Back in Moscow, Masha set out Olga's dilemma to Misha: 'I can't understand her - she's sorry for her husband and she is lonely, at the same time she cannot bear to be away from her roles, probably she's afraid someone might act them better.'24 Olga meanwhile signed a three-year contract. Sawa Morozov, the patron, made the theatre into a shareholders' company. The three 'merchants' invited twelve trusted actors to take 3000 rouble shares in the theatre. Morozov offered a subsidy of 30,000 and a building refurbished by Franz Schcehtcl sit a nominal lease. The shareholders' overall profit in the first year, Vishnevsky reckoned, would be 50,000 roubles. Olga Knippcr tooll.1 share. The talented actor-director Vsevolod Meyerhold and tin- pin ducer Sanin-Schoenberg were cut out. Within a year both left. '' ()$A Knipper was as tied to the theatre as to Chekhov. Suvorin VIMI*.1 Moscow in early February 1902, to stage his play The Question I [| visited Olga and praised her, to her face and by letter to Anion Possibly this was Suvorin's ploy to win back Anton's friendship, bill Olga never forgave the vilification of Suvorin's reviewers.
In fact Anton prized Olga's independence. She earned more tluin 3000 roubles a year, and only once asked him to cover a mysterious debt. He would not ask her to break a contract. He would rather br with her in Moscow's political ferment, than drag her to the tedious tensions of 'this mangy Yalta'. 'You need not weep,' he told Olg.i, 'you live in Moscow not because you want, but because we both want that.' He complained nevertheless about her masters' ruthlessness in depriving him of her company. Stanislavsky assured him it was more fun to be married to an absent actress than an ever-present nonactress. Nemirovich-Danchenko, however, finally succumbed to Masha's appeals and Anton's hints. At the end of January 1902, returning from his sister's death bed in Nice, he promised 'I shall definitely let Olga come and see you for a short time… I am very frightened (as a director) by her extraordinary pining for you.' He then telegraphed, 'I guarantee Olga will be free 21 February to 2 March.'26 Anton called this 'a teaspoonful of milk after forty years' famine'.
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Conjugal Ills February-June 1902 0 N FRIDAY 22 FEBRUARY 1902, Olga and Anton embraced after four months apart. They spent five days in seclusion. 'The Bishop' was sent to Petersburg. No visitors came; correspondence stopped. Masha was in Moscow. Their week together was clouded twice. On Tuesday Olga bled: she presumed she would not conceive. Parting on Thursday was muted: Anton did not kiss her goodbye as she left for the dash over the mountains. 'You were coming outside,' she wrote to him, 'but the wind stopped you, and I… only realized what had happened when the driver had moved off.' Olga had a roast duck and a bottle of wine to fortify her until she reached Simferopol.
At the station there were no Pullman cars, so Olga took an ordinary train. She suddenly fell ill: 'I couldn't get to the door of the ladies', 1 collapsed and couldn't get up, my arms and legs wouldn't obey me, I broke out in a cold sweat. I thought I had food poisoning.' On the train Olga confided in a sympathetic fellow-traveller, who told her she must be pregnant. She doubted it. In Moscow she felt little better. She changed trains and proceeded straight to Petersburg, where the theatre performed in Lent. She had lost weight, her head ached and she dosed herself with quinine. Another actress gave her stimulants. She took painkillers and bandaged her head. By 9 March she was more her old self, eating grouse. Anton stopped worrying. He was cross with her: she would not give him an address.
During their reunion, Anton had received a telegram: Gorky, barely out of prison, had been elected to the Academy of Sciences, whose president was a cousin of the Tsar. In a final round he had won the necessary majority, nine white to three black balls. Gorky was unexpectedly pleased. Then the government and Tsar annulled the election. The radical Korolenko immediately announced his resignation, and pressed Chekhov to resign. Anton pondered. His sympaFEBRUARY-JUNE I9O2 thies were radical, but like Tolstoy he distrusted political gestures.27 Marital life left Anton with a coughing fit that went on for days and nights, but pleasant memories. The day that Olga left, four Antonovkas re-emerged - the headmistress Varvara Kharkeevich, her sister-in-law Manefa, Sophie Beaunier and Dr Sredin's wife, Sofia. Anton told ()lga: 'They all have an identical little smile: 'we didn't want to disturb you!' As if we'd spent five days sitting naked and doing nothing but make love.'
In Petersburg that March Olga acted almost every night. New Times now praised her, but the reviewer was Misha Chekhov, her brother-in-law, and she was embarrassed. The Petersburg Newspaper attacked Nemirovich- Danchenko's play mercilessly as 'a waste of effort, dead meat'. The author leant on Olga for moral support, while she too needed comfort. Suvorin came to tempt Olga: iooo roubles a month to join his theatre. There were also painful encounters. Lika Mizinova was in Petersburg, following the director Sanin-Schoenberg who, driven out of the Moscow Arts Theatre, now worked for the Alek-sandrinsky theatre; Lika and he were betrothed. Their happiness upset ()lga. Anton calmed her down: Why so sour? I've known Lika for a long time and, whatever else, she's a good, clever and decent girl. She'll be unhappy with Sanin, she won't love him and above all won't get on with his sister and probably in a year will have a big fat baby and in eighteen months start being unfaithful. Anton's prophecy, wrong on all counts, did not reconcile Olga to her rival.
Olga also disliked Misha and his wife, her namesake - 'Where did he get a wife like that from?'28 She dined with them, but could not stop his fawning reviews. Anton washed his hands: 'He loves Suvorin and rates Burenin highly. Let him write what he likes.' Masha lied to ()lga. 'You made a good impression on him, he liked you.'29 In fact Misha had let his sister know of his true feelings: I saw In Dreams on the office ticket and our sister-in-law arranged Three Sisters… Every time we met, the sister-in-law asked if I'd seen one thing or another? I answer no. She knew full well that I had no ticket, but I simply can't ask her to get me one… One evening O. visited me! She brought the children sweets… as though
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l.OVI AND 1)1 E III she were duty-bound to visit us, because we are damned relatives who'll take offence if not… [Late one evening] I went to see Lika (for the fifth time) and of course she was out. I passed by O.'s lodgings, knocked. 'Come in!' I did. And, it seemed, at a bad time. Nemirovich-Danchenko was with her, they were having tea and jam. I had interrupted a conversation. I didn't know what to do with myself. O. apparently did not know what to do with me.30 On this occasion Nemirovich-Danchenko and Olga had attacked Misha as Suvorin's hack (even though they were off to see the old man themselves). Offended, Misha left.31
On 31 March 1902, Olga acted Gorky's Petty Bourgeois, a play in which she had to run up and down stairs. Back in the wings she collapsed in agony, and surgeons were sent for. Professor Jakobson and Dr Ott chloroformed their patient and operated at midnight. Olga woke in the morning, badly shocked; in pencil she scrawled a note to Anton, but did not post it for four days: I left Yalta hoping to present you with a little Pamfil, but I didn't realize, I kept thinking it was gut trouble, I didn't realize I was pregnant, much though I wanted to be… Ott and the other one decided on a curettage and confirmed that it was an embryo of 1O2 months. You can imagine how upset I was. I've never been in the hands of gynaecologists before.32 Nobody telegraphed Anton, for fear that the news would bring him to Petersburg in spite of the winter cold, but, because Olga's daily letters had stopped, Anton began to worry. Olga wrote on 2 April from the obstetrical clinic: she said she was sitting up and Stanislavsky was taking her back to her lodgings; the season was over, and she hoped to come to Yalta on Easter Saturday.
If this had been just an early miscarriage, Olga could have travelled. Anton, a good gynaecologist and obstetrician, must have been perplexed: how could Olga have been six weeks pregnant, when she had only spent seven nights with him, five weeks previously, at the end of her cycle? Why did two of Petersburg's most distinguished surgeons operate in the middle of the night for an early miscarriage? Nemirovich-Danchenko and his wife set off for Yalta on 6 April to put Anton's mind at rest. Stanislavsky's telegrams swore that there was no danger. Olga gave other clues: 'pains in the left side of my belly, bad pains
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from an inflamed ovary and maybe that's why I miscarried… I still have an inflamed left ovary. My poor belly is swollen and hurts all over.'33 She told Masha: 'Don't tell Anton! the pains are horrible and I am still suffering.'34 On Easter Sunday she sat up; she began daily enemas and was allowed to Yalta only with a midwife. She grudged the 3 roubles a day. She told Anton she would sleep in the drawing room, 'I do have various female instruments and need my own room. It's embarrassing to keep these vile things where a great writer can see them.' On 14 April, a week after Easter, Olga was carried on a stretcher from the boat and taken straight to bed in Autka. Nilus, who was painting Anton's portrait, packed up his equipment and fled. Anton and Masha became Olga's doctor and nurse.
Anton never talked of his doubts about the diagnosis and operation on Olga. His behaviour was caring, but
