On Official Duty

"On Official Duty" is a novella by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov that explores themes of bureaucracy, duty, and human frailty. The story centers on a government official sent to a remote provincial town to carry out an inspection. Through his interactions with the local populace and the challenges he faces, Chekhov offers a keen and often humorous critique of the inefficiencies and absurdities of bureaucratic systems. The narrative delves into the human condition, revealing the complexities of authority and the impact of personal motivations on professional responsibilities. Chekhov's characteristic wit and insight into human nature shine throughout this engaging tale.

								
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.

In the outer room the doctor and the examining magistrate shook the snow
off themselves and knocked it off their boots. And meanwhile the old
village constable, Ilya Loshadin, stood by, holding a little tin lamp.
There was a strong smell of paraffin.

"Who are you?" asked the doctor.

"Conshtable,..." answered the constable.

He used to spell it "conshtable" when he signed the receipts at the post
office.

"And where are the witnesses?"

"They must have gone to tea, your honor."

On the right was the parlor, the travelers' or gentry's room; on the
left the kitchen, with a big stove and sleeping shelves under the
rafters. The doctor and the examining magistrate, followed by the
constable, holding the lamp high above his head, went into the parlor.
Here a still, long body covered with white linen was lying on the floor
close to the table-legs. In the dim light of the lamp they could clearly
see, besides the white covering, new rubber goloshes, and everything
about it was uncanny and sinister: the dark walls, and the silence, and
the goloshes, and the stillness of the dead body. On the table stood a
samovar, cold long ago; and round it parcels, probably the eatables.

"To shoot oneself in the Zemstvo hut, how tactless!" said the doctor.
"If one does want to put a bullet through one's brains, one ought to do
it at home in some outhouse."

He sank on to a bench, just as he was, in his cap, his fur coat, and his
felt overboots; his fellow-traveler, the examining magistrate, sat down
opposite.

"These hysterical, neurasthenic people are great egoists," the doctor
went on hotly. "If a neurasthenic sleeps in the same room with you, he
rustles his newspaper; when he dines with you, he gets up a scene with
his wife without troubling about your presence; and when he feels
inclined to shoot himself, he shoots himself in a village in a Zemstvo
hut, so as to give the maximum of trouble to everybody. These gentlemen
in every circumstance of life think of no one but themselves! That's why
the elderly so dislike our 'nervous age.'"

"The elderly dislike so many things," said the examining magistrate,
yawning. "You should point out to the elder generation what the
difference is between the suicides of the past and the suicides of to-
day. In the old days the so-called gentleman shot himself because he had
made away with Government money, but nowadays it is because he is sick
of life, depressed.... Which is better?"

"Sick of life, depressed; but you must admit that he might have shot
himself somewhere else."

"Such trouble!" said the constable, "such trouble! It's a real
affliction. The people are very much upset, your honor; they haven't
slept these three nights. The children are crying. The cows ought to be
milked, but the women won't go to the stall--they are afraid... for fear
the gentleman should appear to them in the darkness. Of course they are
silly women, but some of the men are frightened too. As soon as it is
dark they won't go by the hut one by one, but only in a flock together.
And the witnesses too...."

Dr. Startchenko, a middle-aged man in spectacles with a dark beard, and
the examining magistrate Lyzhin, a fair man, still young, who had only
taken his degree two years before and looked more like a student than an
official, sat in silence, musing. They were vexed that they were late.
Now they had to wait till morning, and to stay here for the night,
though it was not yet six o'clock; and they had before them a long
evening, a dark night, boredom, uncomfortable beds, beetles, and cold in
the morning; and listening to the blizzard that howled in the chimney
and in the loft, they both thought how unlike all this was the life
which they would have chosen for themselves and of which they had once
dreamed, and how far away they both were from their contemporaries, who
were at that moment walking about the lighted streets in town without
noticing the weather, or were getting ready for the theatre, or sitting
in their studies over a book. Oh, how much they would have given now
only to stroll along the Nevsky Prospect, or along Petrovka in Moscow,
to listen to decent singing, to sit for an hour or so in a restaurant!

"Oo-oo-oo-oo!" sang the storm in the loft, and something outside slammed
viciously, probably the signboard on the hut. "Oo-oo-oo-oo!"

"You can do as you please, but I have no desire to stay here," said
Startchenko, getting up. "It's not six yet, it's too early to go to bed;
I am off. Von Taunitz lives not far from here, only a couple of miles
from Syrnya. I shall go to see him and spend the evening there.
Constable, run and tell my coachman not to take the horses out. And what
are you going to do?" he asked Lyzhin.

"I don't know; I expect I shall go to sleep."

The doctor wrapped himself in his fur coat and went out. Lyzhin could
hear him talking to the coachman and the bells beginning to quiver on
the frozen horses. He drove off.

"It is not nice for you, sir, to spend the night in here," said the
constable; "come into the other room. It's dirty, but for one night it
won't matter. I'll get a samovar from a peasant and heat it directly.
I'll heap up some hay for you, and then you go to sleep, and God bless
you, your honor."

A little later the examining magistrate was sitting in the kitchen
drinking tea, while Loshadin, the constable, was standing at the door
talking. He was an old man about sixty, short and very thin, bent and
white, with a naive smile on his face and watery eyes, and he kept
smacking with his lips as though he were sucking a sweetmeat. He was
wearing a short sheepskin coat and high felt boots, and held his stick
in his hands all the time. The youth of the examining magistrate aroused
his compassion, and that was probably why he addressed him familiarly.

"The elder gave orders that he was to be informed when the police
superintendent or the examining magistrate came," he said, "so I suppose
I must go now.... It's nearly three miles to the volost, and the storm,

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