She had another strange habit: winding her long braid, the color of fresh bast, around her neck, she would let the end of it fall on her bosom, and hold on to it with her left hand all the while, as though carrying a noose around her neck.…

She could say of herself that her name was Aksinya Kalugina, that she hailed from the province of Ryazan, that she had once “sinned” with Fedka, had given birth to a child, and had come to the city with the family of an excise official, where she was employed as wet nurse, but that when her child died she had lost her position and then she had been “engaged” to work in the house. She had been there for four years.…

“Like it here?” she would be asked.

“It’s all right. I have enough to eat, I get shoes and clothes.…Only you have no peace here.…And Vaska, too.…He beats you, the fiend.…”

“But then it’s gay here?”

“Where?” she would answer, and turning her head, would examine the parlor, as though wishing to see where the gaiety was.

Around her there were drunkenness and noise, and everything—from the madam and the other girls to the cracks in the ceiling—was familiar to her.

She spoke in a thick bass voice and laughed only when she was tickled—she laughed loudly like a husky peasant and shook with laughter. The stupidest and healthiest of the girls, she was less unhappy than the others, for she was closer to the animal.

Of course, it was especially the girls in the house where Vaska was employed as a bouncer who had accumulated fear of and hatred towards him. When they were drunk, the girls did not hide their feelings, and complained of Vaska openly to the guests, but since the guests came there not to protect them, their complaints had neither meaning nor results. When they took the form of hysterical screams and weeping, and Vaska heard it, his flaming head showed itself in the doorway of the parlor and he would say in his indifferent wooden voice:

“Hey, you, don’t act like a fool.”

“Hangman! Monster!” the girl would scream. “How do you dare disfigure me? Look, mister, see what he did to my back with a whip!” And the girl would try to tear off her bodice.

Vaska would go over to her, take her by the hand, and without changing his voice, which was particularly horrible, would expostulate with her:

“Don’t make a noise! Hush! What are you gabbing about? You’re drunk. Look out!”

This was almost always sufficient, and very rarely did Vaska have to take a girl out of the parlor.

Never did any of the girls hear from Vaska a single kind word, although many of them were his concubines. He took them without ado. If any of them caught his fancy, he would say to her:

“I’ll stay with you tonight.”

Then he would keep on going to her for some time, and break with her without a word.

“What a devil!” the girls said of him. “He’s made of wood!”