by Peter Turchi
Vpybsxasxoatovtyjawxaeutfupsgjustcjvagkfajurscj? Rtntctfupsghaetfjarvtcuuskfajurscj. Rlrptbtcjvagjrbhatxsorurertc.
— afdacarscajes12
As Conan Doyle recognized, a doctor approaching a patient is like a detective approaching a crime scene. They both investigate, eliminate misleading information, identify relevant evidence, and then, ideally, solve the problem. Like the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Chekhov was trained as a doctor—a man of science. His fiction and plays benefited directly from his practice observing and analyzing. Early in his career he wrote a number of stories and sketches about crime, the titles of which would not have been out of place in the pulp magazines that flourished soon after his death: they include “Thieves,” “Murder,” “Bad Business,” and “The Drama at the Hunt.” A story called “Criminal Investigator” begins with a county doctor and a criminal investigator “riding to perform an autopsy one wonderful spring day.” The investigator asserts that “there are many mysterious, dark forces in the world . . . even in our everyday life, dear doctor, you can stumble on events that cannot be explained.” The doctor disagrees, saying, “There is no action without a reason.” To make his case, the investigator tells the story of a beautiful young woman who predicted her own death. The doctor responds by suggesting that the woman committed suicide, and goes on to explain not only why she did it, but how. The story leads us to believe that he’s correct, and so supports the notion that all actions can be logically explained.
The story’s interest lies in a dramatic twist: we learn that the beautiful young woman was the investigator’s wife, and by saying that her death could not be explained, the investigator was actually expressing his confusion and grief. Even so, the story doesn’t offer much in the way of mystery, suspense, or insight beyond the obvious irony that the professional investigator can’t examine his own life clearly. As a detective story, “Criminal Investigator” reads like a pale imitation of the kind of tale Conan Doyle perfected. As an examination of character, it comes off as far too self-assured, even smug. The reader is in the position of watching a character solve a puzzle, but the doctor provides the solution almost immediately, with no trouble at all. As an indication of the work Chekhov would go on to produce, though, “Criminal Investigator” serves as evidence that the author was already less interested in plot—the entire story unfolds as the two men ride to work—than in human psychology.
Chekhov came to see writing stories and plays as an opportunity to depict aspects of the world, and specifically human behavior, that could not or should not be explained away so easily. Unlike Conan Doyle, who continued to illustrate, in each new Sherlock Holmes story, how the rational mind could make sense of the most apparently senseless circumstances, Chekhov went on to pit the rational mind against the emotional and irrational in more challenging ways and to interrogate characters who confidently professed to have ultimate knowledge. Rather than making the know-it-all doctor the source of insight, a more mature Chekhov would focus our attention on the tormented young mother, her deeply conflicted husband, and the doctor who mistakenly believes in his own superiority. In that way, Chekhov’s development illustrates the movement toward the kind of psychological realism that continues to prevail over a century later.
Chekhov’s “A Doctor’s Visit” can be read as a reconsideration of “Criminal Investigator” in which he rejects the notion that serious questions can be so easily answered. In the later story, a young woman isn’t dead, but ill, and the cause of her illness is the apparent problem to be solved. The story is set into motion by a “long, incoherent telegram”—a piece of writing that fails to make sense. The doctor, or professor, is unavailable, so he sends his assistant. The game is afoot.
Korolyov, the assistant, is “charmed with the evening, the farmhouses and villas on the road, and the birch trees, and the quiet atmosphere all around.” But in the story’s fourth paragraph, Chekhov invites us to step back. He tells us Korolyov “did not know the country, and he had never taken any interest in factories, or been inside one, but he had happened to read about factories . . . [and] he always thought how quiet and peaceable it was outside, but within there was always sure to be impenetrable ignorance.” With that, we’re notified that our main character’s understanding is limited and that he suffers from a particular bias. We have been deputized, put in the role of detective. We don’t know what case we’re being asked to solve, but we know that we’re on the lookout for something Korolyov doesn’t see.
The young woman’s governess tells Korolyov, “She has been, one may say, ailing from childhood.” Elevated to a lifelong condition, the illness moves from the physical to the psychological and metaphorical.
Korolyov’s first impression of his patient, Liza, is that she is “big and tall, but ugly like her mother . . . a poor, destitute creature.” He examines her, says her heart is fine, and concludes she must have suffered an attack of nerves, and it’s over. At that the girl begins sobbing, and Korolyov’s impression changes: “He saw a soft, suffering expression which was intelligent and touching; she seemed to him altogether graceful, feminine, and simple; and he longed to soothe her, not with drugs, not with advice, but with simple, kindly words.” This moment of sympathy extends to the patient’s mother: “What despair, what grief was in the old woman’s face! She, her mother, had reared her and brought her up, spared nothing . . . and now she could not make out the reason of these tears, why there was all this misery.” This sort of compassionate understanding is nearly always virtuous and redemptive in Chekhov, and here Korolyov transcends himself as the story’s explicit and metaphorical concerns merge.
But Korolyov soon affects a professional distance: he becomes bored; he tells mother and daughter, “I find nothing special the matter . . . it’s . . . an ordinary trouble.” He prepares to leave, but the mother asks him to stay the night. After dinner he takes a walk, and thinks
what he always thought when he saw a factory. They may have performances for the workers, magic lanterns, factory doctors, and improvements of all sorts, but all the same, the workers . . . did not look in any way different from those he had known long ago. . . . As a doctor accustomed to judging correctly of chronic complaints, the radical cause of which was incomprehensible and incurable, he looked upon factories as something baffling . . . and all the improvements in the life of the factory workers he looked upon not as superfluous, but as comparable with the treatment of incurable illnesses.
His thoughts continue along these lines until the watchman strikes the hour, and he thinks the sounds are uttered by “the Devil himself, who controlled the owners and the workers alike, and was deceiving both.” Here we seem to have an answer to the story’s deepest problem: Liza is ill, sick at heart, because of the inhumanity not just of this particular factory, but of all factories. The Devil, representing man’s worst impulses, is to blame. The story is verging on the didactic, and its setting, plot, and characters suddenly seem to have been summoned into existence simply to provide an opportunity for Chekhov to make this political and moral statement. The story is no longer a mystery but a puzzle, and it has been solved.
But Chekhov knew that making a diagnosis was not the same as providing a cure. Korolyov hears the patient awake and goes in to check on her. She tells him she is wretched every night, that she needs not a doctor but a friend, that she is lonely and frightened. Korolyov thinks “she needed as quickly as possible to give up the five buildings and the million if she had it . . . it was clear to him, too, that she thought so herself. . . . But he did not know how to say it . . . it is awkward to ask very rich people what they want so much money for, why they make such a poor use of their wealth . . . even when they see in it their unhappiness.” And so he makes a “roundabout” speech, in which he tells Liza that her sleeplessness does her credit, that this represents improvement over their parents’ generation, and that things will be clearer for their children.
Liza, who has given her discomfort many nights’ thought, can’t be persuade
d by such vague consolation. “What will our children and grandchildren do?” she asks. “I suppose they will give it up and go away,” he tells her, and when she asks where—a question with urgent implications for her, but only theoretical ones for him—he tells her, “Where? . . . Why, where they like. . . . There are lots of places a good, intelligent person can go to.” With that, out of patience and ideas, he says goodnight. The next morning, as he drives off, “Korolyov thought neither of the workers . . . nor of the Devil, but thought of the time, close at hand, when life would be as bright and joyous as that still Sunday morning; and he thought how pleasant it was on such a morning in the spring to drive with three horses in a good carriage, and to bask in the sunshine.”
The story has posed its crucial question in Liza’s voice. “What will our children and grandchildren do?” is an only slightly encoded version of “What should I do?” What appeared to be an answer—that Liza’s “illness” is unease caused by her awareness of the inhumanity and injustice of the factory—has been turned into a question: Once we recognize that dilemma, what should we do? Korolyov’s answer is that we should congratulate ourselves for recognizing the problem, let future generations solve it, and, in the meantime, enjoy the spring day. The narrator provided us with distance from him at the outset so that we could doubt him; and now we see that his answer is unsatisfactory. Liza is “pale and exhausted,” sorrowful and intelligent, “with an expression as though she wanted to tell him something”—and Korolyov drives off. We, however, are left looking at Liza, and forced to consider what we would say to her. A question has been framed and one answer rejected.
In his mature work, while Chekhov allows his characters moments of insight, those insights are almost always limited. When he allows them epiphanies, they are often false epiphanies—that is, the character believes he’s understood something essential, a solution of some kind, but the story quickly undermines it. An epiphany is often used by lesser writers as the final piece of a puzzle. In the best Chekhov stories, that piece doesn’t quite fit; the critical question remains unanswered.14
DISTURBING STRANGENESS
A satisfying plot, I believe, involves not a diminution of mystery but rather a fundamental enlargement.
— TIM O’BRIEN
* * *
ANIMAL CRACKERS
A crossword in which the clues are embedded in a story, created by Emily Cox and Henry Rathvon for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament:
“Well, your 4D there’d be days like this,” cracked the monkey with a wink of his 8D.
We were standing near the 14D in the bow of my 47A, the “62D,” named for my Oregon home back in the 46A. It seemed like 49A since the 74A of our voyage. I knew I should have 50A the animals in orderly 59D at the start. Now I had to 63A the deck to lizards who said “I feel like 21A bucks” and 69A who asked “What 5D is 73D?” My crew, like some loony zoo from Dr. 30A, had become addicted to the 19A form of humor. The hyenas were the worst of a bad 51D:
“What did 58A Garbo tell her banker?” asked one.
“I want to be a 70D,” shot back the other.
“How do salamanders learn?” laughed the first.
“They 67A questions!” came the retort.
“Do Bangkok lovers 40A the knot?”
“Are fortune-tellers’ dupes called 62A suckers?”
“As Rudolph said to Santa, you 16D me!”
And so forth, till I wanted to hurl myself down a bottomless 32D. I sighed heavily—scarcely sans 36D. I wished I were off in Lebanon sitting under some 38D 59A, or touring the markets in London’s 55D (2 wds.), instead of hearing every beast from 29D (2 wds.) Z get into the 42A of mangling people’s 80A and professions:
“What country was Wharton’s Ethan 1A?”
“Did tennis star Tony smash bugs with his racket or use a 2D Motel?”
“Is jazz singing 75A-mentary?”
“Is Peter 6D related to MC Hammer?”
“Speaking of actors, does Anne eat corned-beef 33D?”
“Do jilted farmers get John 65D letters?”
“Are benched hockey players off-18A?”
And then there was the onboard bickering. The tropical fauna (who sublimely 77A hot climes) insisted I keep the 39A (2 wds.)—up to 76A degrees and more—until I feared the rowers would suffer 43A. The canned rations were getting worrisomely 27A. The wolves, who had a convenient 34D (hyph.) kitchen in their private 68D, seemed bent on making a Greek 54D of the lambs. (I knew it was an 12D putting them so close together.) Meanwhile the wildcats squabbled over chess.
“You fiddled with your kingside 7D,” cried one. “You dirty 32A!”
“Captain,” winked a pelican, “don’t you think a wading bird gives you a great 48D to view?”
“Sure, your two gams are swell,” I conceded, “But I have other avian concerns.” Just then the 20A was tangled in the rigging, cawing “This is another fine 11A you’ve got me in!” And the herring 71A was telling the 72A, “Move over, little raptor. It’s my 44D to fly!”
“Say, Captain,” laughed that first hyena. “I’d like to 35D 1-800-diet. Would that be a 15A (hyph.) call?”
“56A enough,” said his mate, “that number’s fake!”
“What a dugong shame,” spouted one of the 23A (2 wds.). “I’ve kidnapped a dolphin for immoral 35A.”
“But 26A well that ends well,” quipped the painting panda, dabbing her brush from 37D to canvas. (The panda also plays bongo 79A in our boat’s band, and 30D her sore paws in 64D salts when she’s done.)
On top of all this madness, we were lost. At sea where no sonar systems or 22D could locate us, I felt I could have been on the 9D Ice Shelf, in the 31D Canal on one of those flat-bottomed 13D—or foundering in Hades’ own river 78A for all I knew. (They say 41A landed at Ararat, but I was hoping for at least a rocky peak in 66D Park, Colorado.)
“With 52D luck,” said the boa to her cousin the water 11D, “we’ll 16A (2 wds.) course and 56D soon we’ll reach dry land.”
“And then we’ll 17A-strate some music,” sang the killer whales. “An 6A buffa, perhaps?”
“Too soon to 60D in celebration,” said I. “The round 45D of Earth is still one blue expanse of 3D. I suggest we pass the time with a nice Hollywood 1D like Von 57A Express or Hello, 61D!. Or we could play a game. If everybody 10D (2 wds.), we’ll try poker, or maybe bingo or beano or 25A.”
“Okay, 28A,” barked a saluting Lhasa 24D (who seemed to think we were in the Army). “But first a question, sir. All we animals come in twos except the 58D. Why are there three of those civet-like creatures?”
“Oh,” said I, getting my punning revenge at last. “They’re having a 53A à 40D.”
* * *
As anyone who has tried it can attest, creating an engaging puzzle involves more than simply arranging pieces of the whole in some disorienting way. Cutting a picture in half, for instance, doesn’t make for much of a jigsaw puzzle; neither does simply keeping at it with the scissors until there are a thousand tiny rectangles. The creation of a puzzle, like the creation of a story or poem, requires choosing a form, working within the conventions of that form (or finding a way to communicate departures from them to the solver/reader), engaging the solver’s/reader’s interest or curiosity, and making sure the puzzle/story/poem has a satisfactory degree of internal logic or consistency. Serious puzzle composers also work to make the result more than just another representative of its type. The computer-generated sudoku and crossword puzzles that fill cheaply produced paperback books are essentially interchangeable, but there is a large realm of puzzles that aim both to satisfy our essential expectations and to be, in some way, uniquely interesting.
Crossword puzzles are relatively new; the first was published in 1913, and they didn’t become popular until more than a decade later. The first book published by Simon & Schuster, in April 1924, was The Crossword Puzzle Book, and by the end of that year the publisher’s four books of crossword puzzles had sold more than a million copies. Dev
otees of crosswords tell us that the puzzles enrich our vocabulary and frame of reference and have been proven to ward off senility—though it seems virtually every type of puzzle, and many games, make similar claims, as if they needed to provide some medical benefit.
Georges Perec, author of A Void and Life: A User’s Manual, and one of the founding members of the Oulipo, the international workshop of potential literature, also created crossword puzzles. He wrote about how the two stages of crossword puzzle creation draw from different sides of the brain:
The filling of the diagram is a tedious, meticulous, maniacal task, a sort of letter-based arithmetic where all that matters is that words have this or that length, and that their juxtapositions reveal groupings that are compatible with the perpendicular construction of other words; it is a system of primary constraints where the letter is omnipresent but language is absent. Contrariwise, the search for definitions is fluid, intangible work, a stroll in the land of words, intended to uncover, in the imprecise neighborhood that constitutes the definition of a word, the fragile and unique location where it will be simultaneously revealed and hidden. . . .15
What, in the end, characterizes a good crossword definition is that its solution is obvious, as obvious as the problem had seemed insoluble as long as it was not solved. Once the solution is found, one realizes . . . one did not know how to see it, the whole problem being to see in another way. . . . What is at stake, in crosswords as in psychoanalysis, is this sort of quavering of meaning, this “disturbing strangeness,” the un-canniness through which the language’s unconscious seeps out and reveals itself.