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THE INN

On the high road to B., at an equal distance from the two towns
through which it runs, there stood not long ago a roomy inn, very well
known to the drivers of troikas, peasants with trains of waggons,
merchants, clerks, pedlars and the numerous travellers of all sorts
who journey upon our roads at all times of the year. Everyone used to
call at the inn; only perhaps a landowner's coach, drawn by six
home-bred horses, would roll majestically by, which did not prevent
either the coachman or the groom on the footboard from looking with
peculiar feeling and attention at the little porch so familiar to them;
or some poor devil in a wretched little cart and with three five-kopeck
pieces in the bag in his bosom would urge on his weary nag when he
reached the prosperous inn, and would hasten on to some night's lodging
in the hamlets that lie by the high road in a peasant's hut, where he
would find nothing but bread and hay, but, on the other hand, would not
have to pay an extra kopeck. Apart from its favourable situation, the
inn with which our story deals had many attractions: excellent water in
two deep wells with creaking wheels and iron buckets on a chain; a
spacious yard with a tiled roof on posts; abundant stores of oats in
the cellar; a warm outer room with a very huge Russian stove with long
horizontal flues attached that looked like titanic shoulders, and
lastly two fairly clean rooms with the walls covered with reddish
lilac paper somewhat frayed at the lower edge with a painted wooden
sofa, chairs to match and two pots of geraniums in the windows, which
were, however, never cleaned--and were dingy with the dust of years. The inn had other advantages: the blacksmith's was close by, the mill
was just at hand; and, lastly, one could get a good meal in it, thanks
to the cook, a fat and red-faced peasant woman, who prepared rich and
appetizing dishes and dealt out provisions without stint; the nearest
tavern was reckoned not half a mile away; the host kept snuff which
though mixed with wood-ash, was extremely pungent and pleasantly
irritated the nose; in fact there were many reasons why visitors of
all sorts were never lacking in that inn. It was liked by those who
used it--and that is the chief thing; without which nothing, of course,
would succeed and it was liked principally as it was said in the
district, because the host himself was very fortunate and successful
in all his undertakings, though he did not much deserve his good
fortune; but it seems if a man is lucky, he is lucky. The innkeeper was a man of the working class called Naum Ivanov. He
was a man of middle height with broad, stooping shoulders; he had a
big round head and curly hair already grey, though he did not look
more than forty; a full and fresh face, a low but white and smooth
forehead and little bright blue eyes, out of which he looked in a very
queer way from under his brows and yet with an insolent expression, a
combination not often met with. He always held his head down and
seemed to turn it with difficulty, perhaps because his neck was very
short. He walked at a trot and did not swing his arms, but slowly
moved them with his fists clenched as he walked. When he smiled, and
he smiled often without laughing, as it were smiling to himself, his
thick lips parted unpleasantly and displayed a row of close-set,
brilliant teeth. He spoke jerkily and with a surly note in his voice. He shaved his beard, but dressed in Russian style. His costume
consisted of a long, always threadbare, full coat, full breeches and
shoes on his bare feet. He was often away from home on business and he
had a great deal of business--he was a horse-dealer, he rented land,
had a market garden, bought up orchards and traded in various ways--but
his absences never lasted long; like a kite, to which he had
considerable resemblance, especially in the expression of his eyes, he
used to return to his nest. He knew how to keep that nest in order. He
was everywhere, he listened to everything and gave orders, served out
stores, sent things out and made up his accounts himself, and never
knocked off a farthing from anyone's account, but never asked more
than his due. The visitors did not talk to him, and, indeed, he did not care to
waste words. "I want your money and you want my victuals," he used to
say, as it were, jerking out each word: "We have not met for a
christening; the traveller has eaten, has fed his beasts, no need to
sit on. If he is tired, let him sleep without chattering." The
labourers he kept were healthy grown-up men, but docile and well
broken in; they were very much afraid of him. He never touched
intoxicating liquor and he used to give his men ten kopecks for vodka
on the great holidays; they did not dare to drink on other days. People like Naum quickly get rich ... but to the magnificent position
in which he found himself--and he was believed to be worth forty or
fifty thousand roubles--Naum Ivanov had not arrived by the strait
path.... The inn had existed on the same spot on the high road twenty years
before the time from which we date the beginning of our story. It is
true that it had not then the dark red shingle roof which made Naum
Ivanov's inn look like a gentleman's house; it was inferior in
construction and had thatched roofs in the courtyard, and a humble
fence instead of a wall of logs; nor had it been distinguished by the
triangular Greek pediment on carved posts; but all the same it had
been a capital inn--roomy, solid and warm--and travellers were glad to
frequent it. The innkeeper at that time was not Naum Ivanov, but a
certain Akim Semyonitch, a serf belonging to a neighbouring lady,
Lizaveta Prohorovna Kuntse, the widow of a staff officer. This Akim
was a shrewd trading peasant who, having left home in his youth with
two wretched nags to work as a carrier, had returned a year later with
three decent horses and had spent almost all the rest of his life on
the high roads; he used to go to Kazan and Odessa, to Orenburg and to
Warsaw and abroad to Leipsic and used in the end to travel with two
teams, each of three stout, sturdy stallions, harnessed to two huge
carts. Whether it was that he was sick of his life of homeless
wandering, whether it was that he wanted to rear a family (his wife
had died in one of his absences and what children she had borne him
were dead also), anyway, he made up his mind at last to abandon his
old calling and to open an inn. With the permission of his mistress,
he settled on the high road, bought in her name about an acre and a
half of land and built an inn upon it. The undertaking prospered. He
had more than enough money to furnish and stock it.