"Dark Avenues", "The Beauty", "The Caucasus", "Visiting Cards" and Other Stories

"The Ballad" is a story about the Lord’s wolf told by a wandering woman, Masha. As a child, she lost her mother early and never saw her father, so the Lord’s people took her "into the house." At thirteen, together with a young lady of the house, she visited the village of Krutyye Gory, the abandoned estate of the lady’s grandfather. In the local church, above the grandfather’s grave, an image of a wolf had been painted—one that played a decisive role in the fate of the prince and his son.

The story "Stepa" takes place on a summer evening during a downpour. The merchant Krasilshchikov enjoyed the freshness of the village countryside, recalling the past summer he had spent in the capital. But to avoid getting lost in the heavy rain, on the way home he stopped to visit a neighbor—a widower. At home there was only his young daughter Stepa, who had long been in love with Krasilshchikov.

"Dark Alleys" is a story about the meeting of an old military man and the owner of an inn. The woman recognized him at once when he entered the parlor, and reminded him of herself and of the love that had existed between them thirty years earlier. As it turned out, Nadezhda had not only continued to love Nikolai Alekseevich all these years, but also never forgave him for how cruelly he left her.

"The Caucasus" tells of the rest of the narrator-hero on the Black Sea shore together with his beloved. She was married and desperately feared her husband, who once told her that he would protect his honor at all costs. Those were days of endless happiness for the lovers amid the southern nature—yet for someone, they became the last.

The main hero of "The Muse" comes to Moscow to take painting lessons from a famous but talentless artist when this girl suddenly bursts into his life. The Muse once simply came to see him as a visitor and became his common-law wife. The narrator had only to obey her commands—starting with buying apples and ending with life at the dacha, where their strange union also ended just as suddenly.

A stop of the train at a small station near Podolsk makes the hero of "Rusya" remember his tutoring work in these parts. His employer had an older daughter—thin, tall—whom he once took for a ride by boat. He told this story to his wife on the train; and at night, when she fell asleep, he plunged into memories of his first and strongest love.

A short story "The Beauty" is about the touching, unhappy life of a small boy with his stepmother: his father married a young beauty whom he dared not contradict.

"Foolish Girl". The cook of a deacon, a nameless fool, gave birth to a child. The whole family and neighbors knew that the father was the son of the deacon—a seminarian—who first satisfied his lust and then forced the cook to be driven away together with the boy as an unpleasant reminder of his sin.

"Antigone". A student arrived at the estate of his uncle and aunt—something he did every year and treated as a dull duty. But meeting the uncle’s beautiful caretaker made him see this trip differently. Two days later, Antigone—so the old man called her—had to go home to her father.

"Tanya" is a love story between the maid and her employer’s nephew. It began with an accidental closeness, was filled with genuine feeling, and was cut short by the relentless course of history.

"Smaragd". Night, summer. A girl admires the sky, whose beauty convinces her that angels exist; and a young man longs to kiss her.

In the story "Visiting Cards" the action takes place on a steamboat. A first-class passenger, a well-known writer, meets onboard a poor woman from third class with a seasoned, but kind and touching face.

"Wolves". On an August night, a student and a young lady rode in a cart: she was afraid of wolves and lit matches, but when wolves really appeared on their way, she didn’t panic and stopped the horses that were running.

The voice of Konstantin Denisov, who narrated this audiobook, seems to be just like—just as the heroes of Bunin’s stories are from—at the beginning of the last century. The reader doesn’t simply convey the atmosphere of dark summer evenings and noble estates—he literally sends the listener on a journey into those unique times.