His funeral comes back to mind like a dream. The cold, grayish Petersburg, a mistake about a telegram, a small gathering of people at the railway station, “Wagon for oysters,” in which his remains were brought from Germany, the station authorities who had never heard of Chekhov and saw in his body only a railway cargo…. Then, as a contrast, Moscow, profound sorrow, thousands of bereaved people, tear-stained faces. And at last his grave in the Novodevitchy cemetery, filled with flowers, side by side with the humble grave of the “Cossack's widow, Olga Coocaretnikov.”
I remember the service in the cemetery the day after his funeral. It was a still July evening, and the old lime trees over the graves stood motionless and golden in the sun. With a quiet, tender sadness and sighing sounded the women's voices. And in the souls of many, then, was a deep perplexity.
Slowly and in silence the people left the cemetery. I went up to Chekhov's mother and silently kissed her hand. And she said in a low, tired voice:
“Our trial is bitter…. Antosha is dead.”
O, the overwhelming depth of these simple, ordinary, very Chekhovian words! The enormous abyss of the loss, the irrevocable nature of the great event, opened behind. No! Consolations would be useless. Can the sorrow of those, whose souls have been so close to the great soul of the dead, ever be assuaged?
But let their unquenchable anguish be stayed by the consciousness that their distress is our common distress. Let it be softened by the thought of the immortality of his great and pure name. Indeed: there will pass years and centuries, and time will efface the very memory of thousands and thousands of those living now. But the posterity, of whose happiness Chekhov dreamt with such fascinating sadness, will speak his name with gratitude and silent sorrow for his fate.
A. P. CHEKHOV
BY
I. A. BUNIN
I made Chekhov's acquaintance in Moscow, towards the end of '95. We met then at intervals and I should not think it worth mentioning, if I did not remember some very characteristic phrases.
“Do you write much?” he asked me once.
I answered that I wrote little.
“Bad,” he said, almost sternly, in his low, deep voice. “One must work … without sparing oneself … all one's life.”
And, after a pause, without any visible connection, he added:
“When one has written a story I believe that one ought to strike out both the beginning and the end. That is where we novelists are most inclined to lie. And one must write shortly—as shortly as possible.”
Then we spoke of poetry, and he suddenly became excited. “Tell me, do you care for Alexey Tolstoy's poems? To me he is an actor. When he was a boy he put on evening dress and he has never taken it off.”
After these stray meetings in which we touched upon some of Chekhov's favorite topics—as that one must work “without sparing oneself” and must write simply and without the shadow of falsehood—we did not meet till the spring of '99. I came to Yalta for a few days, and one evening I met Chekhov on the quay.
“Why don't you come to see me?” were his first words. “Be sure to come to-morrow.”
“At what time?” I asked.
“In the morning about eight.”
And seeing perhaps that I looked surprised he added:
“We get up early. Don't you?”
“Yes I do too,” I said.
“Well then, come when you get up. We will give you coffee. You take coffee?”
“Sometimes.”
“You ought to always. It's a wonderful drink. When I am working, I drink nothing but coffee and chicken broth until the evening. Coffee in the morning and chicken broth at midday. If I don't, my work suffers.”
I thanked him for asking me, and we crossed the quay in silence and sat down on a bench.
“Do you love the sea?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied. “But it is too lonely.”
“That's what I like about it,” I replied.
“I wonder,” he mused, looking through his spectacles away into the distance and thinking his own thoughts. “It must be nice to be a soldier, or a young undergraduate … to sit in a crowd and listen to the band….”
And then, as was usual with him, after a pause and without apparent connection, he added:
“It is very difficult to describe the sea. Do you know the description that a school-boy gave in an exercise? ‘The sea is vast.’ Only that. Wonderful, I think.”
Some people might think him affected in saying this. But Chekhov—affected!
“I grant,” said one who knew Chekhov well, “that I have met men as sincere as Chekhov. But any one so simple, and so free from pose and affectation I have never known!”
And that is true. He loved all that was sincere, vital, and gay, so long as it was neither coarse nor dull, and could not endure pedants, or book-worms who have got so much into the habit of making phrases that they can talk in no other way. In his writings he scarcely ever spoke of himself or of his views, and this led people to think him a man without principles or sense of duty to his kind. In life, too, he was no egotist, and seldom spoke of his likings and dislikings. But both were very strong and lasting, and simplicity was one of the things he liked best. “The sea is vast.” … To him, with his passion for simplicity and his loathing of the strained and affected, that was “wonderful.” His words about the officer and the music showed another characteristic of his: his reserve. The transition from the sea to the officer was no doubt inspired by his secret craving for youth and health. The sea is lonely…. And Chekhov loved life and joy. During his last years his desire for happiness, even of the simplest kind, would constantly show itself in his conversation. It would be hinted at, not expressed.
In Moscow, in the year 1895, I saw a middle-aged man (Chekhov was then 35) wearing pince-nez, quietly dressed, rather tall, and light and graceful in his movements. He welcomed me, but so quietly that I, then a boy, took his quietness for coldness…. In Yalta, in the year 1899, I found him already much changed; he had grown thin; his face was sadder; his distinction was as great as ever but it was the distinction of an elderly man, who has gone through much, and been ennobled by his suffering. His voice was gentler…. In other respects he was much as he had been in Moscow; cordial, speaking with animation, but even more simply and shortly, and, while he talked, he went on with his own thoughts. He let me grasp the connections between his thoughts as well as I could, while he looked through his glasses at the sea, his face slightly raised. Next morning after meeting him on the quay I went to his house. I well remember the bright sunny morning that I spent with Chekhov in his garden. He was very lively, and laughed and read me the only poem, so he said, that he had ever written, “Horses, Hares and Chinamen, a fable for children.” (Chekhov wrote it for the children of a friend. See Letters.)
Once walked over a bridge
Fat Chinamen,
In front of them, with their tails up,
Hares ran quickly.
Suddenly the Chinamen shouted:
“Stop! Whoa! Ho! Ho!”
The hares raised their tails still higher
And hid in the bushes.
The moral of this fable is clear:
He who wants to eat hares
Every day getting out of bed
Must obey his father.
After that visit I went to him more and more frequently. Chekhov's attitude towards me therefore changed. He became more friendly and cordial…. But he was still reserved, yet, as he was reserved not only with me but with those who were most intimate with him, it rose, I believed, not from coldness, but from something much more important.