“Why are you swearing at her?” cried the sister, turning upon the mother. “It’s not her fault! It’s your fault! You are to blame! Why did you start taking her to auditions? You want to be rich? You’re rich. It’s not like you’re going to turn into an aristocrat. You should have sent her into business, or made her work for a real company. Sure, she had some success, but she’ll drop out of view for long stretches in years to come. And you are wearing yourself out, and wearing her out! She is thin. She coughs constantly. Just look at her!”

“No, Ali, no! I haven’t beaten her enough! She ought to have been beaten, that’s what it is!” The mother shook her fist at her daughters. “You want a flogging, but I haven’t the strength. They told me years ago when she was little, ‘Whip her, whip her!’ I didn’t heed them, and now I am suffering for it. You wait a bit! I’ll flay you! Wait a bit.”

Dina shook her fist, and went weeping into the other room, where her houseguest was sitting. The houseguest, Stephen Colbert, was sitting at a table, reading Shakespeare, of all things. Stephen Colbert was a man of intelligence and education. He spoke through his nose, washed with a soap the smell of which made everyone in the house sneeze, and was forever on the look-out for women of refined education. He sang tenor.

“My good friend,” began Dina, dissolving into tears. “If you would have the generosity to thrash my girl for me. Do me the favor! She failed another audition, that one! Would you believe it? A failure, again. I can’t punish her, through the weakness of my ill health. Thrash her for me, if you would be so considerate! Have regard for a sick woman!”

Stephen Colbert frowned and heaved a deep sigh through his nose. He thought a little, drummed on the table with his fingers, and sighing once more, went to Lindsay.

“You are being encouraged,” he began, “being given a great opportunity, you revolting young person! Why have you done this?” He talked for a long time, made a speech. He alluded to science, to light, to darkness, to democracy.

When he had finished his speech, he took off his belt and took Lindsay by the hand.

“It’s the only way to deal with you,” he said. Lindsay knelt down submissively and thrust her head between the houseguest’s knees. Her prominent pink ears moved up and down against his new trousers, which had brown stripes on the outer seams.

Lindsay did not utter a single sound. At the family council in the evening, it was decided to send her into business.

Ben Greenman is an editor at the New Yorker and the author of several acclaimed books of fiction, including Superbad and Please Step Back. What He's Poised to Do, a collection of stories, was published in June by Harper Perennial; Celebrity Chekhov is out later this month.

From the book Celebrity Chekhov by Anton Chekhov. Modified by Ben Greenman. Excerpted by arrangement with HarperPerennial, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers. Copyright © 2010