Professor of Medicine Nikolai Stepanovich - a scientist who has reached the heights of his science, who enjoys universal respect and appreciation; His name is known to every literate person in Russia. The bearer of this name, that is, he himself, is an old man, terminally ill, he, according to his own diagnosis, has no more than six months to live. In his notes, he is trying to understand the situation in which he found himself: his, famous person, fate sentenced to death. He describes the ordinary course of his present life.

Insomnia every night. Home - the wife and daughter of Lisa, whom he had previously loved, now with his petty everyday worries only annoy him. The closest employees: the eccentric and devoted university doorman Nikolay, the prosector Petr Ignatievich, the draft horse and the learned dumbass. The work that used to give pleasure to Nikolai Stepanovich, his university lectures, once equal to the works of the poet, now bring him only torment.

Nikolai Stepanovich is neither a philosopher nor a theologian; all his life the fate of the bone marrow has interested him more than the ultimate goal of the universe, his soul does not want to know questions about the afterlife darkness. But what pleased his life — peace and happiness in the family, his beloved work, self-confidence — was gone forever. New thoughts, which he did not know before, poison his last days. It seems to him that life has deceived him, his glorious name, a brilliant past do not alleviate today's pain.

Ordinary visitors of an old professor. A colleague in the faculty, a negligent student asking for a dissertation topic, everyone seems to Nikolai Stepanovich funny, narrow-minded, limited, each gives cause for irritation or mockery. But here is another welcome visitor: familiar steps, the rustle of dresses, a sweet voice ...

Katya, the daughter of a late fellow oculist, grew up in the family of Nikolai Stepanovich. By the age of fifteen, she possessed a passionate love for the theater. Dreaming of fame and service to art, trusting and enthusiastic, she went to provincial actresses, but two years later she became disappointed in theatrical business, in stage comrades, lost faith in her talent, survived unhappy love, attempted suicide, buried her child. Nikolai Stepanovich, who loved Katya as a daughter, tried to help her with advice, wrote her long but useless letters. Now, after the crash, Katya lives on the remains of her father’s inheritance. She lost interest in life, lies on her couch at home and reads books, and visits Nikolai Stepanovich once a day. She does not love his wife and Lisa, they pay her in return.

An ordinary family dinner also brings Nikolai Stepanovich nothing but irritation. There is a wife, Lisa, two or three of her friends at the conservatory, and Alexander Adolfovich Gnekker - a person who inspires the professor with acute antipathy. A fan of Lisa and a contender for her hand, he is in the house every day, but no one knows what his background and what means he lives on. He sells somewhere someone’s pianos, he is familiar with celebrities, judges music with great authority - he accustomed himself to art, and Nikolai Stepanovich concludes for himself.

He longingly recalls the old, simple and cheerful family dinners, gloomily thinks that for a long time the inner life of his wife and Lisa has eluded his observation. They have long been not the ones he knew and loved them before. Why the change occurred - he does not know.

After lunch, his wife, as usual, begs him to go to Kharkov, from where Snekker is from, to inquire there about his parents and condition.

From a feeling of loneliness, from fear of insomnia, Nikolai Stepanovich leaves the house. Where to go? The answer has long been clear to him: to Katya.

Only Katya is warm and comfortable with him, only she can complain about her condition. Before, he tells her, he had the feeling of a king, he could be condescending, forgiving everyone right and left. But now evil thoughts roam in his head day and night, decent only to slaves. He became excessively strict, demanding, irritable. His whole past life seems to him a beautiful, talented composition, it remains only not to spoil the finale, to meet death briskly and with a calm soul. "But I'm spoiling the finale ..."

Katya has another guest, philologist Mikhail Fedorovich. He, obviously, is in love with her and does not dare to confess to her. He entertains with jokes from university life, and his slander also annoys Nikolai Stepanovich. He interrupts conversations about grinding a new generation, about the lack of ideals among young people with sharp objections. But to himself, he feels that evil, "Arakcheev" thoughts own his being. And to the interlocutors, whom he compared with evil toads, he is drawn again every evening.

Summer is coming, the professor and his family live in the country.

At night, insomnia is still, but during the day instead of work - reading French books. Nikolai Stepanovich knows what creativity is and its main condition: a sense of personal freedom. His judgments about literature, theater, and science are notable and precise. But the thought of an imminent death, now after three or four months, does not leave him. Visitors are the same: doorman, prosector; dinners with the same Schnekker.

Calls in to ride a professor on his ram, Katya. She understands that her life does not add up, that time and money go aimlessly. "What should I do?" She asks. “What answer her?” - reflects Nikolay Stepanovich. It is easy to say “work,” or “give your property to the poor,” or “know yourself,” but these general and template tips are unlikely to help in this particular case. In the evenings, at the cottage, Katya is still the same Mikhail Fedorovich, in love and slandering. And Nikolai Stepanovich, who had previously condemned the attacks on the university, students, literature, and theater, now himself is participating in slander.

There are terrible nights with thunder, lightning, rain and wind, which are popularly called passerines. One such night is undergoing and Nikolai Stepanovich.

He wakes up from the fear of sudden death, cannot control his unaccountable horror. Suddenly you hear either moaning or laughing. His wife runs up, calls him into Lisa’s room. She groans from some kind of flour, rushes to her father’s neck: “My dad is good ... I don’t know what is wrong with me ... It’s hard!” “Help her, help her!” - begs the wife. - Do something!" “What can I do? I can’t do anything, ”father thinks. “The girl’s soul is a bit heavy, but I don’t understand anything, I don’t know and can only mutter:“ Nothing, nothing .. It will pass ... Sleep, sleep ... ”

A few hours later he is in his room, still awake, hears a knock on the window. This is Katya. And she had some heavy forebodings that night. She begs Nikolai Stepanovich to take her money from her and go somewhere to be treated. After his refusal, she sadly leaves.

Nikolai Stepanovich in Kharkov, where his wife persistently sent. The state of anger and irritation has been replaced by a new one: complete indifference. He learns here that they don’t know anything about Gnekker in the city, but when a telegram arrives from his wife with a message that Gnekker secretly married Lisa, he is indifferent to the news. This frightens him: after all, indifference is paralysis of the soul, premature death.

Morning finds him sitting in bed in a hotel room, busy with all the same obsessive thoughts. It seems to him that he understood the reason for the weakness that led him on the eve of the end to evil, slavish thoughts, and then to indifference. The fact is that in his thoughts, feelings, and judgments there is no general idea or god of a living person. "And if there is no this, then, therefore, there is nothing." If there is nothing in common that would bind everything together, a serious ailment, the fear of death, would suffice, so that everything in which the meaning and joy of life could be seen shattered. Nikolai Stepanovich finally gives up and decides to sit and silently wait for what will happen.

There is a knock on the door, in front of him stands Katya. Came, she says, just like that, drops a letter from Mikhail Fedorovich. Then, turning pale and clutching his hands, he turns to Nikolai Stepanovich: “For the sake of the true God, tell me rather, this very minute: what should I do? ... After all, you are my father, my only friend! .. You were a teacher! Say, what shall I do? ”

Nikolai Stepanovich barely stands on his feet, he is bewildered. "In all honesty, Katya, I don’t know ... Come on, Katya, have breakfast." Having not received an answer, she leaves — where she does not know herself. And probably she sees her for the last time. “Goodbye, my treasure!”