Driving home from Easter services with his wife, a young farmer chances upon a man in a field–a Cossack–who has fallen ill. The farmer’s minor attempt to help the man is blocked by his wife, and they return home, leaving the Cossack alone in the field.
This small failure of charity is an omen of their ruin. They suffer one mishap after another, and the farmer not only rues failing to help the Cossack, but also what the incident has revealed to him about his wife.
This is a simple parable, but well wrought. The fact that the sick man is a Cossack–an other–gives the parable extra weight in this day and age. It is the inversion of the biblical story of the good Samaritan, and the fact that the farmer and his wife are returning from Easter services is pointed. (Maybe even too on the nose, but ok.)
READ THIS? READ THAT!
“The Head-Gardener’s Story” is another story that reads like an ancient fable–indeed, it is framed as an ancient folk story, told and retold over the generations. “The Cossack” has that same sense of timelessness, a tale that might have been told by Scheherazade.
A Chekhov Circus 