Vladimir sees his father secretly visit Zinaïda’s lodgings at night after Count Malevsky warns him to watch over Zinaïda Alexandrovna Zasyekin, especially after dark. Vladimir waits in the garden expecting an intruder, but instead recognizes Piotr Vassilievitch moving quietly through it. He then sees a blind lowered at Zinaïda’s window. The scene turns adolescent jealousy into an unsettling suspicion about his father, while leaving the meaning of what Vladimir witnessed unresolved.

Warning and Preparation

Count Malevsky frames Vladimir’s role as that of a page who should remain inseparable from his mistress and know what she does. He stresses the need to watch her at night, directing Vladimir’s attention to the garden fountain and warning him that misfortune may occur there. Malevsky has a reputation for mystifying people and deceiving them, so his words may be teasing rather than a reliable report. Yet Vladimir receives them as a serious disclosure. The warning gives a name and shape to his vague sense that he should go into the garden, and it turns uncertainty into a jealous expectation of an encounter.

Vladimir responds by imagining that someone may climb over the low fence between the family’s grounds and those of Zinaïda’s household. In a state of anger, he resolves to confront whoever appears and thinks in terms of revenge, though he cannot clearly say what he expects to prevent or avenge. He takes an English knife from his writing table and puts it in his pocket. Through the day he keeps hold of it, rehearsing the role of a determined avenger and imagining himself in the place of Aleko, the young gypsy in the tragic poem. The contrast between his theatrical self-image and his inexperience establishes how much the vigil is driven by fantasy before any visitor appears.

The Garden Vigil

After waiting until midnight without undressing, Vladimir goes to a place he has selected in advance. At the far end of the garden, a solitary pine stands where the fence dividing the family’s property from the Zasyekin grounds meets a common wall. From beneath its low, thick branches, he can watch the surrounding area. Nearby, a winding path runs beneath a section of fence marked by signs of climbing and leads to a round arbor made of thick acacias. These features give his watch a precise setting: a boundary that seems passable, a concealed route, and a sheltered place toward which it leads.

The garden is quiet. Vladimir waits, alert to every small sound, and considers whether he should challenge a trespasser or strike. Half an hour passes, then an hour. As nothing happens, his excitement cools and he begins to suspect that Malevsky has merely made fun of him and that the watch itself is absurd. He leaves his chosen post and walks about the garden. Even the family dog is asleep at the gate. He climbs into the ruins of a greenhouse, looks across the open country, and falls into recollection of meeting Zinaïda. The lapse from vigilance into reverie leaves him unprepared for the sound that follows.

Recognition in the Dark

Vladimir thinks he hears a door open and a twig break. He climbs down from the greenhouse ruins and hears quick but cautious footsteps approaching. Believing the expected intruder has arrived, he pulls the knife from his pocket and opens it. Before he can act, a man comes into view. Vladimir recognizes him immediately as his father, Piotr Vassilievitch, whose dark cloak and lowered hat conceal his appearance but do not prevent recognition.

Piotr walks on tiptoe through the garden and does not notice his son. Vladimir, who has drawn himself into a crouch, is so startled that his prepared image of himself as a jealous avenger collapses: he feels reduced from a figure ready for confrontation to a schoolboy. He has dropped the knife in the grass, but does not try to retrieve it. His first response is shame, followed by the sobering question of why his father is walking in the garden at night. The encounter does not show Piotr entering Zinaïda’s lodging or explain his purpose; it establishes his nocturnal presence near her household and makes Vladimir’s earlier suspicions newly consequential.

The Window and Its Unanswered Meaning

On his way back to the house, Vladimir pauses by his seat under an elder tree and looks toward Zinaïda’s window. Its small, slightly convex panes appear dimly blue in the night light. He then sees a white blind being lowered carefully until it reaches the window frame, where it remains. The sequence links Piotr’s passage through the garden with a change at Zinaïda’s window, but Vladimir cannot determine what the blind signifies. Back in his room, he can only consider whether what he has seen was a dream, chance, or something he does not yet dare to entertain.

The scene’s force lies in the difference between what Vladimir knows and what he suspects. He has seen his father in the garden at night and the blind lowered at Zinaïda’s window; he has not witnessed a meeting between them or learned its purpose. The narrative therefore makes recognition a threshold rather than a complete revelation. The expected stranger turns out to be Piotr, and the knife meant for an imagined rival is forgotten in the grass. In the morning, Vladimir wakes with a headache, his previous excitement replaced by blankness and an unfamiliar sadness, as though something in him has died. The vigil ends not in confrontation but in a private, unresolved change in how he understands the adults around him.