Where I'm Calling From

letter. No, the letter is not paramount at all—there’s far more to this than somebody’s handwriting. The “far more” has to do with subtle things. It could be said, for instance, that to take a wife is to take a history. And if that’s so, then I understand that I’m outside history now—like horses and fog. Or you could say that my history has left me. Or that I’m having to go on without history. Or that history will now have to do without me—unless my wife writes more letters, or tells a friend who keeps a diary, say. Then, years later, someone can look back on this time, interpret it according to the record, its scraps and tirades, its silences and innuendos. That’s when it dawns on me that autobiography is the poor man’s history. And that I am saying good-bye to history. Good-bye, my darling.

Errand

    Chekhov. On the evening of March 22, 1897, he went to dinner in Moscow with his friend and confidant Alexei Suvorin. This Suvorin was a very rich newspaper and book publisher, a reactionary, a self-made man whose father was a private at the battle of Borodino. Like Chekhov, he was the grandson of a serf.
    They had that in common: each had peasant’s blood in his veins. Otherwise, politically and temperamentally, they were miles apart. Nevertheless, Suvorin was one of Chekhov’s few intimates, and Chekhov enjoyed his company.
    Naturally, they went to the best restaurant in the city, a former town house called the Hermitage—a place where it could take hours, half the night even, to get through a ten-course meal that would, of course, include several wines, liqueurs, and coffee. Chekhov was impeccably dressed, as always—a dark suit and waistcoat, his usual pince-nez. He looked that night very much as he looks in the photographs taken of him during this period. He was relaxed, jovial. He shook hands with the maitre d’, and with a glance took in the large dining room. It was brilliantly illuminated by ornate chandeliers, the tables occupied by elegantly dressed men and women. Waiters came and went ceaselessly. He had just been seated across the table from Suvorin when suddenly, without warning, blood began gushing from his mouth. Suvorin and two waiters helped him to the gentlemen’s room and tried to stanch the flow of blood with ice packs.
    Suvorin saw him back to his own hotel and had a bed prepared for Chekhov in one of the rooms of the suite. Later, after another hemorrhage, Chekhov allowed himself to be moved to a clinic that specialized in the treatment of tuberculosis and related respiratory infections. When Suvorin visited him there, Chekhov apologized for the “scandal” at the restaurant three nights earlier but continued to insist there was nothing seriously wrong. “He laughed and jested as usual,” Suvorin noted in his diary, “while spitting blood into a large vessel.”
    Maria Chekhov, his younger sister, visited Chekhov in the clinic during the last days of March. The weather was miserable; a sleet storm was in progress, and frozen heaps of snow lay everywhere. It was hard for her to wave down a carriage to take her to the hospital. By the time she arrived she was filled with dread and anxiety.
    “Anton Pavlovich lay on his back,” Maria wrote in her Memoirs. “He was not allowed to speak. After greeting him, I went over to the table to hide my emotions.” There, among bottles of champagne, jars of caviar, bouquets of flowers from well-wishers, she saw something that terrified her: a freehand drawing, obviously done by a specialist in these matters, of Chekhov’s lungs. It was the kind of sketch a doctor often makes in order to show his patient what he thinks is taking place. The lungs were outlined in blue, but the upper parts were filled in with red. “I realized they were diseased,” Maria wrote.
    Leo Tolstoy was another visitor. The hospital staff were awed to find themselves in the presence of the country’s greatest writer. The most famous man in Russia? Of course they had to let him in to see Chekhov, even though “nonessential” visitors were forbidden. With much obsequiousness on the part of the nurses and resident doctors, the bearded, fierce-looking old man was shown into Chekhov’s room.
    Despite his low opinion of Chekhov’s abilities as a playwright (Tolstoy felt the plays were static and lacking in any moral vision. “Where do your characters take you?” he once demanded of Chekhov.
    “From the sofa to the junk room and back”), Tolstoy