The Laestrygonians by Aleksandr Kuprin — Read

At the end of October, or the beginning of November, the city of Balaklava, that most original corner of the variegated Russian Empire, begins to live a life all its own. The days are still warm and pleasant, as they sometimes are in the fall, but at night it grows cold and the ground resounds under your step. The last summer visitors have gone to Sebastopol with their bundles, suitcases, trunks, sickly children, and decadente young ladies. As mementos of the recent guests, there still remain grape-skins which the invalid summer visitors had scattered in abundant quantities on every pier and in every narrow street, all for the purpose of aiding their precious health, and piles of paper, refuse, cigarette stumps, scraps of letters and newspapers, which always remain behind when the summer visitors go away.

And immediately Balaklava becomes roomy, fresh, comfortable, and cozy, as though it were an apartment which had just been left by a crowd of noisy, smoking, arguing, uninvited guests. The old, native Greek population, which had until then concealed itself in back rooms and shacks, now creeps forth and takes possession of the streets.