distant. Three months later he wrote to Wilhelm Jakobson and received a telegram from the surgeon in reply: 'No suspicions, remains of egg removed, inflammation of lining.' Bleeding in February, illness throughout March, Olga's collapse and unspeakable ovarian pain, the midnight operation, the swollen belly, followed by peritonitis, indicated, however, not so much miscarriage and curettage as an ectopic pregnancy, laparotomy and infection.35 Only recently had Petersburg surgeons first dared remove an embryo in a fallopian tube: abdominal surgery was risky in 1902 and ectopic pregnancies were fatal. Anton would have known that an ectopic pregnancy erupts between eight and twelve weeks from conception. If this was what had happened to Olga, conception must have taken place when she and Anton had been 800 miles apart.
A season of illness followed, but Olga's physical vitality and Anton's discretion pulled them through. Their distress lay in suspecting that, despite Ott's airy assurance that Olga could conceive 'triplets right away', Olga's fertility must be lowered, if she now had a ruptured Fallopian tube and a damaged ovary. Anton had little time to beget a child.
Anton, depressed by Olga's and his own ills, grew restless and decided that Yalta was too far from Moscow and Autka was too hilly for walking. Two properties nearby had burnt down because the fire brigade had no water. He wanted Masha to inspect property in Sevastopol instead. By 24 April he was alone with Olga. Masha had returned to Moscow to examine her pupils, to have an abscess treated
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by a lady doctor, to flirt (openly) with Stanislavsky and (secretly) with Bnnin, and to celebrate Lika's wedding. From Moscow she boisterously berated Olga: 'Still full of fat, what are you raging about, you lay-about of a sister- in-law? Get up and earn some money for your husband and his crippled sister.' She did not joke with Misha: 'Olga behaves rather oddly towards me, so does Antosha and I am suffering.' By mid May Olga seemed stronger than her husband. They waited to hand over the household to Masha. On 24 May Anton and Olga left for Moscow, the second and last time they would take this journey together. In Moscow Dr Varnek, an obstetrician, found Olga's ovaries inflamed. He put her to bed for three weeks, prescribing summer at a Bohemian spa, Franzensbad, and rest for a year. Olga howled in distress. Anton would not go to Franzensbad.36 His diagnosis was peritonitis: she should convalesce for two years, and eat only cream. In Moscow Olga's abdominal pains grew worse. Anton was too ill to nurse her. Vishnevsky, a tireless cavaliere servente, came to the rescue. At midnight on 1 June 1902 he drove round Moscow to find a doctor who had not yet left for a weekend in the country. In the morning he found one. Olga was now skeletal; she was given morphine. When she could be moved, she would be taken to the gynaecologist Maxim Strauch's clinic. On 6 June 1902 Olga told Masha: All the Yalta suffering is nothing compared to one night in Moscow. I raved with pain, I tore my hair and if I could have, I'd have done myself in. I roared all night in an alien voice. The doctor says no man has any concept of this pain… Everyone is lighting a candle in church for me. Vishnevsky exhausted himself nursing both Chekhovs. Nemirovich-Danchenko came every day and stayed from noon till six in the evening. Stanislavsky, meanwhile, took practical action. He opened negotiations with Olga's rival, in love and in the theatre. After visiting Olga, he wrote to his wife: 'Komissarzhevskaia will lead the conversation around to transfer to our theatre. That wouldn't be bad! Especially now that there is little hope of Knipper for next season… I'm very sorry for her and Chekhov.'37
In Olga's absence, Lika and her new husband, staying in Yalta at a villa where Anton had once rented rooms, were visiting Masha. Fvgenia and the servants went on a three-day pilgrimage to a monasFEBRUARY-JUNE I902 tery. Anton hated the vigil in Moscow and dreamt of sailing down the Volga, as his brother Aleksandr was doing. Olga made a superhuman effort to rally. Maxim Strauch decided that she could go straight to Franzensbad, but she lapsed again with terrible nausea. Dr Strauch brought a Dr Taube to see her. He, like Anton, diagnosed peritonitis, an often fatal inflammation of the whole belly. Olga rallied again. Anton took to Taube; 'a popular and very sensible German,' he told Nemirovich-Danchenko. After four days Anton felt that Olga might be able to avoid a second operation, but he still refused to contact Olga's mother so as 'not to start a flood of tears'.
As she improved, Anton began to go out. He met Vera Komissarzhevskaia, with her lover and manager Karpov. He watched a boxing match. He left town to fish. One old flame - Olga Kundasova - was bold enough to sit for hours with Chekhov's wife (who asked her to leave). Feeling affection for both Anton and for Suvorin, Kundasova strove to keep their friendship alive. As Anton's physical health declined, her mental health improved. For all Kundasova's radicalism, she was beholden to Suvorin, as a man who supported her and was not afraid of sparring with her, and she reported to him on Anton's health. She appealed to Anton to heal the rift. Suvorin longed to see Anton. He had told Konstantin Nabokov, uncle to the future novelist, 'There are only two interesting younger men in the whole of Russia, Chekhov and Orlenev [an actor], and I have lost both of them.' On 11 June 1902 Kundasova wrote to Anton from Petersburg: To me Aleksei looked none too good and very irritable psychologically. As you wished, there was no discussion of you except for the matter of your health. I beg you with all my heart, write him a few words, perhaps he has not long to live and, clearly, your silence weighs heavily on him. Remember how wretched it is to love somebody and have no response.39 Kundasova pumped Olga for information, and told Suvorin that Anton was in no state to go to Petersburg: Suvorin would have to come to the Crimea in August.
On 14 June Anton slipped the leash. He had decided, after Easter, 'to be a hermit' and mull over a play for their Theatre. Olga could sit up, take chicken soup, and even walk, though she was still too swollen to put on her corset. The selfless Vishnevsky would watch
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SEVENTY-NINE O
Liubimovka June-September 1902 ACCOMPANIED BY Sawa Morozov and two Germans, and equipped, despite the heat, with a new overcoat and Swedish padded jacket, Anton retraced his honeymoon route of a year before. This time, however, he sailed past 'Drunken Grove' in the dark and headed northeast up the Kama to Perm, to the country of Three Sisters. Boats and trains slowly took Anton and his party to the Urals where Morozov owned an estate and a chemical plant. Morozov may have been one of Russia's 'Rockefellers', subsidizing the arts and revolutionaries such as Gorky, but his workers lived in squalor with a drunken paramedic and an empty pharmacy to treat them. On discovering conditions at the plant, Anton made forcible protests, to which Morozov responded magnificently: the working day was cut from twelve to eight hours. Morozov then abandoned Anton and toured his lands. Anton wandered in the sultry heat 'tormented by having nothing to do, by isolation and his cough', noted a student engineer at the plant.40 It was all, Anton told Nemirovich-Danchenko, 'too grey and depressing to write a play about.' On 28 June 1902, seen off by the workers, whose school was now named after him, Anton took the train back to Moscow.
The object of Anton's trip had been not to discover new horizons so much as to escape from a tedious bedside. Nevertheless, he and Olga had exchanged telegrams and letters daily. 'I'm not worried about you, since I know my little dog is well,' Anton wrote on his first day away. He now called her 'stick' as well as 'dog'. She colluded with him, declaring herself in the hands of decent doctors. To others Olga revealed her nausea, boredom and despair. She was allowed only to read and play patience, forbidden to start guitar lessons. 'How foul, grey and boring everything is,' was her lament to Masha. Her hair was falling out and her intestines needed enemas of olive oil. She
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was 'indifferent to everything or morbidly irritable'. She told her mother-in-law: 'I sit like a sad widow, 1 mostly lie down… If Vishnevsky comes, we sit and read in silence… I am a complete cripple. I keep thinking I shall never get better. And what use am I without health?'41
On 2 July Anton returned to Moscow and the sun shone. The Stanislavskys were themselves off to Franzensbad and invited Anton and Olga to stay in their country house at Liubimovka during their absence. The house stood on the river Kliazma, northeast of Moscow, surrounded by forests and meadows. Here Stanislavsky's servants Egor and Duniasha attended them. Olga lay and later swam and rowed. Anton fished and handed each catch over to Egor to be cooked. Visitors were turned away, and church bells were muted. Olga lived downstairs,
