Note:

• Title transliterates On (Rasskaz neizvestnogo) (pronounce (w)ón (raskás nyi-izvyéstnava)), "He (tale of an unknown man)".

Synopsis: A young University student finds a position as a private teacher in a wealthy man's home near the sea. He feels more and more uncomfortable in the strange atmosphere of the place, where politeness and forced laughter seem to be the rule. He learns of the earlier death by drowning of the owner's daughter, and witnesses a constant striving to erase the past. The rich man's young, second wife remains invisible and can only be heard playing the piano. The student becomes haunted by a strange figure in a bowler hat, who comes at night and peers at him through the windows, wherever he is. He eventually invites the creature in every night; the latter sits on his bed, puts his hand on the student's forehead and fills him with anguish. After discovering one morning the owner's wife lying dead on a table, and realizing she was the woman he had always loved without knowing it, the young man slowly sinks into madness…

• Certain aspects of this story are reminiscent of Maupassant's « Le Horla » : the diary form, the anonymous narrator, the haunting and growing anguish leading to madness, and also the cursory mention of a white ship at the end of the story, mysteriously related to the narrator's final lapse (as opposed to its mention at the beginning of « Le Horla », as a trigger to the whole story and a possible explanation).