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

 “The Singers” is a story by Ivan Turgenev, written in 1852. It opens with a description of Kolotovka, an impoverished town where a pub called the Cozy Corner is located. It is a town split in half by a ravine, populated by peasants and drunkards. On the day that the unnamed narrator of the story visits the pub, it is stiflingly hot. The narrator is an outsider in all ways: a man from a higher social class exploring a different milieu.  

The narrator is led into the Cozy Corner by two peasants, Booby and Blinker. The other patrons of the pub regard the narrator warily at first, but his acquaintance with Nicolas Ilynanych, the pub owner, puts them at ease. Nicolas Ilynanych is a cagey but diplomatic man, self-centered but also well-regarded. His wife, who is also at the pub, is shrewd and tough.

A singing competition begins between two men: “the contractor” and a Turkish man named Yashka. The contractor’s dazzling, virtuosic singing is assured and showy. He uses many trills and flourishes and sings in “a high falsetto”: “His transitions were sometimes rather daring, sometimes rather amusing; they would have given the connoisseur great pleasure” (92).