" 'I know this.'
"Staring at me with his old eyes he prophesized: 'You will die before your brother.'
" 'Perhaps.'
" 'I'll anoint you with oil, as Samuel anointed David. Write.'
"We parted friends." (Between October 15-20,1883.)
In the second half of 1883 Chekhov decided that popular interest in his writing warranted a collected volume of his tales. He selected twelve stories, gave them the title of At Leisure, coaxed Nikolai into illustrating them, and persuaded a printer to undertake the job. Before the printer had produced half the copy in galleys, his money ran out and Chekhov had no means of his own to support the completion of the book, which had to be abandoned. A second attempt, however, in the middle of the next year, resulted in the publication of his first book: Tales of Melpomene..
At last, on June 25, 1884, Chekhov enthusiastically announced to Leikin: "I've finished my medical studies," and he gleefully signed his letter: "Doctor and District Physician A. Chekhov." He was at Voskre- sensk with his family, luxuriating in the thought that he had taken his last examination and indulging himself in a delirium of laziness. In the mornings, he put on his rubber boots, and with an old local grandad went off to fish for pike or tench. Or he visited with his friend the postmaster, who gave him an idea for a story, collected his newspapers and letters, and rummaged about the heap of mail on the open shelf reading the addresses "with the zeal of a curious idler." And in the evenings he promenaded around the neighborhood in the company of friends, married couples and their children. "It is possible to live like this," he declared. "Only one thing is bad: I'm lazy and earn little."
Chekhov's escape into a life of idleness was very brief. He soon associated himself with the Chikino hospital as a practicing physician. His first earnings seemed miraculous — five roubles from a young lady with a bad tooth which he failed to cure; one rouble from a monk whose case of dysentery he treated successfully; and three roubles from a Moscow actress, summering at Voskresensk, whose upset stomach he cured. "This success in my new career," he jokingly wrote Leikin, "threw me into such rapture that I gathered all those roubles together and at an inn . . . bought vodka and beer for my table, and certain medicines." (August 23, 1884.)
Having expressed a wish to assist at an autopsy in the murder of a worker near Voskresensk, Chekhov received permission to attend. However, the mcdical instinct in him was subordinated to the literary, for he at once wrote to Leikin a full account of the whole proceedings which could almost stand as a brilliantly realistic short story. In fact, he eventually used the substance for his tale A Dead Body, in which with his customary artistic sense he concentrated not on the murder, but on the two peasants who guarded the corpse in the woods throughout the night.
In July, when the head of the little rural hospital at Zvenigorod took a two weeks' vacation, Chekhov agreed to substitute for him. To assume such responsibility with his limited experience seemed foolhardy, but he regarded the opportunity as a challenge. To be sure, he had the help of an experienced feldsher, a medical assistant. However, his first operation, a minor affair on a little boy, stumped him. He was unnerved by the child's screaming and kicking and the mother's sobbing. In distress he summoned Dr. P. G. Rozanov at Chikino, who came at once and performed the operation most efficiently.
After two weeks at Zvenigorod it seemed to Chekhov that he had been there ten years. He began to suspect that Russian novelists had idealized the life of the rural doctor — which he could see was filled with the daily care of festering sores, diarrhea, tapeworm, the dirt and ignorance of peasants, and the dull escape to the cheap village pub with its bad beer. Chekhov was bored at Zvenigorod. He took refuge in contemplating an extensive project, "A Medical History of Russia," designed as a dissertation to be offered for a higher degree in medicine. Whenever he could afford the time in Moscow, he had attended the university lectures of the eminent historian V. O. Klyuchevsky, and they had revealed to him the richness and significance of the Russian past and its importance for any understanding of the present. This experience led him to plan a work on the inception and historical development of medicine in Russia. He had already compiled an extensive bibliography and had begun reading in ancient historical annals and folk literature. Though he soon dropped the project, it remained lodged in the back of his mind for years. If nothing else, however, it represents his tendency to prefer the theory and peripheral aspects of medicine over its practice. It is curious that one of his first undertakings, as a physician, was to conduct, with the aid of two young colleagues, a purely theoretical medical-sociological study in a Moscow brothel.
As a beginning physician, the practice of medicine seemed to Chekhov a surer way of supporting himself and the family than the practice of literature. He was happy to leave the rural hospital of Zvenigorod and return to Moscow, where he hung on his door the sign Doctor A. P. Chekiiov.
Very little money came in. The literary friends or social acquaintances he treated either did not have any money or considered it undignified to offer him payment for his services. After attending the sick children of one of his few well-to-do friends, the parents gratefully offered him a kind of family souvenir, a purse with an ancient Turkish gold coin in it. It was good for ten roubles at the pawnshop whenever Chekhov was hard-pressed.
Indeed, toward the end of October of 1884, after several months of practice, Chekhov felt compelled to write an unhappy letter to his brother Ivan at Voskresensk: "I'd like it if you could get a position in Moscow. Your income and mine would enable us to live like gods. I earn more than any of your lieutenants, yet I have no money, no decent food, nor a corner where I can sit and work. . . . I'll get sixty roubles and it will immediately vanish."
However, a dark cloud shadowed his efforts, the tragic import of which Chekhov, a twenty-four-year-old doctor on the threshold of a great literary career, quite characteristically refused to admit. For on December 10, 1884, after two exhausting weeks of reporting a sensational trial for Petersburg Gazette, he wrote to Leikin: "Over the last three days blood has been coming from my throat. This flow prevents me from writing or going to Petersburg. I must say I hadn't expected this to happen to me. I haven't seen any white sputum for three days, and whether the medicaments with which my colleagues stuff me will do any good, I cannot say. My general situation is satisfactory. No doubt, the cause is some broken blood vessel." His only concern were the patients he was unable to treat. "It is sad to turn them over to another physician — well, there go my profits!"
chapter v
Chekhov and the Humorous Magazines
Chekhov entered literature through the back door, and his progress from the kitchen to the front parlor was not easily achieved. When his first "trifles" appeared in 1880, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, and Tolstoy were still living, and their greatest novels had already been published. During that year the last installments of The Brothers Karamazov came out, yet there is no evidence that the harried young medical student was particularly aware of this significant literary event. Nor were distinguished authors of the day likely to pick up Dragonfly, Alarm Clock, or Fragments and wonder about an Antosha Chekhonte who contributed pithy stories that occasionally had the ring of genuine art. Such cheap publications did not find their way into the libraries of the landed gentry or the studies of highborn city-dwellers. In short, at the outset of his writing career Chekhov was little concerned with the lofty traditions of contemporary Russian literature and lacked any inspiring personal associations with its finest representatives.