[Oks to Vadim:] "Thirty-five years ago in
St. Petersburg she [Berta Stepanov] and I worked
in the same student organization. We were preparing the assassination of the
Premier. How far all that is! His daily route had to be closely established; I
was one of the observers. Standing at a certain corner every day in the disguise
of a vanilla-ice-cream vendor! Can you imagine that? Nothing came of our plans.
They were thwarted by Azef, the great double agent." (2.4)
In VN's Soglyadatay (The Eye, 1930) the
ghost of Azef appears at a spiritual
séance warning Weinstock that he should beware of
Smurov:
"He spies, lures, betrays. Be on your guard.
Watch out for a small man in black. Do not be deceived by his modest appearance.
I am telling the truth..."
"And who is this man?" asked
Weinstock.
The answer was slow in coming.
"Please, Azef, tell us who is this
man?" (Chapter Three)
Vikentiy Lvovich Weinstock is a Russian bookseller in
Berlin. Oks (Osip Lvovich Oksman) is the owner
of the Russian bookshop on rue Cuvier in Paris.
Above me, on the top floor, lived a
Russian family. I met them through Weinstock, from whom they took books -
another fascinating device on the part of fantasy that directs life.
(Chapter Two)
It is through Oks that Vadim meets Annette Blagovo.
Vadim's second wife (the mother of his beloved daughter Bel) is a
namesake of Anyuta Blagovo, a character in Chekhov's story My Life
(1896). Like Annette's father, Chekhov was a doctor.* The characters of
The Eye include Marianna Nikolaevna, a cultured female doctor. As
to Weinstock, he is a namesake of Chekhov's friend and colleage Vikentiy
Veresaev (V. V. Smidovich, 1867-1945), the author of the
semi-autobiographical Zapiski vracha (Memoirs of a
Physician, 1901), the compiler of Pushkin in Life (1926-27)
and Gogol in Life (1933).
The hero and narrator of Chekhov's Rasskaz neizvestnogo cheloveka
(The Story of an Unknown Man, 1893) is a reformed terrorist.
There exists an old rule--so old and trite that I blush
to mention it. Let me twist it into a jingle--to stylize the
staleness:
The I of the book
Cannot die in the book. (7.1)
Nevertheless, Smurov, the narrator and main character in The Eye,
manages to break that rule by committing suicide in the novella's first
chapter.
*Chekhov used to say that medicine was his lawful wife and literature, his
mistress. (Slyshal zvon, da ne znaet gde on, as we say when
one doesn't know what one is talking about:)
Alexey Sklyarenko