FIRST LOVE

Read by Vadim Maksimov. Duration: 3 hours, 7 min.Sixteen-year-old Vladimir Petrovich Voldemar is staying in the country with his family when he meets Zinaida Alexandrovna Zasyekina, a beautiful 21-year-old woman staying with her mother, Princess Zasyekina, in a wing of the manor. This family, as with many of the Russian minor nobility with royal ties of that time, was only afforded a degree of respectability because of their titles; the Zasyekins, in the case of this story, are in fact very poor. The young Vladimir falls irretrievably in love with Zinaida, who has a set of several other (more socially eligible) suitors whom he joins in the difficult and often fruitless quest for the young lady's favor. Zinaida, as we learn throughout the story, is a thoroughly capricious and somewhat playful mistress to a set of rather love-struck suitors. She fails to reciprocate Vladimir's love in a sensible and honest manner, often misleading him and mocking his comparative youth in contrast to her early adulthood. But eventually the true object of her affections and a rather tragic conclusion to the story are revealed.