I Say Nothing by Ivan Bunin — Read

When he had been a young man, everybody used to call Alexander Romanov Shasha; at that time he was living in the settlement of Limovo, in an iron-roofed house that stood facing the common, and his beatings were administered to him by his father, Roman.

Roman deemed himself the first man in all that district -- he used to shove his hand out to all the gentry and the squires whenever he would meet them. He had a store in the settlement, and a mill beyond it; but the way he got richer and richer was by buying up groves from the landowners and then cutting them down. Makar, his own brother, had nothing to eat; all in tatters, he might be hobbling over the common, and, doffing his hat meekly, would say: "Greetings, brother. " But Roman, well-fed, looking like a deacon, would answer him from his stoop: "Don't you brother me, you dolt. You've made your bow, so just keep on going on your way. " What, then, must have been the feelings of the sole heir of such a man? He used to stroll through the village in a cap that had come from the city; in a sleeveless overcoat of the finest broadcloth, in boots with patent-leather tops. He was all the time cracking polly-seeds, and playing polkas on an expensive accordion. Whenever he met any wenches or young lads -- all his relatives, all consanguine, every one of them -- he would be followed by that sort of gaze from which celebrities feel a chill run down their back. But he would meet such a gaze with a surly -- even a ferocious -- one; all his youth seemed to have passed in a preparation for that role in which he attained such perfection later on.