Stories

responsive, absent-minded, even dull. At eight, we began to be taught literacy. Within a few months, I was reading the Psalter the Book of Psalms fluently, while Lyovka had not even reached the basic syllables. The alphabet caused a revolution in his life. His father used every possible means to develop his son’s mental faculties. He would not feed him for two days at a time, beat him so that the welts were visible for two weeks, tore out half of his hair, and locked him in a dark closet for twenty-four hours. Everything was in vain. Literacy did not come to Lyovka. But he understood the merciless treatment; he became embittered and endured everything done to him with a kind of wicked concentration. This did not come cheap to him. He grew thin, and his appearance, which had previously expressed childlike gentleness and perfect carefreeness, began to express the wildness of a frightened animal. He could not look at his father without horror and disgust. The sexton struggled with his son for another two years, finally becoming convinced that he was born foolish, and granted him complete freedom. Liberated, Lyovka began to disappear for entire days. He would come home to warm up or take shelter from the bad weather, remaining silent, sitting in a corner, sometimes mumbling various words to himself, and maintaining a friendship only with two beings: myself and his little dog. He had acquired this dog by an absolute right. Once, when Lyovka was lying on the sand by the river, a peasant boy brought out a puppy, tied a stone around its neck, approached the steep bank where the river was deepest, and threw the little dog in. In one instant, Lyovka went after it, dived, and a minute later appeared on the...