Interrupted Stories

landowners, who were apparently not so humble in worldly matters, as evidenced by the half-ruined, crooked, sagging huts propped up by poles. But fearing to weary your attention, I modestly decide to start no further than the gates of Mikhail Stepanovich Stolygin’s large Moscow house, the one by the Yauza River. The fence around the house is stone, the gates are of thick wood; on one side is a genuine wicket gate, and on the other a false one for symmetry. A board is inserted into it, and sitting on the board is a tattered old man, apparently a beggar.

This old man, however, was not a beggar, but Mikhail Stepanovich’s house porter.

Fifty-two years had passed since the handsome, fair-haired youth Efimka first walked out of these gates with a broom in his hands and bitter tears in his eyes. Mikhail Stepanovich’s uncle, while touring his estates, brought him from Simbirsk—not because he particularly needed a boy, but just because he liked Efimka’s kindly appearance, and so he decided to arrange his fate. He arranged it firmly, as you can see. Efimka swept as a youth, he swept with a budding mustache, he swept with a thick beard, he swept with graying hair, he swept completely white, and now he sweeps with a yellowing beard, with legs that buckle, and with eyes that see poorly. He preserved only one thing from his youth: the name Efimka. However, stranger than this patriarchal

name was the fact that he never truly grew into an "Efim." As he grew accustomed to his lonely life, as his passion for the courtyard and the street grew stronger and reached the point where he would rise two or three times at night to inspect the yard with the inquisitive curiosity of a dog, despite the gates being locked and two real dogs being unchained, both his liveliness and his ease of manner vanished. His range of understanding became narrower and narrower, and his thoughts became more confused and dim. Once, about twenty years before our story, a foolish notion entered his head: to marry the coachman's daughter. She was not opposed, but the master said it was nonsense, that he had lost his mind, and why on earth would he want to get married—that was the end of it. Efimka pined, told no one a word about it, and started to drink. By his old age, he had become a meek, quiet creature who suffered from the cold and pain in his lower back, finding joy in cheap vodka and the snuff tobacco that the neighboring shopkeeper provided him in exchange for sweeping the street in front of the shop. He had no other strong passions, if we do not count his unconditional obedience to everyone who wished to give orders and his boundless fear of Mikhail Stepanovich as a passion.

It cannot be said that Efimka’s interactions with Mikhail Stepanovich were particularly frequent or