By the 19th, Chekhov was eager to assure Leykin: “In the last week I was fine, didn’t feel depressed and worked”;14 he would submit a story again soon, if his health remained fine. (It did and within a couple of days he sent Fragments a semi-comic doctor story.) He also mentioned, perhaps suspecting that Leykin had already found out, that he had written a four-act play for Korsh. Wondering about Leykin’s recent silence, he asked: “Isn’t there any news about the literary world?”
*
Chekhov had managed to send Petersburg Gazette “A Problem” (“Zadacha,” October 19). The problem, in a nutshelclass="underline"
The other side of the door, in the study, a family council was being held. The subject under discussion was an exceedingly disagreeable and delicate one. [Twenty-five-year-old] Sasha Uskov had cashed at one of the banks a false promissory note, and it had become due for payment three days before, and now his two paternal uncles and Ivan Markovich, the brother of his dead mother, were deciding the question whether they should pay the money and save the family honor, or wash their hands of it and leave the case to go for trial.
To outsiders who have no personal interest in the matter such questions seem simple; for those who are so unfortunate as to have to decide them in earnest they are extremely difficult. The uncles had been talking for a long time, but the problem seemed no nearer decision.
Chekhov liked to remind his readers that it takes a lot of thought, information, and imagination to appreciate the dynamics of a problem. If troubling family matters look simple to us, we’re simply blind to all the circumstances.
In “A Problem,” each uncle is confident and sure of himself and persuasive. The young man is a wretch, but Chekhov seems to not be taking sides:
The maternal uncle, kind-hearted Ivan Markovich, spoke smoothly, softly, and with a tremor in his voice. He began with saying that youth has its rights and its peculiar temptations. Which of us has not been young, and who has not been led astray? To say nothing of ordinary mortals, even great men have not escaped errors and mistakes in their youth. Take, for instance, the biography of great writers. Did not every one of them gamble, drink, and draw down upon himself the anger of right-thinking people in his young days?
The family council goes on for hours, the resolution to let him go to trial breaks down and is reconsidered, and finally he is “forgiven.”
His kindly uncle gives the conditions: repentance and reformation. Sasha, forgiven, immediately proves incorrigible.
*
A detail of Chekhov’s biography that gets repeated again and again is his winning of the Pushkin Award in 1888. It’s true that’s the date of the award, but he knew this month, a year ahead of time, that he had won it. In response to Alexander’s news, which had come to Alexander from Suvorin, who had the insider Grigorovich’s knowledge of the voting, he replied on October 21:
The Pushkin Prize cannot be given to me. That’s first. Secondly, were it given to me, which I cannot believe, so many rebukes will come to me, in Moscow particularly, so many worries and perplexities will arise that even the 500 rubles won’t make up for it. I could accept the prize only if it were divided between me and Korolenko; but now, when it is still uncertain who is the better, when only ten or fifteen Petersburgians see talent in me, while all Petersburg and all Moscow see it in Korolenko, to give the prize to me would be to please a minority and to prick a majority. Don’t say this to Suvorin, for he, as far as I know, does not read Korolenko, and therefore will not understand me.15
He gave his brother details about Ivanov’s future performances and payoffs: “If the censorship should not pass it, which is doubtful, then… most likely I will not shoot myself, though it will be bitter.” He teased Alexander: “Please do my commissions without blinking. You will be superbly rewarded: the future historian will mention you in my biography: ‘He had a brother Aleksei, who ran his errands, whereby he contributed not a little to the development of his talent.’ My biographer is not obliged to know your right name, but from the signature ‘Al. Chekhov’ it will not be difficult for him to guess that your name is Aleksei.”
Alexander replied on October 23 with an account of his conversation with Suvorin, wherein he had passed along Chekhov’s wishes not to have his book entered in the Pushkin Prize contest. Suvorin told Alexander: “Don’t worry, you, I’ll write him myself. What a fellow! He wrote a play in 10 days! Truly, what a fellow!”16
Chekhov wrote Alexander again on October 24, having learned to his relief that the Pushkin Prize wouldn’t be announced until the next year. He also gave Alexander this stern advice: “Damp for children is as dangerous as hunger. Hack this on your nose and find a drier apartment.”17
You invite me to stay in your flat…. Rather! Everybody should be pleased to give shelter to a man of genius! Well, I’ll do you that favor. But one condition: cook for me soup with herbs, which you do nicely, and offer me vodka not before 11 P.M. I am not afraid of the children’s singing.
*
Chekhov wrote “Intrigues” (“Intrigi,” October 24) for Leykin. A conniving doctor plans to slander his way out of a hearing—but his face seems to be betraying him. Chekhov’s recent doctor characters have been frustrated or difficult. In Ivanov, most of the characters despise Dr. Lvov, whose moral bearing is correct but insufferable. In “Intrigues,” Dr. Shelestov may well be the most competent of doctors, but he is also a cheat. Chekhov tells the story from Shelestov’s point of view; Shelestov regards himself as superior to the doctors intriguing against him. He imagines his cool unruffled response to “a whole series of new accusations […] being leveled against me”:18
At this point, carelessly twirling a pencil or a chain, he would say that yes, in actual fact it was true that during consultations he had sometimes been known to raise his voice and attack colleagues, regardless of who was present. It was also true that once, during a consultation, in the presence of doctors and family members, he had asked the patient, “Who was the idiot who prescribed opium for you?” Rare was a consultation without incident… But why was this? The answer was simple! In these consultations he, Shelestov, was always saddled with colleagues whose knowledge left much to be desired. There were thirty-two doctors in town, most of whom knew less than a first-year medical student.
Shelestov continues imagining his unflustered, condescending self-defense: “He would go on expounding, and his supporters would applaud and clasp their hands together in exultation.” But when he is finally about to set out for the actual meeting, Shelestov loses his composure before the mirror.
Shelestov looks at his face, flies into a rage, and begins sensing that his face is plotting against him. He goes out into the hall, and as he is putting on his coat, his galoshes, and his hat, he feels that they are intriguing against him, too.
Chekhov leaves it to us to imagine how the meeting will go.
*
While he was proud of and anxious about the publication of In the Twilight, Chekhov was defensive and embarrassed about the content of and the chintzy payment he received for Innocent Speeches, which was published on October 27. He downplayed his involvement in it. While the brothers Evgeny and Mikhail Verner, the editors of The Cricket, one of the humor periodicals Chekhov used to contribute to, had asked him to select a dozen stories, which Chekhov variously described as a dozen or fifteen or a dozen and a half, Chekhov gave them eventually twenty-one stories, which he lightly edited. The Verners’ payment was only slightly more than he would receive for a typical story at New Times. Still, 150 rubles was something, rent, for example, for almost three months. The only money Chekhov seemed to pass up in these years was for his medical work.19
Even to Alexander, he disparaged the contents of Innocent Speeches: “the stories are so bad you have the right to hit me on the back of the head”; he blamed himself and the Verners for exploiting his “poverty”; he asked Alexander to put the kibosh on any request by the Verners for notice of the book in New Times. “In silence I see the greatest favor.”20 Alexander replied that in fact two of his colleagues wanted to review the book.