the scenes, copied out the parts, prompted, made up the actors'
faces; and I was entrusted, too, with various stage effects such
as thunder, the singing of nightingales, and so on. Since I had no
proper social position and no decent clothes, at the rehearsals I
held aloof from the rest in the shadows of the wings and maintained
a shy silence.

I painted the scenes at the Azhogins' either in the barn or in the
yard. I was assisted by Andrey Ivanov, a house painter, or, as he
called himself, a contractor for all kinds of house decorations, a
tall, very thin, pale man of fifty, with a hollow chest, with sunken
temples, with blue rings round his eyes, rather terrible to look
at in fact. He was afflicted with some internal malady, and every
autumn and spring people said that he wouldn't recover, but after
being laid up for a while he would get up and say afterwards with
surprise: "I have escaped dying again."

In the town he was called Radish, and they declared that this was
his real name. He was as fond of the theatre as I was, and as soon
as rumours reached him that a performance was being got up he threw
aside all his work and went to the Azhogins' to paint scenes.

The day after my talk with my sister, I was working at the Azhogins'
from morning till night. The rehearsal was fixed for seven o'clock
in the evening, and an hour before it began all the amateurs were
gathered together in the hall, and the eldest, the middle, and the
youngest Azhogins were pacing about the stage, reading from manuscript
books. Radish, in a long rusty-red overcoat and a scarf muffled
round his neck, already stood leaning with his head against the
wall, gazing with a devout expression at the stage. Madame Azhogin