In Episode 5 our heroine writes a letter and references “Van’ka” (soft N), one of the most famous Anton Chekhov’s stories. He wrote it in 1886, when he was twenty-six, and it ran on Christmas Day (old style) that year in the Petersburg Gazette in the Christmas stories section, signed A. Chekhonte, which was his comic pseudonym at that time. The story then was reprinted many times during Chekhov’s life.
The address Van’ka writes on the envelope became proverbial in Russian, still seemingly in use today as the standard formula for something doomed by an impossible address.
Tolstoy, as his contemporaries said, specifically loved Chekhov’s child figures, including Van’ka.
~ ~ ~
— Ванька — original Russian text → А. П. Чехов · 1886
— Vanka — English translation → nova·nevédoma · 2026