Adaptation

'The Man in a Case' is one of the beautiful stories of Chekhov. It begins late at night in a sleepy little village of Mironositskoe. Two gentlemen found lodging in the barn of the elderly man of the village, Prokofy. One of them is a school master who is well acquainted with the life in the village and begins discussing the wife of the elder. She is Mavra, an extremely well read and talented woman, however has confined herself to the village. One of the other gentlemen, a veterinary surgeon, expresses wonder on knowing that the woman has not seen a town or a railway line. Poked at that the school master begins describing a colleague of him known as Byelikov who almost lived all by himself. He always wore galoshes and kept every object that he used in a case. He was idiosyncratic as he was obsessed with the fear of violating rules and regulations. He made the whole of the school under himself as he expressed much fear in every possible act of both the masters and the pupils. He lived on the same storey on which the school master Burkin lived. His bed chamber was completely covered with mattresses and curtains and he used the curtains to sleep on in his bed and cocooned himself to a kind of atavistic behaviour of the primordial ancestors.

Ivan Ivanovitch, the veterinary surgeon, intercedes with the philosophy of life to the narration as he is of the opinion that the whole of the world and its populace spend their day to day existence in the same manner. In the case of Byelikov, it is an exhibition of extremism, as the man had the habit of visiting his friends and their colleagues in their tenements and spent an hour or two sitting glum and quiet observing their routine chores and exited with no manners. He is surprised to know that this figure of ridicule almost got married. A History teacher came to the school with his sister, who was almost thirty, however did not subject herself to the work of time on her beauty and complexion and retained a girlish behaviour. It only struck the acquaintances of Byelikov that he was very old enough to have got married and they too woke up to that on seeing a slim chance of uniting Byelikov with Varnika. The mill of marriage had begun its grinding and put the two together in the name of parties and outings. Byelikov procrastinated the marriage as he thought too much about family responsibility. The History teacher hated his intrusion into the private chambers and the deafening silence that he exhibited at such visits.

A naughty person came with a rue to make things public. He drew Byelikov and Varnika together under an umbrella and sent the pencil drawing to everyone. On one occasion, Byelikov, while walking with Burkin found the brother-sister duo cycling their way somewhere. He got horrified at the sight as he thought such an adventuristic display would create in students a tendency to freak out. He left school early the very next day, an act that was un-Byelikov, straight to Varnika's house to explain things and tender his apology for the pencil drawing involving himself and Varnika. The History teacher rose in temperament as Byelikov broached the matter of bicycling and gave a push to him from the top of the flight of the stairs. As he tumbled his way down off the balcony, found him a source of ridicule for Varnika, who came into the house while he was recovering himself from the fall. He became ill three days later and found himself in the bed of angels.

Wendy Wasserstein, a playwright of American fame, wrote a one act play, 'The Man in a Case' an adaptation of Chekhov's story. She makes use of only two characters in her play and alludes to the brother of Varnika. Wendy introduces them as joggers and meeting in a garden of the village of Mironositskoe. Varnika comes with apricots given in honour of the Greek and Latin school master Byelikov. He is annoyed at the fact that she goes on informing about their marriage to everyone and apricots give him hives. Varnika has fallen for him as he keeps everything in confinement including the leftover vegetables and fruits in covers. Byelikov is enamoured of their meeting and notes it down in his diary that he would place lilies on this day on his love's lock every year. As this requires celebration, Varnika wants to go to her brother's house on her bicycle and bring some cream. Startled to know about Varnika's arrival on bicycle, he sends her off on the pretext that he wants to work on the translation of Virgil's Aeneid and even tears the note that he has made a while ago down. Varnika leaves and the lights fade as Byelikov is found garnering the strewn pieces of his note. The play puts up a feministic reading of Chekhov's story and Wendy's adaptation never violates the original and gives a new thrust to the story on the contrary. Both texts provide a good reading.