Volodya

Characters

• Volodya — a schoolboy: A shy seventeen-year-old schoolboy.
• Nyuta (Anna Fyodorovna) — a married guest: A rosy, laughing woman of thirty, the architect’s wife, who amuses herself with a schoolboy’s declaration.
• maman (Marya Leontyevna) — Volodya’s mother: A frivolous widow who has run through two fortunes and visits rich acquaintances as a hanger-on.
• Madame Shumihin (Lili) — the mistress of the country villa: The wealthy general’s widow whose house Volodya and his mother visit and whose talk humiliates them.
• the architect — Nyuta’s husband: A solid gentleman who comes out to the villa once a week and whom Volodya hates for no reason at all.
• Avgustin Mihalitch — a lodger, employed at a perfume factory: A stout, good-natured Frenchman in whose room, among the phials, a revolver is lying.
• the music teacher (Yevgenya Andreyevna) — a lodger in Marya Petrovna’s flat: An old lady in tortoiseshell pince-nez who comforts maman after her son’s outburst.