Berezovo: A Revolutionary Russian Epic

Like his shack, Goat’s Foot and his family stood close to and yet apart from the inhabitants of Berezovo. However much critics at home or abroad might fret over his class of peasantry (calling it in turn backward, drunken, shiftless, degenerate or oppressed) he paid little heed. Even with a hangover so fierce that it made him groan at every shaking step he took, he counted himself a lucky man, and in the currency of the world in which he lived, luck was more valuable than gold. Buried beneath his hearth in a small earthenware pot lay sixty-eight roubles; a smug testament that he was not lacking in either commodity.

Goat’s Foot was not philosophically opposed to the viewpoint of those people such as Modest Tolkach who rejected the concept of “luck”. On the contrary, the two men shared many beliefs in common. Where he differed from Tolkach was that the Hospital Administrator, from the very beginning, had seen his future fortune as being dependent upon the rank and achievements of others, whereas Goat’s Foot, with all his native cunning, could admit to no man being his master.

“Let others go to the moneylenders, or give their roubles to the Two Thieves” was his dictum. For himself, he would tend his desyatinas in summer, hunt game in the winter and if luck should fleetingly cross his path, had he not the same right as any other man to exploit the situation? Like Tolkach, he was not without an aptitude for creating lucrative encounters. Tolkach’s strength lay in his ability to manipulate a bureaucratic system to his advantage: Goat’s Foot’s talent was more basic and, at times, more brutal. He could drink.

It might be said that any fool can drink, but not the way Goat’s Foot drank: beaker after beaker of fierce vodka that filled the head with its fumes, burnt the belly and turned the flames blue when you spat into the fire. Three beakers of that would settle most people, as it had done for Chevanin when he had called the day before. After the first cup, Dr. Tortsov’s assistant had become expansive; after the second argumentative; and after the third maudlin to the point of tears. While his expectation of not having to pay the sixty copecks visitation fee grew stronger with every sip, Goat’s Foot had exercised his other significant talent: he had listened. Similarly, when on the following night and long after the livery stables had closed, the carrier had stumbled half frozen into his shack at the height of the blizzard, it had never occurred to Goat’s Foot to refuse him shelter and hospitality as some in the town would have done. Instead he had poured beaker after beaker down the man’s throat, while Osip, roused still sleepy from his bed beside the fire, had stabled his horses in the gornitsa. For this simple action he had earned the carrier’s gratitude, his fifty copecks for the horse and his conversation.

The two men had sat contentedly in front of the fire, the smoke from their pipes mingling with that from the wet timber in the grate. When the boy had returned, it was with the news that one of the horses had cast a shoe. The carrier had grunted his acknowledgement: the shoe had been lost two versts short of Berezovo; he would be lucky if the horse was not lame in the morning.

And what was he carrying?

Fumbling in his leather pouch, the carrier had produced a crumpled manifesto of his cargo for Goat’s Foot to read but, feigning illiteracy, his host had declined. Returning the paper to its pouch, the man had scratched his head and let his host pour him another drink while he recited his load. A sack of mail from the sorting office in Tobolsk; two cases of soap for Nadnikov at the general store; sixteen blankets for the Barracks commissariat; three bolts of cloth for the haberdashers; flour (white, mind) for Gvordyen’s bakery…

And how had the journey gone?

It had been fine until he had met the blizzard, then it had taken him a whole day to cover twenty versts, sweating at each step in case he lost the road.

Why hadn’t he stopped at a yurt until the blow was over?

The carrier shook his head, watching as the level of alcohol in his beaker rose once more towards the brim. No, the typhus was bad all along the road and grew worse as it neared the town. If he had stopped even for one night he would have been dead in the morning, he declared, crossing himself and emptying his beaker again in one swallow.

The beaker was refilled. And was there news?

The man had belched, and wondered when the peasant’s woman would bring him the food he had been promised.