the number of pinecones they have. He became the right hand of the Emperor and his name was lauded by many poets, who sang of his wisdom prudence and wealth.

Once, after a merry holiday, Don-drin-ti returned to his palace, and, since he could not get to sleep, he went out on the balcony and began to listen to a nightingale singing in the bushes, and he thought: "Of course, now I'm richer and more eminent and stronger than any man on earth. But why do I feel no joy from it? If I remember how I was led for the first time to the house of the silk trader and taken for the master, that was one of the happiest moments of my life, but along with that it was from that moment that I began to rejoice less and less. I think it is because I have nothing to desire. I know that whatever I desire will be fulfilled at once, that's why I don't even feel like desiring. Even when all I had was a boat full of holes and ragged nets, I was happier even then: I sang then without a care, but now I don't even remember the last time I smiled. It's very sad, of course, but it's impossible to set right."

Suddenly from the depths of the garden a voice reached Don-drin-ti: "Everything can be set right."

Don-drin-ti thought he was hearing things and repeated again: "it's unlikely to be set right." But the voice answered him again:

"Everything can be set right."

Don-drin-ti thought it was one of the parrots which he had hung in cages about the garden, mindlessly repeating the words of some servant. But the voice wasn't raucous like a parrot's but tender and dense, as if the wind had struck a great bronze bell or a musician had drawn his bow along the high strings of a `cello. It seemed half way between the voice of a man and the voice of a child.

Then Don-drin-ti picked up his robe and descended from the balcony into he garden to see who was speaking to him. Since the garden was sparse after the Chinese fashion and was, moreover, brightly illumined by the moon, there was no place in it to hide except one - a porcelain gazebo located in the right corner of the garden. It was there that Don-drin-ti headed to settle his doubts. Stopping in front of the carved bronze door, he repeated: "it's unlikely to be set right" and from behind the door he was answered:

"Everything can be set right."

Then Don-drin-ti entered the gazebo and saw a boy there, about sixteen, completely naked, who was sitting on the carpet and weeping bitterly. Don-drin-ti was so surprised at this that he even forgot what he wanted to ask about. He approached the weeping youth and said: "Why are you here, and who has hurt you? Of course, thieves attacked you and stole your clothes and you came over the fence to hide from them in my garden?"

The boy did not answer and only wept, then Don-drin-ti asked again: "Perhaps you're deaf and dumb? I'm asking you who hurt you?"

"You hurt me"

"How could I hurt you? I'm seeing you for the first time."

"You hurt me by parting me from you."

"Could you really have been working for me? I don't remember you."

"Take a good look at me. Do you really not recognize me?"

He turned his round face with great dark eyes toward Don-drin-ti, but no matter how Don-drin-ti looked at him, he couldn't remember ever having seen him anywhere. Then the boy said:

"Of course, you could have forgotten me, it's been twenty years or so already since we saw each other last."

"How old are you? You weren't on this earth yet, even, twenty years ago."

The boy smiled and said: "I'm always the same age because I am a prince - Desire, I am your desire. I was always with you, but you didn't see me, and when your godfather began to fulfill all your whims there was nothing left for me to do but abandon you. That's why I'm crying - because you have forgotten me. Each person has such a prince, each one has his own. We rejoice and protect you while you love us and while your desires are not exhausted. But when you are quieted and turn away from us, we weep and leave you. Look at me: aren't you ashamed to trade me for a misfortunate frog - your godfather?"

Don-drin-ti didn't know what to think; he forgot about his palace, about his rank, and seemed to become a fisher- man as before, who desired to console this prince. He asked the boy: "But what must I do to be with you again?"

"You have already done it, because you desired to console me, but know that in doing this you are deprived of your godfather's patronage and become the old Don-drin-ti. Think how gay if will be: I will always be with you, only you won't see me, but as a sign of peace let me kiss you."

He jumped to his feet like a goat, and raising himself on tiptoe, kissed Don-drin-ti on the lips, and when he came to nothing was there, not the prince, not the gazebo, not the garden, not the palace, while Don-drin-ti himself sat on a rock by the sea - in front of him bobbed a boat full of holes and ragged nets lay about.

Don-drin-ti closed his eyes, thinking that he was dreaming, but when he opened them everything stayed the same as before. And no matter how often he closed his eyes or opened them, nothing changed. Thus he sat until dawn, still not believing the change in his situation. When he finally was convinced that all was lost, he tried to call the godfather. But the godfather didn't appear.

Don-drin- ti felt hunger pangs and began to spread out his nets to repair them. He repaired them and grumbled: "I'd give a lot to meet that brat again - he'd find out what a rope's for and really have something to cry over." After twenty years this was the first desire of the ungrateful fisherman.