In Russian, штифтик (shtiftik), "pin" (our translation), is a small pin of a mechanism, here that of the cylinder of a mechanical organ, in органный штифтик. The narrator places it beside the piano key: a man without desires, without will, and without any wanting would be a pin in the organ's cylinder. If they prove this to him, the man refutes it with an absurd act, only to show that he is a man and not a pin.
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