Chekhov & Marx: the Riddle of "A Woman's Kingdom"

Chekhov’s stories and plays transcend any single point of view or system of analysis. Much, however, can be gained from the application of a particular lens toward organizing a pattern of understanding and focusing details of content and structure, attitude and atmosphere. A “Marxist” lens applies in many ways, from the simplest fundamental agreements in both men’s observations of their complicated and fast-changing world, to a deeper and more enigmatic probing of how this ideological mechanism operates at all levels of existence, especially through the choices and actions of the individual. For both Marx and Chekhov alienation is the primary effect of the reigning system of capitalism and it is characterized by volatile and shattering contradictions that result in suffering.

Many of Chekhov’s titles appear at first to highlight in a literal sense some obvious aspect of what the stories describe. Afterward, the seemingly straightforward title can be understood as a contradiction and comment on the previous understanding and its inherent assumptions, becoming the instantiation of an entirely new and different point of view.

For example, in “The Russian Master,” Nikitin is master in name only—simply from marrying a girl with a substantial dowry. He is not a master within his profession, of any of his slighter interests, or of the wife he thought he controlled. He briefly imagines himself to be the author of his own fleeting happiness. By the end of the story he is so little master of himself that he begs to be overwhelmed by something that would render him into a better person—by which he means relieved of his suffering.

Chekhov repeatedly refers to Nikitin as acting and appearing young—too young. It is a device to hide the character’s immaturity in plain view, Nikitin’s concept of sufferingis also too young—immature—he is as yet unable and unwilling to comprehend or instantiate the idea of suffering except through external conditions, Nikitin stands at the great threshold of Chekhov’s rich cosmos, ready to tke the first steps in once he sees the pointless contradiction of blaming the world for being itself.

Olenka, the “Darling” of the story of the same name, is in fact a vampire—sucking the life out of those she claims to adore, taking on their attributes of character and interest as the metaphoric stolen blood courses refreshingly through her own body. Her ‘goodness’ is entirely self-serving; she is destructive primordial unconsciousness. She never suffers; it is those upon whom she settles her draining gaze who wither away and die.

“A Woman’s Kingdom” will turn out to be anything but for Anna Akimovna, the young and beautiful heiress who discovers the true nature of the world she appears to own and the painful limits of her ability to make demands of life or of herself.

In each case, title and story are much more than merely ironic. Reality itself is turned on its head. The reader’s awakened consciousness, not a proverbial happy or sad outcome, is the goal of Chekhov’s masterful efforts. A conventional ending is never possible. Chekhov exploits the very idea of convention and ordinariness and does so with characters and settings so seemingly unexceptional that this very aspect is the means by which the extraordinary is hidden in plain sight. The stories articulate the contradictions, uncertainty and arbitrariness of the foundations of what is perceived as real and meaningful, illuminating Marx’s contention that the perception of reality is the result of the social relations of a given time expressed through that era’s mode of production. These social relations are what Anna Akimovna cannot overcome. She, like everyone, is caught in the alienation that makes each of them a commodity and player in the game of social reality, simultaneously sincere and false.

In Marx’s description and prognosis for the capitalist system, an increasing few, like Anna Akimovna, own and control the means and materials of production. The worker is separated from the meaningful pursuit of work related to his/her own existence, environment, personal needs and individual abilities; s/he becomes a means to an end. Reduced to a wage earner, the worker’s value resides in the value of his/her labor; surplus value—production and profit beyond the necessary amount to maintain life—is the property of the capitalist. No matter how much product the laborer makes, s/he earns no more, though earning less is certainly possible and likely.

It is in the interest and within the ability of the capitalist to increase the amount of production by improving the system of production—specialization and technology—in which s/he is willing to invest. This, however, invariably results in the ultimate decrease of the exchange value of the product made and a decrease in the wages earned by the laborer. As Marx predicted, the result is increasingly violent alternations of plenty and want, ever more unevenly distributed. The only things shared by all under this system are alienation and the loss of personal expression and freedom. Chekhov is clear in his depiction of these ruinous forces running rampant through all levels of society.

By the end of the 19th century conditions were such that it was already evident that Marx’s assessment of the capitalist system was correct in his description of its failure to address the spiritual, political and economic needs of a rapidly increasing and vastly more interconnected modern population.

Chekhov saw in his own family the entire spectrum from boom to bust, the exceedingly uneven distribution of the few benefits and enormous losses. His grandfather and father were serfs, his father had managed to purchase his freedom prior to Alexander II’s Emancipation of the Serfs in 1861 (Chekhov was thereby born “free” in 1860); the father became briefly a successful lower middle-class shop merchant. Yet before Chekhov had completed High School his father had gone bankrupt and fled to Moscow to avoid creditors. From an early age, Chekhov would spend the rest of his life supporting himself and his family with the proceeds from his writing. Independent of the errors Chekhov’s father may have made to contribute to his own ruin, the system itself was proving to be anything but a dream come true. The volatility of the markets predicted by Marx had encouraged many factory owners to torch their own establishments in order to collect insurance money and offset losses from speculation. Before the glistening benefits of mass-production, the wide distribution of products and education to improve life had time even to begin to tarnish, the system was already in decline.

In “A Woman’s Kingdom,” Anna Akimovna already knows that the industrial empire created by her uncle and overseen by her father is falling to pieces under her tenure, though not specifically from her neglect or personal error—she still employs the same managers as her uncle and father to operate the factory. But they are mostly corrupt and she neither knows about nor likes the business from which she derives her enormous income; everything about it is abhorrent to her. More and more money is spent each year on the maintenance of the workers’ lives and living quarters, yet whose sorry lot nonetheless continues to deteriorate.

In this detail Chekhov resonates with the Marxist belief that this system itself cannot prosper and endure. Within this story is the ironic detail that the only representative group that thrives and endures are the Chalikovs, the impoverished unemployed clerk/charlatan/beggar, his numerous progeny and yet again pregnant wife. Had Chekhov lived longer he might have written of Chalikov’s eventual victorious emergence as a financial services scam artist or some other of the forms of business characters made possible at the ragged margins of the destructive course of capitalism.

Ostensibly, “A Woman’s Kingdom” centers upon Anna Akimovna’s awakened desire for love and a family of her own—the kingdom she desires is the realm of the hearth, not the huge industrial enterprise of which she is mistress by the accident of inheritance. Regretfully, she imagines other women her own age from more modest backgrounds who are happily exhausted and abundantly fulfilled in the loving work of raising children; she does not consider the one-sided and idealistic viewpoint entailed in this dream. A chance meeting reveals a man, Pimenov, upon whom she can project her fantasies of simple and uncomplicated romance, but he is far beneath her station. In fact, he is a foreman at the factory she owns. Over the course of two days—the day before and, principally, Christmas Day and its “two” dinners—she will test the limits of her resolve and the world’s compliance and will end empty-handed and alone, despite all her wealth and privilege. Several compromises will be offered to the terms she dictates, but it will be she who cannot say yes to life, who cannot imagine a life outside of the conventions that she obeys without believing in.

Chekhov employs his usual cunning in introducing Anna Akimovna in the middle of a quandary that subtly suggests that we sympathize with her plight. She is young, attractive, rich and idle; she is not without awareness or conscience, yet her actions never correspond to what she presumably knows to be true and right. Chekhov constantly contrasts characters and situations to amplify the mystifying uncertainty and violent oscillations that correspond to the manifestation of alienation within oneself.

Early in the story Anna Akimovna looks down from her window on the numerous factory workers, bareheaded in the snow-filled courtyard of her palatial house, pleading her forgiveness. These employees were fired by her manager for absenteeism. Anna Akimovna is too ashamed to go out to them and instead lets them be driven away like dogs, into the darkness and cold. Later, in her widowed and childless aunt’s downstairs domain within the huge house, she will participate in the charade of censure for the drunken driver whom the aunt will pretend to dismiss and then quickly forgive and re-integrate into the familial feudal realm of the lower floor—all done with a pointless wink to Anna as the true sovereign of the new order. Yet she has had no say, one way or the other.

In the description of the house itself Chekhov subtly incarnates the contrasting social orders. The vibrant remnant of the feudal, integrated past lives out its last glimmerings in the downstairs quarters where the old aunt resides with a cozy and populous entourage within a strictly defined hierarchy. The palatial upper rooms were originally built and furnished only for use as an entertaining stage for special guests and the social scenarios that are part of the script of the successful life of a wealthy capitalist. In these glittering and sumptuous upper rooms Anna Akimovna now lives, alone with her servants and chef.

Chalikov and his family live far away in a poor old house divided into numerous overcrowded apartments, reminiscent of the humble world into which Anna Akimovna was born. Chance and fate brought her early in life to the palatial house and her role as mistress. She cannot justify her two realms, she longs for the simplicity she imagines was present in her humble past, yet is entirely a creature and product of her position and wealth.

Chekhov creates a stunning opposition in the characters of Chalikov and Anna Akimovna’s lawyer, Lysevich, one of the principal guests at her French Upstairs dinner. Both are devious; both lie; both want money. Ultimately it is Chalikov’s style that offends Anna Akimovna; he is cloyingly ingratiating and too knowing to play his part as supplicant innocently and well. Despite the actual reality of his need she ends up not giving him the large sum of cash that has happenstancely fallen into her hands at the opening of the story. Instead, she gives the money to Lysevich, who is independently wealthy and has no need for the money, yet asks for it in a manner that is subtly humiliating to Anna Akimovna, implying that it is she who has been cruel and neglectful. Ultimately it is Lysevich’s style that pleases Anna Akimovna, and she pays up knowing it will contribute toward nothing of worth.

One of Marx’s contentions about the lives of all under a system of alienation is that the final redoubt of action devolves to the animal necessities: eating, drinking and the acts of reproduction—sacred or profane. Chalikov is always eating or bringing more impoverished and needy souls into the world; Lysevich is a glutton, though only for better cuisine; Anna Akimovna is consumed with a desire to express her true feminine nature, but not willing to pay the price. In all of Anna Akimovna’s tiny, glittering realm no one can generate a literal future: there are no children. The guests at the upstairs dinner are old or impotent disinterested men; the women at the downstairs dinner are also old and well past the prime of life and the few men are drunkards or servants. What Anna Akimovna’s class is good at bringing into the world are the products and displays of culture. Though this is not without meaning, it is not what she actually desires. Anna Akimovna knows that it will be her fate to fail at her last attempt to enter into the continuum of life.

Pimenov becomes the object of her re-awakening. Chekhov shows how this man alone among all the other characters has managed to retain some hold on his own integrity, the integrity that Marx declares is nearly if not entirely impossible to maintain in the awful distortion of economic exploitation. Chekhov refers often to Pimenov’s great physical strength—presumably an emblem of his potential to fulfill Anna Akimovna’s feminine desire, but his greatest strength is seen in the clockworks, watches and tools neatly and lovingly preserved in his simple room. These are the symbols of his re-unification with self, work he does from love and interest and not solely for someone else’s profit. It is not facetious or for show, as with Chalikov and Lysevich, when he tells Anna Akimovna that for her he will make an exception and offers to repair her elegant watch.

In this sense Pimenov is “rich” and Anna Akimovna is “poor” because the supposedly valuable treasure and commodities that compose her world have no exchange value for that which she actually desires. It goes without saying that, in this story, Pimenov’s humble worthiness is not to be rewarded and that Lysevich’s elegantly entertaining unworthiness is promptly, and handsomely, paid for.

At the downstairs dinner an old crone called the Beetle along with all the other women lament the waste of Anna Akimovna’s youth, beauty and wealth, explaining how she might have the experience she desires, even if that should include marrying a simple common man like Pimenov. In a short-lived and convulsive rush of false freedom Anna Akimovna consents to the Beetle’s offer as matchmaker.

The great sadness of this story is that Anna Akimovna is not blind to Pimenov as a man; it is in considering him as a husband that she cannot keep her strength of will and all her money is of no avail. Pimenov is not acceptable to those who inhabit her world, both the born residents like Lysevich and the other upstairs guests or even her own servants, who co-operate with the punishing system of appearances and raise the price of her desire beyond her understanding.

It is her own simpering butler Misha who acts as tutor to his wayward mistress who momentarily forgets the rules of the game and imagines that she might be able to find happiness in a union with the man she imagines her own father might have heartily approved. Misha “reminds” Anna Akimovna that Pimenov would be a frightening sight at table among the highborn guests, trying to figure out exactly how to hold a dinner fork properly. Surely, it was all a good joke, he cajoles—but his tone is not really that of a question. Yes, of course, is her only possible reply: a joke.

This leads to the strangest and most startling realization, both from the perspective of Marx and of Chekhov. Why is it that Anna Akimovna is so powerless in the pursuit of happiness? In Section 4 of the first volume of “Capital”, Marx describes the extraordinary and enigmatic power of commodities within a capitalist society. It is almost identical to the misleadingly seeming ordinary aspect of Chekhov’s stories:

“A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.”

As Marx describes, the fetish power of commodities is not located in our minds but in the social relations themselves comprised within capitalist society. Therefore, despite knowing in our minds that a commodity has no intrinsic power or value, we not only act “as if” it does, but must honor that known misperception—we cannot separate ourselves from it as if it were a mere idea any more than a fish could imagine living on land—because our participation within the dynamic of the entire system is that from which we derive our sense of reality, our sense of self.

Marx offers an “explanation” as to why these characters cannot act in their own best interest and it is far more potent and mysterious than the force of social pressure in the common or naïve interpretation. It is a powerlessness and blindness inherent to the very “rules” of the operating system. These characters are intrinsically divided within themselves owing to their very participation in a particular unavoidable cultural interpretation of “reality” which Chekhov so masterfully weaves into an illuminating and sorrowful work of art.

Blue

When I feel ‘blue’ I wonder what shade it might be.

In a museum, in front of a small immaculate landscape painting, a man I did not know turned to me and said, “In Russian, we have more than forty distinct and separate words describing the color you call ‘blue’. Other people think we are very sad, but Mother Nature makes these words in snow and ice and mist, water and sky. Look!”

Why me? Despite the paltry offering in my native tongue of words describing blue, I know all too well what the Russian is talking about. And, frankly, he is a little sullen, if not altogether sad, but this I also understand, or think I do.

I have excuses or reasons for why I linger so long in all things blue: it is easier on the eyes and there are more colors (and moods) with blue than without; their variety is a delight to discern.

A color wheel is like an upside-down arch; its keystone is the truest blue, betraying no tendency toward yellow or red. Two arms reach up from the blue core, one becomes green on its way to yellow, the other turns purple midway toward its red palm. Above, a narrow slice of blue-free color stretches from pure red to pure yellow, an orange filament of pure joy whose entire expanse is one third of the total wheel. Two thirds of all colors contain some amount of blue; too much of life to ignore.

As night follows day, blue is rest and repose from the exhausting and gorgeous delirium of the brightness that burns out fast, yet lingers in traces like shimmering light on a watery surface, the glimmering turnings of shiny fishes or the fluorescent glissandos of unnamed creatures burrowing deep into the couch of vibrant darkness.

The Kitchen

* * * * * * *
“…angels have no memory...” “Margaret, he has no eyes, no eyes!” “They’re closed.” “Do they have feet; do they need them; his wings don’t move; how will he get around to do his miracles? How will he know where to go if he can’t see?” “Roberta, they’re angels; they just know.” “Why isn’t there a button to bring back the color?” “Stop it, Bertie; it’s an OLD movie; it’s IN black and white.” “Margaret, I can see that, but why isn’t there a button to bring back the color?” “It never had color.” “What does that mean? How could it never have color?” “Because its black and white; now stop it, I can’t hear.” “How are we supposed to believe he’s flying if his wings don’t move?” “Bert, it’s a MOVIE.” “So?” "…to us there is no evil…” “In old movies they don’t have color and there are lots of things they don’t show.” “…we love everyone, equally…” “Why, Margaret?” “I don’t know.” “Well, did they paint everything white before they made the movie? Is that because it’s an angel movie?” “Yes, that must be it. Now will you stop?’’

* * * * * * *
I didn’t really mean ‘right now’ when I said we could bake cookies; I meant ‘someday’. I was hungry—not enough to go downstairs. Bert wouldn’t be stopped. She is a short, scrawny, almost-eight year old, quick and resilient as a tiny steel spring.

At the green marble island in the middle of the kitchen she is a mad scientist, or maybe a pale pigmy conductor, arranging her deaf and dumb orchestra. She stands on the little pink step stool dad made for her in his weekend woodshop class. Bowls to the right; both bottles of that awful organic goat milk and a tin of olive oil in front with all the butter and eggs; and sugar, flour, oatmeal, cornmeal, corn flakes and shredded wheat in a clutter to the left, scattered with raisins, lemons and jars of jelly and jam. Bertie waves tireless, coaxing signals to the uncomprehending boxes, bottles and jars, certain they will become something if only she tries harder or figures out the magic sign.

* * * * * * *
Except for her red sneakers and red hair, everything Bertie has in the entire world is pink. I love pink, though not so bright. It looks very good on me, not like on her. I mix it with white or navy blue, or beige. Maybe, for me, it’s really an accent. It looks more elegant that way, more attractive and, well, I am a blond and, obviously, that makes a difference.

What can she do with red hair and skin so pale and fine? Whenever I bring Bertie along to the market I try to keep her away from the fish counter. Under the fluorescent lights she looks just like the uncooked shrimp and, then, she is so small. It's ridiculous, I know. Bertie is too short to see the shrimp herself and she wouldn't think anything or care, but I worry that other people might notice. Her eyes are magnificent and scary: deep turquoise, and splintery like the inside of diamonds and bright as her hair, which usually sticks straight out, all over, very soft and thin; and though I love it—the way it feels—of course, it will never work when she is my age; she will have to do something.

“Blood is thicker than water, Margaret.” She likes this kind of phrase, but, to me, it makes no sense. Who doesn’t know that blood is thicker than water? And what does she mean? She is too young to ‘mean’ anything. Blood is blood and water is water, and you can’t be a human being and not need both.

“You don’t put olive oil in cookies, Roberta, and we don’t need all these eggs or the milk, put some of this back—and no cereal.”

“Margaret, what do we need? What?” It is a reasonable question, or should be; but it makes me angry—for a moment. We should be looking in a cookbook or something. I can’t remember ever making cookies; people do, I know. I must have, sometime, with my mother. I’m not sure how that makes me feel.

* * * * * * *
“What can I do for you today, Roberta?” “If you don’t know, Mr. Phillips, then why am I here? Waste not, want not.” “No, I mean, you know, Bertie, what would—is there anything you’d like to talk about today?” “Nothing, nothing, nothing.” “All right, we can just sit here, together—I like your sweater, Roberta. Are those flowers you’re drawing?” “No………..They are birds. On little strings. That are very strong. And they are trying to fly away as fast as they can. That’s just what they do.”

“Roberta, I got a special pillow for you, it’s pink.” “I have eyes.” “Yes, Bertie, you do; and I have eyes, too, so I can see you still like pink. It’s a pretty pillow—don’t you think? And you can take it with you or leave it here, if you like.” “I’ll leave it here. I have pillows at home.” “What are you reading?” “A book.” “Yes. Of course. It has a pretty cover; what’s it about?” “Places…Far away places.” “Is there some place you’d like to go, Bertie?” “I want to go home.” “Well. Yes, of course. And it’s all right, Bertie, if you actually want to leave… you don’t have to stay. I’ll call your mother, she’ll be glad to come get you; you don’t have to stay.” “No, I…it’s OK. Mr. Phillips, I don’t… know, I mean they’re shopping. For clothes. Margaret needs new clothes for school and they like to shop.” “Your mother won’t mind at all; neither will your sister.” “I know.” “Margaret is going away soon—to school, to college.” “Everyone says so. I’m going to school too.” “Yes, but Margaret is going away to school-- she won't be living at home, and she won’t be back until Thanksgiving. You’ll miss her, won’t you?” “She’s so much older now. Her hair is so long she looks just like the picture of her mother and daddy.” “Yes, Margaret looks very much as her mother did.”

* * * * * * *
“Blood is thicker than water, Margaret, blood IS thicker than water.” She wants to reach over and flip on the water—to prove her point, I guess—but she can’t without moving the step stool, and, really, that would lose all the effect. She looks over to the sink, and starts laughing when she sees that I notice.

“All right, honey, it’s OK. Put the jelly on top, but make a little dent first.” “You won’t like them.” “Yes I will.” “It’ll look like blood, Margaret. The cookies will look like they’re bleeding.” “Ewww, Bert, that’s awful, it’s raspberry, not blood.” “It still looks a lot like blood, Margaret, really.” “They’ll taste like raspberry; like little linzertortes.” “Linzerwhats?” “Cookies, Roberta, just little cookies, with cute red dots on them, just like you.”

* * * * * * *
“But I don’t look like anyone. Not daddy or mom or Margaret.” “Roberta, you look like you, and Margaret didn’t look so much like her mother when she was a girl your age.” “But she had blond hair.” “Yes.” “Mr. Phillips, how do you know?” “Bertie, I’ve told you. I knew your father before he was married to Margaret’s mother.” “I know she’s dead, but where is that, where is she?” “I would say heaven but you never like that word, or, that’s what you said last week.” “How can you believe it when the angels never move their wings and they don’t have feet?” “I see what you mean, I do. I never thought of it that way, but it doesn’t mean you can’t believe in heaven. Where do the little birds you draw go?” “Far away, far away.” “Maybe it’s the same.” “But they have very, very, very strong strings so they can’t go that far away, they can’t, even if they do.”

* * * * * * *
“Of course I want to go to school, Roberta. It’ll be fun, and everybody has to; how else will I get a job? When you’re older you’ll understand. And you’ll go away to school too.” “That’s not it, Margaret. That’s not it at all, not at all, nothing.” “What then? Where’s the timer, Bertie? We don’t want them to burn. I’m not going away forever and I’m not even going that far.” “But you won’t be here, Margaret, here. HERE.” “Yes I will, when I come back.” “But how?” “I’ll drive.” “No Margaret, I don’t mean that. Did your mother ever come back… just for a visit?”

“Honey, they don’t have anything to do with each other. I am going to school—to college, Roberta—I’ll be back, you’ll see. And…I know this sounds terrible—I was younger than you are now—but, I don’t remember my mother. I remember us. She didn’t live here, with us, with daddy and me. I mean, mom didn’t live here then either, well, obviously, you know, and you weren’t even born. She did live here—my mother—she must have. I guess she was in the hospital most of the time. And when I look at the picture of her and daddy it’s strange, more like me, older, with some boy who looks like daddy, or only just a little. She never looked like that picture—maybe when she was young. She didn’t have any hair. And it’s awful, Bert, and we shouldn’t talk about this at all and you shouldn’t think about this. I don’t know what to say. She put her arm around me, or, well it wasn’t… daddy had to help her.

She gave me the gold barrette, the one in the picture. She tried to put it in my hand. It almost fell. Her fingernails were too long, and sharp. Maybe it was at the hospital—the floor, everything, everything was white. She was sitting up in bed, very high. It must have been morning because it was so bright, the window behind her, the barrette. She told me to look underneath; she said it was our names: 'Anne' and 'Margaret', but I hadn't known her name was Anne; she was my mother. The letters were carved so thin and small, but they sparkled in the light and I could read them. She looked at me for a long time—I mean, I think it was a long time. I can see her now. But it has nothing to do with mom or going to school or you. You shouldn’t think about this, sweetheart. I’m sorry I’m going away, I mean, not really. You’ll see. It will be all right.”

On Chekhov: The Russian Master

On 'The Russian Master'

By the end of Chekhov’s “The Russian Master”, Nikitin is disgusted, essentially, by the same people, situations and things that he found desirable, touching, endearing and amusing—beautiful, even—at the start of the story. His only constant dislike is for the ‘pet’ animals at the Shelestov family estate. One can only wonder whether his disdain for these creatures doesn’t stem from their inferior ability to dissemble, delude and pretend.

The banality Nikitin claims to deplore to the point of escape was present from the start. The first indications we have of his beloved Masha, the youngest Shelestov daughter, are of a petty, controlling, demanding and jealous young woman entirely fulfilled and consumed within the repetitive routines and most basic patterns of a privileged but simple, mundane provincial domestic life.

Nikitin truly believes himself to be in love Masha; though this is entirely possible and initially simple enough to imagine, Chekhov embroiders this romantic idea with an abundance of contradictions that are anything but innocent.

Out riding on a lovely summer afternoon, Masha’s first comment to her husband to be (he alone, it seems, does not guess the certainty of his future status) is a command about how to control his horse and advice not to take its demeanor seriously—that the beast is only ‘pretending’. Masha is as simple and uncomplicated as the other household pets. Though she and Nikitin appear on the surface to be polar opposites, they share a common strategy toward life of ignoring unwelcome evidence.

No amount of information informs Nikitin’s ideas of world or self; “...anything that happened to clash with his own convictions he found naïve and touching.” Both Masha’s father and Nikitin’s friend Ippolit warn him about the seriousness and changes that marriage entails; he hears the words, but not what they mean.

Nikitin thinks that he lives by the laws of logic and boasts that he is the creator of his own happiness and, therefore, its rightful possessor. The minute that reality and the limitations of shared life impinge on his fantasies of freedom and potent creation, he nosedives into an about face and becomes the absolute victim of the dreadfulness around him. He imagines himself to be consumed with a burning desire to become a factory worker and “to exhaust himself with work, to suffer.” Nikitin believes that a laborer treasures every kopek he earns simply because he is a worker, not because he is able, independent of social status, to appreciate his circumstance.

As for work, he has still been unable or unwilling to find the energy, effort or direction even to read Lessing, so how could he actually enter into labor when he can barely get up off the sofa? Nikitin also does not consider that he need not go looking for the suffering he desires; he has it already. He longs for ‘something’ to overpower him, make him oblivious of his own existence, indifferent to his personal happiness with all its limitations, and yet he reserves the right to select this power, thus sentencing himself in his own pettiness.

Chekhov creates and examines with clinical clarity; he seems often to be weighing how different people are from objects, to what extent they are active or passive within the drama of life and free of the overwhelming realities of mere chemical processes, chance and the Siren call of illusion. Were Nikitin merely a self-deluding fortune hunter, our interest would wane, but he is not. Rather than viewing him as a scheming materialist, one can also see him through the lens of science: osmosis.

The poverty, struggle and isolation of Nikitin’s early life are like a dry sponge immersed in the vital waters of the Shelestov family life. From a scientific standpoint, no matter what he were to tell himself were his reasons or how much he might prefer one liquid to another, he cannot stop the process of absorption that will continue until the sponge is entirely saturated. Then it may loathe its soggy state and entertain fantasies about being dry again, as Nikitin ultimately imagines his final salvation in a trip to Moscow, alone, to visit the poor old rooms he inhabited when he was a struggling student.

By the story’s end it is perfectly clear that we can have no idea of what, exactly, Nikitin is ‘master’. He is self-deluding, though not entirely in the dark. He can make effort until he cannot; he can see this, but not that; in short, he is human and subject to the paradox of a nature that is generous and destructive, entirely indifferent and absolutely selective. Chekhov would endorse work. That may be all one can attempt; certainly there will be scant results without it, but no certainties either because of it.

Re-appearance

Let’s face facts: 9 times out of 10 it is simply easier to talk to dead people. First of all, they don’t care if I like them, and second, neither do I. Dead people never worry about how they’re dressed or if their hair looks better this way or that. That is, if they have any, and, really, who would notice?

Also, they never show up unless they have something to say—no one is less likely to be interested in killing time. Being dead is itself a full-time job. Just ask any old person-- Where did the day go? Time flies by faster and faster; they become slower and slower. No matter how bad it may seem, it is much easier and far less time-consuming to get around and do the simplest chores when at least you’re still alive.

On the other hand, it’s true: dead people can be difficult to understand, even if you know who they think they’re talking to. It only makes sense that I should try a little harder and make the extra effort.

X must have become restless about being dead. He always liked being on his own so, naturally, it took a while. And it wasn’t exactly that he missed being alive—his marriage was killing him, but then so was so much else: high blood pressure, sclerotic sinuses, achy joints, people who rang the doorbell. Everything, really. She was definitely part of the problem and one of the reasons we’d grown apart from the start. But that’s not fair of me, their thing began long before we met, and it wasn’t as if he’d been poisoned or murdered: X died of Old Age (and after a very good dinner).

By the time he died I wasn’t paying too much attention to him and hadn’t been for a long time. I was far away. Of course, after he died, X and I could have pretended the way most people do, but, in this regard, we were too much alike. Hell, we both had better things to do, though when he was alive, he would wax sentimental every now and then, usually in some kind of whining rage, and a person could only wonder: what was that all about? Everything, really. He could always find some reason to run off in a huff without leaving the room. He liked being trapped almost as much as he liked being alone. Looking at him you could never tell quite where he was.

The only thing he never complained about, perhaps the only thing he truly loved without reservation, was the daily four-hour commute to work. He was in Heaven—all alone in the car, practically invisible, wrapped inside a cashmere cataract of cigarette smoke so perpetual that the windshield was thick and greasy with tar. And limitless jelly doughnuts, fresh from the little place on La Cienega Blvd. I guess that was my fault. On his own he would never have thought about ‘fresh’ jelly doughnuts, but when I mentioned it he understood the significance immediately and tried inconspicuously to jot a quick reminder in his calendar.

Almost every day, I stopped in at 3:15 a.m. on my way home to the beach from a night on the town spent mostly in recreational exercise of the horizontal variety. At the other end of the radar, on the other side of town and hours later, X had the unexpected treat of adding 20 minutes to his cherished morning drive so that he could be in line, bright-eyed, for the 7:15 a.m. batch straight from the kettle.

I had been very explicit: he would have to wait a little, so the jelly didn’t burn his tongue. The difficult calculation was determining the tiny margin in which the jelly was still warm but the pastry had not yet solidified into just another doughnut; it took skill and training. He liked things ever so just this way, but he was absent-minded. So, of course, I had to stress how important it was to start from the side with the hole or there’d be an unwelcome gusher of boiling red dye #6 jelly all over his pants and, frankly, the car was filthy enough as it was. The diabetes thing, of course, put paid to the doughnuts, but by then, I guess, the commuting was over. I had given them up after a week or two; they made my teeth ache.

To be truthful, I had forgotten about him, except at the barbershop or occasionally while looking in a store window. I’m not actually sure when I last saw him before the re-appearance; I know it was long before he died, and his heart wasn’t in it, even then. He was a bad actor and genuinely enjoyed giving a bad performance and wouldn’t dream of ‘breaking’ character. It was a charade with no clues, no other players and no end. He had chosen the role long ago and mostly it worked—for him, that is. When he wasn’t being an asshole, he had perfect manners; a little too perfect, nothing but manners. He never said anything worth listening to anymore. Maybe I had forgotten how to listen too.

There’s that time in life, oh, it feels like forever, but it isn’t, you know, or, perhaps it could be. You forget and think that what people say is what they’re saying. Stress, overwork, loneliness, the kids; I don’t know. Nothing so interesting; just something always there, in front of everything else: brighter, louder, overdue.

Looking back, I can only imagine that he wanted to apologize but didn’t know how. And it wasn’t his style to just show up and ring the bell. He knew there were reasons a person might not open the door, least of which was the dead thing. He might have thought to bring a box of candy, but he knew he’d just eat it on the way.

He was very smart, in his way, and practical. I don’t know exactly how it happened. I’m not the type to go around cleaning out closets or rummaging in the past. Well, that’s what I say. Anyway, somehow the photo turned up. Oh, it looked harmless and I have to admit: it was very clever of him. Everyone thought it was so cute and artsy: a dopey out-of-focus photo of some building downtown with one of those cookie cutter gingerbready kind of olde world peaks and one very silly tree. But no people in the picture; so, what’s it a picture of, someone asks?

Somebody else thinks it must have been taken from a bus, moving. Hmmm. Just like an Impressionist painting, said someone who doesn’t know Impressionist painting. Daubs and dots of colorless colors scattered with a zillion white speckles: jittery sunshine peeking through a clump of blackeyed green bouncing off of dirt red bricks on a grey day, or just rain on the lens? A darkish line runs up the middle, maybe it really is a tree. The left half of the photo looks like a page torn from a spiral notebook and at the bottom, loopy dents from a ballpoint pen that has run out of ink. No message, just marks from the dry tip trying to scratch something into the paper.

I turn it over. Printed on the back it says, Amsterdam, but the letters bleed into a puddle, apparently illegible to everyone but me. (Once he sent a postcard-- unsigned-- from Hong Kong; it took me the longest time to figure out who it was from.) The photo, of course, is of the building. Alive, he had never known that I had ever been there; nor I he, and, after all, there was such a long time between then and then and now. He probably never went inside, but we both had stood in the same spot, looking at the same thing, light years away.

On Chekhov: Gusev

On 'Gusev'

It has been often commented that Chekhov’s stories describe “ordinary people, leading ordinary lives and failing even at that.” This is unquestionably a significant and central aspect of the cosmos that Chekhov explores in his depictions of how men and women struggle with fate and nature, society and themselves—in other words, the world. Most characters, most people, do not have the strength, wisdom and/or sheer luck to win at the game of life and it can be questioned whether Chekhov ever implies that this impossible victory matters as much as the act of trying— what he refers to always as ‘work’.

“Gusev” is a story about two characters in the infirmary of a steamship headed home, to Russia. Both men are deathly ill; otherwise, they appear to be polar opposites. Gusev is a recently discharged orderly from peasant stock whose attitude toward life is evident in his easy acceptance of obedience and service to others. His is an existence of deep feeling and simple, modest judgment. In his delirium he imagines his small village, his parents, brother, young nephew and niece; feverish reverie transports him to the vast and harsh winter landscape of home, helping to dispel the torturous heat in the claustrophobic and crowded sick-room quarters below deck in the iron-clad vessel.

The social standing of Pavel Ivanych appears uncertain at first; illness and emaciation have distorted his features and physical presence beyond ready identification. He tells Gusev that his father was a priest— an ‘honest’ one, which earned him no favors with the high and mighty. Pavel Ivanych is an intellectual—cold, harsh and judgmental. He has journeyed through life as cantankerously as possible, making enemies and arguing at every chance. Pavel Ivanych is going home to Russia to spite his friends who bade him never return; he describes himself as ‘protest personified’.

Pavel Ivanych believes that he sees all, like a hawk hovering high above the earth, and that he understands everything. To him Gusev is a pathetic dupe who, one small step ahead of death, was herded like an animal onto the ship, hidden among a group of healthy soldiers so as to keep the regiment’s doctor’s ledgers in the pink.

It turns out, however, that Pavel Ivanych has done to himself what others did to Gusev: he lied to get onto the ship, pretending to be of a lower class because he could not pay the higher fare required of ‘quality’ passengers. Pavel Ivanych thinks that, because he takes a critical attitude toward his condition, he is not really ill like Gusev and the others in the infirmary.

Pavel Ivanych tells Gusev: “You have only one life to live and it mustn’t be wronged.” This line is a key to looking at these characters from a particular point of view. Without question or surprise, by the end of the story both men, first the intellectual protester and then the obedient peasant, will be dead. “Nature does not distinguish between saint and sinner.” It is given that in a certain sense life turns out wrong; we all die. Dreams fade and realities are often mercilessly capricious and absolute. In this story and in this line, there is a different voice and another outcome, less characteristic of the tone more frequently found in many of Chekhov’s works. It is life itself that must not be wronged.

Pavel Ivanych and Gusev are testaments to a kind of authenticity. Pavel Ivanych has been true to his nature as a solitary and ethical questioner of the status quo. He has not sought advantage but, rather, the opportunity to express the life within him. Gusev has also been true to his nature as a connected and feeling supporter of the status quo (even in delirium he imagines his niece so close, so present, that she could bring him a drink and receive his gift; he worries that his brother will not care for their aging parents properly). That each man has faults only makes them more human; as exemplars of destiny they have done what they could without compromise, if not without contradiction; each has paid the price for being exactly who he is.

The story ends with Gusev’s burial at sea. Stitched up in sailcloth and weighted with iron, his body descends deep into the water. His individual life is released from its earthly wrapping and reclaimed into the cycle of life, devoured dispassionately by a roaming shark and witnessed by a shimmering chorus of silvery fishes as ecstatic as the rainbow sky high above filled with colors for which, truly, there are no names.

3 or Less

Pitch black darkness. I wake up. Vast, warm darkness. Blue tint overhead. Cellphone’s dead. Clock is broken. I simply awaken. No trill binging. No shouting buzzer. No radio rattling. A restful awakening. Eyes close again. Fingers amble closer. Sweet, soft darkness.

Phone rings. (Landline still works.) Stretching into darkness.
“It’s Rob.”
“Hmmmm.”
“Meet me there.” Not a question.
“Emergency Room?”
“Yes.”
“Anything wrong?”
“No.”
“When?”
“Well, one.”
“For lunch?”
“I’ll try….but…”
“I know.”

Open drapes. Winter invades. Nothing in fridge. Breakfast is coffee. Cup is chipped. Yet it functions. Fork tines curled. Everything is damaged.

Patient Lee pleads. “Professor Lee, Speak!” Doctor Lee cares. Nurse Lee inquiring. "Who are they?" One family world? Am I trapped? Am I freed? From what? They’re not related?

Cousins, fathers, sons. Mothers, daughters, aunts. Everyone’s someone.
Desperate, Lee shouts. “Who?”