The Soldier and Death is a Russian Fairy Tale collected by Alexander Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki (Народные Русские Сказки). It was translated in English by Arthur Michell Ransome.
A soldier is discharged from the army after twenty-five years of service, receiving three dry biscuits in payment. On the way back home, he runs into three old, starving beggars, one after another, and he gives each one a biscuit. The third beggar rewards his selflessness giving him a magic pack of cards and a magic bag which can catch anything.
Later, the soldier arrives in a city and finds out the tsar's palace has been abandoned because a band of demons crowd into the palace every night, partying and gambling loudly and murdering anyone who dares to spend the night in the place. The soldier asks the tsar to permission to spend the night in the palace, and the tsar reluctantly grants his request. A pack of demons overrun the palace when the clock strikes twelve, and upon seeing the soldier, insist that he plays a round of cards with them. The soldier plays with his magic pack, wins every game and fleeces the demons out of their gold and silver. When the mad demons try to tear him to pieces, the soldier imprisons them in the sack.
The tsar's servants come into the palace the next morning and find the soldier alive. The soldier asks them to fetch two blacksmiths, an iron anvil and their heaviest hammers as fast as possible. The blacksmiths hammer the demon-packed sack on and on until the demons swear to leave and never return. The soldier lets the demons rush out of the sack, but he grabs one of them and forces him to swear to be his faithful servant before letting him go.
Grateful, the tsar asks the soldier to live with him as his own brother. The soldier moves to the palace with the tsar, and he eventually gets married and has one son. After a while, though, his son falls sick, and nobody can heal him. The soldier calls his demon servant and asks him to cure his son. The little devil takes a glass from his pocket, fills it with cold water, sets it on the ill child's forehead and asks the soldier look through the glass of water. The soldier sees Death standing at his son's feet, and the Devil says the child then can be saved. The demon splashes the glass' water over the child, who is healed immediately. The soldier says he will give back their blood oath if the demon gives him the glass, and the little demon is happy to give the magic glass and flee back into Hell.
The soldier sets himself up as a doctor using his glass; but it came to pass the tsar fell ill. The soldier uses his glass, sees Death standing at the Tsar's head, and tells him he has but a few minutes left to live. Infuriated because the soldier has cured everybody but him, despite treating him as his brother, the tsar declares he will order him beheaded if he dies. Desperate, the soldier asks Death to take him instead. Immediately the tsar becomes healthy again, but the soldier starts getting sick. The soldier asks Death one hour to say goodbye to his family, and his wish is granted. Before the time is up, though, the soldier imprisons Death in his magic sack. He then travels to a thick, remote forest, and hangs the sack from a high tree.
The soldier gets thrilled at averting his own demise. Several years later, though, he runs into a decrepit, sick, toothless old woman who berates him for his actions. She was ready to die and reunite with her family in the afterlife when he imprisoned Death. Instead, she — and hundreds of thousands of people — keep getting older, sicker and weaker, and their torment will never end. And she prays God that the soldier will be punished for their unending pain.
The soldier freaks out, realizing he has committed an unforgivable sin, and decides to free Death and face his fate. However, Death refuses to take him and flees. The soldier decides to travel to Hell so he can be punished, but the demons still remember that he put them through, and the Devil is so scared of the soldier that he refuses let him in. Considering he may have founded a way to bargain his way into Heaven, the soldier asks the release of two hundred damned souls, and the Devil releases two hundred fifty souls so that he leaves already.
The soldier leads the released souls to Heaven, but God will not let him in either. The soldier tries to trick his way into Heaven by ordering one of the released souls to take his magic sack, and pull him in after going through the doors. However, the soul is so happy to walk into the Heaven that it forgets completely what it was supposed to do, and drops the magic flour sack.
And so the soldier, after waiting a long time, went slowly back to earth. Death would not take him. There was no place for him in Paradise and no place for him in Hell. For all I know he may be living yet.
It can be read here
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The tale was adapted in an episode of Jim Henson's The Storyteller.
Compare with German tales "Gambling Hansel", "Brother Lustig", "Godfather Death" and Romanian tale "Ivan Turbincă".
Tropes:
- Age Without Youth: Death only means people are not dying... but they keep getting older and sicker. And they are not happy about it.
- Badass Boast: The tsar tries to talk the soldier of spending one night in the haunted palace, but the soldier dismisses his concerns:"Your Majesty," says he, "will you give me leave to spend one night in your empty palace?"
"God bless you," says the Tzar, "but you don't know what you are asking. Foolhardy folk enough have tried to spend a night in that palace. They went in merry and boasting, but not one of them came walking out alive in the morning."
"What of that?" says the soldier. "Water won't drown a Russian soldier, and fire won't burn him. I have served God and the Tzar for twenty-five years and am not dead. A single night in that palace won't be end of me." - Bag of Holding: The soldier's magic flour sack can catch anything if ordered to get into it. The soldier catches three geese, a pack of demons, and even Death itself.And here's a flour sack for you as well. If you meet anything and want to catch it, just open the sack and tell beasts or birds or aught else to get into it, and they'll do just that, and you can close the sack and do with them what you will."
- Balancing Death's Books: When the tsar is about to die, the soldier asks Death to let the sovereign alone and take his life instead.
- Barred from the Afterlife: At the end, the soldier tries to enter both Hell and Heaven and, being turned away from both, is left to wander the Earth forever.
- Bigger on the Inside: The soldier imprisons a legion of devils in his magic flour sack.
- Blessed with Suck: The soldier winds up immortal because Death is afraid to come near him. As time passes, he discovers the drawbacks of the situation.
- Blood Oath: When the soldier lets the demons out of his sack, he grabs one of them, slices his wrist and forces him to write a servitude contract using a pen dipped in the demon's own blood.But the soldier was no fool, and he grabbed one old devil by the leg. And the devil hung gibbering, trying to get away. The soldier cut the devil's hairy wrist to the bone, so that the blood flowed, took a pen, dipped it in the blood, and gave it to the devil. But he never let go of his leg.
"Write," says he, "that you will be my faithful servant."
The old devil screamed and wriggled, but the soldier gripped him tight. There was nothing to be done. He wrote and signed in his own blood a promise to serve the soldier faithfully wherever and whenever there should be need. Then the soldier let him go, and he went hopping and screaming after the others, and had disappeared in a moment. - Celestial Deadline: Death grants the soldier one hour to say goodbye to his family.
- Cheaters Never Prosper: Subverted when the soldier plays cards with a band of demons. All devils cheat every round but they cannot win any game no matter what...since the soldier is using a magically-rigged pack of cards.
- Chekhov's Boomerang: A beggar gives the titular soldier a magic sack, which has the power to entrap any creature inside if the owner says something along the lines of "Get in the sack!" The soldier uses this to catch a bunch of devils in the mansion, and it is then forgotten until the soldier uses it trap Death.
- Chess with Death: The soldier plays card games with a pack of demons.
- Deal with the Devil: Subverted. The soldier forces one demon to make a deal with him, and the demon is too frightened of the soldier to try to trick or cheat him. When the soldier declares they are even (after the demon has performed one single task for him), the devil flees terrified.
- Death Takes a Holiday: After a fashion. Death stops being active during an indeterminate period due to being trapped in a sack.
- Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?: Deconstructed. The soldier manages to cheat the Devil and his brethen, and even Death itself, with the result that neither of them wants anything to do with the soldier when he really needs them. Likewise, he tries to cheat his way into Heaven, but God is not fooled by his trick.
- Didn't Think This Through: The soldier attempts to trick his way into Heaven by handing his magic sack to one of the souls waiting to enter Heaven and asking the soul to call him into the sack once he is within Heaven. However, the soul is so happy to walk into Heaven that he forgets why he has a sack or what he is supposed to do with it. So, the soldier is left to wander the earth without his magic sack.
- The Dreaded: The soldier is able to strike fear into any demon, as well as Death himself. Unfortunately, this comes back to bite him when Death refuses to take him out of fear and the demons deny him access to Hell (as well as being too sinful to be allowed into Heaven) when he grows tired of living.
- Equivalent Exchange: The soldier asks Death to spare the Tsar in exchange for his own life, and she accepts.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The soldier is only known as "the soldier". Likewise, neither the innkeeper nor the tsar are given names.
- Face Death with Dignity: After imprisoning Death, the soldier is called out by an old, sick woman because she was ready to die without regrets.
- Flying Dutchman: The story ends with the eponymous soldier being unable to enter either Heaven or Hell, and thus condemned to walking the earth forever.
- Forbidden Fruit: The soldier is warned against to spend the night in the tsar's demon-haunted palace. He decides to do so anyway, and although he is not eaten by the demons, it kickstarts a chain of events which ends up with him being barred from the Afterlife.
- The Grim Reaper: Death is depicted as a little, old woman.
- Hanging Up on the Grim Reaper: Death is going to claim the tsar's life, but the soldier asks her to take him instead. Death obliges him, but the soldier asks one hour to say goodbye to his wife and son. Death agrees to wait, but when the time is nearly up, the soldier traps Death in his sack, and hangs it from a tree in the deepest of a remote forest. Several years later, the soldier realizes that imprisoning Death has disrupted the world's natural balance and he lets her go out of the sack. He is fully expecting to be immediately taken, but Death is afraid of him by now, and just flees.
- Haunted Castle: The tsar's palace has been taken over by a pack of demons who drink and party every night, killing whoever tries to stay in the palace.
- Mother Russia Makes You Strong: When the tsar tries to dissuade the main character from spending the night in the haunted palace, the soldier brags that a Russian will not be frightened by torture or punishment.
- My God, What Have I Done?: The soldier freaks out when he realizes that a lot of elderly, sick people have spent years suffering endless torment because of him imprisoning death."What an old hag," said the soldier to himself. "It was time for her to die a many years ago."
"Yes," says the old crone, with her toothless gums numbling and grumbling over her words. "Long ago it was time for me to die. When you shut up Death in the sack I had only an hour left to live. I had done with the world, and the world had done with me, and I would have been glad to be at peace. Long ago my place in heaven was made ready, and it is empty to this day for I cannot die. You, soldier, have sinned before God and before man. You have sinned a sin that God will not forgive. I am not the only soul in the world who is tortured as I am. Mine is not the only place that is growing dusty in heaven. Hundreds and thousands of us who should have died drag on in misery about the world. And but for you we should now be resting in peace."
The soldier began to think. And he thought of all the other old men and women he had kept from the rest that God had made ready for them. "There is no doubt about it," thinks he; "I had better let Death loose again. No matter if I am the first of whom she makes an end. I have sinned many sins, not counting this one. Better go to the other world now and bear my punishment while I am strong, for when I am very old it will come worse to me to be tortured." - No Name Given: The only characters who could be considered named are Death and God.
- Not Enough to Bury: The pack of devils haunting the tsar's palace barely leave anything from people who decides to stay the night."But I tell you: a man walks in there alive in the evening, and in the morning the servants have to search the floor for the little bits of his bones."
- Offscreen Inertia: The tale ends with the narrator stating that "And so the soldier, after waiting a long time, went slowly back to earth. Death would not take him. There was no place for him in Paradise and no place for him in Hell. For all I know he may be living yet."
- Old Beggar Test: The soldier hesitates before giving the third old, hungry beggar his only remaining food, but he ends giving him the full biscuit. The old beggar wants to reward his kindness, but the soldier wants nothing...except perhaps for a pack of cards to remember him. The beggar gives him a pack of cards which will always win any game, and a magic sack which can catch anything.
- The Problem with Fighting Death: The soldier trapping Death in a magical bag resulted in nobody being able to die — the suffering of the wounded was extended, and the old just became more and more tired and infirm... eventually, hearing the cries of the people, he released Death from the bag, expecting to become his first victim — but Death was frightened by the soldier's powers, and fled from him before resuming his duties. Since neither Hell nor Heaven will take him in, the soldier wanders still, hoping for the day he will be forgiven and allowed to rest at last.
- Rags to Riches: After frightening the demons out of the palace, the poor soldier becomes the tsar's adoptive brother.
- Retired Badass: The story starts when the soldier is honorably discharged after twenty-five years.
- Rule of Three: The soldier is given three dry biscuits as payment for his army service. Later, he meets three old beggars whom he gives his biscuits. The third beggar gives him a magic sack which he uses to hunt three geese.
- Sore Loser: After the Soldier beats all demons in cards, they decide to attack him. Luckily, the Soldier uses his magic sack to subdue them.
- To Hell and Back: The soldier travels to Hell to be punished, but the Devil refuses to let him into.
- To Serve Man: After being fleeced out of their riches, the pack of demons try to eat the soldier. It is implied this was the fate of those who previously tried to spend one night in the palace.
- Twice-Told Tale: It was adapted in the fifth episode of Jim Henson's The Storyteller.
- Ungrateful Bastard: The soldier is given three dry biscuits in payment for serving the tsar for twenty-five years.All these years I have served the Tzar and had good clothes to my back and my belly full of victuals. And now I am like to be both hungry and cold. Already I've nothing but three dry biscuits.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: If the third beggar had not repaid the soldier's kindness by giving him his magic trinkets, the man most likely would have not left the demons haunting the tsar's palace alone, hence he would have not been doomed to live forever.
- What the Hell, Hero?: One ill, old woman calls the soldier out for imprisoning Death, preventing her and a lot of sick, aging people of dying and going to Heaven.
- When the Clock Strikes Twelve: The pack of demons overrun the tsar's palace at "twelve o'clock sharp".
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: The soldier captures Death in a magic sack and is convinced to set him free after finding an aging woman and realizing that many old, sick people are waiting for death that will never come. However, Death is so traumatized from being trapped in the sack that it refuses to come near the Soldier. Then both Heaven and Hell refuse to accept him after he gets sick of life.
