Here we have yet another story of a traveler stranded in rural Russia and needing to rely upon the rough local people for a ride or a meal or a place to stay. In this case, the visitor is a surveyor who needs a conveyance from a village railroad stop to an estate he is to survey some 30 miles away. There’s no one to provide a lift but a “sturdy, sullen-looking pock-marked peasant” named Klim.
Klim has a modest little cart that the surveyor sneers at, and a skinny mare with splayed legs and ragged ears. Chekhov, observing the cart and driver through the surveyor’s eyes, marvels at “the capacity of Russian drivers for combining a slow tortoise-like pace with a jolting that turns the soul inside out.”
As evening lengthens and the cart rumbles into a forest, the surveyor grows fearful that Klim may be setting him up: Is Klim going to rob him in the lonely, dark woods?
The surveyor begins talking tough, wondering if there are any bad guys in the area. It would be great if there were, he says, because he likes a little fight now and again, and besides, he’s armed to the teeth, with enough revolvers to handle a dozen thieves.
As they plunge deeper and deeper into the forest, the surveyor boasts ever more desperately, unaware that his big talk is frightening Klim. At last, Klim becomes so frightened that he jumps off the cart and runs away in the dark, convinced that the surveyor means to harm him.
The surveyor, stranded in the cold, must wait for hours until Klim slinks back to resume the journey.
As with so many other Chekhov stories (for instance, “Difficult People,”) “Overdoing It” echoes modern American life disturbingly well. In so many stories, there is an abiding distrust between country and city folk, rich and poor, educated and illiterate. The threat of violence is ever present, and as in modern America, there is a tendency to imagine that someone is always on the verge of pulling out a gun and shooting you.
“Overdoing It” is mainly meant to be a lark, one of Chekhov’s early entertainments, and it’s well constructed and largely believable, but the parallels to modern societal breakdowns make it not a terribly enjoyable read today, in 21st Century America.
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“Overdoing It” echoes any number of other Chekhov stories involving travelers and bad (or at least bad-seeming) people they meet on the road. But in this story at least, the menace of strangers turns out to be imaginary. In others, like “A Bad Business” or “The Horse-Stealers,” or the atrociously titled “An Adventure,” bad strangers really do turn out to be bad–they are robbers and thieves and murderers. Strangers are no one to be messed with.
And in “A Troublesome Visitor,” even an initially well-behaved stranger can turn menacing. This story is in some ways the obverse of “Overdoing It,” in which fright engenders more fright. In “A Troublesome Visitor,” bravery and empathy seems to engender bullying and threats.
A Chekhov Circus 