Chekhov has been an elusive author: for over a century people have been trying define what is “Chekhovian.” Nabokov’s unkind (or perhaps humorous) definition of the word is “dragging, hopelessly complicated.” Other definitions have been “bleakly Russian,” and “evocative of a mood of introspection and frustration.” The aim of this collection is to widen the horizons of what “Chekhovian” means.
I am grateful to the National Endowment of the Arts, the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, and the Ellen Maria Gorrissen Berlin Prize of the American Academy of Berlin for their generous support of this project. I am also thankful to Burton Pike for his scholarly advice and encouragement.
Little Apples
and other early stories
BECAUSE OF LITTLE APPLES
Between the Black Sea and the White Sea, at a certain longitude and latitude, the landowner Trifon Semyonovich has resided since time out of mind. His family name is as long as the word “Overnumerousnesses,” and derives from a sonorous Latin word referring to one of the countless human virtues. He owns eight thousand acres of black earth. His estate—because it is an estate, and he is a landowner—is mortgaged to the hilt and has been foreclosed and put up for sale. The sale was initiated in the days before the first signs of Trifon Semyonovich’s bald spot, and has been drawn out all these years. As a result of the bank’s credulity and Trifon Semyonovich’s resourcefulness, things have been moving very slowly indeed. The bank will one day fail because Trifon Semyonovich and others like him, whose names are legion, have taken the bank’s rubles but refuse to pay the interest. In the rare cases that Trifon Semyonovich does make an interest payment, he does so with the piety of an upright man donating a kopeck for the souls of the dead or the building of a church. Were this world not this world, and were we to call things by their real names, Trifon Semyonovich would not be called Trifon Semyonovich but something else; he would be called what a horse or a cow might be called. To put it bluntly, Trifon Semyonovich is a swine. I invite him to challenge this. If my invitation reaches him (he sometimes reads this magazine), I doubt that he will be angry, as he is a man of intelligence. In fact, I’m sure he will agree with me completely, and in the autumn might even send me a dozen Antonov apples from his orchards as a thank-you for only having revealed his Christian name and patronymic, and hence not utterly ruining his lengthy family name. I shall not catalogue Trifon Semyonovich’s many virtues: the list is too long. For me to present him—arms, legs, and all—I would have to spend as much time at my desk as Eugène Sue did with his ten-volume Wandering Jew. I will not touch upon the tricks Trifon Semyonovich resorts to when playing cards, nor upon his wheeling and dealing, by dint of which he has avoided paying any debts or interest, nor will I list the pranks he plays on the priest and the sexton, nor how he rides through the village in a getup from the era of Cain and Abel. I shall limit myself to describing a single scene that characterizes his attitude toward mankind, an attitude beautifully summed up in the tongue twister he composed, prompted by his seventy-five-year experience of the human race: “Foolish fools fooled foolishly by foolish fools.”
One wonderful morning, wonderful in every sense (for the incident occurred in late summer), Trifon Semyonovich was strolling down the long paths and the short paths of his sumptuous orchard. Everything that might inspire a lofty poet lay scattered about in great abundance, and seemed to be saying and singing: “Partake, O man, partake in the bounty! Rejoice while the sweet days of summer last!” But Trifon Semyonovich did not rejoice, for he is not a poet, and that morning his soul, as Pushkin said, “did yearn so keenly for quenching sleep” (which it always did whenever that soul’s owner had had a particularly bad evening at cards). Behind Trifon Semyonovich marched his lackey Karpushka, a little man of about sixty, his eyes darting from side to side. Old Karpushka’s virtues almost surpass those of Trifon Semyonovich. He is a master at shining boots, even more of a master at hanging stray dogs, spying into other people’s business, and stealing anything that isn’t nailed down. The village clerk had dubbed him “the Oprichnik,”7 which is what the whole village now calls him. Hardly a day passes without the neighbors or the local peasantry complaining to Trifon Semyonovich about Karpushka, but the complaints fall on deaf ears since Karpushka is irreplaceable in his master’s household. When Trifon Semyonovich goes for a stroll he always takes faithful Karpushka with him: it is safer that way and much more fun. Karpushka is a fountain of tall tales, jingles, and yarns, and an expert at not being able to hold his tongue. He is always relating this or that, and only falls silent when something interesting catches his ear. On this particular morning he was walking behind his master, telling him a long tale about how two schoolboys wearing white caps had ridden past the orchard with hunting rifles, and begged him to let them in so they could take a few shots at some birds. They had tried to sway him with a fifty-kopeck coin, but he, knowing full well where his allegiance lay, had indignantly refused the coin and even set Kashtan and Serka loose on the boys. Having ended this story, Karpushka began portraying in vivid colors the shameful behavior of the village medical orderly, but before he could add the finishing touches to this portrayal his ears suddenly caught a suspicious rustle coming from behind some apple and pear trees. Karpushka held his tongue, pricked up his ears, and listened. Certain that this rustle was indeed suspicious, he tugged at his master’s jacket, and then shot off toward the trees like an arrow. Trifon Semyonovich, sensing a brouhaha, shuddered with excitement, shuffled his elderly legs, and ran after Karpushka. It was worth the effort.
At the edge of the orchard, beneath an old, gnarled apple tree, stood a young peasant girl, chewing something. A broad-shouldered young man was crawling on his hands and knees nearby, gathering up apples the wind had knocked off the branches. The unripe ones he threw into the bushes, but the ripe apples he lovingly held out to his Dulcinea in his large, dirty hands. It was clear that Dulcinea had no fear for her stomach; she was devouring one apple after another with gusto, while the young man crawled and gathered more and only had eyes for his Dulcinea.
“Get me one from off the tree,” the girl urged him in a whisper.
“It’s too dangerous.”
“Too dangerous? Don’t worry about the Oprichnik, he’ll be down at the tavern.”
The boy got up, jumped in the air, tore an apple off the tree, and handed it to the girl. But the boy and the girl, like Adam and Eve in days of old, did not fare well with this apple. No sooner had she bitten off a little piece and handed it to the boy, and they felt its cruel tartness on their tongues, than their faces blanched, puckered up, and then fell. Not because the apple was sour, but because they saw before them the grim countenance of Trifon Semyonovich, and beside it the gloating face of Karpushka.