Fair-haired friends and red-haired enemies.
A rich uncle, liberal or conservative, depending on the circumstances. His admonitions are not as useful to the hero as his death.
An auntie in Tambov.
A doctor with a concerned expression, giving hope that the situation is critical; will often have a stick with a knob on the end and a bald head. And where there is a doctor, there will be rheumatism caused from righteous labour, migraine, inflammation of the brain, care of wounded duellers and the inevitable advice to take the waters.
An aged servant who worked for the old masters, ready to go anywhere for them, even throw himself into the fire. A great wit.
A dog who can do everything but talk, a parrot and a nightingale.
A dacha outside Moscow and a mortgaged property in the south.
Electricity, in most instances connected for no earthly reason.
A briefcase of Russian leather, Chinese porcelain, an English saddle, a revolver which does not misfire, a medal in a buttonhole, pineapples, champagne, truffles and oysters.
Chance eavesdropping as the cause of great revelations.
An innumerable number of interjections and attempts to use appropriate technical vocabulary.
Subtle hints at rather sticky circumstances.
The frequent absence of an ending.
Seven mortal sins in the beginning and a wedding at the end.
An ending.6
No, the weekly Dragonfly was not quite in the same league as the monthly literary journals, those bastions of high seriousness and good taste read by the high-minded intelligentsia, but it was very popular. When the editor inexplicably stopped accepting his submissions a few months later, Chekhov was forced to find an outlet with the two main
comic journals in Moscow, The Spectator and The Alarm Clock.
His big break had come in October 1882, when Nikolai Leikin, the chief contributor and newly appointed editor of the new 'weekly illustrated journal' Fragments (the word 'oskolki' could also be translated as 'splinters'), took the train down from St Petersburg to come on a talent-scouting mission in Moscow.
Leikin was best known as the leading feuilletonist for The Petersburg Newspaper, one of the new independent dailies that had sprung up as a result of the Great Reforms in the late 1860s. It had an impressive circulation of about 20,000 readers, and Leikin entertained them with light-hearted stories about diverse aspects of merchant life in the capital until his death in 1906.7 He was an extraordinarily prolific writer: in addition to the thousands of articles he churned out over the course of his career, he produced some seventy books of stories and sketches, which – unlike those of his protege – now all sit gathering dust on library shelves. He liked what Chekhov was writing, and published his first piece in Fragments a month later. A couple of the stories Chekhov thought up for Leikin are short enough to be quoted in toto, and convey well the spirit of his typical submissions in the early days. In January 1883, for example, Fragments published 'Thoughts of a Reader of Newspapers and Journals', signed by 'The man without a spleen', which was full of corny puns derived from the names of Russian publications:
Don't read the Ufa Province News: you won't find any information about Ufa province in it.
The Russian press has many sources of light at its disposal. It has the Komarovo Light, The Rainbow, Light and Shade, The Ray, The Little Light, Dawn et caet. So why is it still so dark then?
It has The Observer, The Invalid and Siberia.
The press has Entertainment and Little Toy, but it does not follow that it has much fun . . .
It has The Voice and its own Echo .. . Yes?
Whatever is ephemeral cannot boast about its Century . ..
Rus has little in common with Moscow.
Russian Thought is sent… in a strong envelope.
Then there is Health and The Doctor, but meanwhile, how many graves there are!8
The following month 'The man without a spleen' submitted A Lawyer's Novel (A Statement)', following a model that was popular at the time in the weekly comic journals:
In eighteen hundred and seventy-seven, on the tenth of February, in the city of St Petersburg, Moscow district, 2nd quarter, in the house of the merchant of the second guild Zhivotov, on Ligovsky Street, I, the undersigned, met the daughter of a titular counsellor, Maria Alexeyevna Barabanova, 18 years of age, of the Russian Orthodox faith, literate. Having met the said Miss Barabanova, I experienced feelings of attraction to her. Since on the basis of article 994 of the Legal Code, unlawful cohabitation is punishable not only by repentance in church but also by legal costs, through the provision of the relevant statute (see the case of the merchant Solodovnikov, Appeal department decision, 1881), I asked for her hand and her heart. I married, but did not live long with her. I fell out of love with her. Having signed over all her dowry to my name, I began to frequent inns, eldorados, gardens of delights, and carried on frequenting them for five years. And since, on the basis of statute 54 of vol. 10 of Civil Legal Proceedings, five years of separation without contact provides grounds for divorce, then I have the honour of humbly requesting Your Excellency to petition for divorce from my wife.9
Chekhov, or rather Antosha Chekhonte, soon became a regular, and increasingly popular contributor to Fragments. In addition to the short stories and parodies, Leikin commissioned him to start sending in satirical 'Fragments of Moscow Life', under a new pseudonym to protect his identity. After they had exchanged friendly letters for a while, Leikin then suggested that he visit St Petersburg. In June 1884 Chekhov particularly wanted to be in the capital to promote his first short story collection, Tales of Melpomene (i.e., sell some of the copies he had paid for up front), and attract some critical attention. Coming to Petersburg was his 'most cherished dream', he
