person
Pasha
also: Паша, хористка
A chorus singer (khoristka) kept by the married Nikolai Petrovich Kolpakov, visited without warning by his wife, who accuses her of ruining him and demands the return of jewelry to cover an embezzlement; frightened but genuinely without the gifts she is accused of taking, Pasha empties her drawers of everything she owns rather than watch the wife kneel before her, only to be recoiled from in disgust by Kolpakov once his wife has gone.
Reading notes
- The Chorus Girl §3 певица
Pasha is repeatedly called 'the singer' (pevitsa) alongside 'khoristka' (chorus girl) -- period terms for women who performed in the chorus of operetta or light theater, an occupation that carried an assumption of sexual availability to wealthy patrons, the arrangement the whole story turns on.