This is (for Chekhov) an unusual, foxy little story narrated by a bad man.
The narrator works at a godforsaken railway station, where “for fifteen miles around there was not one human habitation, not one woman, not one decent tavern.”
The station constitutes a tiny world unto itself:
“My wife and I; a deaf and scrofulous telegraph clerk; and three watchmen. My assistant, a young man who was in consumption, used to go for treatment to the town, where he stayed for months at a time, leaving his duties to me together with the right of pocketing his salary.”
Into this world enters the aunt of the narrator’s wife – “a woman of easy virtue.” Her arrival signals chaos and dissolution, but Chekhov, sly dog, leaves it up to our imagination as to what happens next.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
This is among Chekhov’s “voiciest” stories. The narrator seems warm and alive (despite his decided lack of a moral compass). More often, Chekhov uses the first person narrative in a reserved way–the narrator may well be an author, as is the case in “Ariadne,” to relate what is purported to be someone else’s story.
Another tale with a vivid voice is “From the Diary of a Violent-Tempered Man.” It’s a very different story, and a very different narrator, but both of the voices are truly alive.
A Chekhov Circus 