Master and Man | Page 3

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Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy Trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude

Master and Man

I
It happened in the 'seventies in winter, on the day after St. Nicholas's
Day. There was a fete in the parish and the innkeeper, Vasili
Andreevich Brekhunov, a Second Guild merchant, being a church elder
had to go to church, and had also to entertain his relatives and friends at
home.
But when the last of them had gone he at once began to prepare to drive
over to see a neighbouring proprietor about a grove which he had been
bargaining over for a long time. He was now in a hurry to start, lest

buyers from the town might forestall him in making a profitable
purchase.
The youthful landowner was asking ten thousand rubles for the grove
simply because Vasili Andreevich was offering seven thousand. Seven
thousand was, however, only a third of its real value. Vasili Andreevich
might perhaps have got it down to his own price, for the woods were in
his district and he had a long-standing agreement with the other village
dealers that no one should run up the price in another's district, but he
had now learnt that some timber-dealers from town meant to bid for the
Goryachkin grove, and he resolved to go at once and get the matter
settled. So as soon as the feast was over, he took seven hundred rubles
from his strong box, added to them two thousand three hundred rubles
of church money he had in his keeping, so as to make up the sum to
three thousand; carefully counted the notes, and having put them into
his pocket-book made haste to start.
Nikita, the only one of Vasili Andreevich's labourers who was not
drunk that day, ran to harness the horse. Nikita, though an habitual
drunkard, was not drunk that day because since the last day before the
fast, when he had drunk his coat and leather boots, he had sworn off
drink and had kept his vow for two months, and was still keeping it
despite the temptation of the vodka that had been drunk everywhere
during the first two days of the feast.
Nikita was a peasant of about fifty from a neighbouring village, 'not a
manager' as the peasants said of him, meaning that he was not the
thrifty head of a household but lived most of his time away from home
as a labourer. He was valued everywhere for his industry, dexterity, and
strength at work, and still more for his kindly and pleasant temper. But
he never settled down anywhere for long because about twice a year, or
even oftener, he had a drinking bout, and then besides spending all his
clothes on drink he became turbulent and quarrelsome. Vasili
Andreevich himself had turned him away several times, but had
afterwards taken him back again--valuing his honesty, his kindness to
animals, and especially his cheapness. Vasili Andreevich did not pay
Nikita the eighty rubles a year such a man was worth, but only about
forty, which he gave him haphazard, in small sums, and even that
mostly not in cash but in goods from his own shop and at high prices.
Nikita's wife Martha, who had once been a handsome vigorous woman,

managed the homestead with the help of her son and two daughters,
and did not urge Nikita to live at home: first because she had been
living for some twenty years already with a cooper, a peasant from
another village who lodged in their house; and secondly because
though she managed her husband as she pleased when he was sober,
she feared him like fire when he was drunk. Once when he had got
drunk at home, Nikita, probably to make up for his submissiveness
when sober, broke open her box, took out her best clothes, snatched up
an axe, and chopped all her undergarments and dresses to bits. All the