Here we have another slightly fractured morality tale, somewhat akin to “The Bet” or “A Story Without a Title.” Like “The Bet,” it concerns questions of crime, punishment, and mercy.
It is called “The Head Gardener’s Story” because the gardener tells it, not because it is about a gardener. It’s framed as a legend from Sweden.
In a nutshell, the story is about a doctor so good and kind that he is essentially seen as a living saint in his town. Indeed, so beloved is he that when a group of robbers hold him up, when they realize who he is they doff their caps and offer him something to eat.
But one day, the doctor is, shockingly, murdered. All the evidence clearly indicates that it was the act of a vagrant, but the townspeople can’t believe it was really murder – how could anyone kill so good a man as the doctor?
The vagrant stands trial and the trial clearly establishes his guilt. But the judges let him go free, because it is simply not possible to believe that anyone could possibly murder the doctor.
It’s a pleasant, maybe not entirely compelling, argument for the possibility (if not the fact) of man’s essential goodness.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
This is one of those Chekhov stories that doesn’t really fit the Chekhov bill. The story it most resembles, like I said above, is “The Bet,” but I really don’t think much of either story, which are plot exercises in service of a moral. But read the two if you think it sounds interesting. Certainly the concept of a man too good to be murdered is at least somewhat interesting to consider…
A Chekhov Circus 