This is an overlong, overdone story of an awkward army officer who accidentally steps into a darkened room where a girl is waiting for a tryst with another officer. They share a kiss before the girl realizes he is not the man she was expecting. He runs out without learning who she was.
The narrative seems over-simplified; the officer, Ryabovitch, is cartoonishly shy and awkward. In the wake of the kiss he is (not credibly) transformed into a talkative and self-confident fellow. It just doesn’t hold up. The transformation is sudden and cartoonish–the kind of thing you would expect in a children’s movie or a rom-com, where a character is radically transformed by a blow to the head.
Structurally, too, “The Kiss” is a sloppy story. Ryabovitch himself isn’t introduced for some five pages–and the story itself is only 30 or so pages long.
Those first five pages, though–before Ryabovitch appears–those are good pages! This is another tale involving a visiting military regiment, and the dynamics of the army/town relationship are fascinating.
A group of soldiers arrives in town and the officers are immediately invited to the local gentry’s estate. The officers are annoyed; they’re tired and need time to set up camp. But they seem to have no choice: When invited to the local manor, you must attend. At the manor house, they dance, dine, flirt, play cards and billiards. All of that detail is interesting and the writing is fine.
Then comes the rom-com silliness and it’s not much good.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
I recommended this story as a counterpart to “The Husband,” a very different look at what happens when the military passes through a town. “The Husband” certainly makes a good pairing with “The Kiss.”
A Chekhov Circus 