I have seen enough of the way in which the terrible consciousness of serfdom destroys and poisons the existence of house-serfs, the way in which it oppresses and stupefies their souls. Peasants, especially those who pay a fixed sum in lieu of labour, have less feeling of their personal bondage; they somehow succeed in not believing in their complete slavery. But for the house-serf, sitting on a dirty locker in the hall from morning till night, or standing with a plate at table, there is no room for doubt.
Of course there are people who live in the hall like fish in water, people whose souls have never awakened, who have B J.e., clubs or guilds for messing or working together. (Tr.)
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acquired a taste for their manner of life and who perform their duties with a sort of artistic relish.
Of that class we had one extremely interesting specimen, our footman Bakay, a man of tall figure and athletic build, with solid, dignified features and an air of the greatest profundity; he l ived to an advanced age, imagining that the position of a footman was one of the greatest consequence.
This worthy old man was perpetually angry or a little drunk, or angry and a little drunk at once. He took an exalted view of his duties and ascribed a solemn importance to them: with a peculiar bang and crash he would throw up the steps of the carriage and slam the carriage door with a report like a musketshot. With a gloomy air he stood up stiff and rigid behind the carriage, and every time there was a jolt over a rut he would shout in a thick and displeased voice to the coachman: 'Steady!'
regardless of the fact that the rut was already five paces behind.
Apart from going out with the carriage, his chief occupation, a duty he had voluntarily undertaken, consisted of training the serf-boys in the aristocratic manners to be employed in the hall.
When he was sober, things went fairly well, but when his head was a little dizzy, he became incredibly pedantic and tyrannical.
I sometimes stood up for my friends, but my authority had little influence on Bakay, whose temper was of a Roman severity; he would open the door into the salon for me and say:
'This is not the place for you ; be pleased to leave the room or I shall carry you out.'
He lost no opportunity of abusing the boys, and often added a cuff to his words, or 'beat butter,' that is, with his thumb and little finger dexterously gave them a sly flip on the head with the sharpness and force of a spring.
When at last he had chased the bovs out and was left alone, he transferred his persecution to his �nc friend, Macbeth, a big Newfoundland dog, whom he used to feed, comb and fondle.
After sitting in solitude for two or three minutes he would go out into the yard, call Macbeth to join him on the locker, and begin a conversation.
'What arc you sitting out there in the yard in the frost for, stupid, when there is a warm room for you? Whnt n beast! \-\'hat are you stnring for, ch? Have you nothing to say?'
Usually n slnp would follow these words. Mncbeth would somctimPs growl at his benefactor; and then Bakay would upbraid him in earnest:
'You may go on fePding a dog, but hP will still remain a dog ;
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he will show his teeth at anyone, without caring who it is the fleas would have eaten him up if it had not been for me! '
And offended by his friend's ingratitude h e would wrathfully take a pinch of snuff and fling what was left between his fingers on Macbeth's nose. Then the dog would sneeze, clumsily wipe out of his eyes with his paw the snuff that had fallen on his nose, and, leaving the locker indignantly, would scratch at the door; Bakay would open it with the word 'rascal' and give him a kick as he went. . . . Then the boys would come back, and he would set to flipping them on the head again.
Before Macbeth we had a setter called Berta ; she fell very ill and Bakay took her on to his mattress and looked after her for two or three weeks. Early one morning I went out into the hall.
Bakay tried to say something to me, but his voice broke and a big tear rolled down his cheek-the dog was dead. There is a fact for the student of human nature! I do not for a moment suppose that he disliked the boys; it was simply a case of a severe character, accentuated by drink and unconsciously grown accustomed to the spirit that prevailed in the hall.
But besides these amateurs of slavery, what gloomy images of martyrs, of hopeless victims, pass mournfully before my memory!
The Senator had a cook, Alexey, a sober, industrious man of exceptional talent who made his way in the world. The Senator himself got him taken into the Tsar's kitchen, where there was at that time a celebrated French cook. After being trained there he got a post in the English Club, grew rich, married and lived like a gentleman ; but the strings which tied him to serfdom would not let him sleep soundly at night, nor take pleasure in his situation.
After having a service celebrated to the Iversky Madonna, Alexey plucked up his courage and presented himself before the Senator to ask for his freedom for five thousand paper roubles.
The Senator was proud of his cook, just as he was proud of his painter, and so he would not take the money, but told the cook that he should be set free for nothing at his master's death.
The cook was thunderstruck ; he grieved, grew thin and worn, turned grey and . . . being a Russian, took to drink. He neglected his work ; the English Club dismissed him. He was engaged by the Princess Trubetskoy, who worried him by her petty niggardliness. Being on one occasion extremely offended by her, Alexey, who was fond of expressing himself eloquently, said, speaking though his nose with his air of dignity:
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'What an opaque soul dwells in your luminous body!'
The princess was furious; she turned the cook away, and, as might be expected from a Russian lady, wrote a complaint to the Senator. The Senator would have done nothing to him, but, as a courteous gentleman, he felt bound to send for the cook, gave him a good cursing and told him to go and beg the princess's pardon.
The cook did not go to the princess but went to the pot-house.
Within a year he had lost everything, from the capital he had saved up for his ransom to the last of his aprons. His wife struggled and struggled on with him, but at last went off and took a place as a nurse. Nothing was heard of him for a long time. Then the police brought Alexey, wild-looking and in tatters; he had been picked up in the street, he had no lodging, he migrated from tavern to tavern. The police insisted that his master should take him. The Senator was distressed and perhaps conscience-stricken, too; he received him rather mildly and gave him a room. Alexey went on drinking, was noisy \vhen he was drunk and imagined that he was composing verses; he certainly had some imagination of an incoherent sort. We were at that time at Vasilevskoye. The Senator, not knowing what to do with the cook, sent him there, thinking that my father ,,..·ould bring him to reason. But the man was too completely shattered. I saw in his case the concentrated anger and hatred against the masters which lies in the heart of the serf: he would talk with a grinding of the teeth and with gesticulations which, especially in a cook, might have been dangerous. He was not afraid to give full rein to his tongue in my presence; he \vas fond of me and would often, patting me familiarly on the shoulders, say that I was: