Short Fiction by Leo Tolstoy (book reader for pc TXT) 📕

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