A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life

“Gooseberries” is a story by Anton Chekhov, written in 1898. The story opens with two friends, Ivan Ivanych and Burkin, walking across a field on a sweltering grey day. They are weary from the heat, even while “filled with love for this plain” (394). Ivan wants to tell Burkin a story about Ivan’s brother. It then begins to rain hard, and the two decide to visit their friend Alyohin, who lives nearby.

Alyohin is a prosperous farmer. He lives in a farmhouse with a pond and a mill, staffed by peasants and a beautiful maid named Pelageya. He greets Ivan and Burkin by asking them if they would like to go into their bathing cabin, while Pelageya gets their quarters ready. They do so, and then take a swim in the pond. (Saunders’s book’s title, A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, comes from this moment in this story.) Ivan swims with gusto, despite the rain, and has to be called out of the pond by the other two men.

Once they are settled in the upstairs living room of Alyohin’s farmhouse, Ivan tells the two men about his brother Nikolay, a petty clerk who long dreamed of being a prosperous farmer like Alyohin.