Alexander often made excuses about his personal behavior, but he seems to have always respected and trusted Anton’s criticisms of his writing. Even three years before, Anton had lectured him by letter regarding the distinction between subjective and objective writing. (“You must deny yourself the personal impression that honeymoon happiness produces on all embittered persons. Subjectivity is an awful thing—even for the reason that it betrays the poor writer hand over fist.”)21 Anton went on in this vein in the present: “It may be hard to resist the pressure to prune, but you have an easy remedy to hand: do it yourself, pare it down to its limits, do your own rewriting. The more you prune, the more often your work will get into print… But the most important thing is: keep at it unstintingly, don’t drop your guard for an instant, rewrite five times, prune constantly.”
The message Chekhov offered and would continue to offer to brothers and unknown writers alike was: “Keep at it unstintingly.” Make writing look effortless, make writing quick and effective. Keep at it and reread one’s own work with the same intensity one gives the best literature. Chekhov could have been a prima donna if he had wanted to, but he was determinedly modest and self-critical. He was so modest that he was amazed, he told Alexander, by his apparent renown: “I have never seen anything like the reception I got from the Petersburgers. Suvorin, Grigorovich, Burenin… they all showered me with invitations and sang my praises… and I began to have a bad conscience that I had been such a careless and slovenly writer. Believe me, if I had known I was going to be read in that way, I would never just have turned out things to order… Remember: People are reading you.” Chekhov gave lessons only about what he himself had learned from experience.
Alexander had been excusing his hasty, careless pieces partly because of his job as a customs official, where he felt he had to hide his association to humor magazines. Anton wouldn’t grant him that excuse, providing examples of other writers working for government agencies: “There are plenty of people in the Officer Corps, which has the strictest of regulations, who don’t conceal the fact that they write. There may sometimes be a need for discretion, but you shouldn’t be hiding away yourself […]. Excuse the moralizing, I’m only writing to you like this because it upsets me and makes me angry… You’re a good writer, you could earn twice as much as you do and yet you’re living off wild honey and locusts… all because of the crossed wires you have in your noodle…”
The twenty-five-year-old moved to wrap up his letter to the twenty-nine-year-old by acknowledging that his situation was different from Alexander’s: “I’m still not married, and I have no children. Life is not easy. There’ll probably be some money in the summer. Oh, if only!” The pressure to make money was relentless. The biographer David Magarshack believes these “two years were the worst years of financial worry Chekhov had ever experienced.”22
Chekhov reemphasized his letter’s main point: “Please write!” The family wanted to hear from Alexander. “I think of you often, and rejoice when I remember you are alive…” But not to get too sappy, he added: “So don’t be a fathead, and don’t forget your A. Chekhov.” In a postscript he tossed in the latest family “news”: “Nikolay is sitting on his backside. Ivan, as before, is being a real Ivan. Our sister is whirling around in a daze: admirers, symphony concerts, a big apartment…”
This most independent man coveted and created family unity.
*
The next day, January 5, Chekhov sent Leykin four new short pieces, one of which, “The Fiasco” (“Neudacha,” January 11), I will quote in its entirety as a good example of the kinds of humor stories he was writing for Fragments.23 He had probably written it in one sitting that day, a Sunday, his medical day off.
Ilya Sergeich Peplov and his wife Cleopatra Petrovna were standing by the door and ravenously listening in. Behind the door, in the little parlor, was proceeding, evidently, a declaration of love; their daughter Natashenka and the teacher of the district school were declaring themselves.
“He’s nibbling!” whispered Peplov, trembling with impatience and rubbing his hands. “Look now, Petrovna, as soon as they’re talking about feelings, right then snatch the ikon off the wall and we’ll go bless them…. We’ve got it under control…. A blessing with a holy ikon is inviolable…. He wouldn’t get away then, even if he brings a lawsuit.”
And behind the door proceeded this very conversation:
“Leave that manner aside,” said Shchupkin, lighting a match on his checked pants. “I most definitely didn’t write you letters!”
“Oh, sure! As if I don’t know your handwriting!” guffawed the girl, artificially squealing and at the same time taking glances at herself in the mirror. “I knew it right away! And what a strange one you are! A writing teacher, but your handwriting’s like a chicken’s! How can you teach writing if you yourself write so poorly?”
“Hm!… That doesn’t mean anything, miss. In calligraphy the main thing isn’t the handwriting, the main thing is that the students don’t forget. You hit one on the head with a ruler, another one on the knees…. That’s what handwriting is! A simple matter! Nekrasov was a writer, but it’s embarrassing to see how he wrote. In his Collected Works, his handwriting is shown.”
“That’s Nekrasov, but you… (sighs). It would be a pleasure to marry a writer. He’d constantly be writing verses to remember me by!”
“I could write you verses, if you wanted me to.”
“What could you write about?”
“About love… about feelings… about your eyes… You’d read them—you’d go crazy…. Tears would pour out! If I were to write you poetical verses, then would you give me your hand to kiss?”
“Big deal!… You could kiss it right now!”
Shchupkin hopped up and, widening his eyes, fell upon her plump hand, fragrant with egg-soap.
“Snatch the ikon!” said Peplov all aflutter, pale with agitation, buttoning up, and nudging his wife with his elbow.
“Let’s go! Go!”
And not hesitating a second, Peplov burst through the door.
“Children…” he muttered, raising his arms and tearfully blinking his eyes. “The Lord blesses you, my children…. Live… be fruitful… multiply…”
“And… and I bless you…” added Mommy, weeping with happiness. “Be happy, dear ones! O, you’re depriving me of my only treasure!” she said turning to Shchupkin. “Love my daughter, be kind to her…”
Shchupkin’s mouth gaped in confusion and fright. The parents’ assault had been so sudden and bold that he could not utter a single word.
“Caught, surrounded!” thought he, faint with fear. “Done for, brother! You’re not escaping this.”
And he humbly bowed his head, as if desiring to say: “Take me, I’m beaten!”
“Ble—I bless…” continued Papa and he also began crying. “Natashenka, my daughter… stand alongside… Petrovna, give me the ikon…”
But here the father suddenly stopped crying and his face winced in anger.
“Dummy!” he angrily said to his wife. “You stupid-head! But where’s the ikon?”
“Oh, Holy Fathers!”
What happened? The handwriting teacher timidly raised his eyes and saw that he was saved: In confusion Mama had snatched from the wall not the ikon but the portrait of the writer Lazhechnikov. Old Peplov and his wife Cleopatra Petrovna, with the portrait in their hands, stood in bewilderment, not knowing what to do or what to say. The handwriting teacher took advantage of the confusion and ran out.
Chekhov originally titled this skit “Busted!” (“Sorvalos’!”). Eventually, thirteen years later, in his Collected Works, he retitled it as “Neudacha” (“The Fiasco”), revising the ending so that he has the teacher skipping out of the room instead of the parents exclaiming “All is lost!” (which resembles a Gogolian curtain line).24