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:

The story is set in a ship's infirmary where five soldiers and sailors are returning to Russia after serving in the Far East. One of them, Gusev, served as an orderly. He is content to do his duty and get by. His delirious dreams are filled with images of his family's farm. He is concerned that if he does not make it home, the farm will fail and his parents will be thrown into the streets.

He makes kind overtures to another patient, Pavel Ivanych, who responds angrily. Pavel Ivanych considers himself a realist, a truth-teller, and a member of the revolutionary intelligentsia. He ridicules Gusev's optimistic good nature. Where Gusev is blind to the oppression he has suffered, Pavel Ivanych denounces injustice wherever he sees it and has a reputation for being a troublemaker. Even as his illness advances, Pavel Ivanych protests. He refuses to believe that he can die like the others; indeed, he insists that he is improving. Nonetheless, he dies.

Gusev grows worse, too. He feels an insatiable yearning for something that he cannot define. Shortly afterward, he, too, dies and is buried at sea. The story closes with a description of his body descending through a school of fish while a brilliant sunset shines above.

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Summary:

Sofya Lyovna is somewhat intoxicated as she drives home through the night with her husband of three months, Vladimir Nikititch (Big Volodya), and her old friend, Vladimir Mihalovitch (Little Volodya). Her husband is 53 years old to her 23; the marriage was a marriage of convenience. In truth, she has always loved Little Volodya, who plays around continuously with married women, but has never shown any romantic interest in Sofya.

As they drive near the nunnery that Sofya's friend Olga has recently joined, Sofya stops to visit her and invites Olga for a ride in the carriage. Olga appears cool and contented with her religious life, while Sofya feels that her own life is a mess. A day or so later, Sofya becomes Little Volodya's lover, but he soon drops her; Sofya then finds that she has nothing to do in her boring and loveless life, but to visit the nunnery and pester Olga again and again with her confessions.

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Summary:

The protagonist of this story is Yakov Ivanov, an ill-tempered old coffin-maker, who hates Jews. Yakov is also a fiddler, but rarely gets to play in the village orchestra because of his antagonism with Rothschild, the flautist. Rothschild is certainly no beauty, a "gaunt, red-haired Jew" with "a perfect network of red and blue veins all over his face."

When Marfa, Yakov's wife of 52 years, becomes ill, Yakov fatalistically builds her coffin in preparation for her death. After she dies, he is "overcome by acute depression." When Rothschild visits him on a friendly errand, Yakov beats up the poor man, yelling, "Get out of my sight!" Afterward, Yakov goes and sits by the river and tries to figure out why he has become the scolding, ill-tempered old man that he is.

Unfortunately, he develops a chill from the exposure. The next day he falls mortally ill with pneumonia. When Rothschild appears at the house again, he is surprised to find Yakov playing the fiddle with tears gushing from his eyes. Later, Yakov tells the priest who has come to confess him, "Give the fiddle to Rothschild."

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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:

In payment for the doctor's saving his life, a young man gives Dr. Koshelkov an antique bronze candelabra. The candelabra features "two female figures in the costume of Eve and in attitudes for the description of which I have neither the courage nor the fitting temperament." While the doctor finds the piece obscene, the young man chides him for not appreciating fine art. Finally, the doctor accepts the candelabra, but decides to give it to Uhov the lawyer, to whom he is indebted.

Uhov, in turn, judges the naked figures to be too raunchy: "I should be ashamed for my servants to see it." Yet, he is pressured to accept the gift. The same night he foists off the candelabra to Shashkin, the comic actor, who subsequently sells it. Two days later, the original young patient rushes into Dr. Koshelkov's office with the original candelabra, proclaiming that his mother had just discovered it in a shop. "Happily for you we have succeeded in picking up the pair to your candelabra!"

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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:

Lieutenant General von Rabbek hosts a party for members of the regiment in his magnificent home. Of all the attendees, the most awkward is Ryabovitch, "a little officer in spectacles, with sloping shoulders and whiskers like a lynx's." He considers himself the shyest, most undistinguished officer in the whole brigade. While wondering through the mansion, trying to avoid talking to people, he stumbles into a dark room, whereupon a woman rushes up to him, whispering, "At last!" She throws her arms around his neck and kisses him. At once, however, she realizes her mistake, runs from the room, and is lost in the crowd.

Ryabovitch's passion awakes! He feels that his life is beginning anew. For the rest of the evening, he searches in vain for the woman who kissed him. The next day his regiment departs for another area, but some time later, when he returns to the same town, Ryabovitch continues his obsession with the kiss he experienced that night, and still hopes to discover who the woman in the dark room was.

If only he could communicate with General von Rabbek--but no, Rabbek doesn't respond. In the end he stands on the riverbank: "Now that he expected nothing, the incident of the kiss, his impatience, his vague hopes and disappointment, presented themselves in a clear light . . . And the whole world, the whole of life, seemed to Ryabovitch an unintelligible, aimless jest . . . "

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Summary:

During Christmas week, Yergunov, a hospital assistant, is returning from a trip to another village when he gets caught in a snowstorm. He stops at a local tavern, where Kalashnikov, "an arrant scoundrel and horse-stealer" and Merik, "a dark-skinned peasant who had never been to the hospital," were also seeking shelter. Lyuba, the barmaid, cries, "Ugh! The unclean spirits are abroad!" The men start pondering the question of whether devils exist, and Yergunov tells the story of how he actually encountered a devil one day, while he (Yergunov) was out in the field vaccinating peasants.

When the storm quiets down, the men prepare to leave. Yergunov attempts to leave at the same time as Kalashnikov, because he is afraid the man will steal his horse, but Lyuba stands suggestively in front of the door, inviting Yergunov's caress. "Don't go away, dear heart," she murmurs.

Meanwhile, Kalashnikov proceeds to steal the horse, which, in fact, belonged to the hospital. After these delaying tactics, Lyuba raps the duped man on his head and tosses him out. Some months later, after he has lost his job because of drunkenness, Yergunov passes the tavern, wondering wistfully what it would feel like to be a thief.

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Summary:

The story begins with a group of young people on a riding party at the Shelestov estate. One of the guests is Nikitin, a young-looking man in his mid-20’s, who teachers literature at the local school, and loves Masha, the 18-year-old younger daughter of their host. Later, over dinner Varya, the older daughter, argues with Nikitin over some points of literature, and another guest scolds him for having never read the German writer, Lessing. But Nikitin glides through the evening on a cloud of love. A day later he returns and proposes to Masha.

In the second part of the story, the wedding occurs. Nikitin and Masha are deliriously happy--"’I am immensely happy with you, my joy,’ he used to say, playing with her fingers or plaiting and unplaiting her hair." But soon one of Nikitin’s friends and fellow teachers develops erysipelas and dies. After that, everything returns to normal, so much so that Nikitin has nothing to write in his diary.

Life seems to be closing in on him. He feels like trying to get away from his wife, "Where am I, my God? I am surrounded by vulgarity and vulgarity. Wearisome, insignificant people, pots of sour cream, jugs of milk, cockroaches, stupid women . . . There is nothing more terrible. I must escape from here, I must escape today . . . "

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