person
Madame Shumikhina
also: m-me Шумихина, Lili Shumikhina, Lili, Лили, Madame Shumikhina
The wealthy mistress of the dacha where Volodya and his mother are tolerated poor relations; widow of General Shumikhin and, Volodya's mother claims, a relation of hers, born a Baroness Kolb. She and her circle gossip about Volodya's mother and, overheard by Volodya, laugh at his clumsy declaration of love to Nyuta.
Reading notes
- Volodya §109 General Shumikhin ... a Baroness Kolb
Maman's claim that Madame Shumikhina's late husband, General Shumikhin, was a cousin of Volodya's own father, and that Madame Shumikhina was herself born a Baroness Kolb, is stated by the narrator to be entirely factually accurate ("not a single false word"); Volodya's furious insistence that she is lying (sections 110-112) is not about the facts but about the performed, status-seeking manner in which his ruined, humiliated mother recites them -- a display he can no longer bear to watch after the previous night.