The Fish (short story)

• Gerasim, a carpenter, "a tall gaunt peasant, with a curly red head and a face overgrown with hair"
• Lubim, a carpenter, "a young hunchback with a triangular face and narrow Chinese-looking eyes"
• Yefim, a shepherd, "a decrepit old man, with one eye and a crooked mouth"
• Andrey Andreitch, the master
• Vasily, the coachman

On a hot summer day two carpenters, Gerasim and Lyubim, sit in a pond, floundering about in the water under a willow tree, beside the unfinished bathing shed they were supposed to be working on. Blue from cold and wrangling, they struggle to drag a large eelpout by the gills, from under the root.

A herd of cattle appears on the bank, followed by the shepherd Yefim. He joins the company, with his own set of directives on how exactly the fish should be extracted from its hiding. The sounds of panic are heard from the landlord's house: it turns out that the cattle have invaded the garden. The landlord Andrey Andreitch appears, feeling very angry, but, intrigued by the news of an eelpout defying its catchers from under a tree, first orders his coachman Vasily to join the team, then, exasperated with the foursome's incompetence, undresses and goes into the pond himself.

It is Andrey Andreitch who, after all manages to pull the fish out from under a tree. He raises it triumphantly over his head, but then... "The fish makes a sudden upward movement with its tail and the fishermen hear a loud splash . . . they all put out their hands, but it is too late; they have seen the last of the eel-pout."