"Errand" (1987)

The last story in Raymond Carver's Where I'm Calling From collection—and possibly the last he wrote—is kind of a switch-up. It presents itself as the story of Anton Chekhov's death from tuberculosis in 1904 at the age of 44, perhaps anticipating his own imminent death at the age of 50. "Errand" appears to be factual but is not when read closely. The confusion is apparently deliberate because much of the story actually is factually accurate. Chekhov died in 1904, for example. I say it's obvious but it's not that obvious. Janet Malcolm has all the details in her book Reading Chekhov, pointing out how many of these confabulated details have seeped into other accounts of Chekhov's death, even formal biographies—the champagne, the layout of the room, observations of the physician and others who were there or might have been. Apparently a lot of people read this story and assumed Carver knew what he was talking about and these vivid but fictional details stuck with them. It's a shame in a way because it makes Carver look a little like a charlatan pulling it out of a hat. But no doubt it was intended as an homage and a secret desire (or not so secret) to be as great of a story writer. There's a scene within a memory of some seven years before the death, where Tolstoy visits Chekhov in the hospital and tells him he likes his stories more than his plays. Did that even "really" happen? I don't know. It feels like a dream but seems plausible, partly because I agree with Tolstoy in this anecdote. "Errand" never quite makes it to being typical Carver but comes closest after Chekhov dies, when the widow Olga Knipper is sending the bellboy for a mortician and giving him directions. In fact, it shifts into something else entirely toward the end, focusing on the bellboy and giving him some sort of epiphany around the champagne cork, which has fallen to the floor. The widow practically takes over narrative duties from that point in a strange kind of phantasm, seemingly from anxiety over whether the bellboy can carry out her complex and sensitive instructions. It's tantalizing to wonder whether "Errand" was the one-off it mostly appears to be, a strange meditation on death near his own end, or some new aspect to his work that would have seen further development.

Raymond Carver, Where I'm Calling From (Library of America)