too lost its appeal, after the excitement of Moscow. Uncle Tom's Cabin, one of its most successful stagings, seemed just a 'tear-jerker'. Although the authorities removed some 300 'seditious' books and journals in 1878, the Public Library was Anton's lifeline, and his reading was now serious. He even advised his elder brothers to read Turgenev's essay Don Quixote and Hamlet, a study of the Russian antihero which has a bearing on Chekhov's own fictional heroes who would be, like Turgenev's, either Quixotic men of action who do not think, or cerebral Hamlets who cannot act.
The pressure to send money to his family - and tobacco and cigarette paper to Aleksandr - did not relent. In return Anton asked for drawing instruments, but Aleksandr claimed that they were too expensive to send. He asked for Aleksandr's chemistry notes, but Aleksandr said that they were beyond his understanding. He asked for logarithm tables, but Pavel could not afford a set.
Hope dawned in Moscow. Konstantin Makarov, a drawing teacher who had taken a liking to Anton in Easter 1877, invited Masha to a ball at the Moscow cadet school where he taught. There she met a pupil of the episcopal Filaret girls' gimnazia. Masha followed her young brother Misha's example. She went to ask the Bishop of
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Moscow for a free place, but the Bishop told her, 'I'm not a millionaire' and refused. A Taganrog colleague of Pavel's, the merchant Sabinin, then took pity and offered to pay. She was quickly tutored for entry into the second year, and in August 1877 was accepted into the Filaret school. Misha, too, had found a benefactor: old Gavrilov paid his fees. Kvgenia pawned her gold bracelets to pay the rent, but Pavel now had hopes of returning south. Another bankrupt merchant had returned to Taganrog, Mitrofan reported, and would start afresh; perhaps Pavel might do the same. Alms arrived: Pavel's sister Aleksandra sent three roubles through Mitrofan; Father Filaret, treasurer of the Brotherhood, sent a rouble; an old colleague sent two. Finally, a member of the Taganrog administration hinted that if Pavel returned, he might have a clerical job at 600 roubles a year. In June 1877 Mitrofan was encouraging: 'have faith that the Lord will not abandon you. Many people are suffering, but not Ivan Loboda and Gavriil Selivanov: those two will probably never be touched by poverty.'
Pavel was offered a clerical job by a church charity. Although he Could compose a lament or a sermon, he could not write a memorandum and was dismissed. In their Moscow flat, at the end of September, he posted up a family roster: Timetable of jobs and household obligations to be carried out in the family house of Pavel Chekhov, resident of Moscow. Where it is stated who is to get up, go to bed, dine, go to church and when, and what jobs to do in their free time, namely… Mikhail Chekhov, aged 11; Maria Chekhova, aged 14: Going to church without delay for all night Vigil at 7 p.m. and early Matins at 6.30 and late Matins at 9.30 on Sundays. Misha had to 'clean boots with a rag', Masha 'to comb her hair carefully'. Those who do not obey this roster are liable first to a severe reprimand and then to punishment, during which crying out is forbidden. Father of the Family Pavel Chekhov. Misha was beaten for oversleeping by eight minutes and not looking at the timetable. He was then instructed: 'Get up and look at the timetable to see if it is time to get up and if it is too early, then go back to bed.' A row blew up between Vania and Pavel over a pair of trousers: Aleksandr described it to Anton (1 November 1877):
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6]
FATHER li) I 111 MAN The father of the family followed him and, m the Taganrog custom, started hitting him round the face. «Xlendcil by such cruel treatment, Member of the Family Ivan Chekhov, aged 17, opened his throat wide and called out as loud as he could. The landlord and landlady and the family members who ran towards the row shamed the Father of the Family and made him release the Member. Then the landlord and landlady made things very clear, pointing to the gate, while the Father of the Family smiled in the most innocent way… Salvation came from old Gavrilov: on 10 November 1877, after seventeen months' idleness, Pavel Chekhov was hired as a clerk. For 30 roubles a month, with free board and lodging, this ex-merchant, aged fifty-two, had to live like the shop boys, working from before dawn well into the night, with the 'right' to board and lodging on the premises (of which he usually availed himself). He could bring home sugar, which the family fed to Misha's puppy, now Korbo the family dog. The roster was taken off the wall. Work in the warehouse stopped the quarrels at home; now the shop boys bore the brunt of Pavel's lectures on how to trade and live. These earned him the name of 'Teacher of Morals'. Pavel was no longer head of the household but a visiting relative, though he never accepted demotion. Evgenia wept less. Kolia worked at home for his gold medal; his best friend, a mortally consumptive artist Khelius (known as Nautilus), came to live with them. Kolia's fame grew: he was now painting theatre sets for a wealthy patron.
In August Anton had written to Misha Chokhov asking him to lobby Gavrilov for Aleksei Dolzhenko. Old Gavrilov not only took on Pavel, but also subsidized Mikhail Chekhov's schooling and promised Pavel's nephew, Aleksei Dolzhenko, a place from February 1878. What had driven Gavrilov to relent towards the Chekhovs? Undoubtedly Misha Chokhov had pleaded Pavel's case. For all the Chokhov hedonism - 'If you drink, you die, if you don't drink, you die, so better drink' - Misha and his siblings were amiable.
Pavel made decisions and paid off minor creditors, such as the old family nurse. He fantasized about becoming rich. At the end of 1877 he had decided: 'Antosha! When you finish studying at the Taganrog gimnazia, you must join the Medical faculty, for which you have our blessing. Aleksandr's choice was frivolous against our wishes and so quite unsuccessful.' In fact Aleksandr excelled in everything from
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Scripture to Physics, but no longer propitiated a father on whom he did not depend. Now that Pavel spent all day and most nights at «..ivrilov's, Aleksandr rejoined his mother, his siblings and the dog. Anion, unlike Aleksandr, went through the motions of consultation. Kven Kolia's art won Pavel's approval. In January 1878 he told Anton: 'We desire you to have the character of your brother Kolia!… by his behaviour he has won good comrades… Nothing in the world cheers us now, we have just one consolation, our children, if they are good.'4'
Pavel fought any wilfulness in his offspring. Anton had written about his 'convictions' and at the end of January Pavel responded with iiio: 'Our own convictions feed us no bread, which is why I work for Mr Gavrilov according to his convictions.' Pavel embarrassed Anton by asking Father Pokrovsky to protect the boy. He devised ploys for buying back the family house. He conceded that Selivanov might never let the house revert, but perhaps he could retrieve his lost capital. To Mitrofan and Liudmila Pavel wrote: So, my dear Brother, if I can buy back our house perhaps with the money collected for Mt Athos monastery and the income from the house can be the interest for the loan, when business in Taganrog improves and a starting price can be named, then ask permission to sell it.47 Mitrofan quashed the idea almost by return of post: the Athos fathers' money kept in the Taganrog branch of the State bank is held solely by Father Filaret to be sent to Odessa… But Father Filaret, for all his kindness, finds joy in the miseries of those who do not live as he does… I shall tell him frankly that I am trading badly, not covering my expenses, so that he does not reproach me for not helping you… Fgor's 1878 New Year letter to Pavel is gruesome: Your mother, Pavel, has been suffering for nearly two years with an untreatable illness, neither her arms nor her legs work, not only was her body withered, but her bones are like splinters, she lies in bed not moving, moreover recently she has a disease of the head, the tumour on her face is like a pillow and there are water blisters and now she cannot see the light of heaven. She is suffering and I am struck down by exhaustion of spirit and strength, she repeatedly asks o;
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I E I II I ii H» I It I MAN God Tor death, but the hour («»t her soul to depart lias not come, she is fed and watered by strangers, when there is no kin, in this grief she often calls on the Lord, she rails, groans day and night, like a fish against the ice, she recalls past happiness, and the present is not happy, she says 'I gave birth to children and saw them, but they are no more, they have scattered over the face of the earth, now they would help me and pity me in my great need.' On 26 February 1878, nearly eighty years old, Efrosinia died - of smallpox, it is reported. Efrosinia's death broke Egor. That summer, at the age of eighty, he left Countess Platova and visited each of his surviving children and grandchildren in turn: first in Taganrog, then in Kaluga, and in Moscow. In December Egor wrote to Pavel and Evgenia and their children, whose names he confused: I speak to you perhaps for the last time… as the first cause of your existence on the earth… I have eaten our daily bread from the table of kind, giving gentlemen, my kind children… forget not the sinful Egor in your prayers… console me with your letters while I am here on earth and when I am in the next world and if by God's mercy I shall be free from deepest hell, I shall write to you from there how sinners live and how the righteous rejoice with the holy angels… now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace. In early 1879 the 'mobile bronze statue' went to stay with his daughter in Tverdokhliobovo and died there of a heart attack on 12 March 1879. At nineteen Anton had lost all his grandparents and three of his uncles. Little wonder that cemeteries haunted his dreams and his waking hours.
Others close to him in Taganrog were disappearing. In early May 1878 his cousin Aleksei Dolzhenko left for
