He used to draw out a plan of his estate and always the same things were shown on it: (a) Farmhouse, (b) cottage, (c) vegetable garden, (d) gooseberry bush. The story is delayed further as they bathe (first time for Aliokhin since spring), and then Ivan swims in the river in the rain, and then they dress in silk dressing gowns and warm slippers and settle by a fire. Ivan is about to tell a story, but is interrupted by a sudden storm, so they take shelter at a nearby mill owned by Aliokhin. They’re tired of walking and the fields seem endless. Ivan Ivanich and Bourkin are on a hunting trip. This is one of my favorite passages from one of my favorite stories I’ve ever read, Gooseberries, by Anton Chekhov. He went on eating greedily, and saying all the while: ‘How good they are! Do try one!’ It was hard and sour, but, as Poushkin said, the illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths. He could not speak for excitement, then put one into his mouth, glanced at me in triumph, like a child at last being given its favorite toy, and said, ‘How good they are!’ Nicholai Ivanich laughed with joy and for a minute or two he looked in silence at the gooseberries with tears in his eyes.
They had not been bought, but were his own gooseberries, plucked for the first time since the bushes were planted. In the evening, while we were having tea, the cook laid a plateful of gooseberries on the table.
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