An Artist's Story (Chekhov)
Short summary
Russian countryside, late 19th century. An idle artist stayed at the estate of a landowner named Byelokurov. One day, while wandering, he discovered the Voltchaninovs' estate and met two sisters: Lida and Genya (nicknamed Misuce).
The artist began visiting the Voltchaninovs regularly. He disliked the serious Lida, who worked as a teacher and was involved in social causes. They often argued about the value of his art versus her practical work. Meanwhile, he grew close to the younger sister Genya, who loved reading and admired him.
One day, after gathering mushrooms with Genya, the artist confessed his feelings and they kissed. The next day, he received a note from her:
"I told my sister everything and she insists on my parting from you," I read. "I could not wound her by disobeying. God will give you happiness. Forgive me. If only you knew how bitterly my mother and I are crying!"
When the artist visited the Voltchaninovs again, he discovered that Genya and her mother had left for their aunt's home. He returned to Petersburg, never seeing the Voltchaninovs again. Years later, he learned from Byelokurov that Lida still taught at the school, while Genya's whereabouts remained unknown.
Detailed summary by chapters
Chapter titles are editorial.
Chapter 1. Meeting the Voltchaninovs
The story began six or seven years ago when the narrator was living in a province of Russia on the estate of a young landowner named Byelokurov. The narrator resided in a large, old house with columns and no furniture except a sofa and a table, while Byelokurov lived in the garden lodge.
Condemned by destiny to perpetual idleness, I did absolutely nothing. For hours together I gazed out of window at the sky, at the birds, at the avenue, read everything that was brought me by post, slept.
One day while wandering, the narrator accidentally discovered a beautiful estate with a white house, a pond, and a village with a church. At the gates stood two young women. The elder was slim, pale, and very handsome with chestnut hair, while the younger, about seventeen or eighteen, looked at him with astonishment. The place and these faces seemed strangely familiar to him.
For a moment it breathed upon me the fascination of something near and very familiar, as though I had seen that landscape at some time in my childhood. And it seemed to me that these two charming faces, too, had long been familiar to me.
Soon after, the elder sister visited Byelokurov's estate to collect donations for villagers whose homes had burned down. She introduced herself as Lidia Voltchaninov and invited both men to visit her family at Shelkovka estate. Byelokurov later explained that the Voltchaninovs were a wealthy family who lived on their estate year-round. Lidia taught at the local Zemstvo school and was proud of earning her own living.
Chapter 2. Visits to Shelkovka estate
The narrator and Byelokurov visited the Voltchaninovs at Shelkovka. The mother, Ekaterina Pavlovna, tried to engage the narrator in conversation about his paintings. Lida spoke mostly with Byelokurov, reproaching him for not participating in the Zemstvo meetings and allowing the district to remain under Balagin's control.
The younger sister, Genya, nicknamed "Misuce" from what she called her English governess as a child, was treated as not quite grown up by her family. She showed the narrator photographs in the family album, touching him with her shoulder as she did so. He noticed her delicate chest, slender shoulders, and thin body.
They played croquet and lawn tennis, walked in the garden, and had supper together. The narrator felt at home in this small, refined house where there were no oleographs on the walls and servants were spoken to with civility. At supper, Lida continued to talk about the Zemstvo, while Byelokurov tried to appear clever and accidentally spilled sauce on the tablecloth, which everyone except the narrator pretended not to notice.
As they walked home, Byelokurov remarked that good breeding was shown not by avoiding spilling sauce but by not noticing when someone else did it. He complained about how hard he worked and how he received no sympathy from anyone. The narrator had little faith in Byelokurov's work ethic, noting that he even carried letters meant to be posted for weeks in his pocket.
Chapter 3. Intellectual conflict with Lida
The narrator began visiting the Voltchaninovs regularly, usually sitting on the lower step of the terrace. He grew accustomed to Lida's daily routine of receiving patients, giving out books, and going into the village without a hat. In the evenings, she would talk about the Zemstvo and schools.
She did not like me. She disliked me because I was a landscape painter and did not in my pictures portray the privations of the peasants, and that, as she fancied, I was indifferent to what she put such faith in.
Meanwhile, Genya spent her days reading in a deep armchair or in the lime avenue. When the narrator arrived, she would eagerly tell him about small events like a chimney fire or a fish caught in the pond. They went for walks together, picked cherries, or she would watch him paint. Her thin, weak arms showed through her transparent sleeves as she moved.
One Sunday in late July, the narrator came to the Voltchaninovs early and walked around the garden looking for mushrooms to pick later with Genya. He saw her and her mother returning from church in light holiday dresses. Later, Genya joined him with a basket, and they gathered mushrooms while talking about miracles and the eternal life. The narrator told her that man should recognize himself as superior to everything in nature, even what seems miraculous.
Genya believed the narrator knew a great deal and could guess correctly what he didn't know. She wanted him to initiate her into the domain of the Eternal and the Beautiful. When she asked why he always argued with Lida, he simply replied, "Because she is wrong." This answer brought tears to Genya's eyes.
After dinner, while Genya read in an armchair and the narrator sat on the terrace steps, Ekaterina Pavlovna confided that she worried about Lida. Though she admired her elder daughter's work with schools and dispensaries, she feared Lida would miss her chance at marriage. Genya responded that everything was in God's hands.
"That's true, Lida—that's true," the mother assented. And she never contradicted her, but always assented: "That's true, Lida—that's true."
Chapter 4. Brief romance and separation
As the narrator left Shelkovka that evening, Genya saw him to the gate. For the first time that summer, he felt a yearning to paint. He asked Byelokurov why he lived such an uninteresting life and why he hadn't fallen in love with Lida or Genya. Byelokurov replied that he loved another woman, referring to Liubov Ivanovna, the plump lady who shared his lodge and kept a sharp hand over him.
During another visit, the narrator engaged in a heated argument with Lida about the value of medical relief centers. He contended that such institutions only added to the peasants' burdens by creating new needs without freeing them from their fundamental problems. What mattered, he argued, was not that a woman named Anna had died in childbirth, but that peasants never had time to think of their souls.
The whole horror of their position lies in their never having time to think of their souls, of their image and semblance. Cold, hunger, animal terror, a burden of toil, like avalanches of snow, block for them every way to spiritual activity.
Lida refused to argue, saying she had heard such arguments before. She turned to her mother and changed the subject to the prince who was being sent to Vichy. The narrator felt his presence was disagreeable to her and left.
Outside, Genya was waiting for him at the gate. They walked together, and she shivered in the night air with only her blouse over her shoulders. When the narrator asked her to stay another minute, he put his arms around her and covered her face, shoulders, and hands with kisses. She whispered that they had no secrets from each other and that she must tell her mother and sister, though she feared Lida's reaction.
I loved Genya. I must have loved her because she met me when I came and saw me off when I went away; because she looked at me tenderly and enthusiastically. How touchingly beautiful were her pale face, slender neck, slender arms, her weakness, her idleness...
The next day, when the narrator returned to Shelkovka, he found the house empty. Through a door, he heard Lida giving a dictation lesson to a student named Dasha. When he inquired about Ekaterina Pavlovna, Lida informed him that she and Genya had gone to their aunt in Penza and might go abroad in winter. Shortly after, he received a note from Genya explaining that her sister insisted they part, and she could not disobey.
The narrator never saw the Voltchaninovs again. Years later, on his way to Crimea, he met Byelokurov on a train and learned that Lida still lived in Shelkovka, teaching at the school. She had gathered supporters and defeated Balagin in the last election. About Genya, Byelokurov knew nothing.
And still more rarely, at moments when I am sad and depressed by loneliness, I have dim memories, and little by little I begin to feel that she is thinking of me, too—that she is waiting for me, and that we shall meet... Misuce, where are you?