“Listen,” he said fervently, catching hold of Kirilov’s sleeve. “I well understand your position! God is my witness that I am ashamed of attempting at such a moment to intrude on your attention, but what am I to do? Only think, to whom can I go? There is no other doctor here, you know. For God’s sake come! I am not asking you for myself…. I am not the patient!”
I hated Abogin in my memory, but there’s no reason to hate him now (or, as Chekhov would argue, ever). I understand his argument: he is asking a favor for someone else; he wouldn’t ask it for himself.
But Dr. Kirilov doesn’t take in Abogin’s words! He turns and walks away, first into the drawing room and then into the bedroom. Chekhov reveals in telling details the short recent history of the boy’s diphtheria.
Here in the bedroom reigned a dead silence. Everything to the smallest detail was eloquent of the storm that had been passed through, of exhaustion, and everything was at rest. A candle standing among a crowd of bottles, boxes, and pots on a stool and a big lamp on the chest of drawers threw a brilliant light over all the room.
Chekhov, like his hero Tolstoy, lays out very simple phrasings at the most dramatic moments: “On the bed near the window lay a boy with open eyes and a look of wonder on his face.” As I am reading it in Russian, I am not translating but reading; it flows, unrearranged, like this, “In bed, by lone window, lay boy with open eyes and amazed expression on his face.”32
Chekhov notes the smell of the room:
The bedclothes, the rags and bowls, the splashes of water on the floor, the little paint-brushes and spoons thrown down here and there, the white bottle of lime water, the very air, heavy and stifling—were all hushed and seemed plunged in repose.
But he discreetly (considerately) avoids letting us stare at the doctor’s wife.
Having fully described the death-room and the parents, Chekhov becomes lyrical. I had forgotten the editorializing, which doesn’t usually come up for comment when people write or talk about Chekhov. We assume that he is always letting the actions and events speak for themselves, which is an explicit credo of his writing-advice, but in this story and in other great stories, he occasionally steps forward to comment:
That repellent horror which is thought of when we speak of death was absent from the room. In the numbness of everything, in the mother’s attitude, in the indifference on the doctor’s face there was something that attracted and touched the heart, that subtle, almost elusive beauty of human sorrow which men will not for a long time learn to understand and describe, and which it seems only music can convey. There was a feeling of beauty, too, in the austere stillness. Kirilov and his wife were silent and not weeping, as though besides the bitterness of their loss they were conscious, too, of all the tragedy of their position; just as once their youth had passed away, so now together with this boy their right to have children had gone for ever to all eternity! The doctor was forty-four, his hair was gray and he looked like an old man; his faded and invalid wife was thirty-five. Andrey was not merely the only child, but also the last child.
I can imagine a criticism: Chekhov has set up the situation too neatly; the couple is in absolute despair. There is no possible consolation, no possible new baby to be had.
The doctor is forty-four and Chekhov will be forty-four when he dies. His wife Olga Knipper will be thirty-five when he dies. And they will have been childless. That’s just a coincidence. Anyway, the doctor here is not dying.
We find out that Kirilov has forgotten about Abogin, who is waiting for him. Abogin thinks Kirilov has been changing his clothes in order to come with him.
Kirilov is bewildered to discover Abogin is still there and tells him he certainly is not and won’t come with him. He can’t leave his wife. Because of the disease their servants have been sent away for a time, and if he left she would be alone.
Abogin is persistent. Kirilov tells him he knows it’s his legal duty to help him, but he just can’t. Abogin says he won’t hold him to his legal duty, but he is annoying in his manner and words. He ends his argument by saying: “You were just speaking of the death of your son. Who should understand my horror if not you?”
And now something happens that reverses Kirilov’s decision. Chekhov steps forward again to editorialize an interesting explanation that contains one of Chekhov’s rules of writing, which I have italicized:
Abogin’s voice quivered with emotion; that quiver and his tone were far more persuasive than his words. Abogin was sincere, but it was remarkable that whatever he said his words sounded stilted, soulless, and inappropriately flowery, and even seemed an outrage on the atmosphere of the doctor’s home and on the woman who was somewhere dying. He felt this himself, and so, afraid of not being understood, did his utmost to put softness and tenderness into his voice so that the sincerity of his tone might prevail if his words did not. As a rule, however fine and deep a phrase may be, it only affects the indifferent, and cannot fully satisfy those who are happy or unhappy; that is why dumbness is most often the highest expression of happiness or unhappiness; lovers understand each other better when they are silent, and a fervent, passionate speech delivered by the grave only touches outsiders, while to the widow and children of the dead man it seems cold and trivial.
This should remind us that Chekhov is continually showing us conversations running on different tracks and why he is suspicious of speeches.
But maybe it also shows us some of his own medical experience. He was often run down and exhausted, suffering from minor complaints and also the more harrowing symptoms of tuberculosis. He had daily office hours, but he saw anyone who knocked at the door for medical care, and he did house calls when he had to. Perhaps he had noticed this too; after he had resolved not to go out, someone’s shaky voice or simple unaffected argument got to him and persuaded him to go.
Kirilov stood in silence. When Abogin uttered a few more phrases concerning the noble calling of a doctor, self-sacrifice, and so on, the doctor asked sullenly: “Is it far?”
“Something like eight or nine miles. I have capital horses, doctor! I give you my word of honor that I will get you there and back in an hour. Only one hour.”
These words had more effect on Kirilov than the appeals to humanity or the noble calling of the doctor. He thought a moment and said with a sigh: “Very well, let us go!”
Again, Chekhov has us think of those everyday appeals we all hear, but that what motivates us to comply is a surprise, even to us. As they set out in Abogin’s carriage toward his estate, Kirilov takes in the dark world, and the dark world takes in him. The two protagonists have not yet fully taken in each other, however; they have not seen each other in full light.
And why is this? What does this show us about how Chekhov was imagining and creating the story? It’s important that neither man quite sees the other as something besides a role: doctor and patient-advocate. There are only a few particular details they have picked up about each other:
It was dark out of doors, though lighter than in the entry. The tall, stooping figure of the doctor, with his long, narrow beard and aquiline nose, stood out distinctly in the darkness. Abogin’s big head and the little student’s cap that barely covered it could be seen now as well as his pale face. The scarf showed white only in front, behind it was hidden by his long hair.
I had forgotten there’s a driver; there is, and Abogin encourages him to drive as fast as possible.
Abogin, whose words are so annoying, manages to keep himself from talking most of the way.
But on that way, with few visual impressions, there are smells and sounds. It’s September: the riders can smell the “dampness and mushrooms.” Unusually in these years, Chekhov does not tie the events of this story to the time of year in which the story is being published, which is the middle of winter. On the other hand, Chekhov had attended that medical conference the week before he began writing the story and had listened to various speakers, including one about the difficult working conditions for doctors in Russia and the lack of accessible health care.33 Chekhov would have talked to more doctors than usual and heard work-life stories. “The life of a rural doctor in the 19th century was hard and unremitting, and required great physical and emotional stamina,” writes Dr. John Coope. “As Astrov [in Uncle Vanya] relates to Marina, the old nurse: ‘On my feet from morning to night with never a moment’s peace, and then lying under the bedclothes afraid of being dragged out to a patient. All the time we’ve known each other I haven’t had one day off.’ ”34