A brief story about a gloomy bureaucrat, Zaikin, whose wife is fun-loving and gay and possibly having affairs. The setting is a summer resort. Zaikin can only visit a couple nights a week–he doesn’t have enough money to commute to his summer home every day–but his wife has settled in for the season.
This tale has strong moments but it seesaws between comedy and drama and never really establishes tonal stability. At the outset of the story, Zaikin is portrayed as a drudge, and a sour one at that. He’s such a grinch that he even suggests that summer holidays are the creation of the devil. In other words, this is not character but caricature.
Later, though, Zaikin seems tragic. He quarrels with his son, Petya, and then regrets it. After lashing out at the boy in a really cruel way, he touches Petya on the shoulder, saying, “Forgive me. You are my good boy, my nice boy, I love you.”
And then his wife arrives on the scene. Nadyezhda is a comically selfish woman, plucking her husband’s cash from him and paying him no attention otherwise. She’s putting on a play and has no time for anything that isn’t related to the show. (Nadyezhda is one of dozens of hateful Chekhov characters who are associated with the theater. Chekhov’s disdain for theater people was so intense and carefully wrought, it was practically encrusted in jewels.)
Zaikin ends up booted from his own bed to make room for house guests (theater people!), and as the story ends we find him pathetically plodding through the warm summer evening in search of a late-night restaurant.
This tale suffers from shifting tones — is it funny? Is it serious? But aside from that weakness, it’s a compelling portrait, and the historical detail (the commuters’ misery, the gay life of the summer town) strengthens it.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
This is not the only time that Chekhov created a character like Nadyezhda. In fact, “shrieking wife who acts in amateur theatricals” is basically a stock character for Chekhov. You can find an almost exact replica of Nadyezdha in “Martyrs,” which unlike “Not Wanted” is basically just a silly story with a twist at the end. Unfortunately, “Martyrs” also a story with what may be the most bizarre instance of anti-semitic content in all of Chekhov (and that’s saying something). Anyway, these two tales bookend each other quite nicely.
A Chekhov Circus 