Ekshaisk

Ekshaisk appears only once in the novel, but the episode that unfolds there carries disproportionate weight, revealing the casual cruelty and social gamesmanship that define the world of Afanasy Ivanovitch Totski. It is a small provincial town, fifteen miles from the country estate where a winter ball is being prepared, and its sole distinguishing feature is the greenhouse of a rich old merchant who keeps canaries and is devoted to flowers. This merchant, described as a tall, grey, terrible-looking old gentleman "de la vraie souche"—a true Russian of the old stock—refuses at first to part with his camellias, but eventually yields when Totski falls on his knees before him and pleads that it is "a matter of life and death." The old man accepts no money for the flowers but allows Totski to make a donation to the village hospital instead, a gesture the narrator calls "good of you and generous."

The Camellia Plot

The episode is narrated by Totski himself during the game of confessions at Nastasia Philipovna's birthday party, where each guest must recount the worst action of his life. Totski's story concerns a winter ball season at the country house of Platon Ordintzeff, a newly elected marshal of the nobility. The fashion for camellias—inspired by Dumas-fils' recently published La Dame aux Camelias—has swept the provinces, and Anfisa Alexeyevna, the host's young wife, wishes for red camellias to outshine her rival, who is bringing white ones. Her husband Platon is driven desperate trying to find them, but the rival snaps up the only red camellias in the place from under his nose. At this point, Totski learns that his rival Peter Volhofskoi, who is desperately in love with Anfisa, has discovered that the merchant at Ekshaisk possesses camellias and plans to ride there at five in the morning to beg for them. Totski, acting on a sudden impulse, orders his coachman woken at two in the morning, drives through the night to Ekshaisk, arrives at the inn by five, and presents himself at the merchant's house soon after six. He secures the bouquet by falling on his knees, pays nothing for the flowers themselves but donates a hundred roubles to the hospital, and returns by a different road to avoid meeting Volhofskoi.

Consequences and Aftermath

The immediate consequence is that Anfisa receives the red camellias when she awakes, her gratitude is boundless, and the wretched Platon weeps on Totski's shoulder. Volhofskoi, who had set out at dawn only to find the flowers already taken, faints, suffers brain fever and convulsions, and a month later, barely recovered, goes off to the Crimea, where he is shot. Totski, telling the story years later, claims the business left him no peace for many a long year and that he went about armed, ready to meet Volhofskoi's challenge. He insists he was not in love with Anfisa himself and that the act was simply "mischief—pure 'cussedness.'" The story is received in silence; Nastasia Philipovna's eyes flash, and she immediately afterward declares the game stupid and announces her own refusal to marry Gania, using the prince's verdict as her authority. The Ekshaisk episode thus functions as a miniature of the novel's larger pattern: a seemingly trivial social maneuver, executed with charm and without malice, sets in motion a chain of suffering and death that the perpetrator half-regrets but never fully acknowledges as his responsibility.