as he later boasted, had done everything in life except get pregnant. Anton's notebooks reflect a darker mood: a feeling of non-love, a peaceful state, long, peaceful thoughts… love is either the remains of something degenerating or part of something that will develop in the future into something enormous, but in the present it doesn't satisfy, it gives far less than you expect. Olga's next letter to Anton contained an inauspicious joke: 'The revolting Vishnevsky swears by God and crosses his heart that in a year or two I'll be his wife - how about that!' A Grand Duchess, Olga said, had accosted her mother and asked, 'When is her marriage, and how is his health?' Thus Anna Knipper learnt of the betrothal.69 Anton said he would write a will forbidding Olga to remarry after his death. For a fortnight he pleaded illness: he was locked in his study, thinking and coughing. He worried about Vania, who was, although never complaining, barely communicating, in fact, overworked and losing weight; about Gorky and Posse, the editor of Life, in prison; about his sick dog; about Olga Vasilieva leaving for France. On 6 May he had a talk with Vasilieva. He deterred his Taganrog cousins from visiting Yalta: Evgenia might be in Petersburg, Masha in Moscow and he in the Arctic or on the Volga.
When Anton came to Moscow a week later, he had his first breakfast with Olga Vasilieva, not Olga Knipper, so that he could introduce Dr Chlenov the venereologist to Vasilieva the potential patron for his clinic. On 16 May Masha left for Yalta to care for Evgenia. On
II.IIIUIAHV-MAY I9OI
17 May Anton went, under duress, to see Dr Shchurovsky, who after a thorough examination and interrogation took a full history. Anton gave wild guesses when asked how long his relatives had lived. He admitted that coughing and diarrhoea had plagued him since infancy and haemorrhages for the past seventeen years. Shchurovsky noted70 that Anton drank moderately, had given up smoking, that he had not had syphilis, but had been treated for, and cured of, gonorrhoea. Shchurovsky suspected that Anton's childhood 'peritonitis' might be due to a hernia. He found Anton's mental state good and his nerves 'tolerable'. (Anton assured Shchurovsky that his depression was 'autointoxication' due to constipation and lifted after a dose of castor oil.) The lungs, however, were bad, with irreversible necrosis, and his gut was badly affected. Severe pulmonary damage and chronic colitis, Shchurovsky hoped, might respond to koumiss, a treatment Anton had not tried. Anton was referred to Dr Varavka at the Andreev sanatorium, in the wilds of Bashkiria, 1200 miles east of Moscow. Olga wrote to Masha the next day: There is not much comfort - the process has not stopped. He prescribed him a course of koumiss drinking and if he can't, then it's Switzerland. I am cooking up a medicine for Anton, I pound it in the mortar, I let it stand and I boil it, it's for the intestines. God grant that the koumiss does him good! As soon as I sort everything out, we are off. I am awfully sad. Masha, why did you go away! I am sad and afraid.7' Olga told Masha everything, except that she and Anton were about to marry. Anton wrote to Masha two days later to say that both lungs now had lesions, that he had the choice of fermented mares' milk in the Urals or Switzerland for two months. As for the wedding and the journey with Olga to the Urals, he even now denied it: 'It's boring to go on one's own, it's boring to be on the koumiss, but taking somebody with me would be selfish… I would get married but I don't have the papers on me, everything is in the desk in Yalta.' He asked for a few blank cheques. Masha wanted him back in Yalta.
On Thursday 24 May 1901 Anton took Vania on an errand, near the clinic where their father had died. He sent his last proofs to Marx and had his mail directed to Aksionovo, a village half way between the Volga and the Urals. He received a telegram from Dr Varavka:
532
533
THREE TRIUMPHS
'Welcome. Have place.' Anton then wired Olga: 'I have everything ready. Need meet before i to talk. We definitely leave Friday.' That day Masha could contain her jealousy no more and, despite her close friendship with Olga, told Anton: Now let me express my opinion about your marriage. Personally I find the wedding procedure awful. And you don't need these extra worries, if you are loved you won't be abandoned and there is no sacrifice involved… It's never too late to get tied. Tell that to your [sweetheart erased] Knipper woman. The first thing to think about is getting you well. For God's sake don't think I'm guided by selfishness. You've always been the person closest and dearest to me… You yourself brought me up to be without prejudices. My God, how difficult it will be to live two whole months without you, what's more in Yalta… If you don't answer this letter quickly I shall be hurt. My regards to 'her'.72 The day of his marriage Anton left instructions for Vania and 50 roubles which he insisted Vania spend on a first-class boat journey down the Volga. He telegraphed his mother, 'Dear Mama, bless me, I am getting married. All will stay the same.731 am off to drink koumiss. Address Aksionovo. Health better.' Evgenia was, Masha later reported, mute with shock, but Anton received a telegram from her, 'I bless, be happy, healthy.' On the morning of 25 May Olga wrote to Masha: Today we are getting married and leaving for Aksionovo, Ufa province, on the koumiss. Anton feels well, is nice and gende. Only Volodia [her brother] and uncle Sasha (at Anton's request) and two student witnesses will be in the church. I had a tragedy and rows with mama yesterday because of all this I don't sleep at night, my head is splitting… I am awfully sad and hurt, Masha, that you are not here with me these days, I would feel different. I am utterly alone, I have nobody to speak to. Don't forget me, Mashechka, love me, we must, you and I must always be together… My regards to your mother. Tell her I shall be very hurt if she cries or is upset because of Anton's marriage. Three days later, waiting for a boat, Olga described to Masha Anton's best farce: At 8.30 I set off to the dentist to have my tooth finished… at 2 I had lunch, put on a white dress and went to Anton's. I had it all out
IEBKUARY-MAY IOOI
with my mother… I myself did not know to the last day when we would get married. The wedding was very queer… There wasn't a soul in the church, there were guards at the gates. Towards 5 p.m. I arrived with Anton, the bride's men were sitting on a bench in the garden… I could hardly stand with my headache and at one moment I felt I should burst out either crying or laughing. You know, I felt awfully odd when the priest came up to me and Anton and led us away… We were married on the Pliushchikha by the same priest as buried your father. I was asked only for a certificate that I was a spinster, which I fetched from our church…741 was terribly upset that Vania wasn't there… Vania knew we were getting married, Anton had gone to see the priest with him… When I got back from the church our servants couldn't control themselves, they lined up to congratulate me and raised a howling and weeping, but I nobly controlled myself. They packed my things, and Natasha that pig let me down… she didn't bring the silk bra and the batiste embroidered blouse. At 8 p.m. we went to the station, only our family saw us off, quietly, modestly.75 Elsewhere in Moscow, at a reception which Anton had asked Vishnevsky to organize, a bemused crowd wondered what had happened to the newlyweds.
534
535
X
Love and Death The best protection against dragons is to have one of your own. Evgeni Shvarts, The Dragon The bedroom smelt of fever, infusions, ether, tar, that indescribable heavy smell of an apartment where a consumptive is breathing. Maupassant, Bel'Ami
SEVENTY-SIX O
Honeymoon June-September 1901 ANNA KNIPPER offered the couple a quick meal before they caught the train to Nizhni Novgorod. Anton and Olga were met at Nizhni by Dr Dolgopolov, who had tickets for the thousand- mile river journey to Ufa, from where they would get a train to the village of Aksionovo and the sanatorium. Dr Dolgopolov had just certified Gorky as too consumptive for prison, and took Anton and Olga to see him. One policeman opened the door; another sat in the kitchen. Gorky's wife was in hospital giving birth. Gorky talked volubly and, when Anton and Olga finally blurted out that they had just got married, thumped Olga on the back.
Dolgopolov put Anton and Olga on a boat that took them down the Volga and up the river Kama towards the Urals, dropping them at a quay called Piany Bor, 'Drunken Grove'. Here they had a long wait for the connecting boat. They should have changed boats in Kazan. There was no hotel; they camped on the ground, in the rain, while a consumptive spat. 'I shall never forgive Dolgopolov. In 'Drunken Grove' and sober. The setting is horrible,' Anton wrote. Olga found a hut and made a bed on the floor. They ate salted sturgeon and tried to sleep. At 5 a.m. a tiny, crowded boat for Ufa picked them up; they slept in separate cabins. Anton was lent a rug, but pestered by admirers. They chugged up the river Belaia through wooded hills; the sun tanned Anton's face and bleached the pink blouse Masha had sewn for Olga. After two nights on the Belaia, at dawn on 31 May 1901, they docked at Ufa. They rushed to catch the 6.00 a.m. train, but there had been a derailment and the train did not leave until two in the afternoon. The windows were jammed and the station carpenter could not budge them. They endured five hours
