Reading Chekhov

Chekhov hid the secrets of his literary nest as well as those of his personal one; he was closemouthed about his compositional methods and destroyed most of his drafts. But he didn't merely withhold information about his literary practice; the practice itself was a kind of exercise in withholding. In his letter of March 1886 to Grigorovich, Chekhov noted a curious habit he had of doing everything he could not to "waste" on any story "the images and scenes dear to me which-God knows why-I have treasured and kept carefully hidden," and, again, writing to Su-vorin in October 1888, he cited "the images which seem best to me, which I love and jealously guard, lest I spend and spoil them, adding, "All that I now write displeases and bores me, but what sits in my head interests, excites, and moves me."

In the much-anthologized story "The Kiss" (1887) Chekhov gave brilliant form to his sense of the danger of dislodging what sits in one's head from its place of safety. A brigade on the march spends the night in a provincial town, and its nineteen officers are invited for evening tea at the house of the local squire, a retired lieutenant-general named von Rabbek. The central consciousness of the story is Ryabovitch, "a little officer in spectacles, with sloping shoulders, and whiskers like a lynx's," who thinks of himself as "the shyest, most modest, and most undistinguished officer in the whole brigade." At von Rabbek's house Ryabovitch is struck by the social adroitness of the host and hostess and their grown son and daughter, who have invited the officers strictly out of duty, and at a time when it is inconvenient to do so-they are having a house party-but who put on a dazzling performance of hospitality. "Von Rabbek and his family skillfully drew the officers into the discussion, and meanwhile kept a sharp lookout over their glasses and mouths, to see whether all of them were drinking, whether all had enough sugar, why someone was not eating cakes or not drinking brandy. And the longer Ryabovitch watched and listened, the more he was attracted by this insincere but splendidly disciplined family." During a period of dancing, in which Ryabovitch does not participate ("He had never once danced in his whole life, and he had never once in his life put his arm round the waist of a respectable woman"), he follows the von Rabbek son and some officers to a billiard room in another part of the house, and then, feeling himself in the way (he does not play billiards, either), decides to return to the drawing room. But in retracing his steps Ryabovitch makes a wrong turn and finds himself in a small dark room. Suddenly, a young woman rushes toward him, murmurs "At last!" and kisses him. Realizing her mistake-she had come to the room for a lovers' tryst, clearly-she shrieks and runs off. The encounter has a momentous effect on Ryabovitch. It is almost like a conversion experience. "Something strange was happening to him… His neck, round which soft, fragrant arms had so lately been clasped, seemed to him to be anointed with oil; on his left cheek near his moustache where the unknown had kissed him there was a faint chilly tingling sensation as from peppermint drops… He was full of a strange new feeling which grew stronger and stronger… He quite forgot that he was round-shouldered and uninteresting, that he had lynx-like whiskers and an 'undistinguished appearance.' " (That was how his appearance had been described by some ladies whose conversation he had accidentally overheard.) The next morning, the brigade leaves the town, and throughout the day's march Ryabovitch remains under the spell of the kiss, which has acted on his imagination like a powerful drug, releasing delicious fantasies of romantic love. At the end of the day, in the tent after supper, he feels the need to tell his comrades about his adventure. He began describing very minutely the incident of the kiss, and a moment later relapsed into silence… In the course of that moment he had told everything, and it surprised him dreadfully to find how short a time it took him to tell it. He had imagined that he could have been telling the story of the kiss till next morning.

One of the officers, a sleazy womanizer named Lobytko, is moved to respond with a crude story about a sexual encounter in a train. Ryabovitch vows "never to confide again." Twelve years later, Chekhov will write another version of this scene in "The Lady with the Dog." After Gurov returns home from Yalta, he is "tormented by an intense desire to confide his memories to someone," and one evening, as he is leaving a Moscow club, he impulsively says to an official with whom he has been playing cards:

"If only you knew what a fascinating woman I made the acquaintance of in Yalta!"

The official got into his sledge and was driving away, but turned suddenly and shouted: "Dmitri Dmitrich!" "What?

"You were right this evening: the sturgeon was a bit too strong!"