The narrator, as is common in Chekhov’s stories, is for the most part inconspicuous, an observer rather than a protagonist. When he notices that she is distracted by the sight of the prince outside talking to her groundskeeper, he reflects on Chekhov’s favorite grievance of these years:
I looked at her and at the prince who could not tell a lie once in his life, and I felt angry and bitter against truth and falsehood, which play such an elemental part in the personal happiness of men.
Why do our social lives depend on lies?
On second thought she sends after the narrator to grant them permission.
On second thought Chekhov seems to have resolved, as straitened as his finances were, to give marriage with Dunya Efros a pass.
A piece that I did not number among his “stories” is a micro-play published later the same week as he published “A Trivial Incident”; it’s titled “Drama” (“Drama,” September 25):
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Pappy, having 11 unmarried daughters.
Young Man.
Coat-tails.
Young man (waving his hand and saying: “I don’t care! Two deaths won’t happen, but one will!” and goes into the study to Pappy). Ivan Ivanych! Let me ask for the hand of your youngest daughter Varvara!
Pappy (lowering his eyes and acting coy). I’m very pleased, but… she’s still so young… so inexperienced… As to that… you want to deprive me of… my peace… (tears increase) the support of my old age.
Young man (quickly). In that case… I don’t dare insist… (Bows and wants to leave.)
Pappy (reaching out and grabbing him by the coat-tails). Stop! I’m glad! Happy! My benefactor!
Coat-tails. (mournfully) Trrrr… 3
No one from the Efros family tried to catch Chekhov by the coat-tails.
*
Chekhov did not go for impressive or enticing titles. He preferred the undersell. The last story of the month was “A Trifle from Life” (“Zhiteyskaya Meloch’,” September 29) and is truly not a major work. (You’re forgiven if you mix up its title with “A Trivial Incident,” published all of nine days before.) I will summarize it only to give evidence of Chekhov’s continued dismay about lying.
A self-satisfied bachelor, an Anna Karenina–style Vronsky-lite, is having an affair with a woman who has an eight-year-old. While the bachelor awaits the return of the woman, he chats with the boy, who tells him about his life in the house, about secretly seeing his father, who loves him; the bachelor-lover, having sworn to the boy complete confidence in that secret, instead rats him out. Chekhov describes the trusting boy’s reaction: “Alyosha sat down in the corner and told [his sister] Sonia with horror how he had been deceived. He was trembling, stammering, and crying. It was the first time in his life that he had been brought into such coarse contact with lying; till then he had not known that there are in the world, besides sweet pears, pies, and expensive watches, a great many things for which the language of children has no expression.”4
*
Chekhov continually veered from annoyance to guilt in his relationship with Leykin. He had moved on in his literary career, though Leykin made him feel he still owed contributions to Fragments. Besides Leykin, though, there don’t seem to have been other friends from whom he could expect loans. As long as Chekhov needed emergency short-term loans, he would have to contribute pieces.
His September 20 letter to Leykin was newsy, friendly, and a little anxious. Chekhov liked the family’s new place after the commotion of setting it up. On the other hand, now he was out of money; he had pawned his watch and gold coins: “What a terribly stupid situation!” he exclaimed. He pointedly didn’t ask Leykin for another loan. He wrote that he was mostly sitting at home, recovering from having treated cholera patients, and occasionally going to watch plays at the theater, where he had free tickets. Making an effort to be chatty, he asked after Leykin’s getaway house and family and pets, and he told Leykin he was awaiting a letter from him.5
He may have been surprised by Leykin’s pertinent next letter on September 27: “Why are you always sick? […] Doctor, heal thyself.”6 Leykin would not have twitted his writer had he known he had tuberculosis.
Chekhov answered on September 30, complaining about nonpayment from the Petersburg Gazette, and asking for Leykin’s intervention both for the payments and for a pay raise: “Put in a good word about the raise, and you’ll agree that it’s insulting in old age to write for 7 kopecks!” Whether it was Leykin’s persuasive word or not, Chekhov’s rate per line at the Gazette went up to 10 kopecks a line, and Leykin agreed to give him another 15 rubles per month from Fragments.7 He was famous indeed but barely managing the family’s rent and expenses. “Nikolay yesterday and for the past few days was seriously and dangerously ill,” he wrote. “An unexpected amount of bleeding vomit appeared, which just barely stopped. He’s thin in the manner of typhus… It’s terrible how much trouble I’ve experienced these days, and there’s still no money…” He imagined or feared that he would give up writing to go work as a government doctor: “It’s probable all the music will end, I spitting, waving my hand, and running away to the district for service.” As for his own illnesses, about which Leykin had teased him: “My health is better. It’s necessary to radically change my life, but it’s not easy. I have 3 sins on my conscience that give me no peace: 1) I smoke, 2) I sometimes drink and 3) I don’t know languages.”
On this date, he had just finished or was just about to finish one of his most extraordinary stories about family life, “Difficult People.”
*
Late this September, Chekhov continued his literary mentorship of Maria Kiseleva, but now through long letters. As always with women he corresponded with, Chekhov was both teasing and direct.8
On September 21, he wrote to Kiseleva about his “dreary” writer’s life: “In order to have the right to be by myself in my room, and not with guests, I hurried off to sit over my writing.”9 He mocked his fame: “It is not much fun to be a great writer. To begin with, it’s a dreary life. Work from morning till night and not much to show for it. Money is as scarce as cats’ tears.”10 He said, explaining his financial woes, that he wasn’t getting paid for some of his literary contributions until October.
I don’t know how it is with Zola and Shchedrin, but in my flat it is cold and smoky…. They give me cigarettes, as before, on holidays only. Impossible cigarettes! Hard, damp, sausage-like. Before I begin to smoke I light the lamp, dry the cigarette over it, and only then I begin on it; the lamp smokes, the cigarette splutters and turns brown, I burn my fingers… it is enough to make one shoot oneself!
Unlike for most of his other correspondents, who were not trying to train themselves to be writers, he explained the range of work he was doing: “I’m writing a play for Korsh (hm!), a story for Russian Thought, stories for N Times, Peterb Gaz, Fragments, Alarm Clock and other organs. I write a lot and for a long time, but I rush like a madman: I start one thing without finishing another… I still haven’t allowed my doctor’s sign to be put up, but I still have to treat them! Brrr… I’m afraid of typhus!”11
He wasn’t advertising for more patients; he had enough unpaid medical work as it was.
I am more or less ill, and am gradually turning into a dried dragon-fly. […]
I go about as festive as though it were my birthday, but to judge from the critical glances of the lady cashier at The Alarm Clock, I am not dressed in the height of fashion, and my clothes are not brand-new. I go in buses, not in cabs.
But being a writer has its good points. In the first place, my book, I hear, is going rather well; secondly, in October I shall have money; thirdly, I am beginning to reap laurels: at the refreshment bars people point at me with their fingers, they pay me little attentions and treat me to sandwiches. Korsh caught me in his theater and straight away presented me with a free pass. […] My medical colleagues sigh when they meet me, begin to talk of literature and assure me that they are sick of medicine. And so on….12