Ionitch

Ionitch by Anton Chekhov (1899)

Dimitri Ionitch Startseff, newly appointed government doctor in Dialij, is urged to call on the Turkins of the town of S., renowned as its most accomplished family: Ivan Turkin, jocular and full of puns; his wife Vera, who writes unpublished novels and reads them aloud to guests; their daughter Katherine ("Kitty"), a vigorous pianist; and the footman Pava, who performs a comic tragic recitation for visitors. Startseff visits on Ascension Day, is charmed by the household's rituals — Vera's reading, Kitty's thunderous piano piece, Turkin's riddles and invented words like "splendiferous" and "not baddish" — and walks home singing, delighted. Over a year passes with Startseff absorbed in hospital work until Madame Turkin summons him for her headaches, giving him a pretext to keep visiting. He falls for Kitty, and one evening begs a private moment with her in the garden, asking about her reading (Pisemski's "The Thousand Souls"). She slips him a note asking him to meet her at midnight at Demetti's grave in the cemetery. Though he dismisses it as a joke, he goes anyway, waits alone among the tombs in a reverie about love and mortality, and returns exhausted. The next evening he goes to propose, escorts Kitty to a club dance, kisses her impulsively in the carriage, then formally proposes that night. Kitty refuses, declaring she loves art and music above all and dreams of the conservatory and fame, not a tied-down domestic life in the town. Startseff is wounded but recovers within days; when he hears she has left for Moscow to study, he settles back into his routine. Four years pass. Startseff has grown stout, prosperous, and increasingly bored and contemptuous of the townspeople's shallow talk; his chief private pleasure becomes counting the money he earns each day. Summoned again by Madame Turkin, he returns to find Kitty changed — thinner, paler, humbler, her youthful confidence gone. She confesses she was never a real pianist, praises his noble work as a doctor, and asks to see him often, but as she speaks he recalls his money-counting habit and thinks only "It's a good thing I didn't marry her." Irritated afresh by the family's unchanged routines (Vera's novel-reading, Turkin's jokes, Pava's recitation), he leaves. She writes once more asking why he stays away; he promises to visit but never does again. Years later, Startseff is fat, wealthy, and irascible, owning an estate and houses, still working as district doctor but now referred to curtly as "Ionitch." He is short-tempered with patients, lonely, and friendless, his lost love for Kitty having been the one happiness of his life. He dines alone each night at the club. The Turkins remain unchanged — Ivan still joking, Vera still reading her stories, Kitty still practicing piano for hours daily, now delicate and travelling each autumn to the Crimea with her mother, her father waving them off at the station with his customary farewell.

By Anton Chekhov · First published 1899 · Genre: Short Stories, Realism, Drama · 8,615 words

First lines

If newcomers to the little provincial city of S. complained that life there was monotonous and dull, its inhabitants would answer that, on the contrary, S. was a very amusing place, indeed, that it had a library and a club, that balls were given there, and finally, that very pleasant families lived there with whom one might become acquainted. And they always pointed to the Turkins as the most accomplished and most enlightened family of all.

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Drama · Play · Russia · Society · Medicine · Love · Relationships · Family · Inheritance · Money · Power · Jealousy

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