OLD AGE
State-Councillor Usielkov, architect, arrived in his native town, where he had been summoned to restore the cemetery church. He was born in the town, he had grown up and been married there, and yet when he got out of the train he hardly recognised it. Everything was changed. For instance, eighteen years ago, when he left the town to settle in Petersburg, where the railway station is now boys used to hunt for marmots: now as you come into the High Street there is a four storied "Hôtel Vienna," with apartments, where there was of old an ugly grey fence. But not the fence or the houses, or anything had changed so much as the people. Questioning the hall-porter, Usielkov discovered that more than half of the people he remembered were dead or paupers or forgotten.
"Do you remember Usielkov?" he asked the porter. "Usielkov, the architect, who divorced his wife. . . . He had a house in Sviribev Street. . . . Surely you remember."
"No, I don't remember anyone of the name."
235
