Interrupted Stories

with such confusing mimicry that Marya Valerianovna did not have time to open her mouth and finally interrupted her with a question. "Nastyushka, is he healthy?" "He is alright, mistress, though he is quite thin. What kind of life is this! After all, our viper took them in specifically to vent his malice on someone, a misanthrope, a rust that eats even iron through and through. You are aware of what Anatoly Mikhailovich's temper is like, he is just like his mother, not like us serfs, where you might walk out the door and swear at the man himself twice over, God forgive me, well, but they take everything to heart." Marya Valerianovna quickly wiped away a tear and whispered, "Let us go, Nastyushka."

Nastya gave strict, stern instructions to Efimka: if Tit sent a young page-boy to ask who she had been speaking with at the gate and whom she had brought inside, he was to say it was the seamstress, Olga Petrovna, who lived at the Pokrovsky Gate. After this, she led Marya Valerianovna across the courtyard to the back porch, then up a dark staircase that had likely never been swept since the house was built. This staircase led to a small closet assigned to Nastya; this closet was the object of her desires, the subject of her petitions for fifteen years. No one in the house had a separate room except for Tit. Mikhail Stepanovich finally allowed her to occupy it, with the condition that she was not to consider it her own, never sit in it, but only use it for the time being to store her

belongings. In this small room stood a small wooden table, stained by time; resting upon it was a samovar covered with a towel, in the neighborhood of a teapot and two overturned cups. On the wall hung two heads drawn in black pencil; one depicted a damaged woman who looked out from the picture with eyes fearfully bulging, and instead of curls, she had worms—one must assume the goal was to represent Medusa. The other represented some sort of gendarme in a helmet, likely emerging from the water, judging by the bare shoulder; his face was disgustingly regular, the nose similar to an Ionic column, overturned with volutes downward, and he held his head stiffly to the side; it is quite possible this gendarme was Alexander the Great.

But it was before these pictures, drawn by a childish hand, that Marya Valerianovna stopped and could hold back no longer. She covered her eyes with a handkerchief, and Nastya wept with all her soul, saying, "Yes, this is him, my darling, he gave this to me on his name day."

— "Well, what if someone comes up here, Nastyushka, what are we to do then?"

— "Do not trouble yourself, mistress, the informer of our house is not here. You see, the headman has arrived, and a caravan with firewood has come or something, so he has gone to the tavern to receive it; he is the most harmful man and