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FLOW I HIN«. CI Ml I E E IES father's body, completely naked, wit li ee enormous bloody plaster covering the whole belly, but the light made it impossible to photograph. The clinic refused to wash the body until Misha brought a new shroud. Misha, furious that Aleksandr had brought his camera, took charge, as the only civil servant. Aleksandr felt 'completely out of place and unwanted' and was taken to the station by Vania. (Misha and Aleksandr barely spoke to each other again.) Pavel was buried in the absence of his two eldest sons, Aleksandr and Anton. The funeral was a shambles. Masha took 300 roubles from her savings bank and borrowed another hundred. Sergei Bychkov, Anton's faithful servant in the Great Moscow hotel, followed the coffin to the cemetery. Misha wrote to Anton that the funeral was 'such a profanation, such a cynical event that the only thing I am pleased about is that you did not come.' Anton confessed that he felt all the more guilty: had he been in Melikhovo, the mishap might not have been fatal.62
Pavel, even if more resented than obeyed, had been a pivot on which life at Melikhovo revolved. Anton saw Pavel's death as the end of an era. Ignoring his mother and sister's wishes that they should stay on at Melikhovo, he told Menshikov: 'The main cog has jumped out of the Melikhovo machine, and I think that life in Melikhovo for my mother and sister has now lost all its charm and that I shall now have to make a new nest for them.' Anton found a young architect, Shapovalov, to design a house at Autka: he hoped it would be completed by April 1899. A week later Masha left Evgenia in the care of the lady teacher at Melikhovo, and took the train south for a fortnight. (Evgenia refused Misha's invitation to Iaroslavl: perhaps she loathed his letters addressing her as 'greatly weeping widow'.63) On 27 October Masha was greeted by Anton in Yalta: 'I've bought a building plot, tomorrow we'll go and look at it, amazing views.'
The Russian public felt for Anton. He was deluged with letters, while the papers worried about his own imminent demise. Misha urged Anton on 20 October: Buy an estate, marry a good person, but definitely get married, have a baby - that is a happiness one can only dream about… Let your
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future wife - somehow I'd like it to be Natasha Lintvariova or Aleksandra Khotiaintseva - arrange your life to be just happy.64 Misha wrote to Masha of Khotiaintseva: 'such a glorious person and so talented that I'd like Anton to marry her.'65 Anton thought of Lintvariova and Khotiaintseva as the salt of the earth, but not as potential wives. He was thinking instead of Knipper, annoyed that Petersburg's papers ignored her Irina. He shared Nemirovich- Danchenko's anger when Suvorin accused the Moscow Arts Theatre of plagiarizing others' productions. Nemirovich-Danchenko, recasting The Seagull, had told Anton: 'Suvorin, as you foretold, was Suvorin. He sold us in a week. To your face he was delighted with us, once in Petersburg he fired off a vile little article, I can't forgive myself for talking to him about joining his Company.'66
From Paris Anton received two photographs of a leaner Lika. One was inscribed: 'Don't think I really am such an old witch. Come soon. You see what just a year's separation from you does to a woman.' The other carried the words of a romantic song she used to sing to Anton: To dear Anton Pavlovich, in kindly memory of eight years' good relations, Lika. Whether my days are clear or mournful, Whether I perish, destroying my life, I know only this: to the grave Thoughts, feelings, songs, strength All for you!! (Tchaikovsky, Apukhtin) If this inscription compromises you, I'm glad. Paris 11/23 October 1898 I could have written this eight years ago and I write it now and I shall write it in ten years' time.
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Three Triumphs o Actresses: The ruin of the son of the family. Of frightful lubriciousness, go in for orgies, get through millions of francs, end up in the workhouse. Though there are some who make good mothers of families. Flaubert, Dictionary of Received Ideas ?
SIXTY-SEVEN
The Seagull Resurrected November-December 1898 IN YALTA ANTON MOVED from dacha to dacha, until Dr Isaak Altshuller took him in for a fortnight. Altshuller, though his surname suggested 'old card-sharp', inspired confidence, for he too had OA and would prescribe only what he took himself. Altshuller urged Anton to accept exile, and shun the fatal cold of Moscow. Then, until his own house was built, Anton settled in Au mur, a villa owned by Kapitolina Ilovaiskaia, a general's widow and ardent fan.1
Masha never forgot being taken to see Anton's building site at Autka: I was upset and annoyed that he had bought a site so far from the sea. When we reached it, what I saw was hard to credit. An old Tatar vineyard, fenced with wattle, not a tree, not a bush, absolutely no buildings… beyond the wattle fence was a Tatar cemetery and, naturally, a corpse was being buried while we were watching. It was the most grim impression. Only later did Masha appreciate the view of the Uchan-Su river tumbling down to the sea and of the steamboats far below arriving and departing. Her reaction upset Anton; back at Au mur, the villa where they were staying, she relented and sketched a plan of the house they would build.
At 4000 roubles, an acre of land was cheap. The promised railway was raising prices. Safe from casual visitors at Autka, Anton could receive 'subversives' and Jews, even though they were banned from Yalta. The Yalta Mutual Credit eagerly lent Chekhov money to build his house. Its director had the Autka mosque divert a pipe to give him the water for cement. Lev Shapovalov, hitherto an art teacher, only twenty-seven, made his name turning Masha's sketches into plans for a house with a half-Moorish, half-German facade. While the
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architect drew, Anton hired a Tatar contractor, Babakai Kalfa, to dig foundations and cart materials. Babakai had chosen a name for this idiosyncratic house, Buyurnuz, 'As you like it'. Friends - Tolstoy or Sergeenko - were perturbed at Anton's enormous financial commitments, for he was not sure whether 5000 roubles that Suvorin had given him was an advance or overdue payment. The Moscow Arts Theatre raised Anton's hopes of more money, and so did Suvorin with a proposal to publish all Chekhov in a uniform edition at a rouble a volume. Castles in Spain, however, did not pay for a castle in the Crimea; even at 30 kopecks a line, Chekhov, his strength waning, would now earn little from new work.
Yet Anton hung on to Melikhovo as a summer dacha. He reassured those who depended on Melikhovo: the postmaster, schoolteachers, district nurses, craftsmen, servants. He ran Melikhovo from afar: arbitrating between the female teachers at Talezh, who were feuding over firewood. He assured the bumbling Doctor Grigoriev, who had failed to save Pavel, that his reputation was unsullied. He defended the postmaster against anonymous accusations of abusing customers. Melikhovo, without either Pavel or Anton, nevertheless collapsed. While Masha was in Yalta, Evgenia, despite the company of a lady schoolteacher, trembled. 'Grief has overwhelmed me, I cannot live in Melikhovo,' she told Misha.2 When Masha got back she found her mother fraught: 'whether the samovar hums, or the stove whistles or a dog howls, it all produces fear and worry about the future,' she reported to Anton. Fire broke out nearby. Masha and Evgenia took servant girls to sleep in their rooms. The ground froze, but no snow fell, so that Melikhovo was virtually cut off from the railway.
On 13 November 1898 Anton gave his mother short shrift: 'After youth comes old age; after happiness, unhappiness, and vice versa; nobody can be healthy and cheerful all their lives… you have to be ready for anything. You just have to do your duty as best you can.' A week later snow fell. Masha locked up Melikhovo. Roman drove her by sledge, with linen and crockery, to the station. Evgenia and a servant, Masha Shakina, followed two days later. They stayed until spring in Masha's Moscow flat, in four small rooms, with borrowed furniture. Masha went back once a month, if blizzards allowed, to pay old Mariushka, Roman and the maid Pelageia. Melikhovo was doomed. The dachshunds were left to the servants and the yard dogs.
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Thieves dug up Varenikov's apple trees. Roman guarded Melikhovo, ringing bells through the night. Varenikov caught two lads and thrashed them.3 Varenikov then had the teacher Terentieva in tears by telling her he would now close Melikhovo school.
By December Masha wanted to join Anton in the Crimea, for she believed that she too was ill. 'I cough badly in the mornings, I have constant pain in the left chest.' The doctor prescribed quinine, codeine and stout. Anton told her that she had the family's bad lungs. Masha took a lively interest in the new house. Could Anton enlarge the rooms? Would Melikhovo have to go, to pay for this palazzo? 'No, and no,' replied Anton, but he prepared Masha and Evgenia for life in the Crimea. As governor of Yalta's girls' school and friend of its headmistress, Varvara Kharkeevich, Anton offered Masha a post as geography mistress there: the present geography teacher 'volunteered'
