Nikolai

A waiter at the Moscow hotel "Slavyansky Bazaar" in Chekhov's novella "Peasants" (Мужики, 1897): taken ill (his legs go numb), he returns with his wife Olga and daughter Sasha to his native village of Zhukovo, is appalled by the poverty he finds there, longs aloud for Moscow, and dies partway through the novella after a folk healer's cupping treatment. He is already dead and buried in the village churchyard by the time of the discarded draft continuation chapters given in this corpus under "Unfinished [Schulz]" (work id neokonchennoe-shulc), where Olga and Sasha plan a memorial service over his grave.