After its translation into English by the author and his son Dmitri Nabokov it was incorporated into the collection A Russian Beauty and Other Stories and published in 1971.
The narrator assembles the props for the story, and the actors appear: Gustav and his brother Anton are two beer-drinking German thugs, and the new lodger, Romatovski who moves in with a heap of books.
The narrator is shocked to learn this, thinking that he was a poet, and disappointed he sees the objects he had assembled for the story disappear.
The story was written in 1933 at a time when Hitler had just taken power, and Nabokov's description of the brothers reflects the mentality and methods of Nazi thugs.
The figure of Romastoski is peculiar as he initially appears to be a literary man, but as the story evolves he is a criminal according to the police report.