Status Updates From X and Other Stories: Newly ...

She sat down on the bench. All the knots insider her immediately slackened, came loose; she suddenly felt she was tired in a way she had never once been in all her life. She laid her head on her arms on the table and that same second fell asleep, fully, happily, all of her...

Sofya felt the storm clouds were not beyond the window but in her herself, inside; they had already been piling up stonily one on top of another for months on end -- and for them not to suffocate her now she needed to smash something to smithereens, or to run away from here, or to cry out in the sort of voice the cobbler had that time about the Last Judgement.

Sofya picked up the ironing board, put it back in place and sat down. She had nothing, neither arms nor legs -- only her heart, and that, turning somersaults like a bird, was falling, falling, falling.

Everything used to be so clear: there had been “things in themselves”, which had been of no concern whatsoever to Tikhmen, and there had been “reflections of things” in Tikhmen, obedient to, and dependent upon, Tikhmen. And now — if you please! It was just as though some kind of evil spirit had got into him, honest to God!

There is in every man something that is him, the whole of him all at once, by which you can distinguish him from a thousand others. And that something in Andrei Ivanych is his forehead: the expanse and sweep of the steppe. And next to it -- his nose: a little Russian snub nose, tow-coloured whiskers, infantry epaulettes. When the Lord God was creating him, He made a broad sweep: the forehead.

Do hurry up Petyenka, the soup will get cold. How many times do I have to tell you I don’t like you having a book at the dinner table…

Oh Alyonka, oh, I’ll just be a moment- oh just a moment… I mean it’s the sixth edition! Do you understand, Bogdanovich’s Dushenka - the sixth edition! In 1812 under the French absolutely everything was burnt and everyone thought only 3 copies had survived…

‘A woman as a guest is more or less all right — you can let her in. But into yourself— no, no.’ Timosha wags his dry finger. ‘Let her into yourself and you’re done for. A woman, brother, she takes root like burdock. And they can’t be got rid of, no way. And so you’ll end up completely overgrown with burdock.’