Chekhov wrote quite a few stories set in waystations of one sort or another – mean little inns, railway stations, etc. – where folk of different classes and backgrounds are forced to cohabit with one another, if only for a night or two. “On the Road,” “The Post,” “Easter Eve,” “The Witch”…. really it’s a whole subcategory of Chekhov story.
“On Official Duty” is more complex than some of these others. A pair of officials have been dispatched to a village where a man has committed suicide. The suicide took place at the local government office – where in fact the officials, a doctor and a magistrate – must spend the night because of a snowstorm. In other words, they will sleep with the corpse in the same room.
Unnerved, the magistrate hightails it to the next town, where he has a friend he can stay with. The doctor ends up in an adjoining room, a sort of stable or store room, in which the local constable (which in this case means caretaker) lays out some straw (nicely enough) for the doctor to bed down in, like a horse.
(If nothing else, Chekhov does a good job of showing the really atrocious standards of life in Russia back in the day.)
We learn the backstory of the dead man from the constable – so we know a bit about his life, but hardly everything. The doctor grows gradually more horrified by his surroundings – the whirling snow, the howling wind, the droning constable. And then, lo and behold, the magistrate returns, saying that his host insists that the doctor join them. And so he escapes to the comfort of a wealthy estate in the country.
I’m rather baffled by this story. Is it a mystery? No. Nor is it mainly about the doctor, although the end of the story is mainly concerned with his swirling thoughts about the sadness of suicide and the suffering of the poor.
The fact is, we learn more about the constable – who isn’t really a character in this story but rather the means by which the story is told – than we do about the doctor or the magistrate or the dead man. We learn how he came to be impoverished, how he landed a spell in jail… And yet the story is not about him at all.
So what is this story about, really? I’m not sure. It ends on a typically Chekhovian, subdued note: The doctor and the magistrate get in a sledge and head back to the site of the inquest. In other words… the story begins with the two of them traveling to the site of an inquest; the story ends with them traveling to the site of an inquest. It’s the kind of narrative trick you might find in an Italo Calvino story. But Calvino was playful; there is nothing playful about “On Official Duty.”
Anyway, one could be forgiven for thinking this story was about nothing! But I will say that I have read a brief commentary that suggests it is ever so much more. You can read that much more generous commentary here. (It’s an all-Chekhov blog project, similar to what I’m doing, from about 10 years ago.) In a nutshell, the essayist argues that this story is a study in contrasts – the life of the city vs. the life of the country. That viewpoint is echoed in another “complete Chekhov” blog.
Well, I suppose it is true that immiseration of the rural poor is contrasted with the relative ease of the (mostly urban) rich, but I don’t really see that as being central to the story. I thought it was mainly a janky mess, despite some good scene-setting.
One side note: As a way to supplement his income (did the man never stop working???), Chekhov worked as a medical examiner, conducting autopsies, so this story has an aspect of reportage.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
An obvious comparison to “On Official Duty” is another, lesser story involving a dead body, the unimaginatively named “A Dead Body.” But a more interesting story, and a more interesting comparison to “On Official Duty,” is “In the Coach-House,” in which a group of workmen play cards in a stable while waiting for news about the master of the house, who has committed suicide.
A Chekhov Circus 