Reminiscences of Anton Chekhov Part 6

His funeral comes back to mind like a dream. The cold, grayish Petersburg, a mistake about a telegram, a small gathering of people at the railway station, "Wagon for oysters," in which his remains were brought from Germany, the station authorities who had never heard of Chekhov and saw in his body only a railway cargo.... Then, as a contrast, Moscow, profound sorrow, thousands of bereaved people, tear-stained faces. And at last his grave in the Novodevitchy cemetery, filled with flowers, side by side with the humble grave of the "Cossack's widow, Olga Coocaretnikov."

I remember the service in the cemetery the day after his funeral. It was a still July evening, and the old lime trees over the graves stood motionless and golden in the sun. With a quiet, tender sadness and sighing sounded the women's voices. And in the souls of many, then, was a deep perplexity.

Slowly and in silence the people left the cemetery. I went up to Chekhov's mother and silently kissed her hand. And she said in a low, tired voice:

"Our trial is bitter.... Antosha is dead."

O, the overwhelming depth of these simple, ordinary, very Chekhovian words! The enormous abyss of the loss, the irrevocable nature of the great event, opened behind. No! Consolations would be useless. Can the sorrow of those, whose souls have been so close to the great soul of the dead, ever be a.s.suaged?

But let their unquenchable anguish be stayed by the consciousness that their distress is our common distress. Let it be softened by the thought of the immortality of his great and pure name. Indeed: there will pa.s.s years and centuries, and time will efface the very memory of thousands and thousands of those living now. But the posterity, of whose happiness Chekhov dreamt with such fascinating sadness, will speak his name with grat.i.tude and silent sorrow for his fate.

A. P. CHEKHOV BY I. A. BUNIN

I made Chekhov's acquaintance in Moscow, towards the end of '95. We met then at intervals and I should not think it worth mentioning, if I did not remember some very characteristic phrases.

"Do you write much?" he asked me once.

I answered that I wrote little.

"Bad," he said, almost sternly, in his low, deep voice. "One must work ... without sparing oneself ... all one's life."

And, after a pause, without any visible connection, he added:

"When one has written a story I believe that one ought to strike out both the beginning and the end. That is where we novelists are most inclined to lie. And one must write shortly--as shortly as possible."

Then we spoke of poetry, and he suddenly became excited. "Tell me, do you care for Alexey Tolstoy's poems? To me he is an actor. When he was a boy he put on evening dress and he has never taken it off."

After these stray meetings in which we touched upon some of Chekhov's favorite topics--as that one must work "without sparing oneself" and must write simply and without the shadow of falsehood--we did not meet till the spring of '99. I came to Yalta for a few days, and one evening I met Chekhov on the quay.

"Why don't you come to see me?" were his first words. "Be sure to come to-morrow."

"At what time?" I asked.

"In the morning about eight."

And seeing perhaps that I looked surprised he added:

"We get up early. Don't you?"

"Yes I do too," I said.

"Well then, come when you get up. We will give you coffee. You take coffee?"

"Sometimes."

"You ought to always. It's a wonderful drink. When I am working, I drink nothing but coffee and chicken broth until the evening. Coffee in the morning and chicken broth at midday. If I don't, my work suffers."

I thanked him for asking me, and we crossed the quay in silence and sat down on a bench.

"Do you love the sea?" I asked.

"Yes," he replied. "But it is too lonely."

"That's what I like about it," I replied.

"I wonder," he mused, looking through his spectacles away into the distance and thinking his own thoughts. "It must be nice to be a soldier, or a young undergraduate ... to sit in a crowd and listen to the band...."

And then, as was usual with him, after a pause and without apparent connection, he added:

"It is very difficult to describe the sea. Do you know the description that a school-boy gave in an exercise? 'The sea is vast.' Only that.

Wonderful, I think."

Some people might think him affected in saying this. But Chekhov--affected!

"I grant," said one who knew Chekhov well, "that I have met men as sincere as Chekhov. But any one so simple, and so free from pose and affectation I have never known!"

And that is true. He loved all that was sincere, vital, and gay, so long as it was neither coa.r.s.e nor dull, and could not endure pedants, or book-worms who have got so much into the habit of making phrases that they can talk in no other way. In his writings he scarcely ever spoke of himself or of his views, and this led people to think him a man without principles or sense of duty to his kind. In life, too, he was no egotist, and seldom spoke of his likings and dislikings. But both were very strong and lasting, and simplicity was one of the things he liked best. "The sea is vast." ... To him, with his pa.s.sion for simplicity and his loathing of the strained and affected, that was "wonderful." His words about the officer and the music showed another characteristic of his: his reserve. The transition from the sea to the officer was no doubt inspired by his secret craving for youth and health. The sea is lonely.... And Chekhov loved life and joy. During his last years his desire for happiness, even of the simplest kind, would constantly show itself in his conversation. It would be hinted at, not expressed.

In Moscow, in the year 1895, I saw a middle-aged man (Chekhov was then 35) wearing pince-nez, quietly dressed, rather tall, and light and graceful in his movements. He welcomed me, but so quietly that I, then a boy, took his quietness for coldness.... In Yalta, in the year 1899, I found him already much changed; he had grown thin; his face was sadder; his distinction was as great as ever but it was the distinction of an elderly man, who has gone through much, and been enn.o.bled by his suffering. His voice was gentler.... In other respects he was much as he had been in Moscow; cordial, speaking with animation, but even more simply and shortly, and, while he talked, he went on with his own thoughts. He let me grasp the connections between his thoughts as well as I could, while he looked through his gla.s.ses at the sea, his face slightly raised. Next morning after meeting him on the quay I went to his house. I well remember the bright sunny morning that I spent with Chekhov in his garden. He was very lively, and laughed and read me the only poem, so he said, that he had ever written, "Horses, Hares and Chinamen, a fable for children." (Chekhov wrote it for the children of a friend. See Letters.)

Once walked over a bridge Fat Chinamen, In front of them, with their tails up, Hares ran quickly.

Suddenly the Chinamen shouted: "Stop! Whoa! Ho! Ho!"

The hares raised their tails still higher And hid in the bushes.

The moral of this fable is clear: He who wants to eat hares Every day getting out of bed Must obey his father.

After that visit I went to him more and more frequently. Chekhov's att.i.tude towards me therefore changed. He became more friendly and cordial.... But he was still reserved, yet, as he was reserved not only with me but with those who were most intimate with him, it rose, I believed, not from coldness, but from something much more important.

The charming white stone house, bright in the sun; the little orchard, planted and tended by Chekhov himself who loved all flowers, trees, and animals; his study, with its few pictures, and the large window which looked out onto the valley of the river Utchan-Spo, and the blue triangle of the sea; the hours, days, and even months which I spent there, and my friendship with the man who fascinated me not only by his genius but also by his stern voice and his child-like smile--all this will always remain one of the happiest memories of my life. He was friendly to me and at times almost tender. But the reserve which I have spoken of never disappeared even when we were most intimate. He was reserved about everything.

He was very humorous and loved laughter, but he only laughed his charming infectious laugh when somebody else had made a joke: he himself would say the most amusing things without the slightest smile. He delighted in jokes, in absurd nicknames, and in mystifying people....

Even towards the end when he felt a little better his humor was irrepressible. And with what subtle humor he would make one laugh! He would drop a couple of words and wink his eye above his gla.s.ses.... His letters too, though their form is perfect, are full of delightful humor.

But Chekhov's reserve was shown in a great many other ways which proved the strength of his character. No one ever heard him complain, though no one had more reason to complain. He was one of a large family, which lived in a state of actual want. He had to work for money under conditions which would have extinguished the most fiery inspiration. He lived in a tiny flat, writing at the edge of a table, in the midst of talk and noise with the whole family and often several visitors sitting round him. For many years he was very poor.... Yet he scarcely ever grumbled at his lot. It was not that he asked little of life: on the contrary, he hated what was mean and meager though he was n.o.bly Spartan in the way he lived. For fifteen years he suffered from an exhausting illness which finally killed him, but his readers never knew it. The same could not be said of most writers. Indeed, the manliness with which he bore his sufferings and met his death was admirable. Even at his worst he almost succeeded in hiding his pain.

"You are not feeling well, Antosha?" his mother or sister would say, seeing him sitting all day with his eyes shut.

"I?" he would answer, quietly, opening the eyes which looked so clear and mild without his gla.s.ses. "Oh, it's nothing. I have a little headache."

He loved literature pa.s.sionately, and to talk of writers and to praise Maupa.s.sant, Flaubert, or Tolstoy was a great joy to him. He spoke with particular enthusiasm of those just mentioned and also of Lermontov's "Taman."

"I cannot understand," he would say, "how a mere boy could have written Taman! Ah, if one had written that and a good comedy--then one would be content to die!"

But his talk about literature was very different from the usual shop talked by writers, with its narrowness, and smallness, and petty personal spite. He would only discuss books with people who loved literature above all other arts and were disinterested and pure in their love of it.