He explained the dilemma to Bilibin in a letter on February 14: “I, having thought it over, prefer the pen name and not without a basis… Family and my family arms I gave to medicine, from which I won’t leave off until the grave. Sooner or later I’m giving up literature. Secondly, medicine takes itself seriously, while the game of literature ought to have distinctive names…”7 Pen names in Russian literature were common enough, but Chekhov relented and allowed New Times to use his real name.
In the meantime, as he told Bilibin, he was busy with doctoring: “Every day I go out into the country for my medical practice. What ravines, what views!”8 Even so, he had knocked off a quick story: “Having at my disposal only 2 ½ hours, I spoiled this monologue [“Bliny”] and… I sent it not to the devil [that is, to Leykin] but to ‘Pet Gaz.’ Intentions were good, but the result was most awful.” He was rushing so much—from wife (medicine) to mistress (literature)—that he hadn’t even eaten, except imaginatively and gorgingly in the story about bliny. Then he brought up Bilibin’s marriage: “You’re going to Finland! When your honeymoon turns into ice cream in Finland, remember then my invitation and curse yourself for your faintheartedness… How much will this trip to your wild Finland cost you? A hundred rubles? And for this money you could very well travel south or, at least, to me in Moscow… Overhead, wedding music is playing now… Some donkeys are marrying and they stamp their feet like horses… They don’t let me sleep.”
He added, beginning a series of seemingly random thoughts: “About my wedding, nothing yet is known…”
*
On February 15, Chekhov made his debut in New Times, an important though right-wing St. Petersburg newspaper that had a Saturday literary section, which is where “The Requiem” appeared.9
“The Requiem” (“Panikhida”) begins:
In the village church of Verhny Zaprudy mass was just over. The people had begun moving and were trooping out of church. The only one who did not move was Andrey Andreyich, a shopkeeper and old inhabitant of Verhny Zaprudy. He stood waiting, with his elbows on the railing of the right choir. His fat and shaven face, covered with indentations left by pimples, expressed on this occasion two contradictory feelings: resignation in the face of inevitable destiny, and stupid, unbounded disdain for the smocks and striped kerchiefs passing by him.10
Chekhov has conjured up a face that is fascinating to imagine, even though it’s not attractive. Would the shopkeeper’s plumpness lead us to assume he’s doing well? He shaves; he keeps up appearances. With the pimple-dents, we know he had an unattractive face in the past. Chekhov has described such a particular human face that we understand the “two contradictory feelings” he’s expressing: 1) his resignation at what promises to become a funeral, and 2) his being distracted by others’ fashion choices at church. He himself is duded up:
As it was Sunday, he was dressed like a dandy. He wore a long cloth overcoat with yellow bone buttons, blue trousers not thrust into his boots, and sturdy galoshes—the huge clumsy galoshes only seen on the feet of practical and prudent persons of firm religious convictions.
The shopkeeper is dignified, conscious of his physical and moral stature, but Chekhov’s assessment of Andrey being “practical and prudent” and pious means that we are ridiculing Andrey’s self-assessment:
His torpid eyes, sunk in fat, were fixed upon the ikon stand. He saw the long familiar figures of the saints, the verger Matvey puffing out his cheeks and blowing out the candles, the darkened candle stands, the threadbare carpet, the sacristan Lopuhov running impulsively from the altar and carrying the holy bread to the churchwarden…. All these things he had seen for years, and seen over and over again like the five fingers of his hand…. There was only one thing, however, that was somewhat strange and unusual. Father Grigory, still in his vestments, was standing at the north door, twitching his thick eyebrows angrily.
Not only is Andrey Andreyich familiar with the church ceremonies, but so is Chekhov, obviously. Chekhov only presents as strange what the character would have thought strange. This is not about local color, though we get that, too.
“Who is it he is winking at? God bless him!” thought the shopkeeper. “And he is beckoning with his finger! And he stamped his foot! What next! What’s the matter, Holy Queen and Mother! Whom does he mean it for?”
Andrey Andreyich looked around and saw the church completely deserted. There were some ten people standing at the door, but they had their backs to the altar.
“Do come when you are called! Why do you stand like a graven image?” he heard Father Grigory’s angry voice. “I am calling you.”
This is not what he or we expected—the familiar priest angry at him.
The shopkeeper looked at Father Grigory’s red and wrathful face, and only then realized that the twitching eyebrows and beckoning finger might refer to him. He started, left the railing, and hesitatingly walked toward the altar, tramping with his heavy galoshes.
Andrey is not so dignified that he cannot be intimidated by Father Grigory, and the priest has the confidence to beckon him and expect obedience:
“Andrey Andreyich, was it you asked for prayers for the rest of Mariya’s soul?” asked the priest, his eyes angrily transfixing the shopkeeper’s fat, perspiring face.
“Yes, Father.”
“Then it was you wrote this? You?” And Father Grigory angrily thrust before his eyes the little note.
And on this little note, handed in by Andrey Andreyich before mass, was written in big, as it were staggering, letters:
“For the rest of the soul of the servant of God, the harlot Mariya.”
“Yes, certainly I wrote it…” answered the shopkeeper.
“How dared you write it?” whispered the priest, and in his husky whisper there was a note of wrath and alarm.
The shopkeeper looked at him in blank amazement; he was perplexed, and he, too, was alarmed. Father Grigory had never in his life spoken in such a tone to a leading resident of Verhny Zaprudy.
Doesn’t this perplexity on Andrey’s part make the story even more compelling? It’s like the surprise one feels in a dream: Me? You’re calling me over? Me? How could you be calling me? I didn’t do anything!
Both were silent for a minute, staring into each other’s face. The shopkeeper’s amazement was so great that his fat face spread in all directions like spilt dough.
Chekhov already gave us Andrey’s great distinctive face, and now we get to enjoy it again.
“How dared you?” repeated the priest.
“Wha… what?” asked Andrey Andreyich in bewilderment.
“You don’t understand?” whispered Father Grigory, stepping back in astonishment and clasping his hands. “What have you got on your shoulders, a head or some other object? You send a note up to the altar, and write a word in it which it would be unseemly even to utter in the street! Why are you rolling your eyes? Surely you know the meaning of the word?”
“Are you referring to the word harlot?” muttered the shopkeeper, flushing crimson and blinking. “But you know, the Lord in His mercy… forgave this very thing,… forgave a harlot…. He has prepared a place for her, and indeed from the life of the holy saint, Mariya of Egypt, one may see in what sense the word is used—excuse me…”
The shopkeeper wanted to bring forward some other argument in his justification, but took fright and wiped his lips with his sleeve.
Andrey’s fright is not the resistance or anger that we might have been expecting. He doesn’t understand why Father Grigory is so mad!
“So that’s what you make of it!” cried Father Grigory, clasping his hands. “But you see God has forgiven her—do you understand? He has forgiven, but you judge her, you slander her, call her by an unseemly name, and whom! Your own deceased daughter! Not only in Holy Scripture, but even in worldly literature you won’t read of such a sin! I tell you again, Andrey, you mustn’t be over-subtle! No, no, you mustn’t be over-subtle, brother! If God has given you an inquiring mind, and if you cannot direct it, better not go into things…. Don’t go into things, and hold your peace!”