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Ivan Schemetzkin
Russian concert pianist from the short story "Flavia and Her Artists" by Willa Cather, first published in the 1905 collection The Troll Garden. Ill at the end of his tour, he is recuperating at the home of arts patron Flavia Malcolm, who has stuffed her house with artist guests.
After dinner the guests took their coffee in the music-room, where Schemetzkin sat down at the piano to drum rag-time, and give his celebrated imitation of the boarding-school girl's execution of Chopin. He flatly refused to play anything more serious, and would practise only in the morning, when he had the music-room to himself. Hamilton and M. Roux repaired to the smoking-room to discuss the necessity of extending the tax on manufactured articles in France,—one of those conversations which particularly exasperated Flavia.
After Schemetzkin had grimaced and tortured the keyboard with malicious vulgarities for half an hour, Signor Donati, to put an end to his torture, consented to sing, and Flavia and Imogen went to fetch Arthur to play his accompaniments.
