All my concerns, all my thoughts were centered upon one thing--to feed my beast, to propitiate the master of my life with enough food, pleasing to his palate, and served on time, so as not to incur his displeasure, so as to escape the terrors of a beating, to get him to spare me but once! But I do not remember that he ever did spare me.

He beat me so--not as a wife is beaten, but as one whom you hate and detest.

Twenty years I lived like that, and what was up to the time of my marriage I do not recall.

I remember certain things, but I see nothing! I am as a blind person.
Yegor Ivanovich was here--we are from the same village--and he spoke about this and about that.

I remember the houses, the people, but how they lived, what they spoke about, what happened to this one and what to that one--I forget, I do not see! I remember fires--two fires.