pallor of his bloodless skin; his high forehead with a wrinkle above the nose was surmounted by a shock of curly reddish hair. The expression of his eyes, which were both attentive and calm, was indescribable, and it was with difficulty that I bore this strange inhuman gaze.

“Your legs—what’s wrong with them?”

He fumbled with the rags, disengaging a withered leg which looked like a cabbage-stalk, lifted it with his hand and placed it on the edge of the box.

“That’s the sort they are. Both of them. Since I was born. They won’t walk, they’re not alive—that’s how it is.”

“And what’s in these boxes?”

“A menagerie,” he answered, lifted his leg in his hand as though it were a stick, stuck it into the rags on the bottom of the box, and with a serene, friendly smile, offered:

“Shall I show it to you? Well, make yourself comfortable. You’ve never seen anything like it.”

Maneuvering adroitly with his extraordinarily long, thin arms, he hoisted himself up, and began to remove boxes from the shelves, handing them to me one after another.

“Take care, don’t open them, or they’ll run away. Put one to your ear and listen. Well?”

“Something’s moving.”

“Aha, a spider’s sitting there, the scoundrel! His name is Drummer. He’s a smart fellow!”

The boy’s marvelous eyes grew lively and tender. A smile was playing over his livid face. With rapid movements of his nimble hands he was removing boxes from the shelves, putting them first to his ear, then to mine, and talking to me animatedly.

“And here is Anisim the cockroach, a show-off like a soldier. And this is a fly, an inspector’s wife, a bad lot, the worst ever! She buzzes all day long, scolds everybody, she even pulled Mammy by the hair. Not a fly, but an inspector’s wife, and her rooms have windows on the street. She only looks like a fly. And this is a black cockroach, a huge one: Master. He’s all right. Only he’s a drunk and has no shame. He’ll get tight and crawl around the court-yard naked and as shaggy as a black dog. And here’s a bug: Uncle Nikodim. I caught him in the court-yard. He is a pilgrim, one of the crooks—makes believe he collects for the Church. Mammy calls him ‘Cheat.’ He is her lover too. She has more lovers than you can count, thick as flies, even if she has no nose.”

“She doesn’t beat you?”

“She? You’re crazy. She can’t live without me. She has a good heart, only she drinks. But on our street everybody drinks. She’s pretty, and jolly too. … Only she drinks, the slut. I tell her: ‘Stop swilling vodka, you fool, then you’ll get rich,’ and she laughs at me. A woman—foolish, of course. But she’s a good egg. Well, she’ll sleep it off and you’ll see for yourself.”

He was smiling so enchantingly that you wanted to howl with unbearable burning pity for him, to cry out so that the whole town would hear you. His beautiful little head swayed on its thin neck like a strange flower, and his eyes blazed with growing animation, attracting me with irresistible power.

As I listened to his childish but terrible chatter, for a moment I forgot where I was sitting. Then suddenly I saw again the small prison window, spattered on the outside with mud, the black mouth of the stove, the heap of oakum in the corner and near the door on a pile of rags the body of the woman, the mother, yellow as butter.