This is a brief sketch about Russia’s complex and corrosive hierarchy, a rigid ranking system that ordered everyone working in the government, the legal system, the military and the clergy.
Chekhov, as a doctor, was somewhat outside of this absurd, constrictive system, but had to participate in other, equally meaningless but important rituals: As an example, someone in his position could not get an apartment in Petersburg without noble status (which he was somehow able to secure with the help of his brother).
The bones of “Fat and Thin” are simple: Two old school friends bump into one another at a train station. One, the thin man, boasts of his success – a wife, a child, and a designation as “collegiate assessor.” Unfortunately, he concedes, his position isn’t very well paid, but his wife gives music lessons, and he makes carved cigarette boxes that he sells, so they get by.
But then he learns that his friend, the fat man, has reached the rank of “privy councillor,” a considerably higher level than his old friend. Everything changes: The thin man stammers and refers to him as “your excellency,” a formality that the fat man briefly resists but then, given his old friend’s complete and sudden servility, accepts with oily disdain.
It’s not entirely clear what Chekhov’s intention is in this sketch. On the one hand, it certainly is a detailed, even dispassionate portrait of an abased man. It’s painful to see the poor collegiate assessor reduced to a servile wretch. The fat man (the higher ranking privy councillor) is actually sickened by the display, even as he extends a fat hand to shake goodbye.
On the other hand, Chekhov goes to some lengths to establish the character of the thin man, and that character is vain, boastful, and not a little proud. And then he gets his comeuppance: When he learns his old friend’s high rank, he practically doubles over in pain. He’s not the only one stunned by the fat man’s success: the narrator tells us that the thin man’s “wife’s long chin grew longer still,” which is a great and cruel description of envy.
For readers of the day, it probably was a relief to chuckle at someone clawing for a toehold in the absurd hierarchy that controlled so much of their lives. From a distance, it seems a little sad.
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There are any number of Chekhov stories lampooning pompous bureaucrats whose strength of character is probably not equal to their social rank. One of the best is “The Privy Councillor,” in which a small-town family welcomes home a relative who has risen far above their station.
A Chekhov Circus 