“Agafya” is a portrait of rural life pressured by Russia’s changing economy. It is set in a village where justice is served via a peasant court that metes out punishment in the medieval fashion, with floggings and who knows what other cruelties.
But in this seemingly medieval society, many of the men ride trains to work at a nearby factory. In other words, these are no longer rural people but, in essence, impoverished suburbanites scratching out a new kind of living, timing out their lives to factory shifts and train schedules.
Amidst these miserable, factory-working suburbanites there is at least one natural man–Savka. But he is not an idealized man of nature living off the land. Rather, he is a layabout, whiling away his days and evenings on a riverbank outside town while the other men toil in the factory.
Savka is big and strong and sexy and devil-may-care, and the poor women of the town (that is to say, the impoverished women of the town) sometimes sneak off to meet him by the river, where they drink and carouse.
Agafya is the latest of these women to pay Savka a visit by the river. She approaches in the evening, knowing that she can run home before her husband arrives, as she will hear his train as it approaches.
But Agafya gets drunk and lingers too long. The train arrives but she remains with Savka. In the end, she doesn’t go home until the morning.
Savka is condescending and cruel about the women who visit him in the woods, calling them shameless hussies. They’ll suffer for visiting him, he knows, and he even approves.
But Savka too will suffer the consequences of his behavior, a fact that he accepts rather casually. “Now she will catch it,” Savka says, watching as Agafya edges across the river back to town. “And they’ll flog me again at the peasant court… all on account of the women…”
This is a memorable portrait of a cad, but also a fascinating snapshot of a moment in time, when Russia’s rural ways were being upended by industrialization. The telling of the story is also interesting; It’s narrated in the first person by a visitor to Savka’s campground. The narrator’s tone is that of a sociologist or even an anthropologist, seeing Savka as a sort of case study. But he can’t help but chide Agafya, urging her to go home as she had planned, before her husband arrives.
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Most of the stories in volume six of Constance Garnett’s translations complement one other: You could easily read three in a row—“Dreams,” “The Pipe,” and “Agafya”—for a rich look at the natural world of the late 19th century and the encroaching growth of factories and town life. “The Malefactor” offers another look at the ways the rural poor struggled to adapt to industrialization.
A Chekhov Circus 