As “Difficult People” opens, the father is not in a good mood. Yevgraf Ivanovich Shiryaev has a “small farm” of 300 acres, which sounds like a lot, but all farmers are vulnerable to Nature’s caprices:
“What weather!” he said. “It’s not weather, but a curse laid upon us. It’s raining again!”3
No one answers him, and he does not seem to expect anyone to do so.
He grumbled on, while his family sat waiting at table for him to have finished washing his hands before beginning dinner. Fedosya Semyonovna, his wife, his son Pyotr, a student, his eldest daughter Varvara, and three small boys, had been sitting waiting a long time. The boys—Kolka, Vanka, and Arhipka—grubby, snub-nosed little fellows with chubby faces and tousled hair that wanted cutting, moved their chairs impatiently, while their elders sat without stirring, and apparently did not care whether they ate their dinner or waited….
Nothing begins until Father is ready. He enjoys his power, the way a priest, professor, or tsar might enjoy his power to keep his subjects waiting:
As though trying their patience, Shiryaev deliberately dried his hands, deliberately said his prayer, and sat down to the table without hurrying himself. Cabbage-soup was served immediately. The sound of carpenters’ axes (Shiryaev was having a new barn built) and the laughter of Fomka, their laborer, teasing the turkey, floated in from the courtyard.
They’re not poor. Shiryaev complains about the weather, but he has the confidence of someone who sees that he has made a success of his life. (We cannot see Pavel Chekhov sharing such a feeling, though Pavel’s greatest success was being the father of Anton, who was writing this story; Anton could have been his pride and joy, though we don’t know that Pavel ever did puff with pride over him. Rather, several years later Pavel puffed with pride over who he himself was: “I am the father of famous children. I must in no way be embarrassed or humble myself before anyone.”)4
Chekhov introduces us to the protagonist, Pyotr. He is “round-shouldered” and wears glasses. Perhaps the round shoulders suggest he is not a farmer or likely to become one. (Chekhov’s closest brother Nikolay wore glasses and was slight of build compared to Anton.)
Pyotr and his mother have resolved on taking action about something: he “kept exchanging glances with his mother as he ate his dinner.” Pyotr loses heart, re-resolves, and at the end of dinner “cleared his throat resolutely” and said:
“I ought to go tonight by the evening train. I ought to have gone before; I have missed a fortnight as it is. The lectures begin on the first of September.”
As a student he has stayed at home longer than he meant to or expected to. What’s the big deal? Why has he had to work up his courage to make this announcement?
“Well, go,” Shiryaev assented; “why are you lingering on here? Pack up and go, and good luck to you.”
A minute passed in silence.
We know now that Shiryaev is not thinking sentimentally about this. He has already cut himself off from his son. His son has his life, he has his. He either pretends not to understand what the announcement means and what his son needs, or it doesn’t occur to him.
“He must have money for the journey, Yevgraf Ivanovich,” the mother observed in a low voice.
“Money? To be sure, you can’t go without money. Take it at once, since you need it. You could have had it long ago!”
So they’re at fault already, Shiryaev asserts, for not having asked for it. Why hadn’t they just asked? Why are they making a big deal of it?
But we know something is up. We feel the tension. Nothing is easy with Shiryaev. Son and mother have prepped for this conversation. Shiryaev has not prepared. He can act on a whim, like a king on his throne. He is ready to listen and grant, or not grant, requests.
The student heaved a faint sigh and looked with relief at his mother. Deliberately Shiryaev took a pocket-book out of his coat-pocket and put on his spectacles.
“How much do you want?” he asked.
“The fare to Moscow is eleven rubles forty-two kopecks….”
“Ah, money, money!” sighed the father. (He always sighed when he saw money, even when he was receiving it.) “Here are twelve rubles for you. You will have change out of that which will be of use to you on the journey.”
“Thank you.”
After waiting a little, the student said:
“I did not get lessons quite at first last year. I don’t know how it will be this year; most likely it will take me a little time to find work. I ought to ask you for fifteen rubles for my lodging and dinner.”
Shiryaev thought a little and heaved a sigh.
Shiryaev is thinking or simply going into his natural mode as a farmer and businessman. He does not appreciate how difficult his son finds it to talk to him about this.
“You will have to make ten do,” he said. “Here, take it.”
The student thanked him. He ought to have asked him for something more, for clothes, for lecture fees, for books, but after an intent look at his father he decided not to pester him further.
How little we still know of Chekhov’s mother. But maybe we know something of Evgenia Chekhova from the narrator’s statement: “The mother, lacking in diplomacy and prudence, like all mothers, could not restrain herself […]” Chekhov was not interested in the “courage” of soldiers; here he shows us instead the reckless courage of mothers. She says:
“You ought to give him another six rubles, Yevgraf Ivanovich, for a pair of boots. Why, just see, how can he go to Moscow in such wrecks?”
“Let him take my old ones; they are still quite good.”
“He must have trousers, anyway; he is a disgrace to look at.”
It’s wonderful to Shiryaev that he immediately has a solution to the boot problem. But encountering his wife’s persistence, he realizes that they have conspired and are going to push for more than he has been willing to grant.
And immediately after that a storm-signal showed itself, at the sight of which all the family trembled.
In Russian, the “storm-signal” reads as “storm-petrel,” a storm bird—identified by sailors immediately preceding a storm.
This means that the family is used to this. Maybe all families recognize such indications. Shiryaev’s family has learned to cover their heads—everyone except, somehow, Shiryaev’s wife!
Shiryaev’s short, fat neck turned suddenly red as a beetroot. The color mounted slowly to his ears, from his ears to his temples, and by degrees suffused his whole face. Yevgraf Ivanovich shifted in his chair and unbuttoned his shirt-collar to save himself from choking. He was evidently struggling with the feeling that was mastering him. A deathlike silence followed. The children held their breath.
Fedosya Semyonovna, as though she did not grasp what was happening to her husband, went on:
“He is not a little boy now, you know; he is ashamed to go about without clothes.”
He knows he is getting the full truth from his wife, the whole story, that his son, this round-shouldered, bespectacled boy bound for a student’s life in Moscow, feels shortchanged by his carefully generous father!
Shiryaev suddenly jumped up, and with all his might flung down his fat pocket-book in the middle of the table, so that a hunk of bread flew off a plate. A revolting expression of anger, resentment, avarice—all mixed together—flamed on his face.
“Take everything!” he shouted in an unnatural voice; “plunder me! Take it all! Strangle me!”
Here is where Chekhov has most definitely become personal, though the adjective “revolting” is the only judgment he (or his narrator) has so far made. We see into the core of the father’s feelings.