CLINICAL
For seventeen days, Chekov endured confinement in a sanatarium of Ostroumov’s. I can’t help but think that he did so with the utmost aplomb and patience. At least on the outside. Both of his lungs were engorged, overmoist – congestion (phlegm) in the left, creaking (blood) in the right. I thought of that house we owned. Oh I don’t know, 20 years back? The way its walls, when they came and pried them open from the inside, revealed a systemized morass of drips and crumbled planks and mushroom clouds of mildew sucking up sustenance within the drywall. “Oh hell” got repeated I don’t know how many times by Ishmael, the contractor who’d kindly answered our summons for aid. And it was, I suppose, a strain of hell. Though the life the four of us lived within that structure seemed anything but. I believe that even now. Likewise, I can only imagine the kind of hell Chekov experienced in his good friend’s clinic. All those daily drills and regimens, food, exercise, examinations, deep breathing, even sleep was a heck of a chore. Remediation ad nauseum. Yet in the midst of his slog, who should come calling one fine day – March 28th to be precise – but – surprise! – L. N. Tolstoi. Yes, that Tolstoi, to whom he related a series of ribald stories by Nossilov – Whatever happened to him, they roared, to that unique, uncured genius he flaunted? More raucous laughter followed. And tea. Then they finished the afternoon with a discussion of immortality, something that filled them both with equal parts vitality, delight, and wonder.
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