§7
Such men as Bakai hugged their chains, but there were others: there passes through my memory a sad procession of hopeless sufferers and martyrs. My uncle had a cook of remarkable skill in his business, a hard-working and sober man who made his way upwards. The Tsar had a famous French chef at the time and my uncle contrived to secure for his servant admission to the imperial kitchens. After this instruction, the man was engaged by the English Club at Moscow, made money, married, and lived like a gentleman; but, with the noose of serfdom still round his neck, he could never sleep easy or enjoy his position.
Alexyéi—that was his name—at last plucked up courage, had prayers said to Our Lady of Iberia, and called on my uncle and offered 5,000 roubles for his freedom. But his master was proud of the cook as his property—he was proud of another man, a painter, for just the same reason—and therefore he refused the money, promising the cook to give him his freedom in his will, without any payment.
This was a frightful blow to the man. He became depressed; the expression of his features changed; his hair turned grey; and, being a Russian, he took to the bottle. He became careless about his work, and the English Club dismissed him. Then he was engaged by the Princess Trubetskoi, and she persecuted him by her petty meanness. Alexyéi was a lover of fine phrases; and once, when he was insulted by her beyond bearing, he drew himself up and said in his nasal voice, “What a stormy soul inhabits Your Serene Highness’s body!” The Princess was furious: she dismissed the man and wrote, as a Russian great lady would, to my uncle to complain of his servant. My uncle would rather have done nothing, but, out of politeness to the lady, he sent for the cook and scolded him, and told him to go and beg pardon of the Princess.
But, instead of going there, he went to the public-house. Within a year he was utterly ruined: all the money he had saved for his freedom was gone, and even his last kitchen-apron. He fought with his wife, and she with him, till at last she went into service as a nurse away from Moscow. Nothing was heard of him for a long time. At last a policeman brought him to our house, a wild and ragged figure. He had no place of abode and wandered from one drink-shop to another. The police had picked him up in the street and demanded that his master should take him in hand. My uncle was vexed and, perhaps, repentant: he received the man kindly enough and gave him a room to live in. Alexyéi went on drinking; when he was drunk, he was noisy and fancied he was writing poetry; and he really had some imaginative gift but no control over it. We were in the country at the time, and my uncle sent the man to us, fancying that my father would have some control over him. But the man was too far gone. His case revealed to me the concentrated ill-feeling and hatred which a serf cherishes in his heart against his masters: he gnashed his teeth as he spoke, and used gestures which, especially as coming from a cook, were ominous. My presence did not prevent him from speaking freely; he was fond of me, and often patted my shoulder as he said, “This is a sound branch of a rotten tree!”
When my uncle died, my father gave Alexyéi his freedom at once. But this was too late: it only meant washing our hands of him, and he simply vanished from sight.