The story follows Monette, a middle-aged traveling book salesman, who enters a church to confess a potential sin to a priest.

While driving, Monette picks up a hitchhiker carrying a sign that says he is deaf and mute. Believing the man cannot hear him, Monette spends the drive venting his rage and despair, eventually revealing the specific motel where his wife and her lover are staying.

Monette leaves the man at a rest stop but later finds his wife and her lover have been brutally murdered at that very motel.

If you are looking to download the story in , it is widely available on Russian digital libraries and retailers: