Chekhov. So many things I could say. But he’s on my mind lately because there’s just so much noise. I know you know what I mean. And of all things that might be said of Chekhov is this: he’s never noise. It’s not only that he never wastes a sentence saying nothing. Though this is true. Find me a sentence he ever wrote that doesn’t add something to whatever story he’s telling. But it’s also this: His sentences cut through the noise, even, at times, or for me lately anyway—silence the noise. An example. A story called “The Doctor.” I believe it’s an early story and it’s by no means his best work. And yet reading it the other night was desperately needed descent into silence. A doctor is summoned to a house he knows well. Here’s part of the opening paragraph:
It was still in the drawing room, so still that a house-fly that had flown in from outside could be distinctly heard brushing against the ceiling. Olga Ivanova, the lady of the villa, was standing by the window, looking out at the flower-beds and thinking. Dr. Tsvyetkov, who was her doctor as well as an old friend, and had been sent for to treat her son Misha, was sitting in an easy chair and swinging his hat, which he held in both hands, and he too was thinking…
No need to tell you what happens, and maybe you can already guess. As I say, this isn’t Chekhov’s finest work. It’s not “My Life” or “The Bishop” or “Man in a Case” or Uncle Vanya. Just a brief sliver of a story, the sort he wrote early in his career for newspapers. Funny thing about Chekhov, his passion was doctoring; he wrote fiction, at least in the beginning, for the cash. My only point here, if I have a point at all, is to say the other night I fell into a silence. I’d been craving it for days. The kind of silence where you only hear the sound of a trapped fly. You know the sound of a trapped fly. That tiny intermittent flicking. A grief-struck mother thinks. Her friend, a doctor without any answers, swings his hat.
Peter Orner is a novelist, story writer, and essayist—as well as chair of the English and Creative Writing department at Dartmouth. His most recent book, Still No Word from You, was a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. He is a volunteer with the Norwich Fire Department.