§5
Every year about Shrovetide our peasants from the Government of Penza brought their payments in kind to Moscow. It was a fortnight’s journey for the carts, laden with carcasses of pork, sucking-pigs, geese, chickens, rye, eggs, butter, and even linen. The arrival of the peasants was a regular field-day for all our servants, who robbed and cheated the visitors right and left, without any right to do so. The coachman charged for the water their horses drank, and the women charged for a warm place by the fire, while the aristocrats of the servants’ hall expected each to get a sucking-pig and a piece of cloth, or a goose and some pounds of butter. While the peasants remained in the court-yard, the servants feasted continuously: soup was always boiling and sucking-pigs roasting, and the servants’ hall reeked perpetually of onions, burning fat, and bad whiskey. During the last two days Bakai never came into the hall, but sat in the kitchen-passage, dressed in an old livery overcoat, without jacket or waistcoat underneath it; and other servants grew older visibly and darker in complexion. All this my father endured calmly enough, knowing that it must be so and that reform was impossible.
These provisions always arrived in a frozen condition, and thereupon my father summoned his cook Spiridon and sent him to the markets to enquire about prices. The cook reported astonishingly low figures, lower by half than was actually offered. My father called him a fool and sent for his factotum and a dealer in fruit named Slepushkin. Both expressed horror at the cook’s figures, made enquiries, and quoted prices a little higher. Finally Slepushkin offered to take the whole in a lump—eggs, sucking-pigs, butter, rye, and all,—“to save you, bátyushka, from further worry.” The price he offered was of course a trifle higher than the cook had mentioned. My father consented: to celebrate the occasion, Slepushkin presented him with some oranges and gingerbread, and the cook with a note for 200 roubles. And the most extraordinary part of this transaction was that it was repeated exactly every year.
Slepushkin enjoyed my father’s favour and often borrowed money of him; and the strange way in which he did it showed his profound knowledge of my father’s character.
He would borrow 500 roubles for two months, and two days before payment was due, he would present himself at our house, carrying a currant-loaf on a dish and 500 roubles on the top of the loaf. My father took the money, and the borrower bowed low and begged, though unsuccessfully, to kiss his benefactor’s hand. But Slepushkin would turn up again a week later and ask for a loan of 1,500 roubles. He got it and again paid his debt on the nail; and my father considered him a pattern of honesty. A week later, Slepushkin would borrow a still larger sum. Thus in the course of a year he secured 5,000 roubles in ready money to use in his business; and for this he paid, by way of interest, a couple of currant-loaves, a few pounds of figs and walnuts, and perhaps a hundred oranges and Crimean apples.