Chekhov has a cruel streak. He doesn’t flinch when portraying snobs, bullies, thieves, zealots, ignoramuses, or bores. “The Petchenyeg” is a portrait of a colossal bore, Zhmuhin. It’s very nicely done; it’s hard to portray a bore without being boring, and this story is definitely not boring.
“The Petchenyeg” is yet another “two travelers meet on the road” story, and a “stranger comes to stay” story. A traveling lawyer shares a train car with Zhmuhin, who invites him to spend the night as the village the lawyer is destined for is a long way from the town.
The lawyer agrees to spend the night at Zhmuhin’s, where he (and we, the readers) meet Zhmuhin’s motley family: His feral sons, who when we encounter them are shooting chickens for some reason; and their mother, Zhmuhin’s wife, a tearful shade of a woman who is in agony over her sons’ lack of education.
Zhmuhin himself is resigned to his circumstances and those of the family. He drones on and on through the night, until the lawyer can’t take it any more. He rushes off at the first sign of light in the sky, but not before calling back, meanly, to Zhmuhin: “You have bored me to death!”
And so it turns out that “The Petchenyeg” is not merely about a bore, but also about a swinish cur who would fling a cutting insult at a man who has housed him and lent him horses for his journey.
As for Zhmuhin, he is so blandly oblivious, he has forgotten the insult after a cup or two of tea.
It’s no small feat to sketch two such unlikeable characters without alienating a reader!
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So many Chekhov stories place a traveler in an unfamiliar, uncomfortable, or even dangerous position. “On the Road,” “The Witch,” “Overdoing It,” and “The Petchenyeg” are all variations on this theme. Another, possibly less obvious comparison, is the memorable if somewhat faulty “On Official Duty,” in which a doctor and lawyer are assigned to investigate a death in a distant village, and one of them ends up bedding down in the very spot where the body is stored.
A Chekhov Circus 