The Two Volodyas

"The Two Volodyas" is a short story by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov that explores themes of identity, duality, and the complexities of human relationships. The narrative centers around two characters named Volodya, who have differing personalities and life paths, yet share a deep connection. Chekhov masterfully contrasts their experiences and perspectives, highlighting the nuances of human nature and the impact of socio-cultural expectations. This poignant tale invites readers to reflect on the struggle for self-definition and the intricate interplay between individual desires and societal norms.

								
"LET me; I want to drive myself! I'll sit by the driver!" Sofya Lvovna
said in a loud voice. "Wait a minute, driver; I'll get up on the box
beside you."

She stood up in the sledge, and her husband, Vladimir Nikititch, and the
friend of her childhood, Vladimir Mihalovitch, held her arms to prevent
her falling. The three horses were galloping fast.

"I said you ought not to have given her brandy," Vladimir Nikititch
whispered to his companion with vexation. "What a fellow you are,
really!"

The Colonel knew by experience that in women like his wife, Sofya
Lvovna, after a little too much wine, turbulent gaiety was followed by
hysterical laughter and then tears. He was afraid that when they got
home, instead of being able to sleep, he would have to be administering
compresses and drops.

"Wo!" cried Sofya Lvovna. "I want to drive myself!"

She felt genuinely gay and triumphant. For the last two months, ever
since her wedding, she had been tortured by the thought that she had
married Colonel Yagitch from worldly motives and, as it is said, par
dépit; but that evening, at the restaurant, she had suddenly become
convinced that she loved him passionately. In spite of his fifty-four
years, he was so slim, agile, supple, he made puns and hummed to the
gipsies' tunes so charmingly. Really, the older men were nowadays a
thousand times more interesting than the young. It seemed as though age
and youth had changed parts. The Colonel was two years older than her
father, but could there be any importance in that if, honestly speaking,
there were infinitely more vitality, go, and freshness in him than in
herself, though she was only twenty-three?

"Oh, my darling!" she thought. "You are wonderful!"

She had become convinced in the restaurant, too, that not a spark of her
old feeling remained. For the friend of her childhood, Vladimir
Mihalovitch, or simply Volodya, with whom only the day before she had
been madly, miserably in love, she now felt nothing but complete
indifference. All that evening he had seemed to her spiritless, torpid,
uninteresting, and insignificant, and the sangfroid with which he
habitually avoided paying at restaurants on this occasion revolted her,
and she had hardly been able to resist saying, "If you are poor, you
should stay at home." The Colonel paid for all.

Perhaps because trees, telegraph posts, and drifts of snow kept flitting
past her eyes, all sorts of disconnected ideas came rushing into her
mind. She reflected: the bill at the restaurant had been a hundred and
twenty roubles, and a hundred had gone to the gipsies, and to-morrow she
could fling away a thousand roubles if she liked; and only two months
ago, before her wedding, she had not had three roubles of her own, and
had to ask her father for every trifle. What a change in her life!

Her thoughts were in a tangle. She recalled, how, when she was a child
of ten, Colonel Yagitch, now her husband, used to make love to her aunt,
and every one in the house said that he had ruined her. And her aunt
had, in fact, often come down to dinner with her eyes red from crying,
and was always going off somewhere; and people used to say of her that
the poor thing could find no peace anywhere. He had been very handsome
in those days, and had an extraordinary reputation as a lady-killer. So
much so that he was known all over the town, and it was said of him that
he paid a round of visits to his adorers every day like a doctor
visiting his patients. And even now, in spite of his grey hair, his
wrinkles, and his spectacles, his thin face looked handsome, especially
in profile.

Sofya Lvovna's father was an army doctor, and had at one time served in
the same regiment with Colonel Yagitch. Volodya's father was an army
doctor too, and he, too, had once been in the same regiment as her
father and Colonel Yagitch. In spite of many amatory adventures, often
very complicated and disturbing, Volodya had done splendidly at the
university, and had taken a very good degree. Now he was specialising in
foreign literature, and was said to be writing a thesis. He lived with
his father, the army doctor, in the barracks, and had no means of his
own, though he was thirty. As children Sofya and he had lived under the
same roof, though in different flats. He often came to play with her,
and they had dancing and French lessons together. But when he grew up
into a graceful, remarkably handsome young man, she began to feel shy of
him, and then fell madly in love with him, and had loved him right up to
the time when she was married to Yagitch. He, too, had been renowned for
his success with women almost from the age of fourteen, and the ladies
who deceived their husbands on his account excused themselves by saying
that he was only a boy. Some one had told a story of him lately that
when he was a student living in lodgings so as to be near the
university, it always happened if one knocked at his door, that one
heard his footstep, and then a whispered apology: "Pardon, je ne suis
pas setul." Yagitch was delighted with him, and blessed him as a worthy
successor, as Derchavin blessed Pushkin; he appeared to be fond of him.
They would play billiards or picquet by the hour together without
uttering a word, if Yagitch drove out on any expedition he always took
Volodya with him, and Yagitch was the only person Volodya initiated into
the mysteries of his thesis. In earlier days, when Yagitch was rather
younger, they had often been in the position of rivals, but they had
never been jealous of one another. In the circle in which they moved
Yagitch was nicknamed Big Volodya, and his friend Little Volodya.

Besides Big Volodya, Little Volodya, and Sofya Lvovna, there was a
fourth person in the sledge--Margarita Alexandrovna, or, as every one
called her, Rita, a cousin of Madame Yagitch--a very pale girl over
thirty, with black eyebrows and a pince-nez, who was for ever smoking
cigarettes, even in the bitterest frost, and who always had her knees
and the front of her blouse covered with cigarette ash. She spoke
through her nose, drawling every word, was of a cold temperament, could
drink any amount of wine and liquor without being drunk, and used to
tell scandalous anecdotes in a languid and tasteless way. At home she
spent her days reading thick magazines, covering them with cigarette
ash, or eating frozen apples.

"Sonia, give over fooling," she said, drawling. "It's really silly."

As they drew near the city gates they went more slowly, and began to
pass people and houses. Sofya Lvovna subsided, nestled up to her
husband, and gave herself up to her thoughts. Little Volodya sat
opposite. By now her light-hearted and cheerful thoughts were mingled
with gloomy ones. She thought that the man sitting opposite knew that
she loved him, and no doubt he believed the gossip that she married the
Colonel par dépit. She had never told him of her love; she had not

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