high spirits lasted all autumn. He found pupils among his fellow students for calligraphy and drawing, but he still had to complete his secondary education while studying Art and Architecture: Anton sent him his Ovid and a crib. By now Kolia was known to a circle of students as 'The Artist', trawling Moscow's drinking dens. The trickle of money from Taganrog dried up. While attending university only on Tuesdays, in return for board and lodging for himself and Kolia, Aleksandr worked in a crammer run by two Scandinavians, Brukker and Groening. Kolia's eccentricities made life intolerable: he worked spasmodically, rarely washed and often wet his bed. In October 1875 Aleksandr complained to Anton: I'm writing on my bed, half-asleep, for it is past one in the morning. Kolia has been snoring for some time after his constant 'I can't spare the time'. The poor boy is wiped out. He's stunk the whole room out. He has an odd way of sleeping. He covers himself so that his head and back are covered up, but a yard of his legs are uncovered.
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He's trouble, he slops about bare-foot in the evening, wears no socks, there's mud in his boots… his feet are filthy. He went to the baths on Saturday and by Sunday his feet are like an Ethiopian's… We have floods almost every night and all his rotten stuff is drying in my room. I swear to you by God that I'll lose my job because of his arsehole… Mama is afraid I'm treating him badly, but she's the one, because she doesn't bother to do anything about acquiring an overcoat for him, while Papa tries for miracles and writes to tell us to borrow money… Although his pupils were charged 700 roubles a year, Brukker had stopped feeding, let alone paying, his student-teacher. In a freezing November the school was no longer heated, the boys fell ill and their parents retrieved them. Groening and Aleksandr fled. Despite a libellous letter from Brukker's wife, a Prince Vorontsov paid Aleksandr board and lodging to teach his sons for a few months. Kolia plunged into destitution, and complained to his parents: Aleksandr has left and I wandered all day around town looking for somewhere to live and came back hungry at night, I hadn't eaten since breakfast and when I got back I asked for food and they told me there wasn't any. Aleksandr's at Vorontsov's, I'm sitting in a little room and there's revolution in the building, they're saying Aleksandr has poached all the pupils that the parents have removed because of the bad state of things. In the next room Brukker is raging and I'm sitting and waiting for him to say, 'Clear out.' Ten roubles from Loboda got Kolia lodgings in December, but he was desperate: 'I shall be spending the night in 30 degrees of frost by Sukharevka tower and I shall die of starvation if nobody lends me anything…' The noose tightened in Taganrog. Evgenia told Aleksandr that she could not cope, let alone find the fare to come and comfort her sons:. Antosha and Vania have spent all week at home, the school is demanding payment and we have no money. Yesterday, 9 October, Pavel went and asked the headmaster to let Vania off, but Antosha is still at home, in all 42 roubles have to be paid for him and Masha. Now tell me not to moan. I'm so weak with worry that I can hardly walk, if I had my health I might earn some money, but I can't, yesterday I spent all day in bed… I asked Selivanov for 30 roubles to pay back at 10 roubles a year. He wouldn't… what are we to do with Kolia, he mustn't drink tea before bedtime. Please see to
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FATHER TO III I MAN
his underwear, don't let him drop it about and let it rot. I'm even crying because we haven't sent you any money… Daddy isn't sending you money, but not because he's mean, God sees that he has nothing. This month we have to pay 50 roubles interest on the house to the bank… Vania's been sent back from school. Diakonov just threw him out. Pokrovsky spoke up for us, but Diakonov wouldn't hear of it… December 1875 in Taganrog was severe: Evgenia had frostbite on both hands. She had thanked Ivan Loboda for keeping an eye on her sons and Loboda lent her enough money for Kolia to come home for Christmas and the New Year. So severe were the snows, however, that the railway from Taganrog was blocked. Kolia had to leave the train south at a halt by a Scythian barrow, Matveev Kurgan: on 23 December Anton was sent by sledge with fur coats to carry him back, hungry and ill, over the last forty miles. Kolia stayed with his family until February, when the lines were kept clear, and he could beg his fare back to Moscow from a family friend.
Kolia was busy in Taganrog contacting old flames. He wrote in dog-French, German and Russian reassuring Aleksandr that Maria Faist, his fiancee, loved him: Quand je disais que tu are putting on weight elle disait toujours: Good boy!… I don't know how I shall leave here; Vater refuses to send any money. I told him if I'm not sent off by the 15th I'll steal it and go. Vater envoye pour moi de tabac, deja 2 fois Vania is such a little bastard that nobody gets any peace.29 Anton too reported to Aleksandr on Maria Faist - in dog-German. On 3 March 1876 he wrote his first surviving letter: Ich war gestern im Hause Alferakis auf einen Konzert, und sah dort deine Marie Faist und ihre Schwester Luise. Ich habe eine discovery gemacht: Luise is jealous of dich and Marie und the other way round. Sie fragten mich von dir separately, secretly. But was ist das? Du bist ein lady's man… Evgenia and Pavel were busy salvaging every penny owed to them. Selivanov's niece Sasha owed rent, but Selivanov had left for warmer premises and taken her with him. Evgenia could not afford a rouble a day to heat the house for her remaining tenants: they piled into the kitchen for warmth. Somehow in these conditions Anton gained '5's
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for Religious Knowledge and German. When Kolia left, his younger brothers and sister cried 'Take us too!', but it was not the children who were off to Moscow. At Easter, early in April 1876, a family council was held: Egor came from Krepkaia, leaving the blind Efro-sinia. He read his grandsons' letters from Moscow and agreed that Pavel had to seek his fortune there. Loboda saw no way out: bills of exchange were falling due. In Russia debtors' prisons existed until 1879 and, despite Pavel's status as police alderman, he risked confinement in the 'pit'. Evgenia told her father-in-law that there wasn't even money for the fare to Moscow. To her amazement, she told Aleksandr, 'he pitied us and gave money… I don't know how to thank him for all his benefactions, he's old and works hard for all his children, for God's sake write to him and thank him, he's already given Kolia 10 roubles.' Egor was dismayed by his sons. In Kaluga Mikhail had died; in Taganrog Mitrofan was just keeping his head above water; Pavel was about to flee in disgrace.
Plans were made to abandon ship. Loboda would not buy the stock. The family hid their unsold wares in the stable. Evgenia hovered between despair and wild hope. She wrote to Aleksandr and Kolia on 8 April: 'Anyone who meets me will be amazed, I've aged all at once, could you give Papa any more, or might we find a little shop in Moscow to rent…'30
Evgenia scraped together 11 roubles for Kolia's fees at College and handed the money, with Easter eggs and cake, to a Taganrog merchant leaving for Moscow. She packed Pavel's bags. The market stall was locked up and the keys entrusted to Ivan Loboda's younger brother, Onufri. The deadline for Pavel's payment of 500 roubles to the Mutual Credit Society passed. The guarantor, a merchant called Kostenko, paid the 500 roubles and counter-sued Pavel. The builder, Mironov, was suing for the 1000 roubles owed to him.
On 23 April 1876, before dawn, Pavel left Taganrog by cart, so as to evade his creditors' spies at the railway station. He went to the first country halt in the open steppe where the Moscow-bound train would stop. At 2.00 p.m. on 25 April he was in Moscow. In Taganrog Anton took over his father's battle for survival.
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SIX
o Destitution
1876
THE YEARS FROM 1876 oi 1879 were traumatic in Anton Chekhov's life. His letters to his father and brothers in Moscow have mostly been lost, but their letters to him, as well as his mother's and his Uncle Mitrofan's letters, show unremitting hardship and fear of worse.
At sixteen Anton became the head of the household, dealing with creditors, debtors, relatives and friends of the family whose sympathy was limited, coping with his mother's misery and his younger siblings' dismay. Gavriil Selivanov showed himself a hard-headed businessman as well as a family friend: the grim comedy of The Cherry Orchard with the auction, the transformation of Lopakhin from friend into predator and the dispersal of the household to the four winds originated in Chekhov's adolescent years in Taganrog. Gavriil Selivanov played Lopakhin to the improvident Chekhovs. Anton, distress forging both his willpower and his reserve, grew strong.
In this debtor's hell, surprisingly, Anton's marks at school improved. The theatre and private concerts continued to occupy him, and he also went to classes with Taganrog's dancing teacher, Vrondy.31
Anton had already started a handwritten class-magazine, The Hiccup. Aleksandr, when sent an issue in September 1875 and two issues early in 1876, was encouraging, and he showed them to cousin Misha Chokhov. Everyone in the Gavrilov warehouse, including its owner, Ivan Gavrilov, found them amusing. In 1876 a wider
