On Official Duty

On Official Duty by Anton Chekhov

A deputy examining magistrate, Lyzhin, and the district doctor, Startchenko, travel to the village of Syrnya to hold an inquest but are delayed by a snowstorm and arrive after dark, forced to spend the night in the Zemstvo hut. That same hut holds the body of Lesnitsky, a Zemstvo insurance agent who arrived three days earlier and shot himself after laying out food and ordering a samovar, an act strange enough that many suspect murder and demand an inquest. In the outer room they are met by the old village constable, Ilya Loshadin, holding a tin lamp; he explains the witnesses have gone off to tea. They view the covered corpse lying by the table, with new rubber goloshes visible beneath the linen, and the doctor complains it was tactless of Lesnitsky to kill himself in a public hut rather than at home. The two men discuss suicide old and new, then, bored and unsettled by the storm's noise, Startchenko decides to ride off to spend the evening with a neighboring landowner, Von Taunitz, while Lyzhin stays behind. Left with Loshadin, Lyzhin drinks tea and draws out the old man's life story: thirty years as constable, walking constantly between villages regardless of weather or holidays, delivering notices and forms, once falsely accused alongside a corrupt clerk but acquitted, paid eighty-four roubles a year and given only occasional kopecks or vodka by peasants and gentry. Loshadin recalls knowing Lesnitsky's family from childhood, describing how Lesnitsky's aunt Yulya had willed land to the monastery and to the peasants of Nedoshtchotova to commemorate her soul, but her brother suppressed the will, took the land, died impenitent and "burst," and afterward young Sergey Lesnitsky lost everything to debts and was given the insurance-agent post by his uncle, a post ill-suited to his pride. Loshadin adds that his own former prosperity has collapsed because his sons drink heavily. Lyzhin listens, reflecting on the old man's ingrained, uncomplaining acceptance of hardship, then sends him off and lies down on hay, unwilling to use the dead man's bed. Alone in the dark, unsettled by the storm's howling and creaks, Lyzhin drifts toward sleep thinking about how remote this world feels from the Moscow life he longs for, and he recalls once actually meeting Lesnitsky at the Rural Board office. Loshadin returns briefly to ask about notifying the village elder, then leaves again. Startchenko then reappears, snow-covered, insisting Lyzhin come to Von Taunitz's estate for the night since horses have been sent. On the drive, their sledge nearly loses the road repeatedly in the blizzard, and they glimpse Loshadin standing in the snow by the roadside as they pass. At Von Taunitz's warm, comfortable house, they are welcomed by the widowed host and his four daughters and a cousin, who sing and play piano; the contrast with the hut strikes Lyzhin as almost unreal. Over supper the suicide is discussed again, Startchenko condemning nervous, "neurasthenic" people for marrying and Von Taunitz sighing sympathetically about the suffering behind such an act, while the daughters listen silently. That night Lyzhin sleeps poorly, disturbed by dreams merging Lesnitsky and Loshadin walking together through the snow, chanting that they bear life's hardship while others enjoy warmth and ease. Waking shaken, he muses that no life or person is truly accidental, that all are bound together in one organism, and that comfortable people's ease is purchased by the suffering of the crushed and outcast, a thought that weighs on him as guilt. The storm keeps them trapped at Von Taunitz's through the next day, filled with idle talk, cards, and music, while Lyzhin keeps thinking of Lesnitsky's body still lying in the hut and the witnesses still waiting. Only by the following morning does the blizzard subside enough for them to leave. At the steps, Loshadin is waiting, snow-covered, capless, sweating, and relieved to see them at last, reporting that the villagers are anxious and the children crying, and begging them to proceed. The footman rebukes him harshly. Without responding, the doctor and the examining magistrate get into the sledge and set off for Syrnya, and the text ends there.

By Anton Chekhov · First published 1883 · Genre: Drama, Tragedy, Social Commentary · 7,935 words

First lines

The deputy examining magistrate and the district doctor were going to an inquest in the village of Syrnya. On the road they were overtaken by a snowstorm; they spent a long time going round and round, and arrived, not at midday, as they had intended, but in the evening when it was dark. They put up for the night at the Zemstvo hut. It so happened that it was in this hut that the dead body was lying -- the corpse of the Zemstvo insurance agent, Lesnitsky, who had arrived in Syrnya three days before and, ordering the samovar in the hut, had shot himself, to the great surprise of everyone; and the fact that he had ended his life so strangely, after unpacking his eatables and laying them out on the table, and with the samovar before him, led many people to suspect that it was a case of murder; an inquest was necessary.

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Satire · Social Commentary · Russian Literature · Short Story Collection · Comedy · Irony · Critique of Bureaucracy · Government Corruption · Absurdity · Dark Humor · Morality Tale · Farcical

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