Merchutkin

The late-employed (not deceased, but dismissed) husband of Nastasya Fyodorovna Merchutkina in Chekhov's "The Anniversary" ("Юбилей"); an off-stage provincial secretary in the military-medical department who was dismissed after a five-month illness and had money deducted from his back pay. He never appears on stage; his wife's confused, mistaken attempt to seek redress for him at the wrong institution -- a bank with which he had no connection -- drives the play's second farcical thread.