Wishing to marry, there being no suitable brides in our area, I invite girls desiring marriage to send their terms. The bride must be no older than 23, blonde, good-looking, of medium height and of lively, cheerful character; no dowry required. Apply to Evgeni Insarov, Almetevo, Bugulma district.
Lika replied by return of post:
Par dépit I am burning up my life now! … and if you tell your friends at supper that a blonde is being unfaithful to you, that will probably amaze nobody, since I shouldn’t think anyone would suppose that someone could be faithful to you.
Anton was supping with literary friends that night and the next four. Sergeenko tried to recruit Chekhov into a club of twelve – writers, painters, composers – for suppers, teas and story-telling. In Petersburg the temperature was -35°C. (At Melikhovo, too, it was colder than anyone could recall.) Party-going and terrible cold took their toll. Suvorin’s house turned into a sickbay. Anton coughed uncontrollably, but treated everybody else. Suvorin had flu and otitis. Anton bandaged Emilie Bijon’s leg: the governess had fallen off a wardrobe. He introduced to Petersburg a Moscow tradition: Tatiana-day celebrations with Suvorin, Grigorovich and Leikin, Barantsevich, Ezhov and Tikhonov. ‘We drank little, but it was an extremely lively dinner,’ recorded Leikin. Anton announced: ‘We must all unite, or they’ll pick us off one by one.’5
Accounts at New Times, controlled by Suvorin’s eldest son, Mikhail, were a muddle. Anton needed to offset the 5000 roubles in advances and loans he had taken from Suvorin. He wanted to pay off Natalia Lintvariova, who had lent him 500 roubles to buy seed and equipment for Melikhovo. He was puzzled: no matter how many of his books Suvorin sold, he seemed to be in debt. At Suvorin’s, he wrote only a short discourse, ‘What Disease Did Herod Die Of?’, and an enquiry on behalf of the painter Repin into whether the moon shone on Gethsemane.
Even in Petersburg Anton could not escape the demands on his time, pocket and affections. Pavel, who received a pension through Suvorin’s office, ostensibly from his sons, angry that payment was late, protested to Aleksandr:
I am the father of famous children. I must in no way find myself embarrassed or humble myself before anyone. I shall not go begging from anybody. It is a disgrace! I need freedom, I shall live where I wish, I shall go whither I wish, and I need money for that.6
Lika lamented still more loudly on 15 January 1893:
I haven’t seen Masha since December … You say that you will come on a Monday? That’s stupid – there are Mondays in March and July and that explains nothing … I am counting the days and hours which must pass before the happy moment comes when I see you. Your Likula.7
Anton felt he had to surrender to Lika, and to return home. On Sunday 24 January 1893, just before he left, he reluctantly dined tête-à-tête with the sister of Maria Kiseliova – Nadezhda Golubeva, a senator’s wife and amateur writer. Anton had last met her at Babkino in the summer of 1887. Anton was forthright with Nadezhda: neither her nor Maria’s writing was any good, because it was done without sweat; his own success came not from genius, but luck and toil. Nadezhda observed Anton closely:
He cast a quick eye around the room; I understood that look and hastened to tell him that my husband would not be dining with him as he was away. Chekhov brightened up suddenly and barked out as of old: ‘Oh, how glad I am! You know, Nadezhda, I don’t have your husband’s good manners. My papa and mama sold herrings.’ … Chekhov was turning the napkin in an astoundingly odd way, as if it irritated him terribly, he crumpled it, twisted it, finally put it behind him. He was on tenterhooks. I couldn’t understand what this all meant. Suddenly he fired: ‘I’m sorry, Nadezhda, I’m not used to sitting down to dinner, I always eat as I walk … In the last six years I’ve aged by twenty years.’ … There was such tiredness in his face! I thought: the springtime of his life has passed, there has been no summer, autumn has come straight away.8
That tired disillusionment is equally strong in Shcheglov’s diary entry for the next day: ‘Chekhov and Co. is not literature, but [quoting Nadson] “Our useless ant hill, our world of pygmies not of men.”’9 On 26 January 1893, Anton was back in his Moscow ant hill, climbing the stairs to see Lika. After nearly three years’ evasion, she must have felt, Anton had surrendered.
Notes
1 See OR, 331 59 46: Anna Suvorina’s letters to Anton: undated, filed as sheets 36–7.
2 Dr Obolonsky, a ‘vulture’ for a lucrative patient, showed his concern: ‘I’ve heard … your stay depends on the degree of Suvorin’s illness. They say he’s seriously ill … he believes you and in you unconditionally. Arrange for him to invite me to examine him.’ See OR, 331 54 7: N. N. Obolonsky’s letters to Anton 1889–1901.
3 Anton also examined Leskov, who feared his doctors were lying about his terminal heart condition. He reassured Leskov, but told others that the novelist had at most a year to live.
4 See Zankovetskaia’s memoirs, LN68, 592–3.
5 See LN68, 493–510 for V. A. Tikhonov’s and Leikin’s diaries.
6 See OR, 331 81 13: Pavel’s letters to Aleksandr, 1874–94.
7 See OR, 331, 52 2b: Lika’s letters to Anton, 1893–4.
8 See LN68, 570–2.
9 See LN68, 484.
THIRTY-NINE
Sickbay
February–March 1893
ANTON HAD ENJOYED PETERSBURG so much that he thought of renting an apartment there. In the frozen countryside, he forgot such frivolity. Pavel, after watching the cow give birth, collapsed and prepared to die. Anton fetched Masha, delirious with a temperature of 40°C, from Moscow. She grew worse, and Countess Mamuna came down to nurse her. Lika, always ill at ease in times of crisis, stayed away. Then Anton himself fell ill. He wrote to Aleksandr on 6 February 1893:
1) Father is ill. He has bad spinal pains and numb fingers. Not continuously, it comes in attacks like angina. The symptoms seem to be senile. He needs treatment, but ‘his lordship is dining’ furiously, rejecting moderation: pancakes all day, hot flour dishes for supper and all sorts of rubbishy snacks. He says ‘I’m stricken with paralysis’, but won’t obey.
2) Masha is ill. She was in bed for a week with a high temperature. We thought it was typhoid. Now she’s better.
3) I have flu. I am doing nothing and am irritable.
4) The pedigree calf has frostbitten ears.
5) The geese pecked off the cockerel’s comb.
6) Visitors keep coming and staying the night.
7) The rural authorities are demanding a medical report from me.
8) The house has subsidence and some doors won’t shut.
9) The sub-zero temperatures continue.
10) The sparrows are copulating.
Now Anton needed Aleksandr’s help. While in Petersburg Anton had found he had no right to live there. A humble townsman, no longer a Moscow resident, he needed a permit to reside in either capital city. He had to obtain dvorianin (noble) status to enjoy full civic freedom. Suvorin found the solution and Aleksandr did the work. Aleksandr lobbied with the Medical Department of the Interior Ministry to appoint Anton a supernumerary civil servant. Now, like Aleksandr and Vania, he had rank and civic rights. Employed by a Petersburg ministry (he forwent a salary), Anton could reside only in Petersburg; to reside in Moscow as well, he had to take leave or, better, retire. The first half of 1893 was spent securing appointment, the second retirement. Then Anton Chekhov could live and travel anywhere. (His parents still needed, to reside in Melikhovo, an annual passport issued by the police in Taganrog.) Aleksandr’s reward was to be invited, with his elder boys, but without Natalia, to Melikhovo. Now that Misha was two, Natalia’s passion fixed on her son; her stepsons were left to Aleksandr’s care. Aleksandr won little sympathy or thanks from Anton. He sent photographs, taken at Melikhovo or printed from Sakhalin plates. Anton grumbled that he had no room to display them and that he despised Aleksandr’s hobbies, fretwork and photography.
Lika reappeared. In February, as the patients in Melikhovo recovered,
she came with Masha for weekends there. In March she spent a whole week, from the 23rd (her name day) to Easter Sunday, but Anton was still hard to lure to Moscow. She wrote on 1 April 1893: ‘I’ve made you some perfume, if you don’t come soon, I’ll give it to somebody else … All men are bastards. Come!’ Pavel set off to see Vania and do the rounds of Moscow’s churches. Masha and Anton took over Pavel’s diary and parodied his lugubrious style:
18 March: –1°. Glory to God, all have left and only two, myself and Mme. Chekhova remain. 19: Masha and Mizinova came … 20: Mama dreamt of a nanny goat on a chamberpot, this is a good sign. 21 Sunday: Semashko came, We ate roast udder. 22 We heard a lark. A crane flew by in the evening. Semashko left. 23 Mama dreamt of a goose in a priest’s hat. This is a good omen. Masha’s belly aches. We slaughtered a pig. 24. We made sausages.
Anton was again hiding from admirers. In February Aleksandra Pokhlebina had lost her pupils and her sanity. She raved that a morphine-addicted rival for Anton’s affections had hired men to attack her. Anton heard from her again in March 1893: ‘Just the thought that you don’t care about my suffering drives me mad, I feel I won’t survive. If you really don’t care what happens to me, then at least pretend, make believe that you like me …’ Pokhlebina’s life and Anton’s peace of mind were saved when her family set up a metallurgical plant, and she went to work there. Anton also persuaded The Performing Artist to publish her eccentric New Ways of Getting Piano Technique.
War broke out between the two camps, Suvorin’s and Lavrov’s, in which Chekhov had pitched his tents. Russian Thought accused the Suvorins of profiting from the Panama Canal scandal.1 On 1 March Anton went to Moscow, with Lika, and calmly drank five glasses of vodka with Lavrov at Russian Thought. On the 5th, two days later, the Dauphin came to Russian Thought, struck Lavrov, and took the night train back to Petersburg. Suvorin was as upset by the distress that ‘Liolia’, his darling Dauphin, had undergone as by public hostility to all Suvorins. Two weeks later Suvorin, Grigorovich and their wives set off for Vienna. Suvorin spent most of 1893 abroad.
Anton was not only deprived of a friend, but his most important relationship was damaged. Few of his letters reached Suvorin that spring and summer: the Dauphin and his brother were intercepting their father’s mail. New Times turned vicious as the Dauphin took over. Aleksandr trembled for his job: the Dauphin would not speak to him or print him. The office of New Times felt that Anton’s involvement in Russian Thought was black ingratitude to Suvorin, his maker. The Dauphin claimed that Anton had written abuse to his father. Hearing of the assault on Lavrov, Chekhov told Masha on 11 March:
So between me and Suvorin [junior] everything is now finished, even though he is writing me snivelling letters. A son of a bitch who swears at people every day and is famous for it, struck a man for swearing at him.
Anton told Aleksandr that the breach was only partially mended:
The old building has cracked and must collapse. I’m sorry for the old man, he wrote me a penitent letter; probably, I shan’t have to break with him permanently; but as for the office and the Dauphin’s clique, there seems little chance of any sort of relations with them.
New Times had lost Chekhov as a writer. It was to lose all its respectable contributors, and its verve degenerated into chauvinism. Even its editors resigned, went mad, or wrote anonymous denunciations. As Suvorin senior failed to hold back the anti-Semitic barbarities of New Times, the breach affected the two men personally. Anton dropped the idea of going to the Chicago Exhibition because the Dauphin intended to come.2
Olga Kundasova, crossing Russia from Novocherkassk, where she researched into mathematics, to Moscow and Petersburg, where she disseminated her findings, felt more for Suvorin. On 10 March she appealed to Anton:
Anton, Suvorin was about to go to Feodosia today, but has put it off. I have, by the way, given him a[nother] letter addressed to you and written that he must not be left alone in his present nervous state. I even suggested that you should accompany Aleksei to Feodosia. Be a good friend, do that and distract him if only a little bit … He wants to call you out to Lopasnia station. So be ready. I ask just one thing: not a word to him about the letter which you will have from his hands. Tear it up.
Anton replied to Kundasova so strongly about his own shattered nerves that she did not dare show the letter to Suvorin. Soon, however, Suvorin was in Vienna listening to Grigorovich’s tales of sexual exploits. In late March he was ill in Venice, nursed by the Grigoroviches. In mid April the Grigoroviches and Anna Suvorina turned back. Suvorin bought himself 1650 francs worth of furniture and began a lonely peregrination to Biarritz and Paris.
Unlike Anton, his younger brothers had decided to marry. After November 1892 Vania’s fiancée, Aleksandra Liosova had stopped coming to Melikhovo, but by Easter 1893 Vania was betrothed to Sofia Andreeva, a teacher at the Basmannaia school – ‘a long-nosed gentlewoman from Kostroma’, Anton sneered. (Liosova later told Anton ‘Ivan asked me not to meet him again, for his hatred for me is too great.’) Countess Mamuna continued to visit Melikhovo, where Misha, to Anton’s irritation, lived throughout 1893, employed at a tax office in nearby Serpukhov. Less was said of Misha’s engagement to Mamuna, although he visited Moscow to see what the family jokingly called ‘the government offices – brunette in a red jacket’. On 26 April Anton, however, told Suvorin:
At Easter the countess writes she is off to see her aunt in Kostroma. There have been no more letters until recently. Misha yearns, hears she is in Moscow, goes to see her and, O wonders, sees people hanging about the windows and the gates. What is it? It turns out there is a marriage in the house, the countess is marrying some goldminer. How’s that? Misha comes back in despair and thrusts under my nose the countess’s tender letters, full of love, asking me to solve this psychological problem.
Anton had discovered Kipling’s substitute for women, and told his architect friend Franz Schechtel in March 1893:
Dear Franz, can you imagine, I smoke cigars … I find they taste far better, they’re healthier and cleaner, although, more expensive. You’re an expert in cigars, I’m still an ignoramus and dilettante. Please instruct me: what cigars should I smoke and where in Moscow can I buy them? I now smoke Petersburg Ten-Kate, called El Armado, Londres, made there from imported Havana tobacco, strong; you can judge their length by … [Schechtel blacked out a phallus]
Schechtel, who was now a rich and fashionable man, sent back a hundred Havana cigars from Riga. In gratitude Anton called on Schechtel on 1 May 1893 and left him a banded cigar with instructions: ‘It must be smoked not just standing and with hat doffed, but also ‘God Save the Tsar’ must be played and gendarmes must prance around you.’ The best cigar in the world, however, provide only an hour of bliss. Leikin had promised Anton his heart’s desire. The arrangements kept on falling through, but finally, on 5 April, as Leikin’s diary shows, Anton’s desires were met:
Khudekov’s servants are taking the Khudekov birds from the Bird Show to the country, to Riazan province, and will at the same time deliver, it’s not out of their way, two dachshunds to Chekhov in Moscow.
Notes
1 The same journalist also attacked Chekhov as ‘a writer without support or goal’ and hoped ‘he gets closer to human sufferings …’, but now Chekhov overlooked abuse from Russian Thought.
2 The Suvorins and Chekhov were all relieved they had not gone: the Russian contribution was just a party of bureaucrats, who were the butt of the American President’s sarcasm.
FORTY
Dachshund Summer
April–August 1893
ON THURSDAY 15 APRIL Masha brought to Melikhovo 5 lb of lard, 10 lb of pork breast, 10 lb of candles, and two dachshunds. She named the blackish dog Brom (bromine) and the tan bitch Quinine (Anton christened them Brom Isaevich and Khina Markovna.) They were frozen on the cart journey, after a week in Vania’s house, where they had been banished to the privy. Anton thanked Leikin:
The dachshunds have been running through all
the rooms, being affectionate, barking at the servants. They were fed and then they began to feel utterly at home. At night they dug the earth and newly-sown seed from the window boxes and distributed the galoshes from the lobby round all the rooms and in the morning, when I took them for a walk round the garden they horrified the farm dogs who have never seen such monstrosities. The bitch is nicer than the dog … But both have kind, grateful eyes.
The dachshunds spent the day chasing hens and geese out of the garden. Anton told Leikin 4 August 1893:
Brom is nimble and supple, polite and sensitive, Quinine is awkward, fat, idle and cunning. Brom likes birds, Quinine digs her nose into the ground. They both love to cry from excess of emotion. They know why they are punished. Brom often vomits. He is in love with a farm bitch. Quinine, however, is still an innocent maiden. They love going for walks across the fields and in the woods, but only with us. I have to smack them almost every day: they grab patients by the trousers, they quarrel when they eat, and so on. They sleep in my room.
Misha was amazed by Anton’s affection:
Every evening Quinine would come up to Anton, put her front paws on his knees and look into his eyes pathetically and devotedly. He would change his expression and say in a broken old man’s voice: ‘Quinine! You poor old thing! You ought to go to hospital, you’d feel better there.’ He spent a whole thirty minutes talking to the dog and made everyone in the house helpless with laughter. Then came Brom’s turn. He too would put his front paws on Anton’s knee and the fun would start again.
Anton Chekhov Page 35