g something; his mother and his wife, a
thin woman with an exhausted-looking face, were sitting near the
lamp, sewing; Yegoritch would be making a rasping sound with his
file. And the hot, still smouldering embers in the stove filled the
room with heat and fumes; the heavy air smelt of cabbage soup,
swaddling-clothes, and Yegoritch. It was poor and stuffy, but the
working-class faces, the children's little drawers hung up along
by the stove, Yegoritch's bits of iron had yet an air of peace,
friendliness, content. . . . In the corridor outside the children
raced about with well-combed heads, merry and profoundly convinced
that everything was satisfactory in this world, and would be so
endlessly, that one had only to say one's prayers every morning and
at bedtime.

Now imagine in the midst of that same room, two paces from the
stove, the coffin in which Putohin's wife is lying. There is no
husband whose wife will live for ever, but there was something
special about this death. When, during the requiem service, I glanced
at the husband's grave face, at his stern eyes, I thought: "Oho,
brother!"

It seemed to me that he himself, his children, the grandmother and
Yegoritch, were already marked down by that unseen being which lived
with them in that flat. I am a thoroughly superstitious man, perhaps,
because I am a houseowner and for forty years have had to do with
lodgers. I believe if you don't win at cards from the beginning you
will go on losing to the end; when fate wants to wipe you and your
family off the face of the earth, it remains inexorable in its
persecution, and the first misfortune is commonly only the first
of a long series. . . . Misfortunes are like stones. One stone has
only to drop from a high cliff for others to be set rolling after
it. In short, as I came away from the requiem service at Putohin's,
I believed that he and his family were in a bad way.

And, in fact, a week afterwards the notary quite unexpectedly
dismissed Putohin, and engaged a young lady in his place. And would
you believe it, Putohin was not so much put out at the loss of his
job as at being superseded by a young lady and not by a man. Why a
young lady? He so resented this that on his return home he thrashed
his children, swore at his mother, and got drunk. Yegoritch got
drunk, too, to keep him company.

Putohin brought me the rent, but did not apologise this time, though
it was eighteen days overdue, and said nothing when he too