In a provincial town, a young merchant of Bavarian kvass meets a walking woman in the evening. She, drunk, stands in a puddle and stamps her feet, spraying dirt like children. A merchant leads her to her home; she agrees to go with him, thinking that he is her client. “Home” is a basement hole in which, in addition to the woman, her son lives with sore feet. She gave birth to him at the age of fifteen from an old voluptuous woman, whom she served as a maid. Lenka (so-called boy) sits in his hole all day and very rarely sees white light. He entertains himself by collecting in various boxes all kinds of insects that he manages to catch, giving them funny nicknames (spider - Drummer, fly - Officer, beetle - Uncle Nicodemus, etc.) and endowing in his imagination human traits that he spying on her mother's clients. These insects make up for Lenka a special world, which replaces the real, human one. However, he has a low concept of the human world, for he judges it by those who come to have fun with his mother in their hole.

Mother's name is Masha Froloha. She, apparently, is seriously ill (her nose failed, although she does not consider herself “contagious”). She madly loves her son and lives only for him. At the same time, she is a finished man, sick and drunk. The future, therefore, does not bode well for her son.

Lenka is wise and serious beyond his years. He treats the mother as a small child, pities her and teaches life. At the same time, he is just a child with no life experience.

The merchant (aka storyteller and author alter ego) begins to visit the boy and tries to somehow brighten his life. But the situation is so hopeless that in the end of the story the hero understands: he was at an impasse: "I quickly went out of the yard, grinding my teeth so as not to cry."