“Champagne: A Wayfarer’s Story” (“Shampanskoe: Rasskaz Prokhodimtsa,” January 5), on the other hand, is humorless and despairing enough to make anyone groan. Garnett translates the word for the story’s narrator as “Wayfarer,” but “Bum” or “Transient” would be more in keeping with the narrator’s self-judgment:
Upon me, a native of the north, the steppe produced the effect of a deserted Tatar cemetery. In the summer the steppe with its solemn calm, the monotonous chur of the grasshoppers, the transparent moonlight from which one could not hide, reduced me to listless melancholy; and in the winter the irreproachable whiteness of the steppe, its cold distance, long nights, and howling wolves oppressed me like a heavy nightmare. There were several people living at the station: my wife and I, a deaf and scrofulous telegraph clerk, and three watchmen. My assistant, a young man who was in consumption, used to go for treatment to the town, where he stayed for months at a time, leaving his duties to me together with the right of pocketing his salary. I had no children, no cake would have tempted visitors to come and see me, and I could only visit other officials on the line, and that no oftener than once a month.9
During his and his wife’s quiet New Year’s celebration, she sees a spilled bottle as a bad omen. He wondered at the time, how could things get worse? “What further harm can you do a fish which has been caught and fried and served up with sauce?” The narrator remembers having the blues and reflects with a clarity and depth that it is unlikely he could muster, but that Chekhov certainly could and did express: “Melancholy thoughts haunted me still. Painful as it was to me, yet I remember I tried as it were to make my thoughts still gloomier and more melancholy. You know people who are vain and not very clever have moments when the consciousness that they are miserable affords them positive satisfaction, and they even coquet with their misery for their own entertainment. There was a great deal of truth in what I thought, but there was also a great deal that was absurd and conceited, and there was something boyishly defiant in my question: ‘What could happen worse?’ ” And he recounts how a seductive woman, his wife’s uncle’s young wife, arrived that New Year’s night. Chekhov knew this was a relentlessly despairing story. He moderated it not a wit: “Everything went head over heels to the devil. I remember a fearful, frantic whirlwind which sent me flying around like a feather. It lasted a long while, and swept from the face of the earth my wife and my aunt herself and my strength. From the little station in the steppe it has flung me, as you see, into this dark street.”
*
From January 4 to January 11, Chekhov occupied at least part of his time attending a medical conference in Moscow. He went to a talk given by Pavel Rozanov, at whose wedding he had been the best man the previous January. On January 8, Chekhov wrote Alexander to thank him for his New Year’s letter and to coax him, as soon as possible, to go to the offices of New Times and Petersburg Gazette and forward him the payments that he was due from them. He offered his brother a commission of 1/40th, a grand total of about five rubles.
The writer Lazarev met with Chekhov again on January 11; about this meeting Lazarev immediately wrote his friend Ezhov. The two friends’ visits with Chekhov were treasured by each and shared with each other at the time, so even today their accounts have a freshness and undusty believability: “Chekhov is a lovely guy. We talked and chatted a lot. He told me plenty of interesting things. Chekhov had a harsh school of life, was in a chorus, worked in a shop, froze in the cold and so on and so on. […] Chekhov terribly cursed Leykin, but says that one should feel sorry for him […] Chekhov is a most absolutely simple guy […] Chekhov says for anyone who wants to have an independent existence it’s necessary to work, work, and work.”10
The next day’s annual drunken Tatyana Day bash served as Chekhov’s excuse to Leykin about why he wouldn’t immediately be coming up with a new piece for Fragments. He would in fact give Leykin only fourteen pieces all year:11
My head has detached from my hand and refuses to create… The entire holidays, my brain has strained; I puffed and sniffed, a hundred times I sat down to write, but every time, from my “lively” pen, long things or sour ones, or nauseated ones poured out, which doesn’t go over for Fragments, and they were so bad, I decided not to send them to you so as not to embarrass my family name.12
He knew Leykin would scoff at his excuses, so he piled it on:
I didn’t send New Times a single story, to the Gazette some sort of 2 stories, and how on such dough I will live in February, God knows… You are generally a skeptic, and you don’t believe in human incapability, but I assure you by honest word, yesterday from morning to night, the whole day I toiled over a story for Fragments, lost the time, and lay down to sleep, not having written a page… Laziness or a lack of desire is out of the discussion… If you will be resentful and scold, you’ll be wrong. I’m guilty, but I deserve indulgence!
[…] The holidays in Moscow were loud. I didn’t have a single peaceful day: guests, doctors’ conference, long conversations, etc….
He recommended, by the way, that Leykin use work by Lazarev: “He’s quiet, like Bilibin, but through his quietness it’s sometimes possible to detect the man.” Chekhov knew already that Leykin didn’t appreciate his recommendations of writers to replace him, but he regularly tried anyway.
Now about a ticklish matter. […] Considering that I am beginning to lose my value as a constant, correct, and dependable employee for Fragments, in view of that, that even in the full swing of literary energy, I’m caused to miss up to 1–2 pieces in each month almost, it would be right to eliminate the extra ones. Right? Agree with me and make the fitting arrangement. I will work as before, trying not to miss a single week, but I can’t swear that cases of craziness won’t again be repeated.
He offered to go off the retainer and receive the freelancers’ usual per-line pay.
He was looking forward, he went on, to Leykin and his wife’s arrival on the 17th for Chekhov’s name day party at 1:00 in the afternoon. In the P.S. Chekhov suggested they work out a simpler line of communication regarding his submissions. Chekhov liked efficiency in telegraph messages; no use paying extra for needless words. He could write Leykin a telegram whenever he didn’t have that week’s submission with the simple unmistakable message: “No. Chekhov.”
Leykin, nettled, replied on the 14th that he and his wife would indeed arrive in Moscow on the 16th, and that he and Chekhov could continue the conversation on the 17th, but… “You write that you didn’t write over the holidays. But apparently you did write over the holidays for The Alarm Clock. […] I’ve already received 3–4 letters asking why Chekhonte’s not writing.” Leykin didn’t hesitate to call him out. How the devil did Leykin know about a pseudonymous piece in the Moscow humor magazine? As for the complaint letters Leykin received, Chekhov didn’t believe that.