The Spy: The Story of a Superfluous Man

When Yevsey awoke he saw that in the corner to which he had directed his mute prayer there were no ikons, but two pictures on the wall, one representing a hunter with a green fe...

The next day Yevsey resolved not to leave the house for a long time. He lay in bed looking at the ceiling. The leaden face of Sasha with the dim eyes and the band of red pimples...

Something strange, like a dream, grew in the city, rushing onward with irresistible rapidity. People lost their fear completely. On the faces which only a short time ago had bee...

"What shall we do with you now? There's nothing for you here. You must go to the city. I have to get bellows there, and I'll take you along, Orphan."

A few weeks later Klimkov began to feel freer and more at ease. Every morning, warmly and comfortably dressed, with a box of small wares on his breast, he went to receive orders...

About midday Yevsey was awakened by Viekov dressed in an overcoat and hat. He looked downcast. He shook the back of the bed, and said in a muffled voice, monotonously:

When Yevsey Klimkov was four years old, his father was shot dead by the forester; and when he was seven years old, his mother died. She died suddenly in the field at harvest tim...

In the rainy nights of autumn short broken sounds came from the roof under Yevsey's window. They disquieted him and prevented him from sleeping. On one such night he heard the a...

Yevsey often entered a house occupied by a physician and a journalist upon whom he was assigned to spy. The physician employed a wet-nurse named Masha, a full, round little woma...

The days and nights dragged along in black and grey stripes, slowly poisoning Yevsey's soul, biting into it and enfeebling it. They crept by in dumb stillness, filled with omino...

The old man became sulky and taciturn. He peered around strangely, suddenly burst into a passion, shouted, and howled dismally, like a sick dog. He constantly complained of a pa...

Yevsey looked after him with wide-open eyes. Before him in the air hung Rayisa's head, her heavy luxuriant hair flowed from it in streams, her face was pale green, her lips were...

The news spread among the spies that some of the ministers had also been bribed by the enemies of the Czar and Russia. They had formed a cabal to take his power from him, and re...

Life, like a horse that has stood idle too long, began to caper strangely, refusing to surrender to the will of those who wanted to control it--who wanted to control it just as...

"Wait a little. Then you'll tell him in a careful way that you have gotten a position as clerk in a printing office, do you hear? Ask as few questions as possible, let them spea...

In the morning Rayisa half dressed, with a kneaded face and dim eyes, gave Yevsey his coffee without speaking to him. Dorimedont coughed and spat in her room. Now his dull voice...

He wanted to please his master, even realized this would be of advantage to him, and he felt he would succeed, though he behaved with watchful circumspection and no warmth in hi...

In the middle of the winter everything suddenly trembled and shook. People anxiously opened their eyes, gesticulated, disputed furiously, and swore. As though severely wounded a...

"Put my foot into it!" he thought dismally, as the recollection of what had happened the day before came back to him. "No, I oughtn't to track people, but track myself." The ide...

Soon after this unsuccessful attempt to draw near to a human being Yevsey was one evening awakened by talking in his master's room. He listened and thought he distinguished Rayi...

Yevsey was the first guest to arrive. He gave Masha a string of blue beads, and Anfisa a shell comb. In return for the gifts, with which both were greatly pleased, they treated...

The shrieks stuck to Yevsey, to the back of his neck, like leeches. They filled him with insane horror, and drove him on, on, and on. Behind him a crowd of people were gathering...

From this life Yevsey awoke in a dusky corner of a large room with a low ceiling. He sat holding a pen in his hand at a table covered with dirty green oilcloth, and before him l...

When Yevsey had been living with Kapiton Ivanovich only a few days, he began to feel he was of some consequence. Formerly he had talked quietly and respectfully with the gendarm...

"They gave little for them, very little. Ugh! I know how such things are done. You can't fool me, no, indeed. Krasavin once caught a single revolutionist, and he got a hundred r...

Early in the morning he was already standing in the corner of a large yard at a yellow hovel with a cross over the roof. A grey humpbacked watchman said as he opened the door:

An accident happened at home. Dorimedont appeared late at night in torn clothes, without hat or cane, his face bruised and smeared with blood. His bulky body shook, tears ran do...

But Yevsey pursued his work precisely. He gave Makarov a few heavy bundles of type in three instalments, and cleverly found out from him where the printing-press would be establ...

Yevsey awoke with a certain secret resolution, which held his bosom as with a broad invisible belt. It stifled him. The ends of this band, he felt, were held by some insistent b...

A dull scraping sound came from the shed, as if a sack filled with something soft were being dragged over the old boards of the floor. At the same time the people heard the pant...