Anton Chekhov (1860 – 1904)

Russian playwright and short story writer, best known for his plays The Seagull, The Cherry Orchard and Three Sisters.

Enemies was written in 1887, and first published in the collection In the Twilight in the same year.

Available to read online here.

This is the fifth of eight stories in the volume Points of View to be given the style classification by Moffett and McElheny of Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View. Their introduction continues: “Thus the story is told from the point of view of both the speaker and the character, the first person and the third person, Sometimes it is very difficult to separate the two persons and their points of view.”

Spoiler alert – if you haven’t read the story yet and want to before you read the summary of it below, stop now!

Enemies

Doctor Kirilov is in a state of shock; five minutes earlier his six year old son, Andrey, died from diphtheria. His wife is kneeling by the boy’s body in silent mourning. But there is a knock at the door; all the servants have been sent away because of the danger of catching the disease, so it is left to Kirilov to answer the door. A pale man named Aboguin pleas for the doctor to come with him as his wife is severely ill, at death’s door it seems, and Kirilov is the only doctor available.

But Kirilov refuses. How can he deal with other problems when his one and only son has just died, and his wife is the only other person in the house? Aboguin begs him – he cannot save Andrey, but he could save his wife. Eventually, after much pressure, Kirilov caves in and accompanies Aboguin on the hour long journey to his house.

But when they arrive, the house is silent; Aboguin thinks this is a good sign at first as no one was panicking about his ill wife. But it quickly becomes apparent that Aboguin has been tricked; his wife was not ill, and just used his absence as a ruse to run off with their regular visitor – and clearly her lover – Papchinsky. Furious at the deception, Aboguin rages against his wife and his situation. But Kirilov is also enraged, at having his own personal hour of distress pointlessly wasted for nothing; and no matter how Aboguin deals with his own situation, Kirilov despises him and everything to do with him for the rest of his life.

A simple tale, but with complex emotions and suffering on both men’s part. Aboguin has no sympathy with Kirilov’s situation but only puts himself first. Similarly, Kirilov has no care about what happened to Aboguin and only thinks of himself. Circumstances and selfishness render them enemies. But is it as straightforward as that? Are they both selfish? Isn’t it reasonable to expect a doctor to come to the aid of a dying woman if he possibly can? And is it reasonable to expect that someone who has lost their only son a mere five minutes earlier needs time to grieve and comfort his wife?

Chekhov’s writing – or at least the translation by Robert N Linscott – is dense and heavy. There is a class distinction between the two men, with a deliberate contrast between their appearance. Kirilov is tall, plain, slovenly dressed, tangled hair, pale grey complexion, and his lips are “unpleasantly sharp, ungracious and severe”. Aboguin on the other hand is solid, fair, robust, exquisitely dressed, noble, leonine, even revealing “a subtle, almost feminine, elegance.” It’s striking that Chekhov makes the point that the Kirilovs are too old ever to have another child: “their right to bear children had passed away, alas! forever to eternity. The doctor is forty-four years old, already grey and looks like an old man; his faded sick wife is thirty-five. Andrey was not merely the only son but the last.”

Far from uniting the two characters in their hours of need, the events of this story divide them, harshly and unequivocally. There’s no right or wrong way to react to grief; and one can never understand the complexity of an individual’s sadness and devastation.

The next story in the anthology is the sixth to be classified by Moffett and McElheny as Biography, or Anonymous Narration – Single Character Point of View, Act of Faith by Irwin Shaw.