The doctor drew himself up. His eyes blinked and filled with tears, his narrow beard began moving to right and to left together with his jaw.
“Allow me to ask what’s the meaning of this?” he asked, looking around him with curiosity. “My child is dead, my wife is in grief alone in the whole house…. I myself can scarcely stand up, I have not slept for three nights…. And here I am forced to play a part in some vulgar farce, to play the part of a stage property! I don’t… don’t understand it!”
But Abogin is not listening to him:
Abogin unclenched one fist, flung a crumpled note on the floor, and stamped on it as though it were an insect he wanted to crush.
“And I didn’t see, didn’t understand,” he said through his clenched teeth, brandishing one fist before his face with an expression as though someone had trodden on his corns. “I did not notice that he came every day! I did not notice that he came today in a closed carriage! What did he come in a closed carriage for? And I did not see it! Noodle!”
“I don’t understand…” muttered the doctor. “Why, what’s the meaning of it? Why, it’s an outrage on personal dignity, a mockery of human suffering! It’s incredible…. It’s the first time in my life I have had such an experience!”
With the dull surprise of a man who has only just realized that he has been bitterly insulted the doctor shrugged his shoulders, flung wide his arms, and not knowing what to do or to say sank helplessly into a chair.
Abogin, privileged, self-consumed, human, grieves for himself and doesn’t hear or perceive the man to whom he is pouring out his heart.
“If you have ceased to love me and love another—so be it; but why this deceit, why this vulgar, treacherous trick?” Abogin said in a tearful voice. “What is the object of it? And what is there to justify it? And what have I done to you? Listen, doctor,” he said hotly, going up to Kirilov. “You have been the involuntary witness of my misfortune and I am not going to conceal the truth from you. I swear that I loved the woman, loved her devotedly, like a slave! I have sacrificed everything for her; I have quarrelled with my own people, I have given up the service and music, I have forgiven her what I could not have forgiven my own mother or sister… I have never looked askance at her…. I have never gainsaid her in anything. Why this deception? I do not demand love, but why this loathsome duplicity? If she did not love me, why did she not say so openly, honestly, especially as she knows my views on the subject?…”
With tears in his eyes, trembling all over, Abogin opened his heart to the doctor with perfect sincerity. He spoke warmly, pressing both hands on his heart, exposing the secrets of his private life without the faintest hesitation, and even seemed to be glad that at last these secrets were no longer pent up in his breast.
Amazing! Abogin, in his grief, loses sight of Kirilov’s. Chekhov does something no other writer in the world would do: he admires Abogin’s “perfect sincerity.” Abogin has opened himself up: This is a quality. We understand why. But Chekhov also has us standing (now sitting) there in Kirilov’s shoes. Abogin’s confession is out of place. It is a burden on someone carrying his own burden. Chekhov reflects:
If he had talked in this way for an hour or two, and opened his heart, he would undoubtedly have felt better. Who knows, if the doctor had listened to him and had sympathized with him like a friend, he might perhaps, as often happens, have reconciled himself to his trouble without protest, without doing anything needless and absurd…. But what happened was quite different.
And as all professionals know, yes, if we do our duty, if we do not involve our own troubles with those sharing theirs with us, all will go more smoothly. We can dislike them later at our leisure, but not now, not now. Now we must suffer them and say and do the right things. If Kirilov could have viewed Abogin as a patient… But that’s unreasonable to ask of him, given his grief. And Abogin, taking for granted his rights as a patient, doesn’t understand why Kirilov can’t keep performing his role as doctor. He only sees him as a doctor.
While Abogin was speaking the outraged doctor perceptibly changed. The indifference and wonder on his face gradually gave way to an expression of bitter resentment, indignation, and anger. The features of his face became even harsher, coarser, and more unpleasant. When Abogin held out before his eyes the photograph of a young woman with a handsome face as cold and expressionless as a nun’s and asked him whether, looking at that face, one could conceive that it was capable of duplicity, the doctor suddenly flew out, and with flashing eyes said, rudely rapping out each word:
“What are you telling me all this for? I have no desire to hear it! I have no desire to!” he shouted and brought his fist down on the table. “I don’t want your vulgar secrets! Damnation take them! Don’t dare to tell me of such vulgar doings! Do you consider that I have not been insulted enough already? That I am a flunky whom you can insult without restraint? Is that it?”
Abogin staggered back from Kirilov and stared at him in amazement.
“Why did you bring me here?” the doctor went on, his beard quivering. “If you are so puffed up with good living that you go and get married and then act a farce like this, how do I come in? What have I to do with your love affairs? Leave me in peace! Go on squeezing money out of the poor in your gentlemanly way. Make a display of humane ideas, play (the doctor looked sideways at the violoncello case) play the bassoon and the trombone, grow as fat as capons, but don’t dare to insult personal dignity! If you cannot respect it, you might at least spare it your attention!”
Abogin is us, in our amazement at someone else’s blow-up—especially when the blow-up is directed at us:
“Excuse me, what does all this mean?” Abogin asked, flushing red.
“It means that it’s base and low to play with people like this! I am a doctor; you look upon doctors and people generally who work and don’t stink of perfume and prostitution as your menials and mauvais ton; well, you may look upon them so, but no one has given you the right to treat a man who is suffering as a stage property!”
“How dare you say that to me!” Abogin said quietly, and his face began working again, and this time unmistakably from anger.
“No, how dared you, knowing of my sorrow, bring me here to listen to these vulgarities!” shouted the doctor, and he again banged on the table with his fist. “Who has given you the right to make a mockery of another man’s sorrow?”
Chekhov won’t let me be settled in my complete sympathy with Kirilov, even though we understand his anger at and contempt for Abogin. Chekhov himself insisted on preserving his dignity as a man, as a doctor. He resented or mocked superiority in manner or treatment. But he also didn’t let himself blow up.
Is this why I find the story so compelling, so powerful? That it doesn’t let me sit in my justification of anger and hatred, as Kirilov does? Kirilov will hate this fool Abogin forever, perhaps, but there will be a feeling of shame, too, in his recollection. Chekhov won’t let me have complacency in my hatred. It will wear at me until, perhaps, it arrives at Chekhov’s level of understanding. All the same, understanding doesn’t mean sympathy. Abogin’s a plump, self-satisfied dope. His heart is broken, but he sees his undisguised grief as its own excuse. Why shouldn’t he wail and carry on? As Chekhov says, he would have eventually, probably, come around, and would have eventually, probably, weighed Kirilov’s grief and circumstances with his own. And he would have thought: “My God! Compared to him, I am very lucky. I can start over. I can find someone my family will love and respect. I will be free. I will have children.”
But Abogin won’t have time to do that, now that Kirilov has blown up at him.
“You have taken leave of your senses,” shouted Abogin. “It is ungenerous. I am intensely unhappy myself and… and…”