Forty Stories

The Highest Heights

The Height of Credulity

A FEW days ago K., a man of considerable local importance, rich and well connected, shot himself in the town of T. The bullet entered his mouth and lodged in his brain.

In the poor man’s side pocket a letter was found, with the following contents:

“I read in the Almanac today there will be a bad harvest this year. For me a bad harvest can only mean bankruptcy. Having no desire to fall victim to dishonor, I have decided to put an end to my life in advance. It is my desire, accordingly, that no one should be held responsible for my death.”

The Height of Absent-mindedness

We have received from authentic sources the following distressing item from a local clinic:

“The well-known surgeon M., while amputating both legs of a railway switchman, absent-mindedly cut off one of his own legs, together with one of the legs of his assistant. Both are now receiving medical care.”

The Height of Citizenship

“I, the son of a former honorary citizen, being a reader of The Citizen,¹ wearing the clothes of a citizen, contracted a civil marriage with my Anyuta.…”²

The Height of Conformity

We are informed that a certain T., one of the contributors to Kievlyanin,³ having read the greater portion of the Moscow newspapers, suffered an attack of self-doubt and searched his own home for illegal literature. Finding none, he nevertheless gave himself up to the police.

April 1883

¹ The Citizen was a conservative St. Petersburg newspaper, owned by Prince Meshchersky and edited for a while by Dostoyevsky. Chekhov loathed The Citizen and pilloried it on many occasions.

² This is a joke. There were no civil marriages in Russia before 1917.

³ A conservative newspaper published in Kiev.