II
Polikéy (or Polikoúshka, 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 cubicle was the very worst, though his family consisted of seven persons. The late proprietor had had these cubicles built in the following manner:
In the middle of a brick building, about twenty-three feet square, was placed a large brick baking-oven, partly surrounded by a passage, and the four corners of the building were separated from the “collidor” (as the domestic serfs called it) by wooden stable-partitions. So there was not much room in these cubicles, especially in Polikéy’s, which was nearest to the door. The family bed, with a quilt and pillowcases made of print, the baby’s cradle, and the 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 farrier—worked), tubs, clothing, some chickens, a calf, and the seven members of the family, filled the whole cubicle, and could not have moved in it had it not been for their quarter of the brick oven (on which both people and things could lie) and for the possibility of going outside into the porch. That was, perhaps, not easy, for it is rather 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 grownups by working, and both the one and the other by climbing on to the top of the oven, where the temperature rose to 120 degrees. It may seem dreadful to live in such conditions, but they did not mind—it was quite possible to live. Akoulína 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 allowance of meal sufficed not only for the children, but to add to the cow’s food. The firewood was free, and so was food 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, operated on them for lampers, dispensed ointments of his own invention, and for this was paid in money and in kind. Also some of the proprietress’s oats used to remain over, for two measures of which a peasant in the village gave twenty pounds of mutton regularly every month. Life would have been quite tolerable, wad there been no worry. But the family had a great grief. Polikéy in his youth had lived at a stud-farm in another village. The stud-groom into whose hands he happened to fall was the greatest thief in the neighbourhood, and got exiled to Siberia. Under this man Polikéy served his apprenticeship, and in his youth got so used to those tricks that in later life, though he would willingly have left them off, he could not get out 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. 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 accepted these things, and paid for them in drink or in money. Such earnings, so people say, are the easiest to get: no apprenticeship required, no labour nor anything, and he who has once tried that kind of work does not desire 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 married, and God gave him joy. His wife, the daughter of a herdsman, turned out to be a healthy, intelligent, hardworking woman, who bore him one fine baby after another. And though Polikéy did not give up 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 stole some reins from a peasant. He was found out, beaten, the proprietress 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 make him go as a soldier, the proprietress gave him a scolding, and his wife wept and was brokenhearted. Everything went wrong. He was a kindhearted man; not wicked, but only weak; liking drink, and so in the habit of it that he could not leave it off. Sometimes his wife would row at him and even beat him when he came home drunk, and he would cry, saying: “Unfortunate man that I am, what shall I do? Blast my eyes, I’ll leave it off! Never again!” A month goes by, and he leaves home, gets drunk, and is not seen again for a couple of days. And his neighbours say: “He must get the money somewhere to go on the spree with!”
His latest trouble had been about the office clock. There was an old clock there that had not been in working order for a long time. He happened to go in at the open door all alone, 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 domestic serfs; and coming to see her one holiday, spoke about the clock. They—especially the steward, who disliked Polikéy—began making inquiries, just as if it was anybody else’s concern! It was all found out and reported to the proprietress, and she sent for him. He at once fell at her feet and pathetically confessed everything, just as his wife had told him to do. He carried out his instructions very well. The proprietress began admonishing him; she talked and talked, and maundered on about God and virtue and a future life, and about wife and children, and at last drove him to tears. She said:
“I forgive you; only you must promise 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 oven, blubbering like a calf. Since then nothing more had ever been traced to him. Only his life was no longer pleasant; he was looked upon as a thief, and when the time for conscripting drew near, everybody hinted at him.
Polikéy was a farrier, as already mentioned. How he became one nobody knew, he himself least of all. At the stud-farm, when he worked under the head-groom who got exiled, his only duties were to clean the stables, sometimes to groom the horses, and to carry water. So he could not have learned his trade 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 went into service with a merchant, paying a yearly fine to his proprietress for permission to do so. So evidently he could not have had any experience as a veterinary; yet somehow during his last stay at home, his reputation as a wonderfully and even a rather supernaturally clever farrier began gradually to spread. He bled a horse once or twice; then threw one down and prodded about in its thigh, and then demanded that it should be placed in a stall, where he began cutting its frog till it bled. Though the horse struggled, and even squealed, he said this meant “letting out the sub-hoof blood”! Then he explained to a peasant that it was absolutely necessary to let the blood from both veins, “for greater lightness,” and began hammering in the blunt lancet with a mallet; then he bandaged the innkeeper’s horse under its belly with the selvedge torn from his wife’s shawl, and at last 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 killed, the more he was believed in, and the more of them were brought to him.
I feel that for us educated people it would hardly be proper to laugh at Polikéy. The methods he employed are the same that have influenced our fathers, that influence us, and will influence our children. The peasant lying prone on the head of his one mare (which not only constitutes the whole of his wealth, but is almost one of his family) and gazing with faith and horror at Polikéy’s frowning look of importance and thin arms with upturned sleeves, as, with the healing rag or a bottle of vitriol between his teeth, the latter presses the sore place and boldly cuts into the living flesh (with the secret thought, “The one-eyed brute will never get over it!”) and at the same time pretending to know where there is blood and where matter, which is a tendon and which a vein—that peasant cannot conceive that Polikéy has lifted his hand to cut, without due knowledge. He himself could not have done it. And once the thing is done, he will not reproach himself with having given permission to cut unnecessarily. I don’t know about you, but I have experienced just the same with the doctor, who in obedience to my request was tormenting those dear to me. The lancet, the whitish bottle of sublimate, and the words, “the staggers—glanders—to let blood or matter,” etc., do they not come to the same thing as “nerves, rheumatism, organism,” etc.? Wage du zu irren und zu träume does not refer to poets so much as to doctors and veterinary surgeons.