The Lady with the Dog
A holiday romance in Yalta, and the unexpected love that followed
Page 1
In the seaside town of Yalta, the holiday-makers were a constant parade. Dmitri Gurov, a Moscow banker not yet forty, sat watching them pass. He had a wife he did not love and a string of brief affairs he always forgot. He was growing tired of the endless eating, drinking, and meaningless talk. Then he began to hear whispers about a new arrival. "She's always alone," people said, "never speaks to anyone, and always has her little white dog with her." Soon he saw her for himself—a young, fair-haired woman in a beret, walking along the promenade. Gurov, who had been in Yalta for two weeks already, felt a sudden interest. "I'm bored," he told himself, looking at her. "I could do with a new distraction."
Page 2
One afternoon, Gurov saw her sitting alone in a pavilion in the public gardens. He decided to act. He walked over and called to the little dog, which growled at him. He offered it a bone, and while it was busy, he sat down beside Anna. "You must be bored here," he began. She was flustered, and did not meet his eyes. "It's a habit to say one is bored," she replied, but then she confessed that she was. She told him her name was Anna Sergeyevna and that she was unhappily married. "My husband is a good man, but he is a flunkey," she said, looking down at her hands. "I don't know what I am doing here." Gurov listened, feeling the easy charm he always felt with new women. "Well," he said gently, "let us go for a walk."
Page 3
A week passed. After they became lovers, Anna was overcome with guilt. She sat in her hotel room, her long hair loose, and wept. "It's wrong," she said, her voice full of despair. "I am a bad, fallen woman. You will be the first to despise me now." Gurov felt a little bored by her tears; he had heard it all before. He calmly walked to the table, cut himself a slice of watermelon, and began to eat it slowly. But as he watched her, pale and unhappy, he felt a sudden, unexpected pity. He went to her and put his arm around her. "What is there to forgive?" he said gently. "You are unhappy with your life, that is all." He spoke to her for a long time, and she grew calm, and they went out to walk by the sea.
Page 4
They often drove out of town to Oreanda. They would get out of the carriage and stand on a bench high in the hills, looking down at the sea in silence. Below them, the world was hidden by morning mist, and the endless water made a dull, deep sound, speaking of a peace and eternity that Gurov's Moscow life knew nothing of. He thought how this same sea had roared long before he existed, and would roar just the same long after he was gone. In this unchanging beauty, his own small worries seemed trivial. "There is a promise of something better in this," he thought. He turned to Anna, who looked so lovely and serious beside him. He drew her close and kissed her. "We must go," he said. "It is time to return."
Page 5
A letter arrived from Anna’s husband begging her to come home. Gurov took her to the station. As the train waited, hissing steam, the platform was chaos. In the middle of the crowd, they stood apart. After the second bell, she looked at him, her face pale. "Let me look at you one more time," she whispered. "Just once more." In her haste, she dropped the flowers she was carrying. He bent to retrieve them for her. "It is over," she said, her voice thin, not looking at him. "There was no 'over' for us." He kissed her, and she boarded without a backward glance. The train pulled away. Gurov stood alone, telling himself the adventure was finished. It was time to return to his real life.
Page 6
Winter came to Moscow, cold and dark. Gurov dove back into his routine of clubs, dinner parties, and banking. He expected the memory of Anna to fade, but instead, it grew stronger and more beautiful. His city life felt false. One evening at a restaurant, he tried to share his feelings with a friend. "If only you knew what a charming woman I met in Yalta!" he began, his voice full of emotion. His friend, an official, did not look up from his plate. "You were right just now," the friend said, poking at his food. "The sturgeon was a little off." This indifferent reply infuriated Gurov. He looked at the man's smug face and the pointless luxury of the restaurant. "What savage manners," he thought. "What pointless nights."
Page 7
Driven by a memory he could no longer bear, Gurov travelled to Anna's town. He knew the theatre was putting on a premiere, and he went, hoping to see her. During the first interval, as the crowd filled the foyer, he saw her. She was coming up the stairs with a tall, stooping man with long side-whiskers: her husband, the 'flunkey'. Gurov watched, his heart pounding, as the man bowed and scraped to a local official. Anna looked tired and ordinary, no longer the girl he knew in Yalta. When her husband went out to smoke, Gurov hurried over to her. "Anna!" he whispered. She glanced up, saw him, and turned deathly pale. She could not speak. "For God's sake," he hissed, seeing her terror. "Don't look at me like that." She turned and fled down a corridor.
Page 8
Anna came to his hotel room. She was breathless and crying. "I've been thinking of you constantly," she confessed. "My life since Yalta has been torture. I thought you had forgotten me, that you were happy with others." He tried to calm her, but he could not find the right words. He simply held her and kissed her for a long, long time. Then, as he held her, he happened to glance in the mirror on the wall. He saw his own face, no longer young, with grey showing in his dark hair. It struck him with the force of a blow. This was not just another affair. This woman was his life, his sorrow, his joy. For the very first time, he was truly in love. "We will find a way," he said, stroking her hair. "We must."
Page 9
A new, double life began. Every two or three months, Anna came to Moscow. They loved each other like husband and wife, like the tenderest of friends, and it was unbearable that they had to hide. "How can we stop this?" she would ask, her eyes full of tears. "How can we escape this lying?" It seemed to them that they were like two birds caught and put into separate cages. What was their crime? "Stop crying, my darling," he would say, stroking her hair. "We will think of something. I promise." They would talk for hours, trying to find a way to be free, but they never could, and felt their situation was impossible.
Page 10
One winter afternoon, they walked together through the Moscow streets, the snow falling thick and soft. They did not speak, but held each other's arms tightly. They had been talking for hours in her hotel room, tormented by their secret. "How?" Gurov had asked, clutching his head. "How can we be free?" Anna, her eyes bright with tears, had put her fingers to his lips. "We will find a way," she whispered. "A new, beautiful life will begin for us. It will." Now, walking through the city, it seemed to them both that a solution was close. But they also knew, with a shared, unspoken certainty, that the end of their struggle was still a long way off, and that the most complicated and difficult part of their journey was only just beginning.
About this story
- Audience: general readers
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