An Easy Man

“In the morning, around six o’clock, a certain living weight falls onto my bed, nudges me, and yells right into my ear:

‘Get up!’

It’s Sasha, a typesetter—my funny little companion, a boy of about nineteen, red-haired, shaggy-haired, with lizard-green eyes and a face covered in lead dust…’

A story from the cycle “On Rus’.”
First published in the journal “Letopis,” 1917, May–June, with the subtitle “Memoirs.”
In a letter to V. A. Desnitsky, M. Gorky noted that the story “A Light Man” (in Gorky’s letter he calls it “Sashka”) can be considered a draft for the story “The Son.”