It was all the same to me then, whether to live, not to live, how to live or with whom.... Thus I passed from one point in my life to another without realizing it myself. CHAPTER III After a time I began to take interest in all that surrounded me. Titoff was a silent man, tall in stature, with his head and cheeks shaved like a soldier's, and he wore a long mustache. He spoke slowly and as if he were afraid to say one word too many, or as if he were in doubt himself of what he was saying. He held his hands in his pocket or crossed them behind his back, as if he were ashamed of them. I knew that the peasants of the village and even those of the neighboring district hated him. Two years before, in the village of Mabina, they beat him with a stake. They said that he always carried a revolver with him. His wife, Nastasia, was handsome, tall and slender. Her face was bloodless, with two feverish, large eyes. She was often sick. Her daughter, Olga, who was three years my junior, was also pale and thin. A great silence reigned about them. Their floor was covered with thick carpet, and not a footstep could be heard. Even the clock on the wall ticked inaudibly. The lamps, which were never extinguished, burned before their holy images. There were prints stuck on the walls, showing the Last Judgment and the Martyrdom of the Apostles and of Saint Barbara. In one corner, on the low stove, a large cat, the color of smoke, looked out of its green eyes on the surroundings and seemed to guard the silence. In the midst of this awful stillness it took me a long time to forget the songs of Larion and his birds. Titoff brought me to the office of the estate and showed me the books. Thus I lived. It seemed to me that Titoff watched me and followed me about in silence as if he expected something from me. I felt depressed and unhappy. I was never gay, but now I became almost morose. I had no one to speak to, and, moreover, I did not wish to speak to any one. When Titoff or his wife asked me about Larion I did not answer, but mumbled something. A feeling of unhappiness and sadness weighed upon me. Titoff displeased me by the suspicious stillness of his life. I went almost daily to the church to help the watchman, Vlassi, and also the new sexton, a handsome young man, who had been a school teacher. He was not interested in his work, but he was a great friend of the priest, whose hand he always kissed and whom he followed about like a dog. He continually reproved me, for which he was in the wrong, because I knew the holy service better than he did and always did everything according to rule.