Stories

Levka accompanied me on almost all my walks. His boundless devotion and his constant attention touched me. His attachment to me was understandable: I was the only one who treated him with kindness. In his family, they despised him and were ashamed of him. Peasant boys teased him, and even grown men inflicted all sorts of insults and injuries upon him, saying: "one should not offend the holy fool term: юродивый a "holy fool" or a person perceived as mentally deficient and spiritually touched, often regarded with a mix of pity and superstition; the holy fool is God's man." He usually walked behind the village; when he happened to walk down the street, only the dogs treated him like a human. Seeing him from afar, they would wag their tails, jump on his neck, lick his face, and fawn over him so much that Levka, touched to the point of tears, would sit down in the middle of the road and, out of gratitude, entertain his friends for hours until some peasant boy would throw a stone by chance, whether it hit the dogs or the poor boy; then he would get up and run into the forest.

Before a village holiday, my father, seeing that Levka was in rags, told my mother to cut a long shirt for him and give it to the sisters to sew. The manager, hearing about this, let out some thick homespun cloth for a caftan term: кафтан a long, traditional Russian coat for him, having shown twice the necessary number of arshins term: аршин an old Russian unit of length, approximately 28 inches in the expense book, likely out of absent-mindedness. An old lackey a valet or male servant was assigned to the master's house; he was assigned not so much for his ability to watch over anything, but because of his drinking.