I would suggest Pyotr had something in common with the Taganrog Chekhov boys, except for one little turn: as a boy he “had taken up a contemptuous and critical attitude to fishing, a pursuit to which both His Reverence and the deacon were greatly addicted.” The story’s author was addicted to fishing as well. We see Chekhov “switching up”—personally identifying in different aspects with characters very different from himself and disassociating from characters otherwise similar.12
This story is a play that we are watching with the comic genius who wrote it. Chekhov glances here and over there and now again over here. He knows what each character is thinking and feeling, but for the most part he has the confidence in us that we can figure out—with his occasional comments and from the dialogue—the hearts and minds of these three men.
The deacon begs His Reverence to direct the composition of the letter to his wayward son. Though the deacon is neither clever nor calculating, he knows how to persuade Orlov:
“Father Fyodor!” said the deacon, putting his head on one side and pressing his hand to his heart. “I am an uneducated slow-witted man, while the Lord has vouchsafed you judgment and wisdom. You know everything and understand everything. You can master anything, while I don’t know how to put my words together sensibly. Be generous. Instruct me how to write the letter. Teach me what to say and how to say it….”
“What is there to teach? There is nothing to teach. Sit down and write.”
And maybe here, in Father Fyodor, we see Chekhov’s own matter-of-fact reflex: The secret to writing is to sit down and write. That’s all there is to it! But we and the deacon know that some people are masterfully bold writers, and for the rest of us it’s not easy to write a reproachful letter to someone we adore.
“Oh, do me the favor, Father Fyodor! I beseech you! I know he will be frightened and will attend to your letter, because, you see, you are a cultivated man, too. Do be so good! I’ll sit down, and you’ll dictate to me. It will be a sin to write tomorrow, but now would be the very time; my mind would be set at rest.”
His Reverence looked at the deacon’s imploring face, thought of the disagreeable Pyotr, and consented to dictate. He made the deacon sit down to his table and began.
The deacon and Father Anastasy exult over the letter’s fiery excellence and leave His Reverence to a well-earned nap.
The scene changes, even seemingly to Chekhov’s relief and pleasure. Chekhov, we know, loved the Easter season.
As is always the case on Easter Eve, it was dark in the street, but the whole sky was sparkling with bright luminous stars. There was a scent of spring and holiday in the soft still air.
“How long was he dictating?” the deacon said admiringly. “Ten minutes, not more! It would have taken someone else a month to compose such a letter. Eh! What a mind! Such a mind that I don’t know what to call it! It’s a marvel! It’s really a marvel!”
Yes, “a marvel,” and even Anastasy agrees and heaps on the praise of His Reverence. The deacon continues to exult, as if his problem with Pyotr has been solved:
The deacon laughed gaily and loudly. Since the letter had been written to Pyotr he had become serene and more cheerful. The consciousness of having performed his duty as a father and his faith in the power of the letter had brought back his mirthfulness and good-humor.
“It’s a splendid letter, only you know I wouldn’t send it, Father Deacon. Let him alone.”
“What?” said the deacon, disconcerted.
“Why… Don’t send it, deacon! What’s the sense of it? Suppose you send it; he reads it, and… and what then? You’ll only upset him. Forgive him. Let him alone!”
I think even some of us readers are surprised by Father Anastasy’s advice. And maybe it’s the surprise of a simply stated moral opinion in the face of logical arguments to the contrary that most effectively convinces us (and eventually the deacon) that he’s right.
The deacon looked in surprise at Anastasy’s dark face, at his unbuttoned cassock, which looked in the dusk like wings, and shrugged his shoulders.
“How can I forgive him like that?” he asked. “Why I shall have to answer for him to God!”
“Even so, forgive him all the same. Really! And God will forgive you for your kindness to him.”
“But he is my son, isn’t he? Ought I not to teach him?”
“Teach him? Of course—why not? You can teach him, but why call him a heathen? It will hurt his feelings, you know, deacon….”
They arrive at the deacon’s “little house with three windows.” We learn the deacon is a widower living with his invalid sister.
Father Anastasy went in with him. Seeing his table already laid with Easter cakes and red eggs, he began weeping for some reason, probably thinking of his own home, and to turn these tears into a jest, he at once laughed huskily.
“Yes, we shall soon be breaking the fast,” he said. “Yes… it wouldn’t come amiss, deacon, to have a little glass now. Can we? I’ll drink it so that the old lady does not hear,” he whispered, glancing sideways toward the door.
Without a word the deacon moved a decanter and wineglass toward him.
Chekhov reminds us that Father Anastasy has his own problems, and that his drinking is connected to the disappointment and shame of his life. And to get a drink, he’s cagey.
The deacon reads the letter aloud, admiring it once again.
Anastasy, despite his dissipation and need to get drunk, reasserts his advice, but even more inspiringly:
“Do you know, deacon, don’t send it!” said Anastasy, pouring himself out a second glass of vodka as though unconsciously. “Forgive him, let him alone! I am telling you… what I really think. If his own father can’t forgive him, who will forgive him? And so he’ll live without forgiveness. Think, deacon: there will be plenty to chastise him without you, but you should look out for some who will show mercy to your son! I’ll… I’ll… have just one more. The last, old man…. Just sit down and write straight off to him, ‘I forgive you Pyotr!’ He will understa-and! He will fe-el it! I understand it from myself, you see old man… deacon, I mean. When I lived like other people, I hadn’t much to trouble about, but now since I lost the image and semblance, there is only one thing I care about, that good people should forgive me. And remember, too, it’s not the righteous but sinners we must forgive. Why should you forgive your old woman if she is not sinful? No, you must forgive a man when he is a sad sight to look at… yes!”
As great as Tolstoy is, even greater an artist than Chekhov (both Chekhov and I would say), I can’t help feeling that Tolstoy writing this story would give in to me and to himself—and let us have a sentimental hero. Only Chekhov can resist this big opportunity for sentimentality. In Tolstoy’s story, Anastasy would not be getting drunk.
Anastasy leaned his head on his fist and sank into thought.
“It’s a terrible thing, deacon,” he sighed, evidently struggling with the desire to take another glass—“a terrible thing! In sin my mother bore me, in sin I have lived, in sin I shall die…. God forgive me, a sinner! I have gone astray, deacon! There is no salvation for me! And it’s not as though I had gone astray in my life, but in old age—at death’s door… I…”
The old man, with a hopeless gesture, drank off another glass, then got up and moved to another seat.
And now the burden of decision about the letter rests on the deacon’s soft shoulders.
The deacon, still keeping the letter in his hand, was walking up and down the room. He was thinking of his son. Displeasure, distress, and anxiety no longer troubled him; all that had gone into the letter. Now he was simply picturing Pyotr; he imagined his face, he thought of the past years when his son used to come to stay with him for the holidays. His thoughts were only of what was good, warm, touching, of which one might think for a whole lifetime without wearying. Longing for his son, he read the letter through once more and looked questioningly at Anastasy.