2 Valenki are lower-class indoor footwear, the equivalent of Khirin wearing mukluks or fuzzy houseslippers at the office.
3 See The Seagull, note 46.
4 In the original, Gambetta. The French politician Léon Gambetta (1838–1882) was famous as a public speaker.
5 French: my credo.
6 The London murderer and mutilator of prostitutes was frequently discussed in Russian newspapers in 1890.
7 All-male testimonial banquets and school reunions often ended with a trip to a brothel.
8 A woman’s waterproof cape.
9 Prince Gremin’s aria in Pyotr Ilyich Chaikovsky’s 1879 opera Yevgeny Onegin (Act III, scene 1).
10 Prior to 1896, this government office carried out all testing of gold and silver.
11 Opening lines of Ivan A. Krylov’s fable “The Passersby and the Dogs.”
12 “Gypsy Song,” a ballad by Ya. F. Prigozhy to the words of a poem by Nikolay Nekrasov, “A heavy cross fell to her lot . . .” (1856). Also quoted in The Seagull.
THE EVE OF THE TRIAL
In 1886 Chekhov published a story with this title, and he returned to it in the early 1890s to convert it into a play. In the process, he blackened the criminal record of his hero, Zaitsev, bringing him to trial not simply for bigamy and a series of beatings but for bigamy, forging his grandmother’s will, and attempted murder. The scene in which Zaitsev plays mock doctor to “examine” the woman in the room next door was considerably enlarged; so was his sleazy courtship of her. Her character was altered to make her seem an experienced coquette ready to cuckold her husband. However, since the play was left unfinished, Zaitsev’s farewell the next morning and his payment for his “honest labor” were never worked out, nor was the climax, the scene in court when Zaitsev is surprised to find that the Public Prosecutor is in fact the hoodwinked husband.
Why Chekhov gave it up is matter for speculation. Perhaps he realized that the seduction would be hard to get past the censor or that the necessary division into two or three scenes would defeat the comedy’s economy as a curtain raiser. As it stands, The Eve of the Trial is close to French boulevard farce in its sexual obsessions. The tone is more insistently vulgar than in any of Chekhov’s other short plays. Bedbugs, fleas, and smells are ubiquitous, a dramatic legacy from Gogol, no doubt, but emphasized here ad nauseam.
The “gags” are part of a long popular tradition. The mock doctor’s examination could easily coarsen into an American burlesque sketch. The Aesopic names Gusev and Zaitsev (Goose and Hare) belong in a clown show. When Zaitsev contemplates suicide, he conducts a ventriloqual exchange with his gun. Crooning endearments to a suicide weapon is a comic device that goes back to the commedia dell’arte and the folk comedies of Ruzzante. Zaitsev is thus a provincial Russian Harlequin, amoral and appetitive, whose ruminations on self-destruction cast a satiric reflection on the suicides in Chekhov’s serious works.
THE EVE OF THE TRIAL
Hoчь пeрe‰ cy‰oм
(Unfinished)
CHARACTERS1
FYODOR NIKITICH GUSEV, a gentleman of advanced years
ZINOCHKA, his young wife
ALEKSEY ALEKSEICH ZAITSEV, passing through
THE MASTER OF A POSTING STATION
A posting station.2 A gloomy room with smoke-blackened walls, big sofas upholstered in oilcloth. A cast-iron stove with a stovepipe, which traverses the room.
ZAITSEV (with a suitcase), STATION MASTER (with a candle.)
ZAITSEV. That’s quite a stench in this place of yours, Señor! You can’t draw a breath! It stinks of sealing-wax, something sourish, bedbugs . . . Phooey!
STATION MASTER. Smells are only natural.
ZAITSEV. Tomorrow wake me up at six o’clock . . . And see that the troika is ready . . . I have to make it to town by nine.
STATION MASTER. All right . . .
ZAITSEV. What time is it now?
STATION MASTER. One-thirty . . . (Exits.)
ZAITSEV (taking off his fur coat and felt boots). It’s cold! You could go crazy with the cold . . . Right now I’m feeling as if somebody had plastered me over with snow, poured water on top of me, and then did a botch job of carving me out of it . . . What with these snowdrifts, this infernal blizzard, another five minutes out of doors, and I think I’d be a dead duck. I’m dead tired. And all on account of what? It would be nice if I were on my way to a rendezvous to collect a legacy, but I’m actually heading for my own destruction . . . I hate to think about it . . . Tomorrow the circuit court is in session in town, and I’m on my way there to be a defendant. I’m going to be tried for attempted bigamy, forging my grandmother’s will to the tune of over three hundred rubles, and attempted murder of a billiard hustler . . . The jury’ll find against me — there’s no doubt about it. Here today, tomorrow night behind bars, and six months from now in the chilly wastes of Siberia . . . Brrr!
Pause.
Still, I do have a way out of that dire situation. I do! In case the jury does find against me, I’ll turn to my old friend . . . A loyal, trusty friend! (Takes a horse pistol out of his suitcase.) Here he is! How’s the boy? I traded Che-prakov3 a couple of hounds for him. What a beauty! Just shooting yourself with him would be a kind of satisfaction . . . (Tenderly.) You loaded, boy? (In a piping voice, as if answering for the pistol.) I’m loaded . . . (In his own voice.) I bet you’ll go off with a bang, right? A real rip-roaring ear-splitter? (Piping.) A real rip-roaring ear-splitter . . . (In his own voice.) Oh, you silly kid, gun o’ my heart . . . All right, now lie down and go to sleep . . . (Kisses the pistol and places it in the suitcase.) As soon as I hear “Guilty as charged,” then right away—bang to the brain and the sweet bye-and-bye . . . But I’m frozen as hell . . . Brrr! Got to get warm! . . . (Does calisthenics with his arms and skips around the stove.) Brrr!
ZiNOCHKA peeps through the doorway and immediately retires from view.
What was that? I thought someone just looked in at the door . . . Hm . . . Yes, someone did look in . . . In other words, I’ve got neighbors? (Hearkens at the door.) Can’t hear anything . . . Not a sound . . . I suppose they’re just passing through as well . . . I ought to wake them up, if they’re decent people, sit down to a game of whist . . . A grand slam in no trumps! One way of keeping occupied, damn it . . . Even better if it’s a woman. I’ve got to admit I like nothing better than a roadside fling. Sometimes when you’re on the road you luck out with an affair like you wouldn’t find in a Turgenev novel . . . I remember a case just like this once when I was riding around Samara province. I had stopped at a posting station . . . It’s night, you get the picture, the cricket’s chirping in the stove, silent as the grave . . . I’m sitting at the table drinking tea . . . Suddenly I hear this mysterious rustling . . . I open the door and . . .
ZINOCHKA (behind the door). This is an outrage! This is beyond belief! This isn’t a posting station, but a madhouse! (After a glance through the doorway, shouts.) Station master! Station master! Where are you!