Her Lover by Maxim Gorky

Her Lover

by Maxim Gorky

Do you really believe that no one loves you for any reason—your appearance, voice, status, etc.—any reason at all? Teresa, the woman in this narrative, experienced the same emotions. Even the author's friend who relayed the story to him said that he was scared of her and preferred to stay away from her. She made up the character Boles on her own to keep herself from feeling lonely and to feel good that someone liked her. She used this as an escape from the outside world.

While studying in Moscow, "Mr. Student"(called by Teresa) shared housing with Teresa. Her reputation was dubious. She was polish/pole. Her voice was loud, her eyebrows bushy, and her body muscular. Whenever he knew that she would be at home, he would keep the door to his room closed out of fear and a desire to avoid her. Occasionally, they would cross paths at the stairway. He wanted to change quarters to avoid interactions with her, but his room was nice with a large view window and a peaceful road.

His door opened one day as he was thinking to take a break from studying, and he heard Teresa's loud voice. She asked him to compose a letter to her lover Boles, who she said was someplace in Warsaw. With hesitation, Mr. Student wrote the letter.

Then, a few days later, she returned and asked him to write a letter to a Teresa. In response, he inquired as to Teresa's identity and the reason behind her desire to send a letter to herself. On this, she went to her room. He felt bad since he thought she would want to write the letter to another woman. He went to her room and she showed him the letter he had written earlier and told him the truth—that no one goes by the name Boles. She told him that she wants the character Boles to exist so that when she writes to him and he responds, it will appear that he exists.

On listening to this, Mr. Student felt miserable and ashamed somehow. As there was a person living near his room who had nobody in the world to treat affectionately, kindly and that person invented a friend/lover for herself. So, he started writing the letter for her, and she started mending the holes in his socks, shirts and other clothes. When someone read Boles's letter for her, she would think that a real person had written a letter to her. This went on till three months, after which the police arrested her and put her in prison.