Third: There is no special moral to be drawn and no special message to be received. Compare this to the special delivery stories of Gorki or Thomas Mann.
Fourth : The story is based on a system of waves, on the shades of this or that mood. If in Gorki's world the molecules forming it are matter, here, in Chekhov, we get a world of waves instead of particles of matter, which, incidentally, is a nearer approach to the modern scientific understanding of the universe.
Fifth: The contrast of poetry and prose stressed here and there with such insight and humor is, in the long run, a contrast only for the heroes; in reality we feel, and this is again typical of authentic genius, that for Chekhov the lofty and the base are not different, that the slice of watermelon and the violet sea, and the hands of the town-governor, are essential points of the "beauty plus pity" of the world.
Sixth: The story does not really end, for as long as people are alive, there is no possible and definite conclusion to their troubles or hopes or dreams.
163
Vladimir Nabokov: Lectures on Russian literature
Seventh: The storyteller seems to keep going out of his way to allude to trifles, every one of which in another type of story would mean a signpost denoting a turn in the action—for instance, the two boys at the theatre would be eavesdroppers, and rumors would spread, or the inkstand would mean a letter changing the course of the story; but just because these trifles are meaningless, they are all-important in giving the real atmosphere of this particular story.
"In the Gully" (1900)
The action of "In the Gully" (usually translated as "In the Ravine") takes place half-a-century ago—the story was written in 1900. The place, somewhere in Russia, is a village called Ukléyevo : kley sounds like clay and means "glue." The only thing to tell about the village was that one day at a wake "the old sexton saw among the side dishes some large-grained caviar and began eating it greedily; people nudged him, tugged at his sleeve, but he seemed petrified with enjoyment: felt nothing, and only went on eating. He ate up all the caviar, and there were some four pounds in the jar. And years had passed since then, the sexton had long since been dead, but the caviar was still remembered. Whether life was so poor here or people had not been clever enough to notice anything but that unimportant incident that had occurred ten years before, anyway the people had nothing else to tell about the village of Ukléyevo." Or, rather, there was nothing good to tell except this.
Here at least was a beam of fun, a smile, something human. All the rest was not only drab, it was also evil—a gray wasp nest of deception and injustice. "There were only two decent houses built of brick with iron roofs; one of them was occupied by the rural administration; in the other, a two-storied house just opposite the church, lived Grigori Petrovich Tsybukin, a merchant who hailed from Yepi-fan." Both of these houses were abodes of evil. Everything in the story, except the children and the child-wife Lipa, is going to be a succession of deceptions, a succession of masks.
Mask One: "Grigori kept a grocery, but that was only for the sake of appearances: in reality he dealt in vodka, cattle, hides, grain, and pigs; he traded in anything that came to hand, and when, for instance, magpies were wanted abroad for ladies'
hats, he made thirty kopeks on every brace of birds; he bought timber for felling, lent money at interest, and altogether was a resourceful old man." This Grigori will also undergo a very interesting metamorphosis in the course of the story.
Old Grigori has two sons, a deaf one around the house, married to what seems a pleasant, cheerful young woman but in reality a malicious devil of a woman; the other son is a detective in town, a bachelor as yet. You will notice that Grigori is immensely appreciative of his daughter-in-law Aksinia: we shall see why in a minute. Old Grigori, a widower, has married again, a new wife named Varvara (Barbara): "No sooner had she moved into a little room in the upper story than everything in the house seemed to brighten up as though new glass had been put into all the windows. The oil lamps burned brightly before the sacred pictures, the tables were covered with snow-white cloths, flowers flecked with red made their appearance in the windows and in the front garden, and at dinner, instead of eating from a single bowl, each person had a separate plate set for him." She also seems, at first, a good woman, a delightful woman, and, anyway, she has a kinder heart than the old man. "When on the eve of a fast or during the local church festival, which lasted three days, Grigori's store palmed off on the peasants tainted salt meat, smelling so strong it was hard to stand near the tub of it, and took scythes, caps, and their wives' kerchiefs in pledge from the drunken men; when the factory hands, stupefied with bad vodka, lay in the mud, and degradation seemed to hover thick like a fog in the air, then it was a kind of relief to think that up there in the house there was a quiet, neatly dressed woman who had nothing to do with salt meat or vodka. "
Grigori is a hard man, and though now in the lower middle class is of direct peasant descent—his father was probably a well-to-do peasant—and naturally he hates peasants. Now comes:
Mask Two : Under her gay appearance Aksinia is also hard and that is why old Grigori admires her so much. This pretty woman is a swindler: "Aksinia attended to the shop, and from the yard could be heard the clink of bottles and of money, her laughter and loud talk, and the angry voices of customers whom she had cheated, and at the same time it could be seen that the illicit sale of vodka was already going on in the shop. The deaf man sat in the shop, too, or walked about the street bareheaded, with his hands in his pockets looking absent-mindedly now at the log cabins, now at the sky overhead.
Six times a day they had tea; four times a day they sat down to meals. And in the evening they counted their takings, wrote them down, went to bed, and slept soundly."
164
Vladimir Nabokov: Lectures on Russian literature
Now comes a transition to the calico-printing mills of the
place and to their owners. Let us call them collectively the
Khrymin family.
Mask Three (adultery): Aksinia not only deceives customers
in the store, she also deceives her husband with one of
those mill owners.
Mask Four: This is just a little mask, a kind of self-deception.
"A telephone was installed in the rural administration, too,
but it soon went out of order when it started to harbor
bedbugs and cockroaches. The district elder was
semiliterate and wrote every word in the official
documents with a capital. But when the telephone went
out of order he said: 'Yes, now we shall find it hard to be
without a telephone.' "
Mask Five: This refers to Grigori's elder son, the detective
Anisim. We are now deep in the deception theme of the
story. But Chekhov keeps back some important information
about Anisim: "The elder son, Anisim, came home very
rarely, only on great holidays, but he often sent by a
returning villager presents and letters written by someone
else in a very beautiful hand, always on a sheet of foolscap
The opening page of Nabokov's lecture on "In the Gully."
that looked like a formal petition. The letters were full of
expressions that Anisim never made use of in conversation: 'Dear papa and mamma, I send you a pound of orange pekoe tea for the satisfaction of your physical needs.' " There is a little mystery here that will be gradually cleared up, as in the