The old man greeted him warmly. I looked at Kalinych in astonishment because I confess I had not expected such ‘niceties’ from a peasant.

That day I went out hunting four hours later than usual, and I spent the next three days at Khor’s place. I became preoccupied with my new acquaintances. I don’t know how I had won their confidence, but they talked to me without any constraint. It was with pleasure that I listened to them and watched them. The two friends were not a bit like each other. Khor was an emphatic sort of man, practical, an administrator, hard-headed; Kalinych, on the other hand, belonged in the company of idealists, romantics, men of lofty enthusiasms and lofty dreams. Khor understood the realities of life – that is to say, he had built a home for himself, saved up some money, arranged things satisfactorily with his master and other responsible authorities; whereas Kalinych walked about in bast sandals and got by somehow or other. Khor had raised a large, obedient and united family; whereas Kalinych had at one time had a wife, of whom he was terrified, and no children. Khor could see through my friend Poluty-kin; whereas Kalinych simply worshipped his master. Khor loved Kalinych and would always give him protection; Kalinych loved and respected Khor. Khor spoke little, gave only occasional chuckles and kept his thoughts to himself; whereas Kalinych would express himself heatedly, although he never sang like a nightingale as the lively factory man is liable to… But he possessed certain innate talents which Khor himself was willing to recognize; he could charm away bleeding, terror and rages, and he could cure worms; bees obeyed him because of his light touch. While I was there Khor asked him to lead a newly purchased horse into the stables, and Kalinych fulfilled the old sceptic’s request conscientiously and with pride. Kalinych was closer to nature, whereas Khor was closer to people and society; Kalinych never liked thinking things out for himself and believed everything blindly, whereas Khor had reached a high pitch of irony in his attitude to life. He had seen much, knew much, and I learned a lot from him.

For instance, from the stories he had to tell I learned that each summer, before the harvesting, a small cart of a particular kind appears in the villages. A man in a caftan sits in the cart and sells scythes. If the payment is in cash, he asks a rouble and twenty-five copecks in silver coinage or a rouble and fifty copecks in paper money; if it’s to be on credit, he asks three paper roubles and one silver rouble. All the peasants, of course, buy on credit. Two or three weeks later he reappears and demands his money. By this time the peasant has just harvested his oats and has the necessary with which to pay. He accompanies the trader to a tavern and there they complete their business. Some of the landowners took it into their heads to buy their own scythes for cash and distribute them on credit to their peasants for the same price. But the peasants seemed dissatisfied with this, and even succumbed to melancholy over it; they were deprived of the pleasure of giving each scythe a twanging flick, of putting their ear to it and turning it about in their hands and asking the rascally salesman twenty times over: ‘Well, now, that’s a bit of a wrong’un, isn’t it?’

Much the same sort of trickery occurs during the buying of sickles with the sole difference that in this case the women also become involved and sometimes force the trader to give them restraining slaps for their own good. But the womenfolk suffer most grievously of all in the following instance. Those responsible for supplying material to the paper factories entrust the buying of rags to a particular species of person, known in certain districts as ‘eagles’. Such an ‘eagle’ is given two hundred paper roubles by a merchant and then sets out to find his prey. But, in contrast to the noble bird after which he is named, he does not fall boldly and openly upon his victim; on the contrary, this ‘eagle’ uses cunning, underhand means. He leaves his cart somewhere in the bushes on the outskirts of the village and then, just as if he were some casual passer-by or bum on the loose, makes his way through the back alleys and backyards of the huts. The women can sense his approach and creep out to meet him. The business between them is quickly completed.