Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories

  “I want to thank you folks for calling,” he said. “Much obliged. That’s one heavy fog. If they’d wandered onto the main road, they could have raised hob out there.”

  “The lady placed the call,” the deputy said. “Frank, she needs a ride into town. She’s leaving home. I don’t know who the injured party is here, but she’s the one leaving.” He turned then to my wife. “You sure about this, are you?” he said to her.

  She nodded. “I’m sure.”

  “Okay,” the deputy said. “That’s settled, anyway. Frank, you listening? I can’t drive her to town. I’ve got another stop to make. So can you help her out and take her into town? She probably wants to go to the bus station or else to the hotel. That’s where they usually go. Is that where you want to go to?” the deputy said to my wife. “Frank needs to know.”

  “He can drop me off at the bus station,” my wife said. “That’s my suitcase on the porch.”

  “What about it, Frank?” the deputy said.

  “I guess I can, sure,” Frank said, taking off his hat and putting it back on again. “I’d be glad to, I guess.

  But I don’t want to interfere in anything.”

  “Not in the least,” my wife said. “I don’t want to be any trouble, but I’m—well, I’m distressed just now.

  Yes, I’m distressed. But it’ll be all right once I’m away from here. Away from this awful place. I’ll just check and make doubly sure I haven’t left anything behind. Anything important,” she added. She hesitated and then she said, “This isn’t as sudden as it looks. It’s been coming for a long, long time.

  We’ve been married for a good many years. Good times and bad, up times and down. We’ve had them all. But it’s time I was on my own. Yes, it’s time. Do you know what I’m saying, gentlemen?”

  Frank took off his hat again and turned it around in his hands as if examining the brim. Then he put it back on his head.

  The deputy said, “These things happen. Lord knows none of us is perfect. We weren’t made perfect. The only angels is to be found in Heaven.” My wife moved toward the house, picking her way through the wet, shaggy grass in her high heels. She opened the front door and went inside. I could see her moving behind the lighted windows, and something came to me then. I might never see her again. That’s what crossed my mind, and it staggered me.

  The rancher, the deputy, and I stood around waiting, not saying anything. The damp fog drifted between us and the lights from their vehicles. I could hear the horses shifting in the trailer. We were all uncomfortable, I think. But I’m speaking only for myself, of course. I don’t know what they felt. Maybe they saw things like this happen every night—saw people’s lives flying apart. The deputy did, maybe. But Frank, the rancher, he kept his eyes lowered. He put his hands in his front pockets and then took them out again. He kicked at something in the grass. I folded my arms and went on standing there, not knowing what was going to happen next. The deputy kept turning off his flashlight and then turning it on again. Every so often he’d reach out and swat the fog with it. One of the horses whinnied from the trailer, and then the other horse whinnied, too.

  “A fellow can’t see anything in this fog,” Frank said.

  I knew he was saying it to make conversation.

  “It’s as bad as I’ve ever seen it,” the deputy said. Then he looked over at me. He didn’t shine the light in my eyes this time, but he said something. He said, “Why’s she leaving you? You hit her or something?

  Give her a smack, did you?”

  “I’ve never hit her,” I said. “Not in all the time we’ve been married. There was reason enough a few times, but I didn’t. She hit me once,” I said.

  “Now, don’t get started,” the deputy said. “I don’t want to hear any crap tonight. Don’t say anything, and there won’t be anything. No rough stuff. Don’t even think it. There isn’t going to be any trouble here tonight, is there?”

  The deputy and Frank were watching me. I could tell Frank was embarrassed. He took out his makings and began to roll a cigarette.

  “No,” I said. “No trouble.”

  My wife came onto the porch and picked up her suitcase. I had the feeling that not only had she taken a last look around but she’d used the opportunity to freshen herself up, put on new lipstick, etc. The deputy held his flashlight for her as she came down the steps. “Right this way, Ma’am,” he said. “Watch your step, now—it’s slippery.”

  “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 c
ase, 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.

  Errand

  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.”