About Love

Начало книги

ust at the edge of the village of Mironositskoe, in a shed belonging to Prokofy, the village elder, some hunters who had been kept late were settling themselves for the night. There were just two of them, a veterinarian, Ivan Ivanych, and Burkin, a high school teacher. Ivan Ivanych had a rather strange hyphenated family name – Chimsha-Himalaiski – which didn’t suit him at all, and the whole province called him by his given name and patronymic; he lived close to the city on a farm that raised horses and had come hunting to get a breath of clean air. Burkin, the high school teacher, spent every summer as the guest of Count P. and had been on his own in this region for a while now.

They weren’t asleep. Ivan Ivanych, a tall, lean old man with long whiskers, sat outside by the doorway and smoked a pipe; the moon cast its light on him. Burkin lay inside on the hay; he could not be seen in the darkness.

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