for fish. Old Egor did not back up his reputation as a self-taught man of books: he dismissed his grandsons' grammar-school education as a hotbed for 'learned fools'. Anton was shocked by his grandmother's revelations: privation and thrashings from Egor, in an outpost surrounded by resentful peasants, had broken her. For the first time the boys understood how their father had been formed, and that his childhood had been even worse than theirs.
A week with their grandparents was enough for Aleksandr ind Anton. Aleksandr insisted on walking six miles back to the main village, Krepkaia, and asked Countess Platova to arrange for them to be taken •'I
2 5
I A I II Ik I I I II I MAN home. A few days later the two hoys wcw loaded onto a cart returning to Taganrog.
In May 1872, Anton (like a quarter of the pupils) failed to pass the third-year examinations - he did not reach the minimum '3' mark required in all subjects, Greek being his Achilles heel. He faced exile in 'Kamchatka', the back row in the third year, for 1872/3. That summer, for a while, Anton could forget this humiliation: the Chekhov children were, to their joy, left behind by their parents. Pavel and Evgenia set off on a pilgrimage around Russia, to visit the great monasteries and Holy Relics, Mikhail Chekhov (fatally ill with OA) in Kaluga, the Polytechnical Exhibition in Moscow, and then, on the way home, Evgenia's rich cousins and in-laws in Shuia. It was this summer which gave Masha, then nine, her first memories: she would try not to harbour grudges, and see the best of the Chekhovs' childhood. She remembered only peaceful pursuits - Aleksandr making electric batteries, Kolia painting, Vania binding books.
In 1873 the sons' horizons broadened, while Pavel's contracted. Anton had a social life: both older brothers, Aleksandr and Kolia had romances, perhaps love-affairs, with girls from the gimnazia that often collaborated with the boy's school and was only a few blocks away. Aleksandr was in love and virtually engaged to Maria, the daughter of Franz Faist, the Taganrog watchmaker. Kolia, who was highly attractive, despite his Mongoloid looks and his short stature, was much pursued, particularly by Liubov ('Love') Kamburova, a cousin of the Chekhov family. To judge by the letters from the girls of Taganrog to Moscow, when the brothers left town, these were only a few of the daughters of Greek and Russian merchants who found the Chekhov brothers attractive. Aleksandr was clever and articulate; Kolia could clown, act and play music; Anton had wit and exquisite manners. Taganrog families long remembered his considerateness to everyone - a concern that seemed at odds with his mocking mimicry of hosts and guests. Even those to whom his literary fame was irrelevant, such as Irinushka, the nanny in Mitrofan's household, remained bewitched by Anton. The secret of his appeal not just to women and girls, but to hotel servants and council officials, publishers and tycoons, lay in the tact and restraint which he cultivated even on his deathbed. Charm led Anton into the houses of the rich: he valued not so much their governesses, amateur dramatics, concerts, fluency in French, tea
16
1870-3
served in china cups, as the respect they seemed to have for others' dignity and privacy.
Anton's tastes and mind were also stimulated by the Taganrog theatre. For decades (it was founded in 1827) it had been regarded by the school as a threat to the morals of the pupils. Pupils were only allowed to visit the theatre after the inspektor had approved the play and was satisfied that the boy would not be distracted from his homework. Teachers patrolled the theatre to spot any unauthorized schoolboys they might cover the heads with scarves, abandon school uniform, or bribe the doorman to let them in when the auditorium was plunged in darkness. The semiforbidden nature of the theatre allured them. A rich cosmopolitan clientele allowed Taganrog to maintain a theatre and a repertoire out of all proportion to the city's size or appeal, with singers from Italy and actors from Moscow to challenge local performers.
Pavel regarded the theatre as the gateway to hell (he is not known to have seen even his son's plays), though his brother Mitrofan was a keen member of the audience. In 1873 the school's hostility to the theatre was temporarily neutralized by the appointment of a young inspektor, the appropriately named Aleksandr Voskresensky-Bi illiantov, who liked to clown in the classroom, constantly took out a pocket mirror to check on his magnificent red beard and was conspicuous in the theatre, where he would crush nuts with his boot and chew loudly at the most pathetic points. This Narcissus was dismissed within the year, but by then Anton was hooked on the theatre. The first performance he saw from a 15 kopeck seat in the gallery, Vania testifies, was Offenbach's La Belle Helene. Offenbach's Helen of Troy, torn between an ineffectual Menelaus and a trouble-making Paris, was to become the model for Chekhov's own dramaticheroines.
In the 1870s, Taganrog's repertoire had 324 different productions.24 Much was French farce and vaudeville, adapted or merely translated, and operetta. Shakespeare too was performed: Hamlet, King Lear, The Merchant of Venice. Anton's fascination with, and variations on, Hamlet were spawned by the Taganrog theatre. Its range of mainstream Russian drama, particularly of Ostrovsky's beautifully constructed 'realjst' studies of the horrors of merchant life - Poverty Is No Vice, The Thunderstorm, Wolves and Ewes, The Forest - left Anton an admirer of Ostrovsky. Romantic drama, however - Victor Hugo and Friedrich
27
I E I E I It I O I II I MAN Schiller - aroused his mockery. The great Kuropean operas - Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi, especially Rigoletto, II trovatore, Un ballo in mas-chera were also performed - evoked in Anton an ambivalent response.
The Taganrog public was demanding and rowdy. Bad singers were whistled off the stage. The provincial reviewers were well-informed. Schoolboys wore special ties to mark their support for one soprano or another. Close underground bonds linked the school and the theatre: one technician spread information on the programmes to come, another sneaked boys in out of sight of the school's police. One of the actors, Iakovlev, had a son studying in the gimnazia. Anton and his friends, including the future actor-manager (and rake) Solovtsov, met him and other actors offstage.
Apart from symphonic concerts in the theatre, there was music elsewhere in Taganrog: the town's park had a symphony orchestra and for many years entry was free. The repertoire was checked by Diakonov and the headmaster before boys were allowed to attend. Music was the only force that could bring Anton to the verge of tears, while Kolia could replay by ear pieces he had heard just once. What she saw as the pernicious influence of the theatre and the concert hall dismayed Evgenia.
Amateur dramatics were inspired by the Taganrog professionals. Until illness weakened his voice, Anton took on several parts, notably the mayor in Gogol's Government Inspector, with Vania playing the antihero Khlestakov, Kolia the servant Osip, and Maria, embarrassed at being publicly kissed, the eligible daughter.
In 1873 Parunov was replaced as headmaster by the statuesque and stentorian Edmund Rudolfovich Reutlinger. He was related by marriage to the new inspektor Diakonov and, although they avoided each other outside school, they made a triumvirate with Father Pok-rovsky. Reutlinger could reassure the ministry of his solid conservatism, while running a school that was innovative and tolerant. Under Reutlinger joint concerts and performances were held with the girls' gimnazia. The two schools had teachers in common, although male teachers were mercilessly teased in the girls' school. The French teacher Boussard was entrusted with joint social events: a fine cellist, a well-known Taganrog host, he was loved by both schools. His death in service and his tomb in Taganrog cemetery haunted Chekhov's adult nightmares.
2K
1870-3
Like many successful headmasters, Reutlinger had more style than substance. He may not have been particularly intelligent, but he was fond of his pupils. To the Chekhovs he was a godsend. Like Parunov, he recognized the brilliance of Aleksandr, and made him a proposition. In return for board and lodging, Aleksandr went to live with Reutlinger, where he could study peacefully and repay his host by tutoring one of the headmaster's boarders. (This gave Aleksandr, like Pavel as alderman on the Police Authority, the reputation of being an informer.) Aleksandr's pupil was Aleksandr Vishnevetsky, later (as Vishnevsky) to be the handsomest, and stupidest, star in the Moscow Arts Theatre firmament. It was not Reutlinger, however, but an outsider in the school, a law specialist called Ivan Stefanovsky, who drew the attention of the school's examining council to the exceptional literary qualities of Chekhov's otherwise 'mediocre' compositions.
When Anton passed into the fourth class, he was threatened with losing his new foothold in educated society. Pavel decided to insure against failure. (Anton had already failed one end-of-year exam, while Kolia had failed two.) Kolia, Anton and Vania were made to write to the headmaster: Desiring to learn in the trade class of
