place
Snake Gully
also: Змеиная балочка, Zmeinaya balochka
A gully Yergunov recalls descending into on his way to Golyshino the previous year, the site of his first strange encounter with Merik, whom he half-mockingly cast as a devil in the telling of his own story.
Reading notes
- Thieves §34 Snake Gully
The site of Yergunov's earlier roadside encounter with Merik, which he is retelling, with self-flattering embellishment, as a supernatural anecdote when Merik -- asleep by the stove the whole time -- sits up and publicly contradicts the tall tale in section 36.