Where I'm Calling From (45 page)

“I’m ready to go,” she said.

“Right,” Frank said. “Well, just to make sure we got this all straight now.” He took off his hat once more and held it. “I’ll carry you into town and I’ll drop you off at the bus station. But, you understand, I don’t want to be in the middle of something. You know what I mean.” He looked at my wife, and then he looked at me.

“That’s right,” the deputy said. “You said a mouthful. Statistics show that your domestic dispute is, time and again, potentially the most dangerous situation a person, especially a law-enforcement officer, can get himself involved in. But I think this situation is going to be the shining exception. Right, folks?”

My wife looked at me and said, “I don’t think I’ll kiss you. No, I won’t kiss you good-bye. I’ll just say so long. Take care of yourself.”

“That’s right,” the deputy said. “Kissing—who knows what that’ll lead to, right?” He laughed.

I had the feeling they were all waiting for me to say something. But for the first time in my life I felt at a loss for words. Then I took heart and said to my wife, “The last time you wore that hat, you wore a veil with it and I held your arm. You were in mourning for your mother. And you wore a dark dress, not the dress you’re wearing tonight. But those are the same high heels, I remember. Don’t leave me like this,” I said. “I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“I have to,” she said. “It’s all in the letter—everything’s spelled out in the letter. The rest is in the area of—I don’t know. Mystery or speculation, I guess. In any case, there’s nothing in the letter you don’t already know.” Then she turned to Frank and said, “Let’s go, Frank. I can call you Frank, can’t I?”

“Call him anything you want,” the deputy said, “long as you call him in time for supper.” He laughed again—a big, hearty laugh.

“Right,” Frank said. “Sure you can. Well, okay. Let’s go, then.” He took the suitcase from my wife and went over to his pickup and put the suitcase into the cab. Then he stood by the door on the passenger’s side, holding it open.

“I’ll write after I’m settled,” my wife said. “I think I will, anyway. But first things first. We’ll have to see.”

“Now you’re talking,” the deputy said. “Keep all lines of communication open. Good luck, pardee,” the deputy said to me. Then he went over to his car and got in.

The pickup made a wide, slow turn with the trailer across the lawn. One of the horses whinnied. The last image I have of my wife was when a match flared in the cab of the pickup, and I saw her lean over with a cigarette to accept the light the rancher was offering. Her hands were cupped around the hand that held the match. The deputy waited until the pickup and trailer had gone past him and then he swung his car around, slipping in the wet grass until he found purchase on the driveway, throwing gravel from under his tires. As he headed for the road, he tooted his horn. Tooted. Historians should use more words like “tooted” or “beeped” or “blasted”—especially at serious moments such as after a massacre or when an awful occurrence has cast a pall on the future of an entire nation. That’s when a word like “tooted” is necessary, is gold in a brass age.

I’d like to say it was at this moment, as I stood in the fog watching her drive off, that I remembered a black-and-white photograph of my wife holding her wedding bouquet. She was eighteen years old—a mere girl, her mother had shouted at me only a month before the wedding. A few minutes before the photo, she’d got married. She’s smiling. She’s just finished, or is just about to begin, laughing. In either case, her mouth is open in amazed happiness as she looks into the camera. She is three months pregnant, though the camera doesn’t show that, of course. But what if she is pregnant? So what? Wasn’t everybody pregnant in those days? She’s happy, in any case. I was happy, too—I know I was. We were both happy.

I’m not in that particular picture, but I was close—only a few steps away, as I remember, shaking hands with someone offering me good wishes. My wife knew Latin and German and chemistry and physics and history and Shakespeare and all those other things they teach you in private school. She knew how to properly hold a teacup. She also knew how to cook and to make love. She was a prize.

But I found this photograph, along with several others, a few days after the horse business, when I was going through my wife’s belongings, trying to see what I could throw out and what I should keep. I was packing to move, and I looked at the photograph for a minute and then I threw it away. I was ruthless. I told myself I didn’t care. Why should I care? If I know anything—and I do—if I know the slightest thing about human nature, I know she won’t be able to live without me. She’ll come back to me. And soon. Let it be soon.

No, I don’t know anything about anything, and I never did. She’s gone for good. She is. I can feel it.

Gone and never coming back. Period. Not ever. I won’t see her again, unless we run into each other on the street somewhere.

There’s still the question of the handwriting. That’s a bewilderment. But the handwriting business isn’t the important thing, of course. How could it be after the consequences of the letter? Not the letter itself but the things I can’t forget that were in the 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.

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 liked Chekhov’s short stories. Furthermore, and quite simply, he loved the man. He told Gorky, “What a beautiful, magnificent man: modest and quiet, like a girl. He even walks like a girl. He’s simply wonderful.” And Tolstoy wrote in his journal (everyone kept a journal or a diary in those days), “I am glad I love… Chekhov.”

Tolstoy removed his woollen scarf and bearskin coat, then lowered himself into a chair next to Chekhov’s bed. Never mind that Chekhov was taking medication and not permitted to talk, much less carry on a conversation. He had to listen, amazedly, as the Count began to discourse on his theories of the immortality of the soul. Concerning that visit, Chekhov later wrote, “Tolstoy assumes that all of us (humans and animals alike) will live on in a principle (such as reason or love) the essence and goals of which are a mystery to us…. I have no use for that kind of immortality. I don’t understand it, and Lev Nikolayevich was astonished I didn’t.”

Nevertheless, Chekhov was impressed with the solicitude shown by Tolstoy’s visit. But, unlike Tolstoy, Chekhov didn’t believe in an afterlife and never had. He didn’t believe in anything that couldn’t be apprehended by one or more of his five senses. And as far as his outlook on life and writing went, he once told someone that he lacked “a political, religious, and philosophical world view. I change it every month, so I’ll have to limit myself to the description of how my heroes love, marry, give birth, die, and how they speak.”

Earlier, before his t.b. was diagnosed, Chekhov had remarked, “When a peasant has consumption, he says, There’s nothing I can do. I’ll go off in the spring with the melting of the snows.’” (Chekhov himself died in the summer, during a heat wave.) But once Chekhov’s own tuberculosis was discovered he continually tried to minimize the seriousness of his condition. To all appearances, it was as if he felt, right up to the end, that he might be able to throw off the disease as he would a lingering catarrh. Well into his final days, he spoke with seeming conviction of the possibility of an improvement. In fact, in a letter written shortly before his end, he went so far as to tell his sister that he was “getting fat” and felt much better now that he was in Badenweiler.

Badenweiler is a spa and resort city in the western area of the Black Forest, not far from Basel. The Vosges are visible from nearly anywhere in the city, and in those days the air was pure and invigorating. Russians had been going there for years to soak in the hot mineral baths and promenade on the boulevards. In June, 1904, Chekhov went there to die.

Earlier that month, he’d made a difficult journey by train from Moscow to Berlin. He traveled with his wife, the actress Olga Knipper, a woman he’d met in 1898 during rehearsals for “The Seagull.” Her contemporaries describe her as an excellent actress. She was talented, pretty, and almost ten years younger than the playwright. Chekhov had been immediately attracted to her, but was slow to act on his feelings. As always, he preferred a flirtation to marriage. Finally, after a three-year courtship involving many separations, letters, and the inevitable misunderstandings, they were at last married, in a private ceremony in Moscow, on May 25, 1901. Chekhov was enormously happy. He called Olga his “pony,” and sometimes “dog” or “puppy.” He was also fond of addressing her as “little turkey” or simply as “my joy.”

In Berlin, Chekhov consulted with a renowned specialist in pulmonary disorders, a Dr. Karl Ewald. But, according to an eyewitness, after the doctor examined Chekhov he threw up his hands and left the room without a word. Chekhov was too far gone for help: this Dr Ewald was furious with himself for not being able to work miracles, and with Chekhov for being so ill.

A Russian journalist happened to visit the Chekhovs at their hotel and sent back this dispatch to his editor: “Chekhov’s days are numbered. He seems mortally ill, is terribly thin, coughs all the time, gasps for breath at the slightest movement, and is running a high temperature.” This same journalist saw the Chekhovs off at Potsdam Station when they boarded their train for Badenweiler. According to his account, “Chekhov had trouble making his way up the small staircase at the station. He had to sit down for several minutes to catch his breath.” In fact, it was painful for Chekhov to move: his legs ached continually and his insides hurt. The disease had attacked his intestines and spinal cord. At this point he had less than a month to live. When Chekhov spoke of his condition now, it was, according to Olga, “with an almost reckless indifference.”

Dr. Schwohrer was one of the many Badenweiler physicians who earned a good living by treating the well-to-do who came to the spa seeking relief from various maladies. Some of his patients were ill and infirm, others simply old and hypochondriacal. But Chekhov’s was a special case: he was clearly beyond help and in his last days. He was also very famous. Even Dr. Schwohrer knew his name: he’d read some of Chekhov’s stories in a German magazine. When he examined the writer early in June, he voiced his appreciation of Chekhov’s art but kept his medical opinions to himself. Instead, he prescribed a diet of cocoa, oatmeal drenched in butter, and strawberry tea. This last was supposed to help Chekhov sleep at night. On June 13, less than three weeks before he died, Chekhov wrote a letter to his mother in which he told her his health was on the mend. In it he said, “It’s likely that I’ll be completely cured in a week.”

Who knows why he said this? What could he have been thinking? He was a doctor himself, and he knew better. He was dying, it was as simple and as unavoidable as that. Nevertheless, he sat out on the balcony of his hotel room and read railway timetables. He asked for information on sailings of boats bound for Odessa from Marseilles. But he knew. At this stage he had to have known. Yet in one of the last letters he ever wrote he told his sister he was growing stronger by the day.

He no longer had any appetite for literary work, and hadn’t for a long time. In fact, he had very nearly failed to complete The Cherry Orchard the year before. Writing that play was the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life. Toward the end, he was able to manage only six or seven lines a day. “I’ve started losing heart,” he wrote Olga. “I feel I’m finished as a writer, and every sentence strikes me as worthless and of no use whatever.” But he didn’t stop. He finished his play in October, 1903. It was the last thing he ever wrote, except for letters and a few entries in his notebook.

A little after midnight on July 2, 1904, Olga sent someone to fetch Dr. Schwohrer. It was an emergency: Chekhov was delirious. Two young Russians on holiday happened to have the adjacent room, and Olga hurried next door to explain what was happening. One of the youths was in his bed asleep, but the other was still awake, smoking and reading. He left the hotel at a run to find Dr. Schwohrer. “I can still hear the sound of the gravel under his shoes in the silence of that stifling July night,” Olga wrote later on in her memoirs. Chekhov was hallucinating, talking about sailors, and there were snatches of something about the Japanese. “You don’t put ice on an empty stomach,” he said when she tried to place an ice pack on his chest.

Dr. Schwohrer arrived and unpacked his bag, all the while keeping his gaze fastened on Chekhov, who lay gasping in the bed. The sick man’s pupils were dilated and his temples glistened with sweat. Dr. Schwohrer’s face didn’t register anything. He was not an emotional man, but he knew Chekhov’s end was near. Still, he was a doctor, sworn to do his utmost, and Chekhov held on to life, however tenuously. Dr. Schwohrer prepared a hypodermic and administered an injection of camphor, something that was supposed to speed up the heart. But the injection didn’t help— nothing, of course, could have helped.

Nevertheless, the doctor made known to Olga his intention of sending for oxygen. Suddenly, Chekhov roused himself, became lucid, and said quietly, “What’s the use? Before it arrives I’ll be a corpse.”

Dr. Schwohrer pulled on his big moustache and stared at Chekhov. The writer’-s cheeks were sunken and gray, his complexion waxen; his breath was raspy. Dr. Schwohrer knew the time could be reckoned in minutes. Without a word, without conferring with Olga, he went over to an alcove where there was a telephone on the wall. He read the instructions for using the device. If he activated it by holding his finger on a button and turning a handle on the side of the phone, he could reach the lower regions of the hotel—the kitchen. He picked up the receiver, held it to his ear, and did as the instructions told him. When someone finally answered, Dr. Schwohrer ordered a bottle of the hotel’s best champagne. “How many glasses?” he was asked. “Three glasses!” the doctor shouted into the mouthpiece. “And hurry, do you hear?” It was one of those rare moments of inspiration that can easily enough be overlooked later on, because the action is so entirely appropriate it seems inevitable.

The champagne was brought to the door by a tired-looking young man whose blond hair was standing up. The trousers of his uniform were wrinkled, the creases gone, and in his haste he’d missed a loop while buttoning his jacket. His appearance was that of someone who’d been resting (slumped in a chair, say, dozing a little), when off in the distance the phone had clamored in the early-morning hours—great God in Heaven!—and the next thing he knew he was being shaken awake by a superior and told to deliver a bottle of Moet to Room 211. “And hurry, do you hear?”

The young man entered the room carrying a silver ice bucket with the champagne in it and a silver tray with three cut-crystal glasses. He found a place on the table for the bucket and glasses, all the while craning his neck, trying to see into the other room, where someone panted ferociously for breath. It was a dreadful, harrowing sound, and the young man lowered his chin into his collar and turned away as the ratchety breathing worsened.

Forgetting himself, he stared out the open window toward the darkened city. Then this big imposing man with a thick moustache pressed some coins into his hand—a large tip, by the feel of it—and suddenly the young man saw the door open. He took some steps and found himself on the landing, whfere he opened his hand and looked at the coins in amazement.

Methodically, the way he did everything, the doctor went about the business of working the cork out of the bottle. He did it in such a way as to minimize, as much as possible, the festive explosion. He poured three glasses and, out of habit, pushed the cork back into the neck of the bottle. He then took the glasses of champagne over to the bed. Olga momentarily released her grip on Chekhov’s hand—a hand, she said later, that burned her fingers. She arranged another pillow behind his head. Then she put the cool glass of champagne against Chekhov’s palm and made sure his fingers closed around the stem. They exchanged looks—Chekhov, Olga, Dr. Schwohrer.