The Tyrant's Novel by Thomas Keneally Read Free Book Online

because of Chekhov's revulsion at the trial of Dreyfus and Suvorin's enthusiasm for it. You can make a note of that name, if you like, said Sarah. It might impress Duncan.
    Holding my breath, I began to take notes. Perhaps she could become habituated to passing on enlightenment to a plain fellow like me.
    I'll never forget the details of her educating me. For as the battered, improvised edition of the great writer's tales she held in her hands indicated, she had also taken the trouble to read all Chekhov's short stories and was involved in making a comparison between a range of Chekhov's prose, including “A Boring Story,” which she said was brilliant, and
Uncle Vanya
. In “A Boring Story,” the old professor of medicine, Nikolai Stepanovich, bemoans the split between science and the humanities, which undermines the ability of graduating physicians to give proper care to their patients. She pointed out to me Stepanovich's statement “Feelings I never felt before have built a nest in my heart. I hate, I despise, I am filled with indignation.” She looked at me significantly after reading that passage—as if there were someone closer to home in whom such sentiments could be rooted. She was frank, but fortunately not rowdy, in her dislike of our President for Life. Pointed to it by her, I read with unutterable longing Chekhov's short story “The Beauties,” which I would never have read to this day without Sarah. “An Attack of Nerves” was next. A law student, visiting whorehouses with friends, becomes obsessed with the problem of prostitution. His moral agony is such that his friends take him to a psychiatrist, who numbs his outrage with bromide and morphine. By doing that, the psychiatrist proves that certain immoralities abhorred by many members of society are actually necessary to the functioning of a community.
    Everything in Chekhov seemed to Sarah and me suddenly to relate to
our
community,
our
fraught nation. Tales of false love—“The Two Volodyas,” for example—seemed in their way to be a critique of the
Hour of Devotion
on our televisions. Sarah had also found and given me a copy of Chekhov's second full-length play,
The Wood Demon,
which was unsuccessful and later proved the basis for
Uncle Vanya.
    Meanwhile, most of the rest of us were willing to accept whatever we could find in the university stacks. I began to think, She's really no flippant girl, this one. And she wasn't, either.
    Were you wounded? she asked suddenly. In the battles for the straits?
    Oh, no. I was very lucky. We were well dug in.
    She smiled. You won't become like one of those old soldiers in Russian stories, talking about nothing but their cavalry wounds.
    No, I agreed. I don't want to sound dramatic. But most of the wounds down there were not of that clean . . . that gallant variety.
    What's your best story? Maybe not the one I read, “The Water Truck Driver.” It was good, but it didn't sound like the last word you had to say.
    Please, I said, making a gesture of literary modesty, hands to forehead. There's one coming out in the university newspaper next week.
     
    After my session in the library with Sarah, I knew I could not string Louise James along any further. I was in agony over that. I knew that if anyone dumped anyone else, it should so obviously be glamorous Louise dumping me.
    I found her at the end of her show. As she emerged from the gimcrack studio her eyes were alight with the joy of what was so obviously her craft—broadcasting. Another show transmitted without mishap.
    I took her to the student café. Inevitably, to outsiders, my speech would have sounded a little Jane Austenish. Louise, I said, after we'd ordered Turkish coffee, I can't go about with you anymore. It would imply I had intentions which I don't have.
    She leaned forward, arms still folded in that way I had always admired, and frowned. But I wouldn't need you to have intentions, she said frankly, a modern woman, not dropping her eyes.
    I can't