The Bet, and other stories

“We owe Yegor five months’ wages. Do you realise it? It’s a bad thing to let the servants’ wages run on. I’ve said so often. It’s much easier to pay ten roubles every month than...

I light the lamp quickly and drink some water straight out of the decanter. Then I hurry to the window. The weather is magnificent. The air smells of hay and some delicious thin...

A third ring. Enters a young doctor in a new black suit, gold-rimmed spectacles and the inevitable white necktie. He introduces himself. I ask him to take a seat and inquire his...

The Russian dishes mentioned in “A Tedious Story” have no exact equivalents. _Sossoulki_ are a kind of little dumplings eaten in soup; _schi_ is a soup made of sour cabbage; and...

Aboguin was standing on the threshold, but not the same man as went out. The expression of satisfaction and subtle elegance had disappeared from him. His face and hands, the att...

“There are some queer types to be found,” says Mikhail Fiodorovich. “Yesterday I went to see our friend Yegor Pietrovich. There I found a student, one of your medicos, a third-y...

Angrily Ilyin began to thrust his stick into the sand. Madame Loubianzev listened without understanding much of it; she liked the conversation. First of all, she was pleased tha...

Our dinner nowadays is as nasty to describe as to eat. On my wife’s face there is pompousness, an assumed gravity, and the usual anxiety. She eyes our plates nervously: “I see y...

She remembered how Gronsdiev was playing with Maxim the poodle after tea yesterday; how he told a story afterwards of a very clever poodle who was chasing a crow in the yard. Th...

“There, I knew it would end like this,” said the painter frowning. “We oughtn’t to have had anything to do with this fool of a blockhead. I suppose you think your head’s full of...

Vassiliev imagined how in about ten minutes he and his friends would knock at a door, how they would stealthily walk through the narrow little passages and dark rooms to the wom...

“I’ll say: ‘Lend me ...’” she thought. “That’s the right thing, because we are acquainted. But the maid must go out of the room.... It’s awkward in front of the maid.... What is...

But somehow, during the intervals his heart beat, and, without noticing it, he ran about the foyer and the corridors like a boy, looking impatiently for someone. Every time the...