As I mentioned earlier, there is
akula (shark) in Vakula (the hero of Gogol's The Christmas
Eve). A shark appears in the penultimate paragraph of Chekhov story
Gusev (1890):
After that another dark body
appeared. It was a shark. It swam under Gusev with dignity and no show of
interest, as though it did not notice him, and sank down upon its back, then it
turned belly upwards, basking in the warm, transparent water and languidly
opened its jaws with two rows of teeth. The harbour pilots are delighted, they
stop to see what will come next. After playing a little with the body the shark
nonchalantly puts its jaws under it, cautiously touches it with its teeth, and
the sailcloth is rent its full length from head to foot; one of the weights
falls out and frightens the harbour pilots, and striking the shark on the ribs
goes rapidly to
Gusev (and Gusinykh, Gusiadi, gus' being
Russian for goose) was Chekhov's name for his brother Alexander. The latter
probably received it, because he suffered from alcoholism and had a bad liver
(poor geese are deliberately fed to spoil their livers for foie
gras). In Ada (1.13), Colonel Erminin (who, according to Van, liked to
pass for a Chekhovian colonel) says in a note that his liver
(pechen') is behaving like a pecheneg (savage). The pechenegs
(a mysterious tribe that in the pre-Tartar times populated the steppe north
of the Black sea) are mentioned in Pushkin's Ruslan and Lyudmila. On
the other hand, Pecheneg ("The Savage") is a story by Chekhov
(1897). It is about a man who invites a stranger met on the train to
spend the night at his place but then tires his guest out with
his endless stories and silly questions robbing him of his
sleep.
Alexey Sklyarenko