The New Yorker – May 13, 2019

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As Osipov’s legend has grown, so have the inevitable comparisons to Chekhov.

LIFEANDLETTERS

A LEARNED NEIGHBOR

Maxim Osipov finds inspiration in the rural Russian town of Tarusa.

BYJOSHUAYAFFA

PHOTOGRAPH BY ELENA ANOSOVA

F

or many years, Maxim Osipov lived

with a gnawing sense of frustration.

He had always thought of himself as a

writer, but, as a student in the waning

days of the Soviet Union, he trained as

a cardiologist and worked for three years

in a busy Moscow clinic. In the early

nineties, when Russia was in the throes

of economic transition, he started a pub­

lishing house, which specialized in trans­

lating medical textbooks, and, in 1994,

he left his hospital job to run it full time.

The company proved successful, yet life

was somehow less than complete. Osi­

pov, a humorous and energetic man with

a baritone voice like thick honey, was

in his early forties when he realized that

he was a doctor who didn’t practice

medicine, and a writer who had never

published a line.

As a child, Osipov spent most of his

summers in Tarusa, a town on the bank

of the Oka River, where his great­grand­

father had a house. As an adult, he lived

in Moscow with his wife, Evgenia, a pi­

anist, and their two children. Around the

time he launched the publishing house,

he acquired some land of his own in Ta­

rusa, which is a two­hour drive from

Moscow, and built a dacha, a place to

spend weekends and summer holidays

with his family. The house is set on a hill

above the center of town. From the up­

stairs windows, you can see a sloping

tableau of red, brown, and green roofs,

the onion domes and rising bell tower

of the central cathedral, and a bend in

the river. In the mid­two­thousands,

when Osipov’s urge to return to clinical

work intensified, it seemed logical that

he should take a post at the local hospi­

tal, which lacked a cardiologist.

In April, 2005, when Osipov saw his

first patient in Tarusa, Moscow was

booming, with high oil prices fuelling

a culture of consumption and reinven­

tion. But none of that was evident in

Tarusa. The hospital was a dispiriting

place. Wires hung from the ceiling, the

wards smelled of urine, and rats darted

across the corridors. Osipov, who saw

patients there two days a week, brought

his own echocardiogram machine with

him. He sometimes joked that the best

medical service that the hospital offered

could be found in the cafeteria, where

at least patients were served a filling

meal. The disposition of the people he

treated reminded him of the way Anton

Chekhov, who had worked as a village

doctor, described the human condition,

as “a dislike of life strangely combined

with a fear of death.”

In 2007, Osipov gathered his thoughts

on his life and his medical practice in

an essay, “In My Native Land,” which

was published in the literary journal

Znamya. It is a perceptive and exacting

piece of writing. Recalling Chekhov’s

observation, Osipov writes of how his

patients appear to lack the motivation

to recover: “They don’t want to die, but

nor do they want to go to a provincial

capital, to figure out a solution, to make

a fuss.” Osipov’s tone is one of comic

despair. He notes, for instance, how often

he has the same conversation with his

patients, in which they tell him that

they cannot read the prescription that

he has written for them because they

didn’t bring their reading glasses. “Well,

then, if you’re without your glasses, I

guess you didn’t plan to read anything

today—this is illiteracy,” he writes.

Among the staff at the hospital, he

goes on, “the idiocy of officials, regional

and national, is not even discussed, only

the methods of deceiving them.” After

the authorities prohibit amputated limbs

from being incinerated on the hospital

premises, he writes, the staff are left

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Fact Yaffa Osipov 05_13_19.L [Print]_9479237.indd 18 5/2/19 10:37 PM