Rybkin, an employee at the newspaper A Sneeze On All Your Head!, a corpulent flabby man, dumped and dull, was standing in the middle of his hotel room, glancing lovingly now and then at the ceiling, from which a hook, meant for a lamp, protruded. A rope was dangling in his hands.
‘Will it hold or not?’ he wondered. ‘What if the rope breaks and the hook crashes down on my head… Wretched life! No place even to hang yourself’.
I don’t know how the madman’s deliberations would have ended if the door hadn’t burst open admitting Rybkin’s friend, Shlepkin, an employee of the newspaper Judas, The Traitor, lively ruddy-faced, jolly.