At first everything interested me, everything was new, as though I had been born again.  I could sleep on the ground and go about barefoot, and that was extremely pleasant; I could stand in a crowd of the common people and be no constraint to anyone, and when a cab horse fell down in the street I ran to help it up without being afraid of soiling my clothes.  And the best of it all was, I was living on my own account and no burden to anyone!

Painting roofs, especially with our own oil and colours, was regarded as a particularly profitable job, and so this rough, dull work was not disdained, even by such good workmen as Radish.  In short breeches, and wasted, purple-looking legs, he used to go about the roofs, looking like a stork, and I used to hear him, as he plied his brush, breathing heavily and saying:  “Woe, woe to us sinners!”

He walked about the roofs as freely as though he were upon the ground.  In spite of his being ill and pale as a corpse, his agility was extraordinary:  he used to paint the domes and cupolas of the churches without scaffolding, like a young man, with only the help of a ladder and a rope, and it was rather horrible when standing on a height far from the earth; he would draw himself up erect, and for some unknown reason pronounce: 

“Lice consume grass, rust consumes iron, and lying the soul!”

Or, thinking about something, would answer his thoughts aloud: 

“Anything may happen!  Anything may happen!”

When I went home from my work, all the people who were sitting on benches by the gates, all the shopmen and boys and their employers, made sneering and spiteful remarks after me, and this upset me at first and seemed to be simply monstrous.

“Better-than-nothing!” I heard on all sides.  “House painter!  Yellow ochre!”

And none behaved so ungraciously to me as those who had only lately been humble people themselves, and had earned their bread by hard manual labour.  In the streets full of shops I was once passing an ironmonger’s when water was thrown over me as though by accident, and on one occasion someone darted out with a stick at me, while a fishmonger, a grey-headed old man, barred my way and said, looking at me angrily: 

“I am not sorry for you, you fool!  It’s your father I am sorry for.”

And my acquaintances were for some reason overcome with embarrassment when they met me.  Some of them looked upon me as a queer fish and a comic fool; others were sorry for me; others did not know what attitude to take up to me, and it was difficult to make them out.  One day I met Anyuta Blagovo in a side street near Great Dvoryansky Street.  I was going to work, and was carrying two long brushes and a pail of paint.  Recognizing me Anyuta flushed crimson.

“Please do not bow to me in the street,” she said nervously, harshly, and in a shaking voice, without offering me her hand, and tears suddenly gleamed in her eyes.  “If to your mind all this is necessary, so be it . . . so be it, but I beg you not to meet me!”