`Boys'

How jarring, in the middle of a Chekhov story, to read the word California, as though Proust had casually name-dropped Schenectady. It comes in “Boys,” a story from 1887. At Christmas, Volodya Korolyov and his friend Lentilov return home from school. Chekhov doesn’t give their ages but they seem on the cusp of puberty, 12 or 13. Volodya’s three sisters notice he is strangely quiet:

“All the time they were at tea he only once addressed his sisters, and then he said something so strange. He pointed to the samovar and said:

“`In California they don't drink tea, but gin.’”

While the family makes Christmas decorations, Volodya and Lentilov sit in the corner whispering, poring over an atlas:

“`First to Perm . . .’ Lentilov said, in an undertone, `from there to Tiumen, then Tomsk . . . then . . . then . . . Kamchatka. There the Samoyedes take one over Behring’s Straits in boats . . . . And then we are in America. . . . There are lots of furry animals there. . . .’

“`And California?’ asked Volodya.

“`California is lower down. . . . We've only to get to America and California is not far off. . . . And one can get a living by hunting and plunder.’”

Lentilov, described by Chekhov in troll-like, unhygienic terms, suddenly asks Volodya’s sisters if they have read Mayne Reid, the Irish-American writer of adventure novels. Mayne (1818-1883) was a protégé of Poe, who described him as “a colossal but most picturesque liar. He fibs on a surprising scale but with the finish of an artist, and that is why I listen to him attentively.” In Speak, Memory, Nabokov tells us that as a boy he especially admired Mayne’s The Headless Horseman, “which had given him a vision of the prairies and the great open spaces and the overarching sky” – an early picture of Nabokov’s future adopted home. Books have inflamed the boys, as they did Don Quixote and Emma Bovary. They plot an escape to California. When Lentilov asks Katya if she has read Mayne’s books, she replies:

“`No, I haven't. . . . I say, can you skate?’

“Absorbed in his own reflections, Lentilov made no reply to this question; he simply puffed out his cheeks, and gave a long sigh as though he were very hot. He looked up at Katya once more and said:

“`When a herd of bisons stampedes across the prairie the earth trembles, and the frightened mustangs kick and neigh.’

“He smiled impressively and added:

“`And the Indians attack the trains, too. But worst of all are the mosquitoes and the termites.’

“`Why, what's that?’

“`They're something like ants, but with wings. They bite fearfully. Do you know who I am?’

“`Mr. Lentilov.’

“`No, I am Montehomo, the Hawk's Claw, Chief of the Ever Victorious.’”

No, Lentilov is the Russian granddaddy of every Star Trek obsessive. Chekhov paints the quintessential nerd a century before the type was widely recognized in the United States. The Oxford English Dictionary’s first citation for “nerd” dates to a remarkably early 1951, in Newsweek: “In Detroit, someone who once would be called a drip or a square is now, regrettably, a nerd.” The OED definition perfectly suits Lentilov:

“An insignificant, foolish, or socially inept person; a person who is boringly conventional or studious. Now also: spec. a person who pursues an unfashionable or highly technical interest with obsessive or exclusive dedication.”

Reid Mayne’s novels were Lentilov’s Dungeons and Dragons, Dr. Who and The Matrix. The OED describes the etymology of nerd as “uncertain and disputed,” but offers an intriguingly boyish explanation: “…nerd, a fictional animal in the children's story If I ran the Zoo (1950) by ‘Dr. Seuss’, depicted as a small, unkempt, humanoid creature with a large head and a comically disapproving expression.” Chekhov, on Lentilov’s first appearance, describes him as “another small person,” and writes:

“He was, in fact, distinctly ugly, and if he had not been wearing the school uniform, he might have been taken for the son of a cook. He seemed morose, did not speak, and never once smiled.”

The boys make their break for California but are stopped by the police as they go from shop to shop, trying to buy gunpowder. Lentilov, who “looked morose and haughty to the end,” is dragged away by his mother. But before he goes, “he took Katya's book and wrote in it as a souvenir: `Montehomo, the Hawk's Claw, Chief of the Ever Victorious.'"