Ivan Kuzmich Shpekin

Shpekin runs the post office with a smile and a pair of scissors, opening letters less from malice than from an insatiable itch to know what everyone is doing. He is a gossip's gossip, the man who knows which official is writing to whom and what they are foolish enough to put on paper. His casual violation of privacy makes him a quiet menace to the town's already fragile discretion, and the letters he cannot resist reading will prove more dangerous than any inspector.