‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Send him to me.’
‘Yes, ma’am’; and Egór Mikháylovich went to the counting-house.
II
POLIKÉY (or Polikúshka, as he was usually contemptuously called), as a man of little importance, of tarnished reputation, and not a native of the village, had no influence either with the housekeeper, the butler, the steward, or the lady’s-maid. His corner was the very worst, though there were seven in his family. The late proprietor had had these corners built in the following manner: in the middle of a brick building, about twenty-three feet square, there was a large brick baking-oven surrounded by a passage, and the four corners of the building were separated from this ‘colidor’ (as the domestic serfs called it) by wooden partitions. So there was not much room in these corners, especially in Polikéy’s, which was nearest to the door. The conjugal couch, with a print quilt and pillowcases, a cradle with a baby in it, and a small three-legged table (on which the cooking and washing were done and all sorts of domestic articles placed, and at which Polikéy – who was a horse-doctor – worked), tubs, clothing, some chickens, a calf, and the seven members of the family, filled the whole corner— and could not have stirred in it had it not been for their quarter of the brick stove (on which both people and things could lie) and for the possibility of going out onto the steps. That, however, was hardly possible, for it is cold in October and the seven of them only possessed one sheepskin cloak between them; but on the other hand the children could keep warm by running about and the grown-ups by working, and both the one and the other could climb on the top of the stove where the temperature rose as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit. It may seem dreadful to live in such conditions, but they did not mind – it was quite possible to live. Akulína washed and sewed her husband’s and her children’s clothes, spun, wove, and bleached her linen, cooked and baked in the common oven, and quarrelled and gossiped with her neighbours. The monthly rations sufficed not only for the children, but for an addition to the cow’s food. Firewood was free, and so was fodder for the cattle, and a little hay from the stables sometimes came their way. They had a strip of kitchen garden. Their cow had calved, and they had their own fowls. Polikéy was employed in the stables to look after two stallions; he bled horses and cattle, cleaned their hoofs, lanced their sores, administered ointments of his own invention, and for this was paid in money and in kind. Also some of the proprietress’s oats used to find their way into his possession, and for two measures of it a peasant in the village gave twenty pounds of mutton regularly every month. Life would have been quite bearable had there been no trouble at heart. But the family had a great trouble. Polikéy in his youth had lived at a stud-farm in another village. The groom into whose hands he happened to fall was the greatest thief in the whole district, and got exiled to Siberia. Under this man Polikéy served his apprenticeship, and in his youth became so used to ‘these trifles’ that in later life, though he would willingly have left off, he could not rid himself of the habit. He was a young man and weak; he had neither father nor mother nor anyone else to teach him. Polikéy liked drink, and did not like to see anything lying about loose. Whether it was a strap, a piece of harness, a padlock, a bolt, or a thing of greater value, Polikéy found some use for everything. There were people everywhere who would take these things and pay for them in drink or in money, by agreement. Such earnings, so people say, are the easiest to get: no apprenticeship is required, no labour or anything, and he who has once tried that kind of work does not care for any other. It has only one drawback: although you get things cheap and easily and live pleasantly, yet all of a sudden – through somebody’s malice – things go all wrong, the trade fails, everything has to be accounted for at once, and you rue the day you were born.
And so it happened to Polikéy. Polikéy had married and God had given him good luck. His wife, the herdsman’s daughter, turned out to be a healthy, intelligent, hard-working woman, who bore him one fine baby after another. And though Polikéy still stuck to his trade all went well till one fine day his luck forsook him and he was caught. And it was all about a trifle: he had hidden away some leather reins of a peasant’s. They were found, he was beaten, the mistress was told of it, and he was watched. He was caught a second and a third time. People began to taunt him, the steward threatened to have him conscripted, the mistress gave him a scolding, and his wife wept and was broken-hearted. Everything went wrong. He was a good-natured man; not bad, but only weak. He was fond of drink and so in the habit of it that he could not leave it alone. Sometimes his wife would scold him and even beat him when he came home drunk, and he would weep, saying: ‘Unfortunate man that I am, what shall I do? Blast my eyes, I’ll give it up! Never again!’ A month would go by, he would leave home, get drunk, and not be seen for a couple of days. And his neighbours would say: ‘He must get the money somewhere to go on the spree with!’ His latest trouble had been with the office clock. There was an old wall-clock there that had not been in working order for a long time. He happened to go in at the open door by himself and the clock tempted him. He took it and got rid of it in the town. As ill luck would have it the shopman to whom he sold the clock was related to one of the house-serfs, and coming to see her one holiday he spoke about the clock. People began making inquiries – especially the steward, who disliked Polikéy —just as if it was anybody else’s concern! It was all found out and reported to the mistress, and she sent for Polikéy. He fell at her feet at once and pathetically confessed everything, just as his wife had told him to do. He carried out her instructions very well. The mistress began admonishing him; she talked and talked and maundered on about God and virtue and the future life and about wife and children, and at last moved him to tears. Then she said:
‘I forgive you; only you must promise me never to do it again!’
‘Never in all my life. May I go to perdition! May my bowels gush out!’ said Polikéy, and wept touchingly.
Polikéy went home and for the rest of the day lay on the stove blubbering like a calf. Since then nothing more had been traced to him. But his life was no longer pleasant; he was looked on as a thief, and when the time of the conscription drew near everybody hinted at him.
As already mentioned, Polikéy was a horse-doctor. How he had suddenly become one nobody knew, himself least of all. At the stud-farm, when he worked under the head-keeper who got exiled, his only duties were to clean out the dung from the stables, sometimes to groom the horses, and to carry water. He could not have learned it there. Then he became a weaver: after that he worked in a garden, weeding the paths; then he was condemned to break bricks for some offence; then he took a place as yard-porter with a merchant, paying a yearly sum to his mistress for leave to do so. So evidently he could not have had any experience as a veterinary there either; yet somehow during his last stay at home his reputation as a wonderfully and even a rather supernaturally clever horse-doctor began gradually to spread. He bled a horse once or twice, then threw it down and prodded about in its thigh, and then demanded that it should be placed in a trave, where he began cutting its frog till it bled, though the horse struggled and even whined, and he said this meant ‘letting off the sub-hoof blood’! Then he explained to a peasant that it was absolutely necessary to let the blood from both veins, ‘for greater ease’, and began to strike the dull lancet with a mallet; then he bandaged the innkeeper’s horse under its belly with a selvedge torn from his wife’s shawl, and finally he began to sprinkle all sorts of sores with vitriol, to drench them with something out of a bottle, and sometimes to give internally whatever came into his head. And the more horses he tormented and did to death, the more he was believed in and the more of them were brought to him.