Men with soft-skinned hands still frequented restaurants, still wooed lascivious women, still sought to pillage the towns; they even plundered the very corpses, hoping to carry loot into the country, to barter it for the bread that had been gained by horny-handed labour. Thus might they postpone their deaths another month, thus might they still fill up papers, still go on wooing (legally) carnal women and await their heart's desire, the return of the decadent past. They were afraid to recognise that only one thing was left them, to rot in death--to die--that even the past they longed for was a way to death for them. ... Forests, thickets, fields, a tranquil sky.... Many dwelt in the towns--amongst them a certain man, no different from the rest. He had no bread, and he too went into the country to bargain for flour in exchange for his gramophone. Producing all the necessary papers, permits, and licences, he proceeded to the railway, which was dying because it too was of the towns. At the station there were thousands of others with permits to travel for bread, and because of those thousands only those without permits succeeded in boarding the train. This particular man fastened himself on the lower step of a carriage, under sacks that hung from the roof, travelling thus for some forty miles. Then he and his gramophone were thrown off, and for the first time in his life he tramped thirty miles on foot under the weight of a gramophone. At the next station he climbed on to the roof of a carriage and travelled a hundred miles further. Then he was thrown off again, But there the main-road passed the railway; by turning aside from it, walking through a field, fording a river, making a way through the woods, skirting the ravines, trudging through river beds, and traversing the marshes he reached the village of Pochinki. He arrived there with his gramophone at sundown. The red light of the sun was reflected on the windows, the women-folk were milking the cows: it was already autumn and the daylight faded rapidly. The man with the gramophone tapped at the window and Kononov Ivan lifted the shutter. "Look, comrade, I've a gramophone here, to exchange for flour ... a gramophone, a musical instrument, and records...." Throwing back his shoulders, Kononov-Ivan stood by the window--then stooped, looked askance at the sunset, at the fields, at the musical instrument. He reflected a moment, then muttered absently: "Aint wanted.... Go to Poriechie...." and the shutter dropped. A sombre sky in autumnal lights--and the crossways.... Two wheel- tracks, ripple-grass, a foot-path. Sometimes the wanderer tired, that path seemed interminable, without beginning or ending. He turned aside, went astray, returned on his tracks--evermore to the thickets, forests, marshes.... End of Project Gutenberg's Tales of the Wilderness, by Boris Pilniak