Taganrog's notorious brothel. (Chekhov later admitted41 that he lost his virginity at the age of thirteen - probably at this establishment.)
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Vania, eighteen months younger, left the childless house of Marfa Morozova - where the sounds of thrashings still resounded - and moved in with his gentle Aunt Fenichka and her son Aleksei, calling in on the Loboda household for meals. On i November 1876 Mitrofan reported to Pavel: 'Vania… is living with Fenichka, he's only been going to school for the last week; he has some money from bookbinding; he asks you not to miss him or worry about him.' A fortnight later, Mitrofan clarified: 'Vania hasn't been going to school, but in late October there was a concert in the school hall for the benefit of poor pupils and it was a success. The next day Vania started attending and is getting good marks.'
Anton, on the other hand, Mitrofan saw only when the boy came to beg for a postage stamp or a glass of tea. All winter 1876-7 Pavel nagged his son: 'I told you to give the wall clock to Mitrofan and you sold it… Mama was expecting 20 roubles from you. When she heard that only 12 had been sent, she burst into floods of bitter tears.' The three roubles a week Antosha earned coaching barely paid his own costs, and he was sharing his income with a Jewish friend, Srulev. Although Selivanov owned the house, he was willing to let Pavel have the income from any tenants. This was Pavel's only hope. Anton persuaded the widow Savich, who lived next door with her daughter Iraida, to take a room in the Chekhov house. A rabbi was willing to take the house for 225 roubles a year; Pavel and Selivanov both held out for 300. Pavel was being unrealistic; Selivanov was perhaps now prevaricating, for he had no interest in Pavel earning enough to redeem his house. In mid December Selivanov made a surprise visit to Moscow, on his way to see his brother in Petersburg, and visited Pavel for just half an hour. They talked mainly about Pavel's debts; Pavel still trusted his former tenant. He wrote to Anton: 'We were very glad to see him.'
Pavel felt the house was morally his. On 21 December 1876 he sent a new power of attorney to Evgenia's bachelor brother-in-law, ()nufri Loboda: 'To rent out as living accommodation the brick house with iron roof and all outbuildings, a brick annexe and a carriage-house that is mine personally, at a price that you consider right for not less than one year…'
Pavel even three months later had no doubt that a tenant would be found. Evgenia, however, was alarmed by Selivanov's vagueness
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about the ownership of their house. In Spring 1877 she wrote anguished notes to Selivanov and to Anton: she was searching for another saviour. Her rich relatives, the Zakoriukins from Shuia, visited Moscow on their way back from a pilgrimage: they gave Masha 10 roubles for a new dress and offered Evgenia and her younger children hospitality in Shuia: I shall ask them to buy back the house and then we shall sell it to Gavriil Selivanov for 3400 roubles… ask him personally for Christ's sake to keep his promise to me, to let us buy it back and not to charge too much for the rebuilding, while we have a chance of asking the Zakoriukins. For God's sake, Antosha, talk to Mr Selivanov… our only hope is that God the King of Heaven will inspire Selivanov to do the good deed he promised [giving back the house D.R.]. Our life is very short and if he does a good deed for us, then he will live long, and if he does not, he will die before the year is out, I have entrusted this to St John the Divine… If Selivanov agrees and doesn't charge much for the house, then I shall come at the end of June and you and I will go to Moscow together. Anton read the letter to Selivanov, who snorted, 'I thought Evgenia was cleverer than that.' Evgenia intended, as soon as the weather was warm, to walk the thirty miles to the St Sergei monastery to pray for Selivanov's soul. Pavel merely asked Selivanov to get the family a 300-rouble grant from the Brotherhood.
The Shuia relations understood Evgenia's plight, but would not buy out Selivanov. Day-to-day living in Moscow was fraught and Pavel still had no work. In February 1877 he found a job as a builder's clerk on a church site. He was dismissed in two days. All that autumn and winter he had sat, idly pontificating. Infuriated, Aleksandr (who was then living with Kolia in a school) described to Anton Pavel's life in Moscow: We've borrowed 10 roubles from Misha Chokhov and they've been squandered and we sit weeping. Worst of all, we've lost all hope of finding a job. Every, every day we go to church and invariably, like an ex-businessman at the Exchange, we listen to talk about the Serbian war and usually come home empty-handed, for which we are met with tears of joy and the phrase: 'My bitter judgement', after which we disrobe, take a printed sermon out of our pocket, bought from the church elder, and begin to read aloud. Everyone
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listens to us and only occasionally docs the Artist [Kolia] slap his model's head and shout, 'Good Lord, Misha, when are you going to pose properly? Turn three-quarters-face.' Then after the injunction, 'Quieter you Antichrists,' order is restored. When the reading is over, the sermon is hung on a nail, with its number and the words 'Price one silver kopeck. Glory to Thee, Lord,' written on it.'42 Misha Chokhov could cheer up his destitute uncle and aunt, and even lend them 10 roubles, but he was busy at Gavrilov's and in his social life, and in no position to offer charity. A bleak winter followed. Rvgenia felt bereft not only of food, clothes and hope, but also of Anton's concern: We've had two letters from you full of jokes while we had only 4 kopecks for bread and dripping and waited for you to send money, it was very bitter, obviously you don't believe us, and Masha has no fur coat. I have no warm shoes, we stay at home, I have no sewing machine to earn money with… For God's sake send money quickly… please don't let me die of misery, you have plenty to eat and the sated can't understand the hungry. Tear this letter up. E. Chekhova. We sleep on the floor in a cold room… and tomorrow… we have to find 13 roubles for the flat.43 Anton showed little compassion. In a letter to Aleksandr he enclosed an iron hinge, a bread roll, a crochet hook and a picture of Filaret the Merciful. He teased his mother's lack of punctuation: when she instructed him 'Antosha in the pantry on the shelf he replied that there was no 'Antosha on the shelf in the pantry'.
When Mitrofan sent money, it was for Pavel to buy and send him a Church elder's uniform. He expected other services from Pavel, such as distributing his spiritual adviser's sermons in Moscow. Mitrofan would have sent with Ivan Loboda the coffee and halva that Rvgenia loved, but 'Loboda refuses to take anything crumbly'. Neither did Mitrofan send the sewing machine, because the railways were refusing freight that winter: the trains were requisitioned for the Russo-Turkish war, soon to rage in the Balkans and the Caucasus. Kolia's paintings, which he offered to his Taganrog relatives, were stranded at the station in Moscow for the same reason. Mitrofan wrote to Pavel and Evgenia: 'Without your sewing machine you have time to pick up a pen and tell Taganrogians about your life… have you
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got into debt there, or not? You write, my unforgettable brother, that you have no money… God will never abandon you.'
As November ended, Pavel's father Egor came to the rescue. Mitrofan announced: '… the old man, our kind parent, grieving and commiserating, cordially deigns from his own small earnings to send you, his beloved offspring, to feed your family, one hundred roubles. Let us give thanks to the Lord.' That Christmas saw another family conference in Taganrog. Old Egor summoned Selivanov to Mitrofan's house. Selivanov offered to sell Pavel's house to Mitrofan or Egor for the 500 roubles he had paid the bank. Neither Egor nor Mitrofan took up the offer. Selivanov felt his obligations to the older Chekhovs were now over. Within a year, after he had made repairs, he moved in, taking with him his nephew Petia Kravtsov, niece Sasha and Anton. Anton seemed happy as Selivanov's lodger. He was treated well by everyone except the cook Iavdokha, the only servant in Chekhov's life to mistreat him. She saw Anton as a hanger-on to be bullied, not a master to be obeyed. Anton and Petia greeted the New Year of 1877 raucously, firing a shotgun at the fence. He wrote to cousin Misha in Moscow: 'The room stinks of gunpowder and gun smoke covers the bed like fog; a terrible stench, for my pupil is firing rockets off in the room and at the same time is letting off his natural Cossack, rye-bread, home-grown explosive from a certain part of the body that is not called artillery.'
New Year in Moscow was grim, although the Taganrog authorities now allowed Mitrofan to buy Pavel and Evgenia a year's passport, so that they could live openly in Moscow. The eleven-year-old Misha showed enterprise. Wben threatened with joining the Gavrilov warehouse as a shop boy, he roamed all over Moscow, until he persuaded one headmaster to take him until a benefactor was found to pay the fees. In the severe cold of the winter of 1876-7 the eleven-year-old Misha ran to school without a coat. Egor's 100 roubles had soon gone. Anton was told to sell the family piano. Anton's earnings from his three pupils also went to Moscow. Kolia sold a painting,
