Another lunch break and another story from Pushkin and this time it has a tragic ending very much in the Russian style with the postmaster dying with a broken heart, that manifests itself in a major drink problem.
The Postmaster
The narrator stops at a post station one night and comes cross a postmaster with a beautiful daughter and he enjoys speaking and drinking with them before hitting the road. Her goes back years later and discovers the old man living alone and he tells the traveller a story about the disappearance of his daughter. She was taken by a hussar who dragged her off to Petersburg but when the old man comes looking for her he is turned away and returns home and never sees her again. When the traveller returns for as third time he is told the old man has died of drink and then a boy takes him to his grave and tells him the story of how a woman came recently and lay on the grave for a long time. Nothing is said by the traveller knows that it was the daughter from all those years before come back to try and make peace with her father.
Last tale of Belkin tomorrow…