I no longer lived in Great Dvoryansky Street, but in the suburb with my old nurse Karpovna, a good-natured but gloomy old woman, who always foreboded some harm, was afraid of all dreams, and even in the bees and wasps that flew into her room saw omens of evil, and the fact that I had become a workman, to her thinking, boded nothing good.

“Your life is ruined,” she would say, mournfully shaking her head, “ruined.”

Her adopted son Prokofy, a huge, uncouth, red-headed fellow of thirty, with bristling moustaches, a butcher by trade, lived in the little house with her.  When he met me in the passage he would make way for me in respectful silence, and if he was drunk he would salute me with all five fingers at once.  He used to have supper in the evening, and through the partition wall of boards I could hear him clear his throat and sigh as he drank off glass after glass.

“Mamma,” he would call in an undertone.

“Well,” Karpovna, who was passionately devoted to her adopted son, would respond:  “What is it, sonny?”

“I can show you a testimony of my affection, mamma.  All this earthly life I will cherish you in your declining years in this vale of tears, and when you die I will bury you at my expense; I have said it, and you can believe it.”

I got up every morning before sunrise, and went to bed early.  We house painters ate a great deal and slept soundly; the only thing amiss was that my heart used to beat violently at night.  I did not quarrel with my mates.  Violent abuse, desperate oaths, and wishes such as, “Blast your eyes,” or “Cholera take you,” never ceased all day, but, nevertheless, we lived on very friendly terms.  The other fellows suspected me of being some sort of religious sectary, and made good-natured jokes at my expense, saying that even my own father had disowned me, and thereupon would add that they rarely went into the temple of God themselves, and that many of them had not been to confession for ten years.  They justified this laxity on their part by saying that a painter among men was like a jackdaw among birds.

The men had a good opinion of me, and treated me with respect; it was evident that my not drinking, not smoking, but leading a quiet, steady life pleased them very much.  It was only an unpleasant shock to them that I took no hand in stealing oil and did not go with them to ask for tips from people on whose property we were working.  Stealing oil and paints from those who employed them was a house painter’s custom, and was not regarded as theft, and it was remarkable that even so upright a man as Radish would always carry away a little white lead and oil as he went home from work.  And even the most respectable old fellows, who owned the houses in which they lived in the suburb, were not ashamed to ask for a tip, and it made me feel vexed and ashamed to see the men go in a body to congratulate some nonentity on the commencement or the completion of the job, and thank him with degrading servility when they had received a few coppers.