Stories

by Anton Chekhov

  GUSEV

  1. Captain Kopeikin is the hero of an inset story in Gogol’s Dead Souls. Midshipman Dyrka (his name means “hole”) is referred to in Gogol’s play The Marriage.

  2. A Turco-Tartar people who settled on the Black Sea in the ninth century A.D. They were exterminated by the Byzantine emperor John II Comnenus in 1123. For Pavel Ivanych the word simply means primitive, savage people.

  3. The proper preparation for death for an Orthodox Christian. The sacrament of anointing with oil is in fact a sacrament of healing, but has come to be considered a part of the “last rites.”

  4. Germans, being Lutherans, were not thought of as Christians in the Russian popular mind.

  5. The prayer “Memory Eternal” (Vechnaya pamyat’) is sung at the end of the Orthodox funeral service and the panikhida.

  PEASANT WOMEN

  1. The words “where there is no sickness or sighing” come from the panikhida, the Russian Orthodox memorial service.

  2. Holy Week is the week preceding Easter, during which the events of Christ’s Passion are remembered. Thursday is a day of particular holiness when the Last Supper is commemorated.

  3. In Russia “Trinity” is another name for Pentecost, the feast that falls on the fiftieth day after Easter and celebrates the descent of the Holy Spirit.

  4. Churches and homes are traditionally decorated at Pentecost with green branches and flowers, symbolizing the life-giving action of the Holy Spirit.

  5. He means “the fiery Gehenna,” synonymous with Hell in Jewish and Christian tradition. The words are somewhat closer in Russian. The actual Gehenna is the Hinnom valley just outside the walls of Jerusalem, which in ancient times was a refuse dump where fires constantly smoldered.

  THE FIDGET

  1. See note 6 to “Small Fry.”

  2. A dacha is a summer residence for city dwellers—a cottage, part of a big house, or a whole house, depending on a person’s means. “Going to dacha” also signifies the whole way of life in the summer.

  3. A. Mazzini (1845–1926) was an Italian opera singer.

  4. The words come from the poem “Reflections at the Front Entrance,” by Nikolai Nekrasov (see note 2 to “A Boring Story”), which became very popular in its musical setting.

  5. V. D. Polenov (1844–1927) was a Russian landscape and historical painter.

  6. L. Barnay (1842–1924) was a German actor.

  7. Osip is the servant of Khlestakov, impostor-hero of Gogol’s comedy Revizor (“The Inspector General”).

  IN EXILE

  1. See note 21 to “A Boring Story.”

  WARD NO. 6

  1. These “calendars” included edifying little stories and helpful advice as well as the days of the year.

  2. See note 7 to “Small Fry.”

  3. The Swedish Order of the Polar Star was also awarded in Russia.

  4. The zemstvo was an elective provincial council with powers of local government; it came to be very important for reform-minded Russians in the latter nineteenth century.

  5. See note 3 to “Easter Night.”

  6. The 1860s in Russia were a period when liberalism became radicalized and the material and practical were exalted above the ideal.

  7. See note 2 to “A Boring Story.”

  8. “In the future” (Latin).

  9. The French biochemist Louis Pasteur (1822–95) and the German doctor and microbiologist Robert Koch (1843–1910) were pioneers in the study of microbes and contagious diseases. Koch discovered the tuberculosis bacillus.

  10. Mt. Elbrus in Georgia, at 18,481 feet, is the highest peak of the Caucasus and the highest mountain in Europe.

  11. An old-fashioned method of treatment for various respiratory ailments, which consisted in applying a number of small heated glasses to the patient’s back. The heat would cause suction and draw the blood to the surface.

  12. In The Brothers Karamazov (Part I, Book 1, chapter 4) Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov does indeed produce a variant of Voltaire’s famous saying: Si Dieu n′ existait pas, il faudrait l’ inventer (“If God did not exist, he would have to be invented”).

  13. The Greek philosopher Diogenes the Cynic (412?–323 B.C.) came to Athens from his native Sinope as a penniless vagabond and was so scornful of wealth and social convention that he lived in a barrel.

  14. Marcus Aurelius (121–180 A.D.), Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher, taught the wisdom of self-restraint and indifference to both pleasure and pain.

  15. See Matthew 26:39 (also Mark 14:36 and Luke 22:42).

  16. The itinerary includes some of the standard tourist sights in Moscow. The Iverskaya icon of the Mother of God was an ancient miracle-working icon which, in Chekhov’s time, was kept in a specially built chapel between the arches of the Iversky Gate at the entrance to Red Square; it disappeared soon after the revolution. Zamoskvorechye is the part of Moscow across the river from the Kremlin. The Rumiantsev Museum was the first public museum in Russia, opened in the early nineteenth century in Pashkov House; it contained anthropological collections, books, manuscripts, antiquities, and paintings.

  17. A reference to the phrase “and out of me burdock will grow,” spoken by Bazarov in Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (1862), which became proverbial in Russia (see note 3 to “A Boring Story”).

  18. “Bad tone” (French), meaning socially unacceptable.

  19. See Genesis 1:26: “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’”

  THE BLACK MONK

  1. Lines from Evgeny Onegin, a novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin (1799–1837), used in the opera of the same name composed by P. I. Tchaikovsky (1840–93).

  2. Gaetano Braga (1829–1907), Italian cellist and composer, was best known for his salon composition La Serenata, which was arranged for various instruments.

  3. The words are a quotation from Poltava, a long poem by Pushkin. Kochubey, who appears in the poem, was a wealthy Ukrainian landowner.

  4. “Let the other side be heard” and “sufficient for an intelligent man” (Latin).

  5. See John 14:2.

  6. “A sound mind in a sound body” (Latin), from the tenth Satire of the Roman poet Juvenal (c. 65–128 A.D.).

  7. A two-week fast period preceding the feast of the Dormition on August 15.

  8. Polycrates (d. 522 B.C.), tyrant of Samos, after enjoying forty years of happiness, became worried that his luck would not hold out. He thought he might bribe fate by throwing a precious ring into the sea, but it was found in the belly of a fish and brought back to him. Soon after that Samos was taken by the Persian general Orontes, and Polycrates was crucified.

  9. See the first Epistle of Paul to the Thessalonians, 5:16.

  10. July 20.

  11. Kovrin confuses two stories here: Herod ordered the slaughter of all the male children under two years old in and around Bethlehem (Matthew 2:16–18); the Egyptian “first-born” were smitten by the Lord as a sign to Pharaoh that he should let Moses lead the people of Israel out of Egypt (Exodus 12:29–32).

  ROTHSCHILD’S FIDDLE

  1. See note 11 to “Ward No. 6.”

  2. The feast of St. John the Theologian, author of the fourth Gospel, is celebrated on May 8, and the feast of the relics of St. Nicholas (see note 5 to “Easter Night”) on May 9, commemorating the “rescue” of the saint’s relics a few days before the Turkish invasion of Myra in the eleventh century and their safe transfer to the Italian town of Bari, where they now lie.

  THE STUDENT

  1. Good Friday, commemorating the Passion of Christ, is a day of total fast.

  2. Rurik (d. 879), a Viking chief, was invited by the people of Novgorod to become their prince, thus founding the first ruling dynasty of Russia; Ivan IV, the Terrible (Ioann is the Old Slavonic form of the name), born in 1530, ruled Russia from 1547 to 1584 and was the first to adopt the title of tsar; Peter I, the Great (1672–1725), the first to adopt the title of emperor, extended the power of Russia considerably and built the new capital of St. P
etersburg.

  3. According to an old Russian superstition, a person not immediately recognized by face or voice is destined to become rich.

  4. A composite reading of twelve passages from the four Gospels describing the Crucifixion is part of the matins of Holy Friday, sometimes referred to simply as “the Twelve Gospels.” The student gives his own summary of some of the readings in what follows.

  ANNA ON THE NECK

  1. Not a real pilgrimage, but a visit to a monastery, where hotel rooms could be had more cheaply than elsewhere.

  2. The Order of St. Anna, named for the mother of the Virgin Mary, was founded in 1735 by Karl Friedrich, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, in honor of his wife Anna Petrovna, daughter of the Russian emperor Peter the Great. It had four degrees, two civil and two military: the decoration for the first civil degree was worn on a ribbon around the neck, for the second, in the buttonhole.

  3. Shchi (cabbage soup) and kasha (buckwheat gruel) were the most common Russian peasant dishes.

  4. The Order of St. Vladimir, named for St. Vladimir, Prince of Kiev (956?–1015), who converted Russia to Christianity in 988 A.D., was founded by the empress Catherine the Great in 1782 and was generally awarded for long-term civil service.

  THE HOUSE WITH THE MEZZANINE

  1. N. A. Amosov (1787–1868) was an artillery officer and engineer. He invented a kind of stove that functioned pneumatically, which was introduced on the market in 1835. An Amosov heating system was installed in the imperial Winter Palace in Petersburg, bringing the inventor a reward of 5,400 acres of land.

  2. See note 4 to “Ward No. 6.”

  3. A sign of protest; it was considered improper for a girl or woman to go out without covering her head.

  4. Baikal is a sea-sized freshwater lake in Siberia famous for the depth and purity of its water; the Buryat are an Oriental nationality inhabiting the region around Baikal.

  5. A folk motif: the hero cannot recover his lost beloved until he wears out a pair of iron shoes.

  6. See note 19 to “Ward No. 6.”

  7. For Rurik see note 2 to “The Student.” Petrushka, the peasant servant of Chichikov, hero of Gogol’s Dead Souls, “liked not so much what he was reading about as the reading itself, or, better, the process of reading, the fact that letters are eternally forming some word, which sometimes even means the devil knows what” (Volume I, chapter 2).

  8. A health spa in central France, known for its mineral waters.

  9. A line from the fable “The Crow and the Fox,” by I. A. Krylov (see note 24 to “A Boring Story”). The end of the fable is well known: the crow fails to hold on to the God-sent piece of cheese.

  THE MAN IN A CASE

  1. M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin (1826–89) was a liberal journalist and satirist best known for his dark novel The Golovlevs and his satirical history of Russia, The History of a Certain Town.

  2. Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–94) was a liberal historian, author of The History of Civilization in England (1857–61), in which he formulated the idea that the development of civilization leads to the cessation of war between nations. There was also a George Buckle (b. 1857), a biographer and editor of the English magazine Life.

  3. Fish is “lenten” but butter is not—thus Belikov strikes a middle path. In addition to the four major fast periods during the year (the Advent fast before Christmas, the Great Lent before Easter, the Peter and Paul fast, and the Dormition fast), Wednesdays and Fridays are also fast days in the Orthodox Church.

  GOOSEBERRIES

  1. Cantonists were sons of career soldiers, who were assigned to the department of the army from birth and educated in special schools at state expense.

  2. Bast is the pliant inner bark of the linden tree, which when stripped from the outer bark was put to a variety of uses in Russia, as material for roofing, shoes, wagon covers, and so forth.

  3. An altered quotation from the poem “The Hero,” by Alexander Pushkin; it should read, “Dearer to me than a host of base truths is the illusion that exalts.”

  A MEDICAL CASE

  1. The reader will realize from this and other stories in the collection that summer nights in northern Russia are extremely short and dawn may come as early as two o’clock in the morning.

  2. See note 16 to “A Boring Story.” Tamara is the heroine of the long poem The Demon (1839).

  THE DARLING

  1.Faust Inside Out may be the Russian title of Le Petit Faust (“The Little Faust”), an operetta by French composer Florimond Hervé (1825–92). Orpheus in the Underworld is an operetta by Jacques Offenbach (1819–80), French composer of German origin.

  ON OFFICIAL BUSINESS

  1. See note 4 to “Ward No. 6.”

  2. That is, the emancipation of the serfs in 1861.

  3. A line from Evgeny Onegin, by Alexander Pushkin.

  4. “A little glass of Cliquot” (French). Cliquot is one of the finest champagnes.

  5. “The Queen of Spades,” a short story by Pushkin, was made into an opera by Tchaikovsky.

  THE LADY WITH THE LITTLE DOG

  1. See note 4 to “Gusev.”

  2. Selyanka is a casserole of cabbage and meat or fish, served in its own baking pan.

  3. The Slavyansky Bazaar was a highly respectable hotel and restaurant in Moscow, frequented in Chekhov’s time by artists, actors, and writers.

  AT CHRISTMASTIME

  1. Jean-Martin Charcot (1825–93), a French doctor known for his work on nervous ailments, invented a method of treatment by means of cold showers.

  IN THE RAVINE

  1. Krasnaya Gorka (“Pretty little hill”) is the Tuesday of the second week after Easter, when the graves of dead relations are visited and decorated. It was usual to celebrate weddings after Easter, because they could not be celebrated in church during Lent.

  2. The Flagellants were a sect in Russia (with its counterparts elsewhere) that believed in flagellation as a means of spiritual purification. They had their own prophets and scriptures, and were always rejected by the Orthodox Church.

  3. A Persian term meaning “plenipotentiary,” the title of the highest Persian ministers, but here used simply by association with things Middle Eastern.

  4. The church is named after the icon of the Mother of God from the city of Kazan, a sixteenth-century wonder-working icon the type of which is one of the most widespread in Russia.

  5. The first Sunday after Easter, commemorating the disciple who doubted Christ’s resurrection.

  THE BISHOP

  1. In Russia on Palm Sunday, the feast celebrating Christ’s entry into Jerusalem a week before the Crucifixion, pussywillows are handed out to the people in church, for lack of palms. The day is known as “Pussywillow Sunday.”

  2. Father Simeon is right: there is no mention of Iehudiel or his ass in the Bible.

  3. A Latin-German macaronic phrase meaning “child-curing whipping birch.”

  4. See notes 3 and 4 to “Panikhida.”

  5. See note 21 to “A Boring Story.”

  6. See note 4 to “Easter Night.”

  7. The words come from hymns sung during the services known as “Bridegroom services” celebrated on the first three days of Holy Week: “Behold, the Bridegroom cometh at midnight, and blessed is the servant whom He shall find watching; and again, unworthy is the servant whom He shall find heedless …” and “Thy bridal chamber I see adorned, O my Savior, and I have no wedding garment that I may enter …”

  8. The washing of feet is part of the liturgy of Holy Thursday when it is served by a bishop. It commemorates Christ’s washing of his disciples’ feet before the Last Supper (John 13:3–15).

  9. See note 1 to “The Student.”

  10. John 13:31–18:1, the longest of the twelve Gospel readings.

  11. See note 4 to “Anna on the Neck.”

  THE FIANCÉE

  1. Quotations from the hymns of matins of the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, three weeks before the beginning of Lent (see Luke 15:11–32).

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sp; 2. That is, June 29.

  3. A straight-sided hat, usually made of velvet, awarded to Orthodox priests as a token of distinguished service. The Russian kamilavka is a distortion of the Greek kalimavka (“beautiful hat”).

  4. Russian civil servants wore uniforms similar to military uniforms, including hats with cockades.

  5. See note 27 to “A Boring Story.”

  6. The Cossack territory in the southeastern Ukraine enjoyed some measure of freedom and autonomy before it was fully annexed by Catherine the Great in the late eighteenth century. “Going to the Cossacks” meant living a life free of restrictions and conventions.

  7. As a means of killing flies, a piece of paper treated with poison would be left to soak in a dish of water. The flies would drink the water and die.

  8.Kumys is the Tartar word for fermented mare’s milk, which was believed to strengthen the lungs. Leo Tolstoy, among others, was an advocate of the “kumys cure,” which he took several times while visiting his property in Samara province during the summer.

  STORIES

  A Bantam Book / November 2000

  All rights reserved.

  Translation copyright © 2000 by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky

  Excerpts, as submitted, from Letters of Anton Chekhov by Michael Henry Heim and Simon Karlinsky copyright © 1973 by Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information address: Bantam Books.