Father Alexyei’s Story

Characters

• Father Alexyei — an elderly parish priest: A widowed village priest who watched his son perish; the grief has never left his face.
• Yakoff (Yasha) — the priest's son, a seminarist and student: A meek top pupil who abandoned seminary and university, hounded without respite by a black apparition.
• the black one — the apparition that haunts Yakoff: First a little green old man in the forest, then a silent black figure in the corner that at last speaks.
• Marfa Savishna — a neighbour, a colonel's young widow: A quiet, sensible woman with whom Yakoff briefly thaws; she pays for his gravestone herself.
• the narrator — an inspector of country estates: The listener, taken ill in a remote parish, who preserves the priest's account in his own words.
• the priest's wife — Father Alexyei's wife: The good, sedate mother of eight children; she dies of a chill just as Yakoff leaves for Moscow.