The gypsy camp roams the steppes of Bessarabia. At the campfire, a gypsy family prepares dinner, horses are grazing in the distance, and behind the tent is a tame bear. Gradually, everything stops and falls into a dream. Only in one tent does not sleep an old man, waiting for his daughter Zemfira, left to walk in the field. And so Zemfira appears with the unfamiliar old man. Zemfira explains that she met him behind the mound and invited him to the camp that he was being pursued by the law and he wants to be a gypsy. His name is Aleko. The old man cordially invites the young man to stay for as long as he likes, and says that he is ready to share bread and shelter with him. In the morning the old man wakes Zemfira and Aleko, the tabor awakens and sets out on a journey by a picturesque crowd. The heart of a young man shrinks from yearning at the sight of a deserted plain. But what does he yearn for? Zemfira wants to know this. Between them a conversation begins. Zemfira is afraid, that
he regrets the life he left, but Aleko calms her down and says that he left without regret “the disuse of the stuffy cities.” In the life that he threw, there is no love, which means that there is no fun, and now his desire is always to be with Zemfira. The old man, hearing their conversation, tells them an old legend about a poet who was once exiled to this region and was heart-ridden in his native land, despite the love and care of the local people. Aleko learns in the hero of this legend of Ovid and is amazed at the vicissitudes of fate and the ephemeral glory. Two years Aleko rode along with the camp, free, like the Gypsies themselves, not regretting the abandoned. He leads through the villages of the bear and thereby earns bread. Nothing disturbs the peace of his soul, but one day he hears Zemfira singing a song that leads him into confusion. In this song, Zemfira admits that she stopped loving him. Aleko asks her to stop singing, but Zemfira continues, and then Aleko realizes that Zemfira is untrue to him. Zemfira confirms the most terrible assumptions Aleko. At night, Zemfira wakes up her father and says
that Aleko is crying and moaning in a dream, calling her, but his love has frozen Zemfira, her heart asks for will. Aleko wakes up, and Zemfira leaves for him. Aleko wants to know where Zemfira was. She replies that she was sitting with her father, because she could not bear the sight of Aleko’s mental anguish, which he experienced in a dream. Aleko confesses that he saw Zefira’s betrayal in a dream, but Zemfira persuades him not to believe in evil dreams. The old gypsy asks Aleko not to mourn and assures that longing will ruin him. Aleko admits that the reason for his sadness is Zemfira’s indifference to him. The old man comforts Aleko, says that Zemfira is a child that a woman’s heart is fond of joking, that no one is free to order the heart of a woman to love one, how to order the moon to freeze in place. But Aleko, remembering the hours of love spent with Zemfira, is inconsolable. He laments that “Zemfira has cooled down”, that “Zemfira is incorrect.” To edify the old man tells Aleko about himself, about how young he was, how he loved the beautiful Mariola and how he finally achieved reciprocity. But quickly passed the youth, even faster – the love of Mariula. Once she left with another camp, leaving her little daughter, this same Zemfira. And since then, “all the virgins of the world” have grown old. Aleko asks how the old man could not take revenge on the offenders, as he could not thrust the dagger into the heart of the kidnapper and the unfaithful wife. The old man responds that nothing can keep love, nothing can be returned, “what was, it will not be again.” Aleko assures the old man, that he himself is not such that he can not renounce his rights or even enjoy revenge. And at this time Zemfira on a date with a young gypsy. They are conditioned on a new date this night after the moon sets. Aleko anxiously sleeps and, awakened, does not find Zemfira nearby. He gets up, comes out of the tent, he is seized with suspicion and fear, he wanders around the tent and sees a trace that is barely perceptible in the starlight, leading to the mounds, and Aleko follows this trail. Suddenly he sees two shadows and hears the voices of two lovers who can not part with each other. He recognizes Zemfira, who asks her lover to flee, but Aleko stabs him into the knife. In horror, Zemfira says that she despises the threats of Aleko, and curses him. Aleko also kills her. Dawn found Aleko sitting behind a hill with a bloody knife in his hand. Before him are two corpses. The tribesmen say goodbye to the dead and dig their graves for them. In the reverie sits an old gypsy. After the bodies of lovers were betrayed to the ground, he approaches Aleko and says: “Leave us, proud man!” He says that gypsies do not want to live next to the murderer, with a man who “wants only himself” for himself. The old man said this, and the camp soon withdrew and disappeared into the steppe. Only one cart remained in the fatal field. The night came, but no one laid out the fire before her and no one spent the night under her roof. E. L. Beznosov. The old man said this, and the camp soon withdrew and disappeared into the steppe. Only one cart remained in the fatal field. The night came, but no one laid out the fire before her and no one spent the night under her roof. E. L. Beznosov. The old man said this, and the camp soon withdrew and disappeared into the steppe. Only one cart remained in the fatal field. The night came, but no one laid out the fire before her and no one spent the night under her roof. E. L. Beznosov.
