A story from Pushkin that is well ahead of its time

Reading further in the 1966 collection from Norton (Aitken, ed. and tr.) of Pushkin's complete prose fiction, it becomes clear that in his "comic" stories Pushkin is a sucker for Shakespearean plots, in which feuding families/neighbors find reconciliation when their children fall in love with each other (that's where we seem to be heading in the novel-length yet unfinished work Dubrovsky) or in which one of the young lovers plays a trick and disguises herself as a servant w/ whom the guy falls in love and eventually learns - surprise! - that she's the one the parents had hoped he'd fall in love w/ after all (cf, As you Like It). (These plot elements btw go back to Roman comedy.) In some ways I find the "tragic" stories more intriguing. The Postmaster is one, told by a narrator who encounters the village postmaster a few times over the course of several years. At their first encounter the narrator is smitten w the beauty of the postmaster's 14-year-old daughter; the narrator kisses her, in a moment that he recalls with pleasure for the rest of his life but which seems to us creepy and perhaps even abusive - and that should be a hint about the true character of this seemingly lovely and charming young woman. On a later visit, the much-remembered daughter is absent and the narrator asks the postmaster how she's doing, to which he replies: Who knows? After some drinks he proceeds to tell how the daughter ran away w/ a soldier and despite his visit and entreaties refused to return home. So we get a sense that life with father was maybe not all that pleasant - could he have been abusive? - and that she has a more sinister side to her seemingly youthful and spirited personality - otherwise, her behavior is bizarre even by Russian-fiction standards. In the final visit to the site, the narrator learns that the postmaster has died, and he visits the lonely and dispiriting grave site, learning from the boy who led him there that a woman had recently paid a tearful visit to the site - so there are other, unknown and unexplained elements to the daughter's personality to her story. All told, it's a fine story full of suggestion and innuendo that has the kind of "open" ending - rather than all the knots tied - that was nearly unique in Pushkin's time (the 1820s) and is now - post-Joyce - is a well-established mode for short fiction.