“No one heard the door creak in the hut and Kryga, frost-covered from the frost, entered, huge in his untanned short sheepskin coat, hunched over from constant worries. On the shabby bricks of a Russian stove heated by dung, the children were fast asleep, covered with rags; on the floors, with their bare arms scattered across the boards, Kryga’s wife, Avdotya, tossed and tossed and raved...”