Twelve-year-old Yuri Zhivago goes with his uncle Nikolai to visit a writer named Ivan Voskoboinikov. Yuri's mother died two years earlier from consumption—what is now called tuberculosis. His father has been missing for years, having allegedly squandered a large fortune. The Zhivago family was once so wealthy that everything in the town bears the Zhivago name, from a factory to a bank to a special local cake. Now Yuri lives in poverty with his uncle Nikolai, “a priest who was defrocked at his own request” (20). Nikolai and Ivan work on Ivan's manuscript concerning “the land question” (22) then take a walk through the beautiful countryside, debating philosophy and politics. While outside, they see a “clean little yellow and blue train” (25) make an unexpected stop while passing through a marsh. They go to see what is wrong; the train has stopped because a man has “hurled himself headlong off the express and onto the embankment” (26), killing himself. One of Yuri’s young friends, Misha, knows the man, having met him while travelling with his father, Grigory. Misha remembers the man saying kindly that he once had a son of a similar age to Misha, then asking Grigory (an attorney) for advice about bankruptcies, even though his own “stout and arrogant lawyer” (28) was travelling with him.