The Undiscovered Chekhov

MR.

GULEWTCH,

WRITER,

AND THE

DROWNED

MAN

ON FRIDAY, JUNE 10, the famous and talented journalist Ivan Ivanovitch Ivanov took his own life in the Hermitage gardens, in front of everyone. He drowned himself in the pond. May you rest in peace, you honest and noble toiler, whisked away in the prime of life. (The deceased was not yet thirty.)

That same Friday, in the morning, the deceased had taken some pickle brine for his hangover, written a playful sketch, lunched cheerfully with friends, gone for a walk in the park with some cocottes at seven in the evening, and at eight... taken his life!

Ivan Ivanovitch was known to be joyful, carefree—a lover of life.

He never thought of death, and had not once boasted that he would live “God knows how long,” even though he drank like a fish. So you can imagine the expressions on the faces of all who knew him when his body was pulled out of the green water!

Rumors raced through the park—“There’s something fishy going on! This smells of foul play! The deceased had no creditors, no wife, no mother-in-law... he loved life! There is no way he would have drowned himself!”

The suspicion of foul play grew stronger when the ven-triloquist, Mr. Egorov, attested that a quarter of an hour before Ivanovs tragic end, he had seen the deceased in a boat with Mr. Gulevitch, writer. When the authorities undertook a search for Mr. Gulevitch, it turned out that the writer had made a run for it.

Arrested in Serpukhov, Mr. Gulevitch, writer, at first claimed he knew nothing. Then, when he was told that a confession would mitigate his guilt, he burst into tears and confessed. At the preliminary inquest he made the following deposition:

“I knew Ivanov only for a short time. I became acquainted with him because I have a great respect for men of the press. [In the protocol the word respect was underlined.] There were no family ties between us, nor did we have any business connections. On the ill-fated evening, I had invited him for tea and stout, because I have great respect for literature [here again respect was underlined, and next to it in scrawny protocol handwriting, ‘All this emphasis!’]. After tea, Ivan Ivanovitch said, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to take a boat out.’ I agreed, and we got into a boat.

“‘So tell me a joke!’ Ivan Ivanovitch said when we were in the middle of the pond.

“I didn’t need to be asked twice, and launched into one of my classical jokes with ‘Well, if you insist.’ After only a few words Ivan Ivanovitch burst out laughing, grabbing his stomach, rocking back and forth, causing the deciduous [What does he mean?] foliage of the Hermitage gardens to resound with the congenial [What?] hilarity of the venerable journalist... When I, Gulevitch, writer, finished my second joke, Ivan Ivanovitch again burst out laughing, rolled back... It was Homeric laughter! Only a Homer [Who?] could laugh thus! He rolled back, leaned against the side... the boat listed, and the silvery ripples obfuscated him from Mother Russia’s loving eyes... and... I can’t go on! Tears... are choking me!”

This deposition did not quite match the deposition given by Mr. Egorov. The venerable ventriloquist stated that Ivanov was by no means laughing. Quite the contrary. While he was listening to Mr. Gulevitch, writer, his face was sour and doleful in the extreme. Mr. Egorov had been on the shore, and had heard and seen how at the end of the second anecdote Ivanov had clasped his head and exclaimed: “How stale and boring life is! What melancholy!”

It was after he uttered these words that he tumbled into the water.

The law will now have to decide which of the two depo-sitions is more credible. Mr. Gulevitch has been released on bail.

The death of Mr. Ivanov was not the first fatal incident in the Hermitage Park, and it is high time someone took measures to protect the public from future incidents of this nature... By the way, I’m only joking.