shook his head when they lifted
him up from the ground and put him back in the coffin. You see those
three doors in a row: in there lived young ladies who were always
receiving visitors, and so were better dressed than any other
lodgers, and could pay their rent regularly. The door at the end
of the corridor leads to the wash-house, where by day they washed
clothes and at night made an uproar and drank beer. And in that
flat of three rooms everything is saturated with bacteria and
bacilli. It's not nice there. Many lodgers have died there, and I
can positively assert that that flat was at some time cursed by
someone, and that together with its human lodgers there was always
another lodger, unseen, living in it. I remember particularly the
fate of one family. Picture to yourself an ordinary man, not
remarkable in any way, with a wife, a mother, and four children.
His name was Putohin; he was a copying clerk at a notary's, and
received thirty-five roubles a month. He was a sober, religious,
serious man. When he brought me his rent for the flat he always
apologised for being badly dressed; apologised for being five days
late, and when I gave him a receipt he would smile good-humouredly
and say: "Oh yes, there's that too, I don't like those receipts."
He lived poorly but decently. In that middle room, the grandmother
used to be with the four children; there they used to cook, sleep,
receive their visitors, and even dance. This was Putohin's own room;
he had a table in it, at which he used to work doing private jobs,
copying parts for the theatre, advertisements, and so on. This room
on the right was let to his lodger, Yegoritch, a locksmith--a
steady fellow, but given to drink; he was always too hot, and so
used to go about in his waistcoat and barefoot. Yegoritch used to
mend locks, pistols, children's bicycles, would not refuse to mend
cheap clocks and make skates for a quarter-rouble, but he despised
that work, and looked on himself as a specialist in musical
instruments. Amongst the litter of steel and iron on his table there
was always to be seen a concertina with a broken key, or a trumpet
with its sides bent in. He paid Putohin two and a half roubles for
his room; he was always at his work-table, and only came out to
thrust some piece of iron into the stove.

On the rare occasions when I went into that flat in the evening,
this was always the picture I came upon: Putohin would be sitting
at his little table, copyin