Mikhail Ivanovich Lubkov

A charming, perpetually indebted university friend of Kotlovich's who arrives to "rest from family life," abandoning his own wife and four children in Moscow; he becomes Ariadne's traveling companion and lover abroad, repeatedly borrowing money from Shamokhin, before Ariadne tires of him and sends him back to Russia. Given to a speech impediment (he cannot pronounce r or l) and a relentless, self-mocking cheerfulness that treats his own ruin as a joke.