Now, the Vasili we’ve come to know is a blusterer and a bully. To be happy, he has to be in control, correct, victorious, obeyed. We imagine him at home, a petty tyrant, not loved much, not feared much either; avoided when possible, probably; laughed at behind his back for his incompetence and ego.

He’s already declared that they’re not staying. And what kind of master reverses himself? The weak kind, that’s who, like this old guy—the kind whose household is falling apart, the crying kind, the kind Vasili has been trying all his life not to be but secretly knows he is.

Had they stopped at another house, a house where, say, a young and still-powerful master was making the case for the considerate treatment of one’s servants, Vasili, wishing to emulate that powerful master, might have been willing to reverse himself, to show how considerate he was of Nikita, his servant.

But instead he meets this old, weak, defeated master and feels an aversion, and that aversion combines with the fact that the horse has already been harnessed (the dictatorship of politeness) to drive him back out into the night, and to his death.

In a sense, Vasili is killed by his fealty to the idea that, to preserve and broadcast his power, a “master” must be firm, strong, and unpersuadable.