Gooseberries

Gooseberries Summary | Detailed Summary

It is an overcast day when Ivan Ivanovitch, a veterinary surgeon, and Burkin, a high school English teacher, take their dogs for a walk in the country, a landscape that is familiar and beautiful. They can see the windmills of Mironositskoe when the rain begins to fall. Burkin suggests they take shelter at a friend's house.

Alehin lives in nearby Sofino, a wet, muddy and desolate place where the sound of the watermill drowns out the sound of the rain, and the dam shakes as if it will break. Ivanovitch and Burkin find their friend, a tall, stout man of forty with long hair, in his barn winnowing. He is filthy and his clothes are in disrepair, but he greets them warmly and takes them into his home. A beautiful young servant, Pelagea, supplies them with towels and soap. In the bathhouse, Alehin is apologetic as he dirties the water in his efforts to get clean.

Ivanovitch runs out into the rain and plunges into the millpond, cavorting like a dolphin. He enjoys himself so much that he forgets the time, and Burkin and Alehin are completely dressed before he even gets out of the water.

Pelageo serves them tea in the upstairs drawing room where Ivanovitch begins to tell his friends a story about his younger brother Nikolay. Their father, Tchimsha-Himalaisky, an officer who rose to the rank of nobility, afforded his children a carefree childhood in the country. Yet, after his boys grew up, each chose a very different life. Ivanovitch decided on an extensive education and a medical career, while Nikolay took a government job in the city.

Ivanovitch goes on to say that Nikolay longed to return to the country. To that end, he scrimped, saved and planned for a farm from the house's architectural details to the gooseberry plants in the yard. Ivanovitch claims his brother went so far as to marry an elderly woman just for her wealth, and that she became so distressed by his frugality that she died and left it to him. Nikolay never dreamt he caused her death, Ivanovitch tells them, because "money, like vodka, makes a man queer." He cites two other examples of how crazy money can make people: there is a man who eats his lottery tickets to keep anyone else from benefiting and another who loses his leg under a train but is only worried only about the money in his boot.

Nikolay realized his dream of a country estate similar to his boyhood home when he purchased a 330-acre estate. There, he planted twenty gooseberry bushes, which would symbolically and literally bear the fruits of his labor. Ivanovitch had visited the estate, named for their father, a year ago. With little effort to hide his contempt for Nikolay, Ivanovitch says that his brother, and even his brother's cook and dog, had taken on the physical characteristics of a pig. Nikolay was no longer his timid baby brother, but someone who saw himself as a gentleman and was offended when peasants did not address him as "your honor." He was concerned about his salvation, but performed sadly misguided works of charity such as giving peasants gallons of vodka on his birthday. He was full of insolent conceit, Ivanovitch asserts. Once afraid to voice an opinion, he now weighed forth on any issue and considered his opinions to be the right ones. The dinner they shared the night of his visit ended with Nikolay offering him some homegrown gooseberries. While Nikolay found them so delicious he could not stop eating them, Ivanovitch contends they were sour and unripe.

It was then that Ivanovitch says he reconsidered. He said he suddenly saw a man who had what he wanted and was happy, truly happy. He began to reflect on his own happiness always tinged with an element of sadness, the knowledge that eventually trouble comes for everyone - disease, poverty, losses. He tells his friends that he finds the happy hoards suffocating because they do not see or do anything about the world's suffering and are, in fact, happy because they do not bear witness to it.

Since his visit with his brother, Ivanovitch says he cannot bear to be in town where he might see a happy family gathered around a table to share a meal. At night when he tries to sleep, he has a rush of ideas that keeps him awake. He wishes he were young again, and then he turns his attention to the younger Alehin and advises him to be confident and do good; that it is more important than personal happiness.

Burkin and Alehin are left confused and dissatisfied by the story. They felt inclined to talk about elegant men and women like those in the portraits who had once had tea in this same room. Alehin concludes that Ivanovitch's story had no direct bearing on his life and goes to bed.

Burkin and Ivanovitch are shown to a room with beds freshly made by Pelagea. Ivanovitch says his prayers and goes to sleep, leaving his pipe on the table, smelling of stale tobacco. Burkin is restless in the dark, left wondering where the oppressive smell comes from. Outside, the rain falls all night.