Reminiscences of Anton Chekhov Part 4

Perhaps they think that I read psalm-services for the dead? You, old fellow, ought to ask a cabman what my occupation is...."

V

At one o'clock Chekhov dined downstairs, in a cool bright dining-room, and there was nearly always a guest at dinner. It was difficult not to yield to the fascination of that simple, kind, cordial family. One felt constant solicitude and love, not expressed with a single high-sounding word,--an amazing amount of refinement and attention, which never, as if on purpose, got beyond the limits of ordinary, everyday relations. One always noticed a truly Chekhovian fear of everything high-flown, insincere, or showy. In that family one felt very much at one's ease, light and warm, and I perfectly understand a certain author who said that he was in love with all the Chekhovs at the same time.

Anton Pavlovitch ate exceedingly little and did not like to sit at table, but usually pa.s.sed from the window to the door and back. Often after dinner, staying behind with some one in the dining-room, Yevguenia Yakovlevna (A. P.'s mother) said quietly with anxiety in her voice:

"Again Antosha ate nothing at dinner."

He was very hospitable and loved it when people stayed to dinner, and he knew how to treat guests in his own peculiar way, simply and heartily.

He would say, standing behind one's chair:

--"Listen, have some vodka. When I was young and healthy I loved it. I would pick mushrooms for a whole morning, get tired out, hardly able to reach home, and before lunch I would have two or three thimblefuls.

Wonderful!..."

After dinner he had tea upstairs, on the open verandah, or in his study, or he would come down into the garden and sit there on the bench, in his overcoat, with a cane, pus.h.i.+ng his soft black hat down to his very eyes and looking out under its brim with screwed up eyes.

These hours were the most crowded. There were constant rings on the telephone, asking if Anton Chekhov could be seen; and perpetual visitors. Strangers also came, sending in their cards and asking for help, for autographs or books. Then queer things happened.

One "Tambov squire," as Chekhov christened him, came to him for medical advice. In vain did Anton Pavlovitch answer him, that he had given up medical practice long ago and that he was behind the times in medicine.

In vain did he recommend a more experienced physician,--the "Tambov squire" persisted: no doctor would he trust but Chekhov. w.i.l.l.y-nilly he had to give a few trifling, perfectly innocent pieces of advice. On taking leave the "Tambov squire" put on the table two gold coins and, in spite of all Chekhov's persuasion, he would not agree to take them back.

Anton Pavlovitch had to give way. He said that as he neither wished nor considered himself ent.i.tled to take money as a fee, he would give it to the Yalta Charitable Society, and at once wrote a receipt. It turned out that it was that the "Tambov squire" wanted. With a radiant face, he carefully put the receipt in his pocket-book, and then confessed that the sole purpose of his visit was to obtain Chekhov's autograph. Chekhov himself told me the story of this original and persistent patient--half-laughing, half-cross.

I repeat, many of these visitors plagued him fearfully and even irritated him, but, owing to the amazing delicacy peculiar to him, he was with all patient, attentive and accessible to those who wished to see him. His delicacy at times reached a limit that bordered on weakness. Thus, for instance, one nice, well-meaning lady, a great admirer of Chekhov, gave him for a birthday present a huge pug-dog in a sitting position, made of colored plaster of Paris, over a yard high, i. e., about five times larger than its natural size. That pug-dog was placed downstairs, on the landing near the dining room, and there he sat with an angry face chewing his teeth and frightening those who had forgotten him.

--"O, I'm afraid of that stone dog myself," Chekhov confessed, "but it is awkward to move him; it might hurt her. Let him stay on here."

And suddenly, with eyes full of laughter, he added unexpectedly, in his usual manner:

"Have you noticed in the houses of rich Jews, such plaster dogs often sit by the fireplace?"

At times, for days on end, he would be annoyed with every sort of admirer and detractor and even adviser. "O, I have such a ma.s.s of visitors,"--he complained in a letter,--"that my head swims. I cannot work." But still he did not remain indifferent to a sincere feeling of love and respect and always distinguished it from idle and fulsome t.i.ttle-tattle. Once he returned in a very gay mood from the quay where he sometimes took a walk, and with great animation told us:

--"I just had a wonderful meeting. An artillery officer suddenly came up to me on the quay, quite a young man, a sub-lieutenant.--'Are you A. P.

Chekhov?'--'Yes. Do you want anything?'--'Excuse me please for my importunity, but for so long I have wanted to shake your hand!' And he blushed--he was a wonderful fellow with a fine face. We shook hands and parted."

Chekhov was at his best towards evening, about seven o'clock, when people gathered in the dining room for tea and a light supper.

Sometimes--but more and more rarely as the years went on--there revived in him the old Chekhov, inexhaustibly gay, witty, with a bubbling, charming, youthful humor. Then he improvised stories in which the characters were his friends, and he was particularly fond of arranging imaginary weddings, which sometimes ended with the young husband the following morning, sitting at the table and having his tea, saying as it were by the way in an unconcerned and businesslike tone:

--"Do you know, my dear, after tea we'll get ready and go to a solicitor's. Why should you have unnecessary bother about your money?"

He invented wonderful Chekhovian names, of which I now--alas!--remember only a certain mythical sailor Koshkodovenko-cat-slayer. He also liked as a joke to make young writers appear old. "What are you saying--Bunin is my age"--he would a.s.sure one with mock seriousness. "So is Teleshov: he is an old writer. Well, ask him yourself: he will tell you what a spree we had at T. A. Bieloussov's wedding. What a long time ago!" To a talented novelist, a serious writer and a man of ideas, he said: "Look here, you're twenty years my senior: surely you wrote previously under the nom-de-plume 'Nestor Kukolnik.'"

But his jokes never left any bitterness any more than he consciously ever caused the slightest pain to any living thing.

After dinner he would keep some one in his study for half an hour or an hour. On his table candles would be lit. Later, when all had gone and he remained alone, a light would still be seen in his large window for a long time. Whether he worked at that time, or looked through his note-books, putting down the impressions of the day n.o.body seems to know.

VI

It is true, on the whole, that we know nearly nothing, not only of his creative activities, but even of the external methods of his work. In this respect Anton Pavlovitch was almost eccentric in his reserve and silence. I remember him saying, as if by the way, something very significant:

--"For G.o.d's sake don't read your work to any one until it is published.

Don't read it to others in proof even."

This was always his own habit, although he sometimes made exceptions for his wife and sister. Formerly he is said to have been more communicative in this respect.

That was when he wrote a great deal and at great speed. He himself said that he used to write a story a day. E. T. Chekhov, his mother, used to say: "When he was still an undergraduate, Antosha would sit at the table in the morning, having his tea and suddenly fall to thinking; he would sometimes look straight into one's eyes, but I knew that he saw nothing.

Then he would get his note-book out of his pocket and write quickly, quickly. And again he would fall to thinking...."

But during the last years Chekhov began to treat himself with ever increasing strictness and exact.i.tude: he kept his stories for several years, continually correcting and copying them, and nevertheless in spite of such minute work, the final proofs, which came from him, were speckled throughout with signs, corrections, and insertions. In order to finish a work he had to write without tearing himself away. "If I leave a story for a long time,"--he once said--"I cannot make myself finish it afterwards. I have to begin again."

Where did he draw his images from? Where did he find his observations and his similes? Where did he forge his superb language, unique in Russian literature? He confided in n.o.body, never revealed his creative methods. Many note-books are said to have been left by him; perhaps in them will in time be found the keys to those mysteries. Or perhaps they will forever remain unsolved. Who knows? At any rate we must limit ourselves to vague hints and guesses.

I think that always, from morning to night, and perhaps at night even, in his sleep and sleeplessness, there was going on in him an invisible but persistent--at times even unconscious--activity, the activity of weighing, defining and remembering. He knew how to listen and ask questions, as no one else did; but often, in the middle of a lively conversation, it would be noticed, how his attentive and kindly look became motionless and deep, as if it were withdrawing somewhere inside, contemplating something mysterious and important, which was going on there. At those moments A. P. would put his strange questions, amazing through their unexpectedness, completely out of touch with the conversation, questions which confused many people. The conversation was about neo-marxists, and he would suddenly ask: "Have you ever been to a stud-farm? You ought to see one. It is interesting." Or he would repeat a question for the second time, which had already been answered.

Chekhov was not remarkable for a memory of external things. I speak of that power of minute memory, which women so often possess in a very high degree, also peasants, which consists in remembering, how a person was dressed, whether he has a beard and mustaches, what his watch chain was like or his boots, what color his hair was. These details were simply unimportant and uninteresting to him. But, instead, he took the whole person and defined quickly and truly, exactly like an experienced chemist, his specific gravity, his quality and order, and he knew already how to describe his essential qualities in a couple of strokes.

Once Chekhov spoke with slight displeasure of a good friend of his, a famous scholar, who, in spite of a long-standing friends.h.i.+p, somewhat oppressed Chekhov with his talkativeness. No sooner would he arrive in Yalta, than he at once came to Chekhov and sat there with him all the morning till lunch. Then he would go to his hotel for half an hour, and come back and sit until late at night, all the time talking, talking, talking.... And so on day after day.

Suddenly, abruptly breaking off his story, as if carried away by a new interesting thought, Anton Pavlovitch added with animation:

--"And n.o.body would guess what is most characteristic in that man. I know it. That he is a professor and a savant with a European reputation, is to him a secondary matter. The chief thing is that in his heart he considers himself to be a remarkable actor, and he profoundly believes that it is only by chance that he has not won universal popularity on the stage. At home he always reads Ostrovsky aloud."

Once, smiling at his recollection, he suddenly observed:

--"D'you know, Moscow is the most peculiar city. In it everything is unexpected. Once on a spring morning S., the publicist, and myself came out of the Great Moscow Hotel. It was after a late and merry supper.

Suddenly S. dragged me to the Tversky Church, just opposite. He took a handful of coppers and began to share it out to the beggars--there are dozens standing about there. He would give one a penny and whisper: 'Pray for the health of Michael the slave of G.o.d.' It is his Christian name Michael. And again: 'for the servant of G.o.d, Michael; for Michael, the servant of G.o.d.' And he himself does not believe in G.o.d.... Queer fellow!" ...

I now approach a delicate point which may not perhaps please every one.

I am convinced that Chekhov talked to a scholar and a peddler, a beggar and a litterateur, with a prominent Zemstvo worker and a suspicious monk or shop a.s.sistant or a small postman, with the same attention and curiosity. Is not that the reason why in his stories the professor speaks and thinks just like an old professor, and the tramp just like a veritable tramp? And is it not because of this, that immediately after his death there appeared so many "bosom" friends, for whom, in their words, he would be ready to go through fire and water?

I think that he did not open or give his heart completely to any one (there is a legend, though, of an intimate, beloved friend, a Taganrog official). But he regarded all kindly, indifferently so far as friends.h.i.+p is concerned--and at the same time with a great, perhaps unconscious, interest.

His Chekhovian _mots_ and those little _traits_ that astonish us by their neatness and appositeness, he often took direct from life. The expression "it displeasures me" which quickly became, after the "Bishop," a bye-word with a wide circulation, he got from a certain gloomy tramp, half-drunkard, half-madman, half-prophet. I also remember talking once with Chekhov of a long dead Moscow poet, and Chekhov glowingly remembered him, and his mistress, and his empty rooms, and his St. Bernard, "Ami," who suffered from constant indigestion. "Certainly, I remember,"--Chekhov said laughing gayly--"At five o'clock his mistress would always come in and ask: 'Liodor Tranitch, I say, Liodor Tranitch, is it not time you drank your beer?'" And then I imprudently said: "O, that's where it comes from in your 'Ward N 6'?"--"Yes, well, yes"--replied Chekhov with displeasure.

He had friends also among those merchants' wives, who, in spite of their millions and the most fas.h.i.+onable dresses, and an outward interest in literature, say "ideal" and "in princ.i.p.al." Some of them would for hours pour out their souls before Chekhov, wis.h.i.+ng to convey what extraordinarily refined, neurotic characters they were, and what a remarkable novel could be written by a writer of genius about their lives, if only they could tell everything. And he would sit quietly, in silence, and listen with apparent pleasure--only under his moustache glided an almost imperceptible smile.

I do not wish to say that he _looked_ for models, like many other writers. But I think, that everywhere and always he saw material for observation, and this happened involuntarily, often perhaps against his will, through his long-cultivated and ineradicable habit of diving into people, of a.n.a.lyzing and generalizing them. In this hidden process was to him, probably, all the torment and joy of his creative activity.

He shared his impressions with no one, just as he never spoke of what and how he was going to write. Also very rarely was the artist and novelist shown in his talk. He, partly deliberately, partly instinctively, used in his speech ordinary, average, common expressions, without having recourse either to simile or picturesqueness. He guarded his treasures in his soul, not permitting them to be wasted in wordy foam, and in this there was a huge difference between him and those novelists who tell their stories much better than they write them.

This, I think, came from a natural reserve, but also from a peculiar shyness. There are people who const.i.tutionally cannot endure and are morbidly shy of too demonstrative att.i.tudes, gestures and words, and Anton Pavlovitch possessed this quality in the highest degree. Herein, maybe, is hidden the key to his _seeming_ indifference towards question of struggle and protest and his aloofness towards topical events, which did and do agitate the Russian intelligentsia. He had a horror of pathos, of vehement emotions and the theatrical effects inseparable from them. I can only compare him in this with a man who loves a woman with all the ardor, tenderness and depth, of which a man of refinement and great intelligence is capable. He will never try to speak of it in pompous, high-flown words, and he cannot even imagine himself falling on his knees and pressing his hand to his heart and speaking in the tremulous voice of a young lover on the stage. And therefore he loves and is silent, and suffers in silence, and will never attempt to utter what the average man will express freely and noisily according to all the rules of rhetoric.

VII

To young writers, Chekhov was always sympathetic and kind. No one left him oppressed by his enormous talent and by one's own insignificance. He never said to any one: "Do as I do; see how I behave." If in despair one complained to him: "Is it worth going on, if one will forever remain 'our young and promising author'?" he answered quietly and seriously: