person
Semyon Mitrich
Semyon
also: Семен, Семен Митрич, кабатчик Семен, Semyon, Semyon Mitrich
The small, sickly keeper of the village tavern (recently relabeled an "inn"), who holds Filimon Slyunka's gun in pawn and, despite Slyunka's and Ryabov's fervent pleading and oaths, refuses to release it without the rouble owed on it.
Reading notes
- Too Early! §1 renamed an ``inn''
"Кабак" (kabak, a low drinking-house) rebranded as "трактир" (traktir, a more respectable term closer to "inn" or "tavern-restaurant") is a small comic touch of provincial pretension: Semyon has upgraded the sign but not the ramshackle building underneath it, which the narrator immediately undercuts by describing its plucked-looking roof and dim windows.
- Too Early! §6 It's a fast now
Semyon's objection that "пост" (a fast) is underway refers to the Orthodox fasting calendar -- most likely Great Lent, which precedes Easter and falls in this same early-spring window as the woodcock's first flight -- during which meat, including game birds, is forbidden; his point is practical piety layered onto stinginess: even if he lent the gun, the men could not licitly eat what they shot.
- Too Early! §11 You'd do better to go to vespers
"Ко всенощной" refers to the All-Night Vigil, the long combined vespers-and-matins service of the Orthodox Church typically held on the eve of a Sunday or feast day; Semyon's jab suggests Slyunka, as an old man near death, should be tending to his soul in church rather than chasing game birds -- a taunt about age that visibly wounds Slyunka in the next section.