Nadia, the loveliest Antonovka, did not visit. Nadia's father, the archpriest, had quarrelled with Varvara Kharkeevich, the headmistress who was providing Anton's dinners, and Anton, in sympathy, ostracized both father and daughter. Anton's social conscience cost him much. When he found a bed for a sick teacher, News of the Day printed 'Chekhov's Colony: in his new estate the writer is setting up a colony for village teachers of Serpukhov district, a cheap hotel for intellectual toilers.' Anton was flooded with appeals and, once the telephone was put in, he knew no peace. Although it linked him only to Yalta, telegrams often came just before dawn, when Moscow actors stopped celebrating. Anton ran, coughing, barefoot across unfinished floors, to answer the telephone.
On September 1899 Anton met the boat bringing Evgenia, Masha, Dr Kurkin and old Mariushka from Sevastopol, all prostrate with
SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER 1899
seasickness, Evgenia terrified of drowning. Mustafa climbed to the first-class deck to collect their luggage. A ship's officer, seeing a Tatar among the first-class passengers, struck him in the face. Mustafa bore the blow, then pointed to Anton, whose face was distorted with rage, and said: 'You haven't hit me, you've hit him.' The Crimean Courier reported the incident. Shortly afterwards Mustafa left Chekhov's service - either because of this outrage or because Evgenia did not want a Moslem in her house - and the Chekhovs hired Arseni Shcherbakov, who had worked in the Nikita Botanical Gardens and whose hobby was reading the Lives of the Saints. With Arseni, the house acquired its first pets, two tame cranes who danced after the gardener, and to whom old Mariushka became devoted.
The house was hardly fit to live in. Until October there were no internal doors: newspapers hung over the doorways. Visitors still gathered: the Chekhovs' old neighbour at Melikhovo, Prince Shakhovskoi, his marriage broken, clung to Anton, asking why families fell apart. Vania announced that he was coming for Christmas. Elena Shavrova, devastated by the death of her baby, sent her translation of Strind-berg's The Father and came to Yalta.34 In Moscow Ezhov insisted that Epifanov should die in Yalta, and that Chekhov should pay the sick man's fare.
Masha, on leave from teaching, toiled hard. She told Olga on 12 September: The house is charming, amazing views, but alas, far from finished. My room is not ready, nor is the lavatory, of course, there's dust, shavings, flies and a mass of workers banging away constantly. But the telephone works. Yalta ladies invite my brother to eat, but he is inexorable and prefers to dine at home. By evening people gather and carriages stand in a long line on our street, just like outside a theatre. We give visitors tea and jam, that's all. I'm quite good at being chambermaid. At 7 in the morning mother and I go to market for food. I don't get tired at all, the weather is enchanting, the air ravishing, my suitors delightful! Yesterday Prince Shakhovskoi sent me an enormous basket of fruit and roses. Shakhovskoi took back to Moscow a pair of cuff links depicting two birds, one melancholy, one coquettish, for Olga Knipper, and Anton's cassowary blanket, which had moulted: this he handed to Anton's in law Petrov at Muir and Mirrielees.
496
497
I'll It IF I H I UM I' II S
In the country Stanislavsky devised the staging of Uncle Vania, while in Moscow Nemirovich-Danchenko struggled to interpret the text; privately, he expressed to friends the same reservations as the Imperial Theatre Committee. Nemirovich-Danchenko spent days drilling Olga Knipper, who dithered: was the Professor's wife Elena wanton or idle? As Nemirovich-Danchenko, fearless of Suvorin's critics, wanted to take Uncle Vania to Petersburg, too, into enemy territory, Anton withdrew the permission he had given for Uncle Vania to be staged by others there.
Just as Nemirovich-Danchenko wanted a monopoly of Anton's plays, so Olga was seeking a monopoly of Anton's love life. One by one, she got to know his women friends. She met Lika the day after parting with Anton. Kundasova could be ignored. On 21 September Olga Knipper told Anton: She [Kundasova] stood in the living room, saying she was paralysed, that she had forgotten where she was. Then she recovered; we chatted, had tea and lemon, and rye porridge. She was so elegant, sheer charm. But, you know, it was painful to look at her - she has been so knocked about by life she needs peace and affection so badly.35 On 29 September 1899 the Moscow Arts Theatre opened its new season with Uncle Vania, A. K. Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan the Terrible and Gerhart Hauptmann's Lonely People. Anton sent the company a telegram: 'we shall work mindfully, cheerfully, tirelessly, unanimously.' The theatre appointed him 'inspector of actresses'. Clouds were gathering, however, over Nemirovich-Danchenko and Stanislavsky. Their patron Morozov was charged with fraud. Ivan the Terrible was coolly received. Olga wrote to Anton: 'Nobody is delighted by the Terrible's acting. You rightly distrusted Stanislavsky playing Ivan… What a night poor Stanislavsky is having today. The trouble is that audiences don't like him as an actor..,'36 Chekhov and Hauptmann, in his most Chekhovian play, Lonely People, were the last hope. Nemirovich- Danchenko and Olga both urged Anton to write them a third ?1aOAnton sent a jewel box instead. His mind plotted a garden, not a play, and his creativity was still dissipated revising early work for Adolf Marx. Never had he felt so detached from writing, or so absorbed in horticulture. He tore himself away from the garden only once in
SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER 1899
October, to show Evgenia Kiichiik-Koy. The mountain road shook her and Anton resolved that this summer residence would have to be sold. The Autka house was becoming habitable, Anton's study now had a desk and a door, and the Chekhovs had hired a maid, Marfa Motsnaia, for 8 roubles a month. Masha told Misha: Everyone now has their own room, we are sorting ourselves out, there is very little furniture. Anton's study and bedroom have turned out pretty well, we now have an upright piano. There is masses of cleaning - lime everywhere, impossible to wash off, everything covered in dust… I have to leave my Moscow flat and look for a little one, cheaper, of course - those are my orders. To move to Yalta for good, before I have a job in the Yalta school, is something Anton finds unsuitable for me, and that's it. Masha rebelliously dreamed 'of getting some money and living as freely as I can'. Konshin, however, still failed to pay what he owed for Melikhovo.
Anton's health succumbed to an exceptionally wet autumn. He talked again of surgery for haemorrhoids; his intestines lost in a day's diarrhoea a month's painstakingly gained weight. He feared loneliness, telling a colleague, Dr Rossolimo, 'without letters one could hang oneself, learn to drink bad Crimean wine and couple with an ugly, stupid woman'. Rumours that Anton was about to marry had fed Petersburg and Moscow gossip for years. Now the gossip became warmer. Aleksandr asked first, on n October 1899, 'Petersburg is persistently marrying you off to two actresses, what shall I tell them?' (The second, Olga Knipper's 'shadow', was the stunningly beautiful Maria Andreeva.) Rumours even reached Nizhni Novgorod. Gorky, still a happily married man, told Anton: 'It's said you are marrying an actress with a foreign surname… if it's true, I'm glad.'
After four dress rehearsals, Uncle Vania was performed for the first time in Moscow on 26 October 1899, two years after it had been published. Masha arrived in Moscow from Yalta too late for the triumph. Only Nemirovich- Danchenko and Olga were at first unhappy with the play: Nemirovich-Danchenko had removed forty of the fifty pauses Chekhov had specified; Olga blamed Stanislavsky for making her act Elena as highly sexed. Nemirovich- Danchenko had made Stanislavsky 'go through [his] part literally like a pupil in drama school'.
498
499
Ill U I I I UIUM MIS (Having seen Stanislavsky act Trigorm, Anton could not believe he could be lecherous enough as Dr Astrov: 'Inject some testosterone into him,' he had advised Nemirovich-Danchenko.) The second performance on 29 October, at which Masha accepted the author's acclaim by proxy, was even more triumphant: the theatre and Chekhov's fame were safe. There were to be twenty-five performances of Uncle Vania this season, and The Seagull would be played once a fortnight: Anton's share of the earnings, with full houses, would be some 3000 roubles. The theatre, Nemirovich-Danchenko announced, stood, like the world in Russian folk myth, on three whales: A. K. Tolstoy, Hauptmann and Chekhov.
The Knippers and Chekhovs drew closer. Masha reported on 5 November: 'Knipper and I meet very often, I've dined several times at her home and now know her Mama, i.e. your mother-in-law, and a drinking aunt.' Olga befriended Masha, as the gateway to intimacy with Anton. Masha praised her: 'What a fine person she is, I am more sure every day. A very hard worker and, I think, extremely talented.' Olga spent nights with Masha, who lived near the theatre, though the flat was in chaos. (The servant girl had given birth to a baby daughter.) In the same letter, Masha revelled in her new life, telling Anton: 'With the girls we have a servant, a French teacher, the German teacher often calls, the class assistants keep visiting, the headmistress, Masha and her baby which squeals and Olga Knipper's laughter - just imagine!'
