When you write 30 or 40 stories in a year, or even more, and most of them are meant to be entertainments for the popular press, you end up with a lot of trifles–a whole lot of trifles.
And, saying it that way, I suddenly realize the artist that Chekhov most resembles: The Beatles!
Now, I am not one of those Beatles people, but I’ll grant their greatness. So much of their early work was sacharine pop music, or pale imitations of 1950s American rock and R&B, and their best stuff in those early days was still kinda piffle. I don’t know how you listen to their early work and project forward to the really great stuff from the second half of the 1960s.
So too with Chekhov. The vast majority of his work in 1882 through 1886 was easy entertainment, written to amuse and, as importantly, written for money. His letters from those years were as likely to mention his payment rate as literature. The best stories from those early years are mainly notable for tight construction, clever endings, imaginative characters and settings–but not so much for psychological insight or nuance. There were exceptions, but that seems like a fair generalization.
This isn’t one of the exceptions. It’s a light piece, meant only to amuse. And I’m sure it did amuse, back in the day anyway. For modern readers, it’s kind of the literary equivalent of a dad joke.
Anyway: In “In the Dark,” assistant procurator Gagin is roused from sleep by a sound in the house. His wife is alarmed. What could it be? A burglar? Or is their servant, Pelagea, merely entertaining a man in her room downstairs? Anxious and irritated, Gagin goes to investigate, and finds nothing amiss.
The tale closes with a nice little twist–as so many of these early entertainments do.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
There are dozens of similar Chekhov entertainments from his early writing, and nearly as many stories featuring harried husbands. But a very similar tale is “Nerves”–featuring another husband crashing around in the dark. “Nerves” doesn’t have quite as crisp a twist ending, but it features a hilarious German servant.
A Chekhov Circus 