This is one of Chekhov’s kinder portraits of children, and of their occasional protectors. “A Day in the Country” is a sketch of rural poverty, but not one of boundless cruelty and want.
The story, such as it is: An orphan boy, Danilka, gets his hand stuck in a tree (trying to reach in to grab a cuckoo egg in the hollow.) With thunder rumbling across the sky, his sister, Fyokla, runs back to the village to seek help, but no one is willing to come out in the storm save for Terenty, a poor, homeless cobbler. He braves the thunder and lightning, and even manages to calm Fyokla’s fears about the lightning, asking her, “Why would it kill a little thing like you?”
The storm passes and Terenty manages to free Danilka’s hand. The three homeless souls spend the day together, the children asking questions about nature and science, the old cobbler answering kindly and thoughtfully.
Terenty is surely one of the most kind of all Chekhov’s creations, embodying simple goodness in a way that I cannot recall in any other tale. But it is not a simple characterization: Terenty is a drunk. The word “drunken” is used two separate times to describe him in the early paragraphs of the story. And once the orphans are brought back to the village, he heads off to a tavern to drink some more.
The story ends in a barn, where Danilka and Fyokla have bedded down. Terenty finds them, blesses them, and leaves a bit of food for them to eat in the morning. No one sees this act of loving kindness. It’s a touching scene.
Having said all that, this is, nevertheless, not one of Chekhov’s best. For one thing, it’s more than a little maudlin. The children are practically cherubs, asking charming questions in wide-eyed wonder. The boy “greedily drinks in” everything that Terenty tells him; after all, the narrator asks tendentiously, “in spring… who would not want to hear about the golden may-beetles, about the cranes,” etc. etc.
Despite the children’s poverty, the tale unfolds in a sacharine haze: Even the act of grabbing a bird egg is presented as an act of goodness: Danilka was getting it for Fyokla.
It’s also worth noting that Chekhov barely describes the boy and girl, whereas he devotes more than two paragraphs to Terenty’s shabby (even comical) clothing and battered appearance. Presumably Fyolka and Danilka are similarly shabby and likely filthy, given their circumstances, but to mention this would risk alienating the reader. Better that they seem golden in the sunlight after the storm.
Meanwhile, the whole of rural life is idealized: Chekhov notes that Terenty is not the only villager who knows the names of all the wild flowers and animals, and is wise about herbal cures, and a good judge of livestock and can predict the weather. All the villagers have this knowledge. They have learned “not from books, but in the fields, in the wood, on the riverbank.” And so forth.
A final criticism: The story is dull. (It must be said! Sigh. Sorry.) The race to rescue Danilka has some interest, but once the storm is past, there is a Golden Books aspect to the tale. Ah, the merry lives of simple country folk!
Still, Terenty’s touching acts of kindness and generosity are memorable and beautifully rendered.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
Not only is Terenty one of the very few examples of simple, kind man in Chekhov stories, he’s one of the very, very few examples of a “wise” peasant. Well, there is one parallel: Panteley, the kindly peasant who keeps an eye on the little boy Yegorushka in “The Steppe.” In fact, Panteley and Terenty seem to be very much one and the same, and “The Steppe” features a violent electrical storm that is presented very similarly to the one in “A Day in the Country.”
A Chekhov Circus 