Volume 33, Number 3 · February 27, 1986
In a Room and a Half
By Joseph Brodsky
The room and a half (if such a unit of space makes any sense in English) in which the three of us lived had a parquet floor, and my mother strongly objected to the men in her family, me in particular, walking around with our socks on. She insisted on our wearing shoes or slippers at all times. Admonishing me about this matter, she would evoke an old Russian superstition; it is an ill omen, she would say, it may bode a death in the family.
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