# Short Fiction — Character guide

> Key figures in Short Fiction by Ivan Bunin.

- [Theodot](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/theodot.md): Theodot is a muzhik among laborers and a student on a country night, recounting how he tracked his she-goat to a village and found a woman wrestling a black sow in a sty. His story is ridiculous and sad at once, and he l
- [Alexander Romanov Shasha](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/alexander_romanov_shasha.md): Shasha is the son of Roman, and he rioted, kicked up rows, and demanded a winding up of Roman's affairs, turning the older man green with wrath. Not content with his own wife, he took up with his father's mistress—a cook
- [Chang](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/chang.md): Chang is a dog purchased from his first master, a Chinaman, and taken aboard a steamer bound for Russia, where he suffers three weeks of seasickness and terror in a hot, half-dark corridor. His black eyes and wolf-like f
- [The Gentleman from San Francisco](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/the_gentleman_from_san_francisco.md): The Gentleman from San Francisco is a rich American aboard the opulent steamer Atlantis, dining in crystal-lit halls while the ocean heaves in black mountains outside. Polished, Mongolian-faced, with gold teeth and a bal
- [Kasimir Stanislavovitch](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/kasimir_stanislavovitch.md): Kasimir Stanislavovitch is a man of complex identity—possibly an artist or intellectual—who drinks vodka in an empty hall, his eyes reddening at a gramophone's sweet, snuffling drone. He wanders from hot restaurant to co
- [Gautami](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/gautami.md): Gautami is a maiden of simple raiment and tall stature, called 'the Lean,' who yields to the king's son by the deserted river and becomes his concubine, bearing his child. Her dark eyes, always the same yet full of encha
- [Constantine](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/constantine.md): Emile Du-Buis drifts through Constantine after a funeral, a self-styled fin de siècle poet with long hair, black clothes, and one leg shorter than the other. He plays for hours with Madame Maraud's daughters, reads sonor
- [Vanniya](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/vanniya.md): The Gentleman of San Francisco has spent decades amassing a fortune and now rewards himself with a grand tour of Europe, Egypt, and Japan, bringing along his wife and unmarried daughter. He moves through luxury liners an
- [Roman](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/roman.md): Roman is a loud, self-made merchant who boasts about his son to guests and then beats him the moment they leave, unable to understand why Shasha answers only with cryptic defiance. He wants a son who will take pride in t
- [Madame Maraud](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/madame_maraud.md): After a funeral brings Emile Du-Buis into her orbit, Madame Maraud finds her days livelier, her walk lighter, and her voice more tender — a small, half-innocent pleasure in being the center of a young man's attention. Wh
- [Semyon Novikov](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/semyon_novikov.md): Ungainly and out of place in Olga Meschersky's genteel circle, the officer is drawn into a liaison she treats as a game and he takes as a promise of marriage. When she hands him her diary on the station platform and tell
- [Anna](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/anna.md): Anna grows up in her sister's orderly hut, listening to Katherine read saints' lives aloud and never asking for more, her fair face often lost in a pensive stillness she explains only as her neck creaking. She loves the 
- [Ivlev](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/ivlev.md): Ivlev is a visitor to his brother-in-law's estate, riding a hired tarantass through fields of rye and flowers toward a distant region of the province. Idle and observant, he yields to the aimless contemplation that suits
- [Olga Meschersky](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/olga_meschersky.md): Olga is the girl everyone watches: no one skates or dances like her, no one has more admirers, and even the junior classes adore her. Her charm is inseparable from a certain flightiness—rumors swirl that Shensin is madly
- [Pashka](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/pashka.md): Pashka lies half-reclined in the straw among laborers, biting little straws and grinning at Theodot's account of his ridiculous troubles with a stolen she-goat. His easy, pleasant laugh startles the high school boy liste
- [Father Rodion](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/father_rodion.md): Father Rodion arrives at a peasant family's plot claiming the meadows as his own, waving his stick and threatening to bring a watchman. When the girl's hotheaded father confronts him, the priest—supposedly a man of holy 
- [Kate](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/kate.md): Katherine married young and took her husband into the household, but when he began leaving for whole years at a time she vowed to have no more knowledge of him—meeting him cheerily, mending his shirts, yet sleeping apart
- [Zotov](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/zotov.md): A named character with limited but distinct appearances.
- [Aglaia](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/aglaia.md): Fourteen years in colonial Constantine have transformed the woman who once sailed in the Auvergne: silver threads her hair, her skin has grown golden and transparent, and she governs her household with impeccable, slight
- [Ivan Bunin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/ivan_bunin.md): The author appears as a character or narrator in some stories.
- [Kiriushka](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/kiriushka.md): A minor character, possibly a child or servant.
- [Phenka](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/phenka.md): A minor female character with brief appearances.
- [Elijah](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/elijah.md): A biblical or folk prophet figure appearing in a story.
- [Flaxen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/flaxen.md): A character referred to by hair color, likely a youth.
- [Chaikin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/chaikin.md): A named character, possibly a tradesman or neighbor.
- [Lushka](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/lushka.md): A minor female character, possibly a peasant or lover.
- [Nikolai Ivannich](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/nikolai_ivannich.md): A named character with a patronymic, likely a local figure.
- [The Officer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/the_officer.md): A military officer appearing in a scene.
- [Nicanor Matveich](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/nicanor_matveich.md): A named character with a patronymic, likely a local elder.
- [Makar](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/makar.md): A minor character, possibly a peasant or worker.
- [Khvoshchinsky](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/khvoshchinsky.md): A named character, possibly a landowner or eccentric.
- [Carmela](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/carmela.md): An Italian female character with a minor role.
- [Pakhomka](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters/pakhomka.md): A minor character, possibly a peasant or worker.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/short_fiction_30_se/characters