Dipping into his medical bag of tricks, and possibly drawing on his own experience of tuberculosis, Chekhov sketches a brief tale of a dying soldier shipping home on board a steamer.
The soldier, Gusev, shares an uncomfortable space with several other men, all deathly ill; one, Pavel, blithely tells Gusev that he (Gusev) will die on the journey–he clearly isn’t healthy enough to complete the trip.
The irritable Pavel is a rather wonderful creation, a sort of miniature Kurtz decrying the world as he slides into madness and death.
Gusev himself is a curious man – that is, he is curious about the world, and though he would seem to want to be home again, he also seems resigned to his sad fate as he rolls over the waves with his doomed companions.
In the end, Gusev outlasts Pavel but does not last long enough to prove Pavel wrong–Gusev is not healthy enough to survive the trip, and his body is committed to the sea. The narrative tracks his bagged body as it drifts down through the ocean water, past a shoal of fish and a curious shark. This section is meant to be beautiful but it seems more odd than elegiac. The fish are weirdly anthropomorphized and you can’t help but worry that you’ll be forced to read details of Gusev’s body being torn at by the shark, or nibbled away by sea creatures. Blessedly, the narrative returns to the water’s surface for a final look at the evening sky.
That’s all there is to this story: It’s a respectful, quiet portrait of a man giving up his life.
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Similar to this story, “Typhus” tracks the course of an illness. Death takes its toll in both stories, but with slightly different outcomes in each.
A Chekhov Circus 