The White Deer
A Novel of Anton Chekhov
by Regina McBride
In the summer of 1879, on his way to Moscow to study medicine, 19-year-old Anton Chekhov, from a bankrupt merchant class family, stops to spend a restful few weeks in the Ukrainian countryside, staying with his friend, Dr. Mitrofan, who is worried about Anton’s lingering bronchitis. It is here that Anton meets Vera Denisova, also 19, a budding actress, the daughter of theater aristocrats from Volkhov, a neighboring estate. The two spend much of their time wandering Volkhov’s vast property, hoping for a glimpse of a white deer that has been spotted in the back acreage.
As they grow closer, Vera confides in Anton about her secret romance and heartbreak over Petya, a servant her age who was gifted at drawing and who she helped to acquire an apprenticeship as a draughtsman in order to leave servitude for good. Anton is fascinated by her obsession, and a triangle forms between Vera, Anton, and the absent Petya. Anton, too, shares his secrets with her, his conflicted relationship with his indigent family and his frustrated wish to publish stories. Surreptitiously through Anton, Vera learns the truth about her family’s declining financial situation and the impending loss of her beloved childhood estate. Together in the long, extended light of summer days, Vera and Anton struggle to come to terms with their feelings for each other and the new profoundly changed world that is waiting for each of them at summer’s end.
The final section of the novel charts the correspondence between Vera and Anton over the next two decades. Vera has become a successful actress and Anton, a doctor who treats peasants for free, has more than realized his ambition as a writer.
In a final letter to Vera before his death at 44 of tuberculosis, Anton reveals that his play, The Cherry Orchard, was inspired by his time with her at Volkhov.
Praise for The White Deer:
"In this stirring tale, McBride evokes a sense of place with lush depictions of birch stands and daisy fields along with a soundtrack of Tchaikovsky and folk tunes, creating a backdrop for Vera’s tender and chaste friendship with Anton. It’s an evocative portrait of a vanishing way of life."
~ Publishers Weekly
"This transportive novel sweeps the reader up into a vivid, melancholic dream set on a nineteenth century Russian estate. Regina McBride creates her own Chekhovian tragi-comedy that delights as it captures a lost world frozen in time. The White Deer is a gripping must-read for anyone who loves literature and a love story gone awry."
~ Virginia Pye, author of Marriage and Other Monuments
The house was quiet. Anton and the doctor had probably not yet returned from fishing. I wandered up the hall looking into rooms, then climbed the stairs and knocked softly on doors, opening them and looking in. In one room I spotted Anton’s shirt from the day before, draped over a chair. A large window overlooking the gardens was open and morning sunlight came spilling in. Everything in the room seemed to be stirring, from the white covers on the unmade bed, to an errant sheet of the Evening Gazette that rose up like a cobra with every new breeze, crackling and writhing, before collapsing again onto the rug. I stepped in and quietly closed the door.
On the nightstand I found a novel: In the Land of Mantillas and Castanets, by Bezetsky. I sat down on the bed and opened it. Inside was an unsealed letter, the envelope not yet addressed. I resisted taking out the pages, but my curiosity was too great. The letter was not yet signed, clearly left unfinished. It was dated the night before, 11:45 PM.
My dear brothers, it began. Much of the first long paragraph was about the area of the river that ran through Dr. Mitrofan’s property. He mentioned a huge pike he had seen eyeing him from the shallows. I am after him in the morning, he wrote. That grandfather’s hour is about to come.
In the next paragraph he described the neighboring acreage, Volkhov, as the grand, though dilapidated and doomed estate of a theatrical family. My heart paused at the word doomed.
Once great orchards are sad, run down now and neglected though everything that grows wild is thriving in the summer weather. Old trees of every kind, an Eden of sorts, only waiting for the apple to fall and the appearance of the serpent.
The matriarch, now dead, was the bombastic actress, Dashkova. She came through Taganrog in a Schiller play before any of us were born but left her reputation behind her, the worst kind of mannered actress, it is reported, with all the grace and sensitivity of an alligator.
The room went four shades darker.
Anton’s character here was so at odds with his gentle, earnestly polite manner.
I thought of folding the letter and putting it back, afraid if I kept reading, he might fall further in my estimation. But I took a breath and continued.
The squire of Volkhov, Sergei Denisov is reportedly a talented actor who hasn’t worked in more than a decade. An overly sentimental man, so sincere I find myself suffering for him. When praising Anatoly Slezkine, who performed on their summer stage, he froze in a deep, spasmodic bow, bent so far forward I thought he might touch his forehead to the ground.
My heart raced with indignation and my throat tightened. But the sentence that followed was even worse.
He is a handsome figure of a man and I am told that he is quite the hound with the women and travels about living the life of a playboy.
I stared at the words and they smeared together on the paper.
I threw the letter onto the bed beside me and waited for my heart to slow down. When I picked it up again my eyes were drawn to the mention of my mother.
Sergei’s wife is a mysterious soprano who lives like a hermit in some unknown area of the house and who I have heard vocalizing in the distance but have yet to glimpse. Her brother, who spent years in a Siberian prison camp, wanders the back acres in turn-of-the century military regalia, carrying a rifle.
There are two delightful young women in that house, Sergei’s daughter, Vera, and his stepdaughter, Sasha. Sasha is the older of the two, though it is difficult to say how old she is. I cannot quite describe the effect her beauty had upon me when I first saw her. I felt a painful though pleasant sadness, undefined as if in a dream. But she is not somehow at ease with her beauty and tries in strenuous ways to show it to effect, and I am afraid I find that tiring, as if she’s attempting to use any man she engages with as a mirror to somehow see herself.
The younger girl, Vera, is quite different.
I watched Vera and Sasha perform a scene from Shakespeare on an outdoor stage. The breathtaking Sasha delivers her lines with adequate charm, but Vera is a genuine actress. There were a few moments as she stood there when I would have cast her as Joan of Arc having a vision, a radiance about her head. There were no false notes.
Any sense of wonder I may have felt over Anton’s words about my performance was eclipsed by the sensation of nausea over everything else I’d read. Polite, gentle Anton had been judging us every moment. We were transparent to him and apparently, ridiculous, and the worst was what he’d said about my father, which caused a hard, pulsating pain in my chest and stomach.
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Regina McBride is the author of eight books. The White Deer ~ a novel of Anton Chekhov is her sixth novel. She is also the author of one memoir, Ghost Songs, and one book of poetry.
Her novel, The Nature of Water and Air, was a Booksense Pick (Independent Book Stores Selection), a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers book, and a Borders Original Voices choice. It was optioned for a film. Her books have been translated into five languages.
A recipient of fellowships from the NEA and the New York Foundation for the Arts, Regina lives in New York City, where she taught fiction writing for thirty years at Hunter College and continues to teach privately.
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