The young man asked a woman "whether she had seen the census-takers?"
And three men simultaneously answered his question: some said that
they were over the well, but others said that they had been there,
but had come out and gone to Nikita Ivanovitch. An old man dressed
only in his shirt, who was wandering about the centre of the yard,
said that they were in No. 30. The young man decided that this was
the most probable report, and conducted me to No. 30 through the
basement entrance, and darkness and bad smells, different from that
which existed outside. We went down-stairs, and proceeded along the
earthen floor of a dark corridor. As we were passing along the
corridor, a door flew open abruptly, and an old drunken man, in his
shirt, probably not of the peasant class, thrust himself out. A
washerwoman, wringing her soapy hands, was pursuing and hustling the
old man with piercing screams. Vanya, my guide, pushed the old man
aside, and reproved him.

"It's not proper to make such a row," said me, "and you an officer,
too!" and we went on to the door of No. 30.

Vanya gave it a little pull. The door gave way with a smack, opened,
and we smelled soapy steam, and a sharp odor of spoilt food and
tobacco, and we entered into total darkness. The windows were on the
opposite side; but the corridors ran to right and left between board
partitions, and small doors opened, at various angles, into the rooms
made of uneven whitewashed boards. In a dark room, on the left, a
woman could be seen washing in a tub. An old woman was peeping from
one of these small doors on the right. Through another open door we
could see a red-faced, hairy peasant, in bast shoes, sitting on his
wooden bunk; his hands rested on his knees, and he was swinging his