The Darling

At the beginning of the short story, Chekhov explains that Olenka was "always fond of someone, and could not exist without loving." Olenka is defined by her love, first for her father, then for her husbands, and finally for a child that she becomes obsessed with. While this love is strong in the moment, it quickly transfers. She seems to love her husbands deeply, and embraces every aspect of them, but as each dies she quickly moves on to the next, immersing herself just as deeply as before. This pattern suggests a kind of shallowness to Olenka's love and illustrates that perhaps Olenka is more in love with being in love than with any of the men to whom she attaches herself.

At the start, Olenka watches a boarder in her father's house, Kikun, complain about the coming weather. Kikun owns and operates the Tivoli, an open-air theater in town, and he gripes about how the rain is ruining his business. Well, that's only half of it, as he launches into a diatribe about the ungrateful public that can't appreciate the artistry he offers at his theater. He talks about hanging himself, about drowning the theater, about how he'd prefer hard labor in Siberia.

Olenka can't help but feel something for Kikun as he goes on and on complaining. She feels his pain, and cries for him. As the narrator explains, Olenka was always loving somebody, such as her sick father who grew increasingly ill and homebound. Given her gentle face and naive manner, she attracted the attention of men and earns the affection of women on the street, who grab her hand and exclaim, "You darling!"

Olenka's father passes away and she inherits the house. Without her father around to care for, Olenka fixates on Kikun, waiting up late at night for him to return from the theater, listening to the band playing and the fireworks going off at the Tivoli. Before long, Kikum proposes to Olenka, and they marry. It rains on their wedding day, and this only contributes to Kikun's despair.