"Madame" by Alexander Bessonov, summary

Alexander Bessonov is a Novosibirsk writer and master of short fiction, whose work has gained popularity online thanks to its subtle humor, lyricism, and unexpected endings. His third collection of short stories, published in 2021, includes vignettes, anecdotes, and novellas. Each work is a complete story about human destinies, love, loneliness, nobility, and the curiosities of everyday life. A distinctive feature of the book is its alternation of third-person narration with the author’s personal stories, which serve as a kind of compere to refocus the reader’s attention.

A world of chance encounters and warmth

The collection opens with the story that gives the book its title. A corpulent woman, returning from the store with heavy bags, encounters a homeless man wearing a bright yellow scarf. The man addresses her with refined formalities — "Madam" and "Miss" — offering to hold her bag and asking for two hundred rubles. Instead of a banal handout, a warm, ironic dialogue ensues. He walks her to her front door, showering her with sincere compliments, and she thanks him generously, restoring the man’s long-lost sense of self-worth. They agree to meet the next day at the same place.

In the short story "Cloak," the author self-deprecatingly explains why he wears outerwear in twenty-four-degree heat. It turns out he’s a recognized champion at losing documents, and his cloak serves as a reliable bag, practically impossible to leave behind.

The story "Sleeping Beauty" introduces us to Svetlana, a young woman who agrees to babysit her neighbor’s seven-year-old son, Kirill. The boy turns out to be a precocious lover of robotics and Mythbusters shows. As they talk, the child, like an experienced therapist, shatters Svetlana’s infantile dreams of "ordinary female happiness" at the expense of her wealthy husband, calling her consumerist attitude the behavior of a "parasitic cockroach." He advises her to become rich, beautiful, and kind herself, so she can live a full life.

The hero of the short story "Kitty" meets a languid gray cat named Behemoth at a gas station. The animal discusses people’s dissatisfaction with the weather and their inability to enjoy the moment, leaving the man completely confused about the reality of what’s happening.

Loyalty, betrayal and lessons of humanity

The dramatic story "It Happened That Way" tells the story of a loyal dog named Chuck, who was simply taken into the woods and abandoned by his owner, Mikhail, during a divorce. Chuck struggled for days to reach his family home, freezing to death outside the closed door of his apartment building in a snowstorm. The dog is rescued by a lonely pensioner, a former commuter train driver named Viktor Mikhailovich. Chuck’s former owners are completely indifferent: the woman claims she never wanted the dog, and the man cowardly lies that the dog is lost. Chuck finds a new home with Viktor Mikhailovich, and when a repentant Mikhail tries to return the dog for the child of his new girlfriend, the dog doesn’t even budge, and the old commuter train driver sternly advises his neighbor to get his heart checked, which he obviously doesn’t have.

The humorous sketch "The Beard Mystery" reveals a secret about the author’s father, who taught at a construction institute. He wore a beard his entire life, but shaved it off one day when lazy, failing students mistook him for a World War II veteran during an exam and asked how old he was at the Battle of Stalingrad. The teacher replied, "Minus seven years!"

In the story "Cough," lonely Ekaterina Vasilyevna registers on a dating site under the quaint pretext of searching for a "cough cure." After a series of unreasonable offers from partygoers and stock market enthusiasts, she receives a message from the intelligent Igor Sergeyevich, an associate professor, head of the semiconductor department, and guitarist. Their correspondence quickly develops into a romantic invitation to the Gulf of Ob.

The novella "Gladioli" describes a neighborly squabble that escalates into a drinking binge. A boy named Stepan plucked five gladioli from a flowerbed to give to his mother as a "happy Tuesday." The enraged neighbor, Valentina Petrovna, who planted the flowers, comes running to confront her, but Stepan’s mother, Tamara, skillfully defuses the conflict with lemon balm tea, cottage cheese casserole, cedar nut liqueur, and chocolate. Ultimately, the tipsy neighbor leaves, sincerely loving Stepan and scolding her own husband for his lack of gallantry.

The story "Little Man" is filled with tenderness. Mason the dog helps his owners, the Petrovs, raise their newborn Misha. When the baby cries at night, the dog brings him a blue toy ring or whines playfully, soothing the little one. When the child becomes seriously ill and is taken to the hospital, Mason faithfully waits and prays in his own way, and after Misha’s recovery, he resumes his vigil by his crib.

The irony of everyday life and social metamorphoses

In the story "Tolerance," the author’s brutal friend, a powerlifter and homophobe who despises barbershops, is forced to visit one while on a business trip. After a professional, relaxing head massage from a pretentious barber, he suddenly develops a tolerance for other people’s personal lives.

The hero of the short story "The Telephone Ringed Silently" stubbornly ignores calls from an old friend. A woman lying next to him urges him to show strength, pick up the phone, and express his resentment for the fact that his friend only remembers him after arguments with his girlfriends. In the end, it turns out that the woman lying next to him is a psychologist, and the man simply paid for the session.

In the sketch "Woman with a Blue Bag," the author recalls a trip to Cape Tobizin in Vladivostok. Walking along a dangerous path over a cliff, he sees a mother and her little daughter collecting other people’s trash in a large blue bag. This example of a sincere love for cleanliness motivates the author to return, pick up a discarded bottle, and carry it in his jacket pocket for six months.

Apraksin Lane in St. Petersburg becomes the scene of a comical duel in the story "An Incredible Incident in the Center of St. Petersburg." Two homeless men engage in a brutal fight over historical disagreements: one claims that Mikhail Lomonosov was Peter the Great’s bastard son, while the other fiercely defends the scientist’s honor. The fight escalates into a philosophical debate about whether great people (including Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos) make their own or whether their parents’ money decides everything. When one of them shouts at his opponent, "Look at yourself! You’re a homeless person!" the fight ends due to the personal insult.

The story "Staging" is a sharp satire on contemporary conceptual theater. An elderly provincial author is horrified by how a fashionable St. Petersburg director has distorted his play about adoption: all the characters on stage are naked, the maternity hospital director is portrayed as a drug addict, and catharsis is achieved through the physiological shock of the audience.

Paradoxes of love and human relationships

The plot of "Another Ordinary Story" tells the story of Alexey and Katya, a married couple whose relationship is crumbling after two years of unsuccessful attempts to conceive. Alexey leaves work as a truck driver to pay off his medical debts. Tensions mount, but on one of his trips, her husband takes Katya along. The road transforms their lives: endless fields, the comfort of roadside cafes, and their shared life restore their closeness. Katya begins a successful blog, "Travel Notes of a Family," her business thrives, and her debts are repaid. In the end, long-awaited happiness arrives: Katya begins to feel sick on the road, and she gives her husband an unforgettable smile.

In the short story "Gifts of the Magi," Anna, desperate to find money for a New Year’s gift for her husband, sells her only inheritance from her grandfather — a 1991 Toyota Corolla — to buy her husband a Yamaha outboard motor. Her husband comes home, both happy and sad: he sold his boat to buy Anna a set of good studded winter tires. The wheels and motor remain on the balcony, covered in falling snow, a symbol of absolute love.

The story "Chekhovian Dialogues" explores the theme of false shame. The daughter of a conductor on a reserved seat carriage asks her father to lie to the wealthy parents of her boyfriend, Igor, by telling them that he works as a top manager at Russian Railways. At a shared lunch, Igor’s father, an arrogant businessman in a gray suit, discusses the usefulness of people and profit, trying to secure a tender through his new acquaintance. The conductor honestly admits his profession, declaring that he’s always done what he wanted and sincerely loved his daughter, after which the businessmen leave the café in disgust.

The collection concludes with the story "Active." A representative of the influential 74-year-old oligarch Sergei Arkadyevich sits down with the author, Alexander, at a café. The businessman, contemplating eternity, decides to buy the author’s manuscript of a novel he’d been working on for three years, intending to publish it under his own name and cement his place in literary history. Despite subtle threats and a massive PR campaign, the author leaves two hundred rubles under his cup for coffee and leaves, declaring, "Manuscripts burn! And how they burn!"