Polikoúshka by Leo Tolstoy

Polikéy (or Polikoúshka, as he was usually contemptuously called), as a man of little importance, of tarnished reputation, and not a native of the village, had no influence either with the housekeeper, the butler, the steward, or the lady's-maid. His cubicle was the very worst, though his family consisted of seven persons. The late proprietor had had these cubicles built in the following manner:

In the middle of a brick building, about twenty-three feet square, was placed a large brick baking-oven, partly surrounded by a passage, and the four corners of the building were separated from the "collidor" (as the domestic serfs called it) by wooden stable-partitions. So there was not much room in these cubicles, especially in Polikéy's, which was nearest to the door. The family bed, with a quilt and pillowcases made of print, the baby's cradle, and the three-legged table (on which the cooking and washing were done and all sorts of domestic articles placed, and at which Polikéy -- who was a farrier -- worked), tubs, clothing, some chickens, a calf, and the seven members of the family, filled the whole cubicle, and could not have moved in it had it not been for their quarter of the brick oven (on which both people and things could lie) and for the possibility of going outside into the porch. That was, perhaps, not easy, for it is rather cold in October, and the seven of them only possessed one sheepskin cloak between them; but, on the other hand, the children could keep warm by running about, and the grownups by working, and both the one and the other by climbing onto the top of the oven, where the temperature rose to 120 degrees. It may seem dreadful to live in such conditions, but they did not mind -- it was quite possible to live. Akoulína washed and sewed her husband's and her children's clothes, spun, wove and bleached her linen, cooked and baked in the common oven, and quarrelled and gossiped with her neighbours. The monthly allowance of meal sufficed not only for the children, but to add to the cow's food. The firewood was free, and so was food for the cattle, and a little hay from the stables sometimes came their way. They had a strip of kitchen garden. Their cow had calved, and they had their own fowls. Polikéy was employed in the stables to look after two stallions; he bled horses and cattle, cleaned their hoofs, operated on them for lampers, dispensed ointments of his own invention, and for this was paid in money and in kind. Also some of the proprietress's oats used to remain over, for two measures of which a peasant in the village gave twenty pounds of mutton regularly every month. Life would have been quite tolerable, wad there been no worry. But the family had a great grief. Polikéy in his youth had lived at a stud-farm in another village. The stud-groom into whose hands he happened to fall was the greatest thief in the neighbourhood, and got exiled to Siberia. Under this man Polikéy served his apprenticeship, and in his youth got so used to those tricks that in later life, though he would willingly have left them off, he could not get out of the habit. He was a young man, and weak; he had neither father nor mother nor anyone else to teach him. Polikéy liked drink, and did not like to see anything lying about. Whether it was a strap, a piece of harness, a padlock, a bolt, or a thing of greater value, Polikéy found some use for everything. There were people everywhere who accepted these things, and paid for them in drink or in money. Such earnings, so people say, are the easiest to get: no apprenticeship required, no labour nor anything, and he who has once tried that kind of work does not desire any other. It has only one drawback: although you get things cheap and easily, and live pleasantly, yet all of a sudden -- through somebody's malice -- things go all wrong, the trade fails, everything has to be accounted for at once, and you rue the day you were born.