The Waistcoat

"The Waistcoat"[1] ("Kamizelka"[2]) is an 1882 short story by the Polish writer Bolesław Prus, and is considered a masterpiece of short-story writing.

The story has been translated into Czech, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Russian, and Slovak.

All the action takes place within an enclosed space: the narrator is, as it were, a viewer in a movie theater, whose screen is his neighbors' window across the courtyard.

The wife was slim and was a part-time seamstress; the husband was sturdy and hard-working, often staying at work till late in the night.

In April they were living with a servant girl, from July they were alone, and in October only the wife remained, as her husband had died of the tuberculosis that had been diagnosed by a physician during a home visit.