Chekhov’s Journey

by Ian Watson

  Mikhail had seen this syndrome oodles of times; here it was again. And Dr Suslova a psychiatrist, too!

  “Maybe his taxi broke down—or skidded!” Sonya registered alarm.

  She was a chunky blonde with sensual lips and nostrils which would have been sensual, too, had nasal copulation been in vogue; perhaps she picked her nose in private. By contrast, her knitted two-piece was severe: a double corset of woollen chain-mail.

  She had left the double doors open. “Osip!” Felix called out. “Can we all have some more tea?”

  An answering loud grunt from somewhere along the passage indicated that the caretaker had heard.

  Sergey recovered his notebook and riffled through it. “How about this, then? On April 21st 1890 Anton Chekhov left Moscow on a journey little short of heroic, dah-di-dah … period photo of the station. Some family and friends accompanied him as far as Yaroslavl. Photo of Levitan in his cocky hat and dandy togs. How about a photo of Levitan’s mistress?”

  “You’d have to show Sophia Kuvshinnikova’s husband too,” said Felix. “Could get complicated, eh?”

  “Okay, forget her. Of these friends, only the eccentric lady astronomer Olga Kundasova carried on as far as Perm. Photo of a steamer on the Volga. Or the Kama.”

  “Carried on?” Mikhail winked at Sonya. “Didn’t she just?—much to Anton’s bewilderment. Oh, didn’t he understand the ladies beautifully in his art? But in life, ah … perhaps he understood them all too well?”

  Dr Suslova made a great fuss of seating herself, on an overstuffed divan. She plumped up and down, raising dust.

  “Actually,” Mikhail went on slyly, “in his opinion Kundasova ate like a horse. Chomp, chomp, chomp: a machine for champing oats …”

  Three

  THE FIRST BOON of the post station was an authentic toilet, located off the hallway. Amazingly there was even a supply of toilet paper; torn sheets of the Siberian Herald were spitted on a rusty hook. Anton used two of these for their destined purpose and folded another one into his pocket for later reference.

  And that was all he took—because stuff just didn’t seem to get nicked along the Road. Not if you were a bona fide traveller. Footpads and tramps and escaping convicts murdered and robbed each other blind without a second thought. They would kill an old peasant woman just to tear her skirt up for puttees to keep their legs warm. But genuine voyagers seemed to be protected by some ingrained instinct, though this could hardly be ascribed to a sense of decency. Conceivably it all harked back to the time of the Mongols. Maybe the yellow Asiatic overlords had decreed vicious tortures for anybody who interfered with a tax route, and a folk memory lingered on. Maybe he could write about this in his next article for Suvorin?

  After relieving his bowels and bladder, Anton hied himself round to the stables, where three horses snuffled in their stalls. But there was no sign of any decent carriage or buggy to hire for the next stage, only one wreck of a cart.

  A body lay snoring in the straw. The ostler’s head was a beetroot, cropped to the scalp because of erysipelas. In vain Anton nudged the man with his boot. Having failed to kick life into the fellow, he returned to the post station to kick up a fuss instead.

  Which he did as to the manner born, blustering and cursing for a full fifteen minutes. In the end he conceded that he might just be prepared to pay a little extra to winkle out some proper transport from wherever it was hidden. Emerging, he discovered that all his baggage had already been dumped in the street outside the door.

  Volodya he found in the inn next to the post station. The old codger was trying to wheedle a drink out of the bloated innkeeper. The innkeeper, disdaining him, was shouting at his serving slut to dig herself out from behind the kitchen stove.

  Cockroaches scuttled everywhere on the dining room walls. Though in other respects this place was a paragon of cleanliness, compared with Great Russian inns. It didn’t stink of sweat, fart, vomit and rancid sunflower oil. Conceivably, too, the army of cockroaches was a hygienic improvement—they fed on bugs.

  What’s more, the innkeeper didn’t belch into Anton’s face; he merely yawned.

  “There ain’t a scrap to eat,” the man protested. “We’re cleaned out. I dunno why you’re bothering me!”

  However, Anton had learned the style. After a few days’ travel in these parts, all your brain seemed capable of was rancour and malice. Promptly he lounged in a chair, hoisted his feet up on the table and began to roll a cigarette.

  “I’m not shifting from here till you serve me something—so you might as well get your skates on!”

  “That last lot cleaned us out, the greedy pigs. Well, they did, an’ all.”

  Anton stared meaningfully at the innkeeper’s swollen belly. Obviously the man was a hog, who kept all the best food for himself.

  “I could manage some tea,” conceded the hog.

  “I’m not drinking brick dust, d’you hear? You can stuff it. How about some hot soup? With some fresh bread? What have you got, eh? Just leave out the corned beef!”

  “Well, I could manage some milk soup—maybe with an egg whipped in it.”

  “You can stuff that, too! Haven’t you got any fresh meat, man? Fish, fowl, I don’t care. It took me all eternity to get here, and don’t think for a moment that I’m going to ask you for a bed with its zoo-full of wild life. I’m riding on. But not until I’ve swallowed something better than milk soup!”

  A cunning sneer appeared on the innkeeper’s face.

  “Would your honour care for duck soup?”

  Anton allowed himself, once again, to be gulled.

  He sustained himself on nips of vodka till the soup arrived, approximately an hour later. The serving girl actually spread a tablecloth and brought the soup bowl without sticking her thumb in it. She also brought bread: a crisp, golden, fluffy dream!

  Alas, the soup was a gruel of mud with raw onions floating in it. He spooned around: only the chopped-up gizzard and unwashed rectum of the duck seemed to be included in the recipe.

  True to form, as soon as he had taken his first foul sip, a driver arrived from the village with news that his honour’s carriage was awaiting him, this very moment. Snatching up some bread to sustain him through the coming fray, Anton hurried outside—and was confronted by a farm cart with a bed of dirty straw, harnessed to two nags.

  He raged. “I’m not riding in that bloody thing! I need a proper carriage with a seat! A buggy will do fine.”

  “It’s all there is, Sir.”

  “Liar! You’re wasting your own time, never mind mine. Go and get a decent vehicle this moment. I know there’s one—that layabout in the stable told me.”

  This couldn’t go on! It was plain as the nose on his face that he would be forced to buy his own rattletrap in Tomsk, at ruinous cost to his finances …

  In the end he agreed to a price which was sheer robbery; and off went the villager, whistling as he led the nags away, no doubt to the knacker, while Anton tramped indoors again to his soup. And of course all the duck grease had congealed by now. A layer of fatty ice lay upon an undrinkable cold pond.

  Staring into this wretched mirror, his thoughts drifting, Anton found himself remembering …

  The Novel… Ah yes, that novel he was supposed to be writing! The Big One. Tales From the Lives of My Friends … A young chap condemned to Siberia for armed rebellion; a police chief who despised his uniform; numerous atheists … a cast of dozens. Would he ever finish it, even as a set of separate stories? The embryo book seemed as far distant as the Moon right now. From this wretched inn he saw it through the wrong end of a mental telescope; the last few weeks had shrunk this magnum opus into insignificance.

  Thrusting the soup aside, he stuffed his mouth with bread and filled his pockets, removing his notebook from one of them. While he waited for the villager to come back he scribbled the truth about Siberian post stations—so that he could mail the piece to New Times from Tomsk and pay off a bit more of his advance from Alexey Sergeyevich Suvorin �
�

  Four

  PRESENTLY OSIP, THE caretaker and general factotum, brought in the tea. His arrival prompted Sonya to leap up and rush to the window, as if this action would automatically bring a taxi into view.

  “I really don’t know what’s keeping the Doctor,” she said, quite superfluously, when nothing occurred.

  Mikhail cleared his throat. “Dear lady, punctuality is a form of hysteria …

  “I mean,” he went on blithely, “it’s hysterical to be exactly on time, ain’t it? Take me for instance: last week I promised to meet this guy Ilya at the People’s Palace. So I turned up on time, just a couple of minutes late. Of course Ilya didn’t turn up so sharpish. I puffed one cigarette then another, and by the time he did show up—and he was only twenty minutes late—I was in such a stew that I just walked straight past the poor sod without a word. You ought to have seen his face! You remind me of him.”

  Sonya realized that she was staring in dumb wonder at this handsome young man with the high forehead and the whispy beard. She flushed with chagrin.

  “What is time, anyway?” rhapsodized Mikhail, his hands spread wide. “What is time to a lump of rock hurtling between the stars?” He smirked. “Don’t panic, I’m just doing my Antosha trick. Wait till I get my pince-nez on! Did you know that he was short-sighted in one eye, and far-sighted in the other one? Goodness, that must account for a lot! Oh, and don’t let’s forget this little scar up here.” He tapped his forehead. “Collected this souvenir when I was a kid, I did. Bashed my noddle on a rock, diving into the Black Sea.”

  Sonya gazed at Mikhail’s flawless brow, trying to perceive what wasn’t there.

  “I do wish you’d stop going on about ‘Antosha’,” complained Sergey. “The Siberian trip marks the transition from the frivolous young hack, Antosha, to the mature artist Anton. The trip was a rite of passage.”

  “So that’s what it was?” And Mikhail stage-whispered lugubriously across the room to Sonya: “But I am frivolous—that’s the trouble, from a dramatic point of view. I ain’t no Meyerhold, see? Just the spit’n’image of old Anton Pavlovich.”

  “But you’ll do, so long as your talent can be augmented?” Sonya nodded. “I shouldn’t worry about it. Dr Kirilenko has augmented talents which people didn’t even know they possessed. He hypnotised a policeman to believe he was Tchaikovsky—and now the man has entered the Conservatoire. Honest! Dr Kirilenko’s method is a wonderful means of showing how every human being has such … such capacities.”

  Mikhail giggled; and Sonya hoped that her eyes hadn’t shone—that would be too much.

  “It isn’t a matter of improving his acting talents per se,” Felix said. “That isn’t the idea, Dr Suslova. It’s more a question of—”

  “Of becoming Chekhov, to put it in a nutshell.” Mikhail grinned at Sonya. “Ably assisted in this brave enterprise, I dearly hope, by you, my sweet little melon.”

  “What on earth do you mean, ‘melon’?” she cried indignantly.

  “Never fear! Just one of old Anton’s jocular endearments. Addressed to lady friends who yearned for him in vain … He was a bit under-sexed, you see, so he preferred badinage to libido. Not that he didn’t spend one well-documented night in the arms of Aphrodite! And he managed to fuck Olga Knipper when he finally married her. She had a miscarriage, so that proves it. But he wasn’t exactly one of your hot lovers.”

  “My hot lovers? Really!”

  “Infinite apologies! I guess I’m still a bit coarse to be a proper ascetic Anton, ain’t I?”

  “I don’t know about ascetic!” said Felix. “He liked a booze-up now and then. And caviare and soft carpets.” The Director rubbed his hands appreciatively.

  “Hardly surprising,” said Mikhail, “given all his ailments.”

  “Ah, but he knew what caused his ill health.” Sergey wagged his tea about and spilled some. “Youthful poverty, and the fight for survival! But the Siberian journey rejuvenated him. Fresh air! And more important, a clear social goal.”

  “What a load of bunk.” Mikhail winked at Sonya. “Let me tell you, my luscious cantaloupe, as far as politics was concerned I might as well have been living on Mars. Didn’t I once define Socialism as a nervous disorder? Symptom: over-excitability? Though maybe it was guilt that sent me on my trip? Psychiatry knows all about guilt, eh?”

  Sonya looked embarrassed, so Felix came to her aid.

  “It’s true enough that the critics were sniping at him for not seeming committed enough. All those ‘Toads of the Inquisition’!”

  Sergey glanced at the Director, meaningfully. ‘Et tu, Felix?’ his expression seemed to say.

  Mikhail sniggered. “Actually, I’d say I was heading for a nervous breakdown back in ’89. My brother Mikhail, snuffed it. Critics slamming me. Ivanov, a flop. My piles were right buggers. I was spitting blood.”

  Sonya hesitated. “So you prescribed a change of life for yourself?”

  “Equally, I fancied myself as the Great Russian Novelist, didn’t I? Sad, really. Me, the ultimate cameo artist. Hadn’t the space in my head for a novel, had I? But off I went to Siberia searching for space. Not for literary copy, mark you. For infinity.”

  Felix nodded happily. “Yes: space. That’s the ticket.”

  “And by experiencing space first hand, I purged myself of this fatuous ambition. How’s that for a diagnosis, Doctor Suslova?”

  Sonya shook her head non-committally.

  “It was really daft of me to take on the infinite in Siberia. It just ain’t possible to know the whole caboodle. Only idiots and humbugs tell you otherwise. Life’s too foggy. Like my plays.”

  Felix clapped ironically. “Vintage stuff, Mike.”

  “Oh, come on,” snapped Sergey. “You adopted a modern scientific approach in your plays. You believed in evidence. Life was your laboratory. So you wrote scientific drama and scientific fiction. Damn it, I mean he did! Chekhov did.” Sergey sounded confused—uncertain as to whether he was addressing Mikhail Petrov or Anton Chekhov.

  “My dear chap, you make me sound like Jules Verne. But I’ll grant you one thing: I was a master of indeterminacy—if that’s what you mean by modern science.”

  “Not by modern Soviet science! Nowadays we’re much closer to knowing everything. It’s only a question of time.”

  “Only fools and humbugs, I repeat!”

  Fortunately they all heard the growl of a car labouring uphill; its wheels spun on the ice, but on it came. Once more, Sonya rushed to the window.

  Victor Kirilenko was a burly gentle giant, with a puckish smile. His massive head was adorned with a bush of black curls, but his nose was thin and insignificant, with the result that his dark close deep-set eyes seemed to be burrowing together—to fuse perhaps into one cyclopean eye eventually. Under his charcoal suit he sported the biceps and chest of a muscle-builder; he looked as if he could hold chairs at arm’s length for half an hour.

  Osip had trailed into the room in Dr Kirilenko’s wake, still carrying the Doctor’s doffed overcoat with gloves stuffed in the pockets, as though to imply that this fellow was uncultured enough—compared with artists—to be keeping his coat on indoors. Osip peered down at Kirilenko’s patent leather shoes for any trace of melting slush, then sniffed and wandered off.

  “Honoured! It’s very kind of you,” Felix murmured. Gripping Kirilenko’s hand deeply between thumb and forefinger, he thought to minimise the chance of having his own hand crushed. However, the handshake was soft and Kirilenko glanced down at Felix’s deep grip in amusement.

  “We are none of us what we seem, Felix Moseivich!” Only then did he relinquish Felix’s hand. “In fact, we’re all more than we seem. Much, much more! If that wretched taxi driver could have thought he was a great explorer, he’d have penetrated the mysteries of the route in a flash!” His eyes twinkled. “But I couldn’t really risk hypnotising him, could I? Suppose a policeman stopped us and asked my driver his name, and he replied, ‘Alexander Humboldt, at your service’! De
ar me!”

  “So there are perils involved in your theory of ‘super-knowledge’, eh?”

  “No, no: ‘Superability’ is the proper term. Any ‘knowledge’ has to come from the person in the trance. There’s no point in persuading somebody that they’re Leonardo or Levitan if they don’t know a scrap about them. Whereas you,” and Kirilenko fixed unerringly on Mikhail, “you know a good deal about Chekhov, eh?”

  The actor toyed with his moustache. “That’s as maybe … When you come down to brass tacks, we really haven’t the foggiest about old Anton.”

  “In which case, it’ll be up to you to select the true interpretation. And it’ll be the true one because it’ll be based upon your unconscious perceptions—those are a whole lot keener than your conscious faculties. Some people still find it hard to credit, but a trance isn’t an inferior mental state. Not a bit of it! The encephalograph proves the contrary. A trance is actually a far more active mental state than ordinary waking life. So it’s your ‘super-perception’ which we’ll bring to the surface—recreating Chekhov in the process.”

  . “Then I can polish off a decent script.” Sergey stood up and shook hands. “I’m Gorodsky, by the way. It was I who spotted your stimulating piece in Knowledge is Power. So I drew it to the attention of Felix Moseivich. Of course, I’m fully aware of your line of work: what the popular journalists like to call ‘Artificial Reincarnation’.” A superior smile played across Sergey’s lips. “You seem to have taken it a step further than most.”

  Kirilenko was aware of a certain edge in the man’s voice. A writer wouldn’t normally expect to take dictation from an actor—but in this instance a writer had taken steps to ensure this very thing! So was Mr Sergey Gorodsky entirely confident of his own creative ability? Or had he cleverly found the perfect pretext for exempting him from responsibility?