spouse, but now he never misses a chance to besmirch them, which by the way they thoroughly deserve. Once he even went so far as to say about them: 'Pharisees, sons of bitches.'… Selivanov in my view is a thousand times right when he warns mother against the Holy Fathers.
1876
On 3 June 1876, after a grim family conference with Fgor and his blind wife, Mitrofan wrote to his brother: We can see Evgenia is very unhappy; she has lost weight, and so has Anton, only we do not know how you are living in Moscow, what you are doing, how you are feeding yourself. A great Divine Visitation is upon you… Evgenia was with us today to see Papa off and drank a glass of fine wine. She said, 'For grief.' We said, For future joy.' Mironov hopes you can be saved, but you must pray for him. Pavel did not remonstrate with Mitrofan, but with Anton for showing his anxiety. Antosha! I'm told that you and Mama have supposedly lost weight. How can this be? You write to me, 'Daddy, be brave and strong, be cheerful and pray.'… So you are as big a coward and as poor in spirit as your elder Brother… Antosha, take care of Mama, if anything happens, you will have to answer. She could come and join us, perhaps you can gather say 100 roubles for her fare. Life is no bowl of cherries here either… Pavel saw his whole life as a great sacrifice; he lectured Anton: 'we have not had a single peaceful day in our lives, have cared, have laboured, have endured everything, suffered, pleaded, so as to educate you as best we could, to make you cleverer, to make your life easier.' The other children were told to clean the barrels in the cellar, asked about the latest trials of corrupt merchants in Taganrog, reproached for poor marks at school. Pavel, Aleksandr and Kolia had moved, in the same house, from a 13-rouble room to a 7-rouble room. In the holidays Aleksandr and Kolia went to the country with Mrs Pol-evaeva, leaving Pavel alone in Moscow. He vented his discontent to Anton: Here we don't know the taste of beef or potatoes or fish or vinegar… Tell Mama not to let anyone into the House and not to let the Creditors see her, say that she's not at Home… Sell the furniture, the Mirrors and the beds, get the money together and send Mama to Moscow… Anton was unhappy at being left behind in Taganrog to fend for himself and his indigent parents. Pavel brushed aside his protests:
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I'A I IE E TO III E MAN
Antosha… I'm amazed that you and Masha want so much to come to Moscow and not to live in Taganrog. The bedbugs in Moscow would eat you in one night, I've never seen such enormous insects in my life. Worse than Taganrog creditors, I literally scrape them by hand off my pillow at night. You write that whether I find a job or not, you still have to come, but you don't consider mat it's impossible to live in Moscow without money… I am definitely going mad with nothing to do, I am weak with idleness, never in my life have I experienced such an agonising situation… Mama writes that she won't be allowed to leave Taganrog, and that she has debts. I am astounded by such an opinion… Kolia desperately wanted his mother to come, together with the youngest children, Masha and Misha. But he agreed with Pavel that Anton and Vania should stay. He took his father's side and said that it was not worth Pavel working for less than 50 roubles a month. Nobody in Moscow would employ a bankrupt merchant in his fifties for even half that wage. Gavrilov, cousin Misha's employer, turned Pavel away: 'Why did you come here?' Pavel, a debtor on the run, had no permit to settle in Moscow; any creditors who were not staved off by Selivanov or the Taganrog Brotherhood could extradite him to Taganrog. Aleksandr and Kolia had seen fugitive debtors escorted by soldiers to the station; they urged Pavel to face the music, declare himself bankrupt and only then to return to Moscow openly, with a valid passport. A Taganrog police official, Anisim Petrov, much feared as an informer, but a friend of the Chekhovs, assuaged Pavel's fears. Kolia asked Anton to find out from Selivanov whether the Taganrog authorities were trying to have Pavel extradited. To Kolia's anxious letter of 9 June, Pavel added an angry note: 'What's the point of looking for me when there's nothing to be got out of me? I escaped empty-handed and Glory to God for that!'
Glimmers of hope soon eclipsed. In mid June Gavrilov lent Pavel 115 roubles to buy 90 pounds of tea to pack into one-pound bags for 9 roubles profit. Gavrilov even let Pavel take home the tea samples. The Micawber in Pavel came to life. By late June he was painting a rosy future to Evgenia: Come to Moscow, bring Masha. Just get 50 roubles together and come. We'll find a flat or a country cottage. The Moscow air is good, my health is restored. I don't miss Taganrog any more and
1876
don't want to go there. Who'll be in the house - just Antosha. Leave him to Fenichka… bring the valuables, the silver frames. Here you can pawn them and get good money, the interest is small, i'/2% a month. When we earn some money, we'll redeem them again. If you can't let Mitrofan have my fox-fur coat for 50 roubles, bring it with you, we'll pawn it here and get whatever money we need. Where you are you're likely to starve to death, but here we have credit. [Ivan] Loboda is here and is nice and respectful to me. He says he's seen you at his family's house. I suppose the children's clothes must be worn out, but here we have everything, we live like Lords… Mitrofan now claimed that he was rallying support for his brother: All the others sympathize and commiserate and nobody thinks that you did anything on purpose. Grigori Bokos… said, 'Write and tell your brother that I have mortgaged my last property and redeemed the bill, which I shall not call in, but I would like Pavel to renew it…' On 29 June 1876 the blind Efrosinia, Pavel and Mitrofan's mother, broke her leg. She never rose from her bed again. (The bearer of these tidings took Vania and Misha to stay with Egor for a month.) On 11 July Mitrofan's infant son Ivan died.
Using Anton's earnings from selling the household goods and tutoring fellow pupils, Evgenia paid for three fares to Moscow. Vania and Misha returned from their grandparents' house. On 23 July 1876 Evgenia, taking Masha and Misha with her, caught the train to Moscow. The Chekhov house stood empty.
Vania moved in with his widowed aunt Marfa Morozova, who, in spite of her Loboda resources, did not pay his school fees. Anton spent a month with Selivanov's relatives in the country: there he lay ill for a fortnight, apparently with a hernia. In Taganrog he was taken in by Gavriil Selivanov, agreeing, for board, lodging and fees, to coach Selivanov's Cossack nephew Petia Kravtsov for cadet college, and his lively niece, Sasha Selivanova, for grammar school. Sasha Selivanova wore a red dress with black spots: Anton called her 'ladybird' and developed a flirtation with her that endured for decades. On one occasion they were spotted 'cooing like doves' on a bench overlooking Taganrog's great flight of steps to the seashore; when disturbed they slipped away to the nearest courtyard.37
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FATHER TO THE MAN
Judging by the letters the young Kravtsov wrote and by Sasha's later career as a schoolteacher, this first love did not stop Anton from being an effective tutor. He and Selivanov established a modus Vivendi. Four years later Selivanov would write to Anton: 'When I invited you to my quarters, we understood each other the moment we spoke and we recognized in our hearts that I needed you just as much as you needed me.'38 Pavel and Evgenia had left Anton and Vania to fend for themselves.
SEVEN O
Brothers Abandoned
1876-7
ONCE HIS MOTHER had left for Moscow Anton was pressed even harder to raise money by selling furniture, finding tenants and collecting debts, but the worst had happened: Pavel's creditors did not hope to recover their money from two schoolboys. Living with Selivanov, dining with aunts and uncles, Pavel's sons did not fear the bailiff's knock. Four heady summer holidays, from 1876 to 1879, were spent on ranches belonging to Gavriil Selivanov's brother Ivan or his sister Natalia Kravtsova. As guests of the Kravtsovs (another Gavriil, Natalia, and their four children), on a ranch where even chickens and pigs ran wild, Anton and Petia went out with a shotgun to get the dinner. Here Anton rode stallions bareback and, as he confessed years later,39 spied on peasant girls bathing naked. He kissed one of them, without a word, by a well.
On 16 August 1876 school started again and Anton reigned himself in. Public Library chits show that he was reading classics - from Cervantes to Turgenev. He was now in the 6th class, where the brightest boys were looking forward to freedom and wealth as doctors or lawyers. Anton's best marks were for Religious Knowledge; his father and uncle, after all, were members of the Cathedral Brotherhood. It was assumed that Anton would join the clergy, and Anton was teased as 'Pious Antosha'. Few pupils from Taganrog became priests, but the matriculating classes of its gimnazia in the late 1870s produced a great number of professionals: there were to be at least eleven doctors.40 Outside school the schoolboys led a wild social life. They would meet in a den, play cards, drink, smoke and indulge in amateur dramatics. The landlord tolerated this youth club. Precocious gimnazia boys also frequented
