This feels like a fragment, rather than a complete story. It’s a decent fragment, but it’s a fragment.
The story, such as it is: An army officer, Klimov, comes down with typhus. After suffering through a delirious fever, he regains consciousness and health, only to learn that he has infected his beloved sister, who died during his delirium.
Sorry if I’ve spoiled the ending for you.
There’s not a lot to hold on to in this story. It’s an example, one of many, of Chekhov using his medical background for fictive purposes. By the time of writing, he had been a practicing doctor for several years and was intimately familiar with the ravages of typhus: In 1885 he sat with a woman who clutched his arm as she died of the disease.
One other thing to note is a weird bit of racist musing Klimov does on the train before the fever fully takes hold. He’s talking with an annoying Finn, and he thinks: “Detestable people these Finns and Greeks.” (Finns and Greeks???) Then, to cheer himself up, he tries to think about the French and Italians, who I guess are admirable rather than detestable.
Ha. Who says you can’t get a laugh from a story about typhus?
READ THIS? READ THAT!
An even more grim tale of a dying soldier is “Gusev,” which concerns a young officer who has been discharged and is traveling home by boat in the company of other sick and dying military men.
A Chekhov Circus 