Ugh. What we have here is a sort of Brothers Grimm Christmas horror story, a “Little Match Girl” for grownups.
A poor mother and father miss their daughter, who has moved to the city to be with her husband. The parents, poor and illiterate, must use a local scribe to communicate–and they have never received word of their daughter’s welfare in the four years since she left the village.
That’s the first chapter.
In the second and final chapter, we learn what has become of their daughter, and we learn as well the reason that they have never heard from her. (Hint: It’s not the daughter’s fault.)
This is a fiendish, awful story that is pretty hard to take. I suppose the one thing that can be said of it is that it’s another example of the ways that Russia’s rapidly shifting economy upended the world of the rural poor. The old parents live the old way, milking their cow in the morning, dozing by the stove. Their daughter, meanwhile, lives in the city, where her husband, having served in the army, is now a groveling (but utterly self-satisfied) lickspittle butler in a doctor’s office. The city life versus the country life: the choice has been made.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
For some reason, this story reminds me of “Oysters,” I suppose because they both have a certain horrible fairy tale quality to them, and sketch, in very different ways, life in the big city, which could be foreign and sad, if also rich and seductive.
A Chekhov Circus 