From the station one could already see Tatiana’s forest and three high, narrow country houses that Losev, who in the first years of his marriage had started to run various dubious enterprises, had never finished building. It was a two-hour drive from Moscow to Kuzminky and then from the station by horseback about twenty minutes. So, leaving for the Brest railway station after breakfast, he told his servant that he’d be back in three days’ time.
#Chekov a visit to friends free#
So, walking about his room and thinking it over he made an effort and decided to visit them for three days, to do his duty and then be free and at peace at least until next summer. The fact that he hadn’t been to the Losevs’ for a long time was weighing on his conscience. "How it’s all worked out, though," he thought now, rereading the letter in embarrassment. “I can’t not go there, they’ll be offended…" Besides Ta and Va, there’s also Na, Tatiana’s sister Nadezhda, who had both jokingly and seriously been called his bride she’d grown up before his eyes it was expected that he would marry her, and at one time he had been in love with her and was going to propose, but now she’s twenty-four years old and he was still single. There was no laughter there, no noise, no merry, carefree faces, no meetings in quiet moonlight nights and, most importantly, no youth and all that in any case had probably only been charming in his memory. He couldn’t any longer be attracted to Kuzminky as before. Apparently they wanted advice or money from him again now. Kuzminky had been her dowry only six years ago but it had already been ruined by that Sergei Sergeyitch, and now every time they owed money to the bank or had to pay off a mortgage they sought advice from Podgorin as a lawyer, and had also twice asked him to lend them money. This short, playful letter was also alien to him it had probably been composed over a long moment and with difficulty, and while Tatiana was writing her husband Sergei Sergeyitch had probably been standing behind her. Their present life was quite unfamiliar to him, incomprehensible and alien. He loved them dearly, but he seemed to have loved them more in his memories than now. And now, although he was already a lawyer and beginning to turn grey, they still called him Misha and considered him young and said that he hadn’t yet experienced anything in life. Tatiana, Varya and he were almost the same age but he’d been a student then and they were already grown-up girls and had looked on him as a boy. "Dear Va!” Podgorin thought, giving himself up to his memories. “How sweet she is!" She’d finished her medical studies now and was working somewhere outside Tula in a factory, and she apparently had come to Kuzminky to visit. He remembered a simple, lively, intelligent face with freckles that matched her dark red hair – Tatiana’s friend Varya, or Varvara Pavlovna. But who was Va? Podgorin thought back on long conversations, gay laughter, romance, a flower garden and walks in the evening with girls and young women who lived in Kuzminky and nearby. The letter was from Tatiana Alexeevna Loseva, who ten or twelve years ago, when Podgorin lived in Kuzminky, was called Ta for short. We beg you both on our knees, come today, show us your lovely, clear eyes. "Dear Misha, you’ve forgotten us completely, come to see us soon, we want to see you. Īn e-book, with the Russian text in an annex, is available for downloading below. They talk, they dance, they sing, they recite poetry and go for walks, but the old magic just isn’t there for Podgorin somehow.Ī sad story, characteristic of the author’s works in his last period on the theme of decline and loss of things in general and of past attachments in particular.Ħ,600 words, translated specially for this site. They ask him for legal help, the husband asks him for a loan and the young sister would clearly like to bring him into their family. Which turns out to be very much the case, as they are bankrupt, the estate is about to be sold, and Ta, Va and Na are desperate at the prospect of being deprived of the ancient family home. He feels obliged to go, knowing that the husband is a wastrel and a profligate and that they probably have financial problems. Podgorin, a thirty-year-old lawyer, receives a mail from Tatyana and Varya, two young women of his age with whom he’d been very close ten years previously, asking him to come for a visit to Tatyana’s family home where she lives with husband and two young children and her young sister Nadezhda.
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