One Autumn Night

One Autumn Night by Maxim Gorky, April 1902. It’s a touching tale of a young man who finds himself without shelter or food on a cold “Autumn Night” in Moscow. The strong opening lines of the narrator set the stage nicely: “Once in the autumn I happened to be in a very unpleasant and inconvenient position. In the town where I had just arrived and where I knew not a soul, I found myself without a farthing in my pocket and without a night’s lodging.” Scavenging for something to eat around the “steamship wharves,” he encounters another poor wretch, the young woman, Natasha, in similar circumstance if for different reasons. Together they scrounge a loaf of bread and take ref…