An extraordinarily strange thing happened in St. Petersburg on 25 March. Ivan Yakovlevich, a barber who lived on Voznesensky Avenue (his surname has got lost and all that his shop-front signboard shows is a gentleman with a lathered cheep and the inscription ‘We also let blood’), woke up rather early one morning and smelt hot bread. As he sat up in bed he saw his wife, who was a quite respectable lady and a great coffee drinker, taking some freshly baked rolls out of the oven.

‘I don’t want any coffee today, Praskovya Osipovna’, said Ivan Yakovlevich, ‘I’ll make do with some hot rolls and onion instead.’ (Here I must explain that Ivan Yakovlevich would really have liked to have had some coffee as well, but knew it was quite out of the question to expect both coffee and rolls since Praskovya Osipovna did not take very kindly to these whims of his.) ‘Let the old fool have his bread, I don’t mind,’ she thought. ‘That means extra coffee for me!’ And she threw a roll on to the table.

Ivan pulled his frock-coat over his nightshirt for decency’s sake, sat down at the table, poured out some salt, peeled two onions, took a knife and with a determined expression on his face started cutting one of the rolls.

When he had sliced the roll in two, he peered into the middle and was amazed to see something white there. Ivan carefully picked at it with his knife, and felt it with his finger. ‘Quite thick,’ he said to himself. ‘What on earth can it be?’

He poked two fingers in and pulled out – a nose!

He flopped back in his chair, and began rubbing his eyes and feeling around in the roll again. Yes, it was a nose all right, no mistake about that. And, what’s more, it seemed a very familiar nose. His face filled with horror. But this horror was nothing compared with his wife’s indignation.