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Fyodor Nilov
Fyodor
also: Федор Нилов, Fyodor Panteleich, Федор Пантелеич
A poor Moscow cobbler who, on Christmas Eve, envies the rich and strikes a Faustian bargain with a customer who turns out to be the Devil; granted wealth, he finds it brings only overeating, sleepless fear of thieves, and a wife who will not let him sing or play the accordion -- and wakes to find it was all a vision, restored to his old life and no longer envious.
Reading notes
- The Cobbler and the Devil §51 had already swung his arm back to give her one across the back
Fyodor, now made rich, moves by old habit to strike his new wife -- the same casual violence he had earlier shown toward Marya (loc 19), now checked only by the new wife's higher social standing and firm refusal, not by any change in Fyodor's character. The passage is rendered faithfully from the source without embellishment; it is presented here as a period-typical detail of the story's portrait of working-class marriage, not endorsed by the story or this edition, and is glossed factually rather than sensationally.