The district police chief stopped at a pub first. He had the honour to drink two cups of green tea and then walked outside the village head’s house to wait for a group of farmers who were in arrears with taxes. Sedelnikov, a farmer in Anjipu village, was very strict even though he was young and thirty years old. In fact, he was also very poor and could not pay taxes on time. He was happy to be the village head and realized that he was in charge. Besides being strict, he didn’t know how to show his strength. Everyone was afraid of him at the villagers’ meeting. When he was in charge, he would suddenly attack a certain street or pub. A drunken man yelled and tied his hand to put him in the detention room once. He took his grandmother for a day and a night, because it would be her instead of Osip, and she was still cursing. He had never been in the city, but he got a lot of abstruse words from somewhere, so some villagers respected him, even though others didn’t know what to say.

Osip took his tax book into the village chief’s cabin, and the police chief, a thin old man with long gray cheeks and beard, was sitting at table 74 and […]

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