Chap­ter I begins with a qui­et but heavy jour­ney as Niko­lay Tchik­ildy­eev returns to his child­hood vil­lage of Zhuko­vo, no longer the man full of ambi­tion he once was. Once a wait­er in Moscow, he is now frail and finan­cial­ly defeat­ed, cling­ing to a thin hope that the vil­lage may offer heal­ing or, at least, shel­ter. With his wife, Olga, and their daugh­ter, Sasha, beside him, the scene they encounter is bleak—crumbling build­ings, bare­foot chil­dren, and a home stripped of dig­ni­ty. The inte­ri­or is dark, crowd­ed, and marked by makeshift decor that sig­nals deep pover­ty. Where mem­o­ries once pro­vid­ed warmth, now dust and silence fill the space. Their arrival is met not with joy, but with a still­ness that feels more like mourn­ing than wel­come.

Out­side, the land­scape ini­tial­ly fools the sens­es. The green fields and the lazy riv­er sparkle under the sun, accom­pa­nied by the faint ring of a church bell that evokes dis­tant com­fort. But the illu­sion fades as the vil­lage’s decay shows through. Every house bears the scars of neglect, every cor­ner whis­pers of years lost to hard­ship. Olga and Niko­lay walk in silence, sens­ing that beau­ty here is only sur­face-deep. It’s not just the place that has changed—it’s that they them­selves are no longer who they were. The vil­lage is no longer a sanc­tu­ary, but a mir­ror reflect­ing back their fears. This con­trast between appear­ance and real­i­ty adds emo­tion­al weight to their arrival.

The home they now occu­py is full but not alive. Nikolay’s par­ents, tooth­less and slow, share the space with his sib­lings’ fam­i­lies, all con­fined to tight quar­ters. Chil­dren sleep wher­ev­er there is space, and meals are tak­en qui­et­ly, with only bread and water to pass around. Con­ver­sa­tion turns eas­i­ly toward mis­for­tune: ill­ness­es untreat­ed, plans aban­doned, days spent sim­ply endur­ing. Olga, though not unused to hard­ship, feels an ache rise as she watch­es her daugh­ter adapt too quick­ly to depri­va­tion. There is no place here for indi­vid­ual rest, only the shared weari­ness of those too tired to change any­thing. Niko­lay begins to under­stand that sur­vival, here, means silenc­ing one’s despair.

When Kiryak returns that evening, shout­ing and clear­ly drunk, the tone in the house­hold shifts from exhaus­tion to fear. Marya, his wife, flinch­es instinc­tive­ly, her body already prepar­ing for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of harm. His pres­ence dom­i­nates the room even before he enters it, cast­ing a shad­ow longer than the door­way. Niko­lay lis­tens in silence, real­iz­ing that the demons he fled in the city now have dif­fer­ent names in the village—alcoholism, vio­lence, res­ig­na­tion. It isn’t ill­ness that might end him, but the suf­fo­cat­ing rhythm of rur­al life, where hope drains more slow­ly but no less com­plete­ly. The oth­ers pre­tend noth­ing is wrong, but their silence speaks loud­ly.

Olga, watch­ing all this unfold, becomes the emo­tion­al com­pass of the house­hold. She tries to bridge the dis­tance between what was expect­ed and what has arrived. Her instincts to nur­ture remain intact, though now test­ed more than ever. The youngest chil­dren cling to her sto­ries, while the old­er ones drift toward cyn­i­cism. Even in this grim place, Olga seeks some­thing to hold onto—perhaps a chance for Sasha to know some­thing bet­ter, or per­haps just the abil­i­ty to keep mov­ing for­ward. The emo­tion­al labor she per­forms is unseen, but it sus­tains what­ev­er ten­der­ness remains.

The chap­ter clos­es with Niko­lay sit­ting alone by the win­dow, cough­ing soft­ly as night set­tles over Zhuko­vo. The cold creeps in even though it’s still sum­mer, and the flick­er­ing lamp­light exag­ger­ates the room’s shad­ows. He watch­es the sky turn black and lis­tens to the rhyth­mic breath­ing of the chil­dren behind him. He had hoped to return home for heal­ing, but what he found was some­thing else: a truth both painful and inescapable. In this moment of qui­et, he begins to under­stand that com­ing home doesn’t always mean find­ing peace. Some­times, it means fac­ing what was hid­den in mem­o­ry, and learn­ing how to endure it.