Summary:

Burkin and Ivan Ivanovich seek shelter from the rain in Alehin's country home. As they sit having their tea, Ivan Ivanovich tells the story of his brother, Nikolay, who worked as a government functionary and always dreamed of saving enough money to buy his own country home with a garden and gooseberries. He skimped and saved and finally, after his wife's death, bought an estate.

When Ivan Ivanovich visited him many years later, Nikolay was no longer the self-doubting clerk he once was, but had become a confident (and corpulent) landowner, who was obviously happy with his life and with the delicious gooseberries from the bushes he had planted. Ivan Ivanovich realized then that he, too, was a happy man, despite all the pain and evil in the world.

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Summary:

Seventeen year old Volodya and his mother visit the home of their wealthy acquaintances, the Shumihins. Everyone teases the awkward and shy young man. Volodya is infatuated with Nyuta, the Shumihins' cousin, a married woman of 30 "with rosy cheeks, plump shoulders, a plump round chin, and a continual smile on her thin lips." Volodya encounters her as she returns through the garden from bathing. She teases him to speak. Finally, he blurts out, "I love you" and grasps her around the waist. She laughs and frees herself.

Later, Volodya hears Nyuta and his mother laughing about the incident. He remains at the house overnight and has another encounter with Nyuta, this time in her room. When Volodya and his mother return home, he goes to his room, puts the muzzle of a revolver in his mouth, and kills himself.

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Summary:

Nadya Shumin is engaged to be married to Andrey Andreitch, the son of a local priest. Nadya lives on her grandmother's estate with her mother, "a fair-haired woman tightly laced in, with a pince-nez, and diamonds on every finger." While Nadya is a woman with a great desire for education and independence, Andrey is a friendly but rather vacuous and totally unmotivated man.

Sasha, an ill and impoverished young man who is spending the summer on the estate has long been considered part of the family. Sasha implores Nadya to follow her heart--to go to Petersburg and attend the University. She resolves to do so and secretly accompanies Sasha when he returns to Moscow. She then goes on to begin her own life in Petersburg.

After the school term, Nadya returns for the summer, but she is aware that things will never be the same. The family receives word that Sasha has died of tuberculosis. At the end of the story, Nadya is packing to leave the estate "as she supposed forever."

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Summary:

It is a summer night on the steppe and two shepherds are lying on the ground as their sheep sleep. A man on a horse stops to ask them for a light for his pipe, but stays to chat. They discuss the recent death of Yefim Zhmenya, an old man who had sold his soul to the Evil One. You could tell he was evil because people walking past his garden could hear his melons whistle. The older shepherd tells another story about Yefim, whom he had seen appear as a bullock one stormy night.

One of the men observes that there are many treasures buried in the local hills. "Yes," says the old shepherd, "but no one knows where to dig for them." But then he tells them about a map to the treasure and indicates that he knows precisely where to dig. However, when the horsemen asks him what he would do with the treasure if he finds it, the old shepherd can't answer.

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Summary:

On Good Friday a clerical student is walking home when he encounters two widows warming themselves around a fire. As the cold evening descends, he joins them and tells the story of the Apostle Peter, who the night before Jesus died was so afraid for his own skin that he denied knowing Jesus, not once, but three times. Afterwards, the Gospels say, he was filled with remorse and "went out and wept bitterly."

The two women are deeply moved by this tale; one of them starts to cry. The student suddenly experiences a connection between the story of Peter, 1900 years old, and the women and himself. He is filled with "the inexpressible sweet expectation of happiness, of unknown mysterious happiness . . . and life seemed to him enchanting, marvelous, and full of lofty meaning."

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Summary:

A prosperous lawyer (Skvortsoff) encounters a ragged beggar, who claims to be a teacher fired unjustly from his job. Skvortsoff, however, remembers that he saw the same man the other day, when he had claimed to be an impoverished student. The beggar (Luskoff) breaks down and admits that he is simply a drunk without work. Skvortsoff offers him a job chopping wood, which he reluctantly accepts. Olga, the cook, takes Luskoff out and shows him the wood stack.

After that, Luskoff returns frequently to do odd jobs, and eventually Skvortsoff sets him up with a clerical position. Two years later, Skvortsoff sees the former beggar at the theater. He prides himself for having "saved" Lushkoff from a life of drunkenness, but Lushkoff reveals that it was Olga who saved him--she chopped the wood, and the compassion she showed led to a change in his heart.

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Summary:

An army lieutenant named Klimov is returning home to his sister and aunt in Moscow and falls ill while on the train. His mouth is dry, his brain turns to mush, and he keeps hearing a strange voice cry, "Is the mail ready?" When he finally arrives at the station, he collapses. During the next days or weeks, he thrashes around his bed in delirium, latching onto disconnected images of a cheerful doctor, a grave priest, and various acquaintances and events.

One morning Klimov awakens feeling well. His whole being is filled with a sensation of happiness. He learns from the doctor that he has survived a case of spotted typhus. But where is his sister Katya? His aunt groans, "Ah, Katya, Katya! Our angel is gone! Is gone!" Indeed, Katya had caught typhus from her brother and died. Her funeral had taken place the day before. Pavel's "heart ached, he burst into tears, and leaned his forehead against the window frame."

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Summary:

May-Alice Culhane (Mary McDonnell) is a daytime soap opera star who is struck by a taxi in New York and wakes up in a hospital paralyzed from the waist down. Upset and bitter, and unable to continue acting, which she says is the only thing she was ever good at, she returns to her Louisiana bayou family home to begin the rest of her life in isolation.

An employment agency sends out a string of helpers. Some are better than others, but all are quickly defeated by May-Alice’s deep bitterness and negativity and her incipient alcoholism. Then comes Chantelle (Alfre Woodard), who needs the job so badly, as part of digging herself out from a cocaine addiction, that her determination makes her a match for May-Alice.

It is decidedly bumpy going, but Chantelle persists and May-Alice finally strops drinking and begins to make some progress in physical therapy. She takes up black-and-white photography, developing her own prints from her wheelchair, and she gratefully receives the gentlemanly attentions of her high school idol Rennie, played by David Strathairn. (The film takes its title from a practice that locals believe can make love-wishes come true.)

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Summary:

In Siberia, "Old Semyon, nicknamed Canny, and a young Tatar, whom no one knew by name, were sitting on the riverbank by the campfire;the other three ferrymen were in the hut." (p. 97) The Tatar is horrified by the prospect of exile, having left a beautiful wife behind. But Semyon counsels acceptance "You will get used to it," he repeats again and again.

Semyon tells him the story of Vasily Sergeyitch, a wealthy aristocrat who was sent into exile 15 years earlier. He was able to send for his wife and daughter. The wife agreed to come, but then ran away with a lover, and now the daughter who has spent her life in exile with him lies dying of consumption. The point of this story seems to be that the exiled man should accept his fate and forego desire, or the expectation of happiness.

Later, Vasily Sergeyitch hails the ferry to take him across the river. He is hastening to town to see a new doctor, whom he desperately hopes might help his daughter. Old Semyon mocks him: "Looking for a good doctor is like chasing the wind in the fields or catching the devil by the tail." (p. 111) As the ferrymen try to sleep in the cold, windy hut, they hear the Tatar outside crying, and Semyon repeats, "He'll get used to it."

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Summary:

In a village of Reybuzh lives an elderly tyrant who has two sons, one of whom works in a factory in the city, while his ailing wife lives in the village with her in-laws. The other son, a disabled alcoholic, has remained at home; his wife is "a handsome young woman, smart and buxom." The two wives are essentially no more than servants in their father-in-law's house. One day a traveler stops overnight in the village. Before going to bed, he relates the sad tale of Kuzka, his adopted son. The boy's mother was beaten by her husband. She subsequently poisoned him and, after being convicted of murder, died in prison.

Later that night, one of the young wives (Varvara) returns home from a toss in the hay with the priest's son. The other (Sofya) accosts her, and they discuss the traveler's story as they ruminate on their own terrible lives. Varvara suggests that they could poison her drunken husband and their father-in-law. Sofya is tempted, but frightened of being caught, and of God's punishment. The next morning the traveler settles his account, and he and the young boy leave.

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