Peace seemed to be restored when Evgenia came back from the country and Aleksandr and his family returned to Taganrog. In autumn 1883, once university life began, Anton and Kolia mixed with Masha's kursistki. Ekaterina Iunosheva received a joking 'Last Farewell' by Kolia. (Anton had a hand in this poem - all three eldest Chekhov brothers had the stuffed owl for a muse): As from a cigar a dreamer smokes, You float about in all my dreams, Bringing with you love's cruel strokes, And on your lips a hot smile gleams…27
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Kolia did not stay in the family home for long. He hid behind the ample skirts of Anna Ipatieva-Gohlcn from his creditors and the authorities, and Anton no longer collaborated with him.
In late November Kolia left Moscow and went to stay with Alek-sandr and Anna Sokolnikova in Taganrog. Meanwhile Pavel, horrified to discover that Aleksandr and his consort had stolen something precious from him, asked Kolia to intervene: My regards to Aleksandr. I am sorry for the ruined creature and those that live with him. He has stolen my wedding certificate and is living on it and mis grieves me. Bring it, be sure to take it off him. Those that live without the law shall perish wimout the law!28 Pavel's phrase 'shall perish without the law' became a family saying. Anton kept out of these quarrels: he was drawn to wider horizons. Leikin had been leaking hints to those in Petersburg who asked about the identity of his contributor, Antosha Chekhonte. On 8 October 1883 Nikolai Leskov, revered for his novel The Cathedral Folk and for his powerful stories, such as 'Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk', arrived with Leikin for five days in Moscow. Leikin could not resist introducing Leskov to Chekhov. Leskov (with Ostrovsky, the only living writer whom Pavel Chekhov respected) had surly suspicions of young writers, but took to Chekhov. Anton took Leskov on a tour of the brothels in Sobolev lane. They ended up in the Salon des Varietes. Then, as Anton told Aleksandr, Leskov and he took a cab: He turns to me half drunk and asks: 'Do you know what I am?' 'I do.' 'No you don't. I'm a mystic' 'I know.' He stares at me witli his old man's popping eyes and prophesies. 'You will die before your brother.' 'Perhaps.' 'I shall anoint you with oil as Samuel did David… Write.' Despite Anton's agnosticism and Leskov's Orthodox faith, the two writers were very close in spirit: no other of Leskov's successors had his gift for narrative voice, for showing environment making character, for maintaining an ironical, but mystical appreciation of nature and fate. However inauspicious the future encounters of Leskov and Chekhov (for Leskov hated doctors and Anton was never to be fully at ease in Petersburg), this meeting settled Chekhov's fate: he was to be Leskov's successor.
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More lowly writers also saw Anton as a successor. The hack Popu-doglo (who at the age of thirty-seven was mortally ill) marvelled that Anton alone understood his disease and, when he died on 14 October 1883, left him all his books.29 Liodor Palmin was very attached to Anton, although, like Leskov, he abhorred his profession. Palmin's affection came in doggerel missives: I sit in silence like an outcaste. Meanwhile Kalashnikov's good beer Gives me humoristic cheer, Sparkling in my empty glass. Forgive this naughty fleeting rhyme, Like logarithms for arithmetics, I always find one just in time…30 Every few months Palmin informed 'Mr Rest-in-peace', as he called Chekhov, of his new address, for instance: 'By the Dormition on the Gravelets (don't think it is Dead Lane, Coffin House, Cross- Kisser's Flat, which is for any doctor, especially a young doctor, a suitable address).'
In his final year Chekhov became well acquainted with morbidity: he took charge of cases from registration to death or cure. He had to write a full case history for his professor in the clinic for nervous diseases, and in the internal medicine clinic for Professor Ostroumov (whose patient he would one day become). The final exams began in the winter and were harrowing: a medical student then had to retake all previous exams in his final year; this made a total of seventy-five examinations, as well as course assessment. Chekhov's conduct of a 'nervous' case shows him conforming to the tenets of the time. A young railway clerk, Bulychiov, was admitted for six weeks with impotence, spermatorrhoea and psychosomatic back pain: Chekhov concluded that they were due to frequent masturbation during adolescence, and prescribed Bulychiov nux vomica, potassium bromide, daily baths, each a degree colder than the previous.31 A modern mind would ascribe Bulychiov's state to fear of the consequences of onanism, but Chekhov and his professors saw masturbation as a morbid habit for which prostitutes, cold baths and sedatives were the remedy. The autopsy that Anton carried out at a Moscow police station on
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ixx i on «:in«KIIOV 24 January 1884 was more acute. Professor Neuding awarded it only '3+', but the report was the germ for several stories: On 20 January 1884 he visited the baths. Returning home he had tea and supper, then went to bed. At 8 a.m. on 21 January he said that he would go, as usual, to town, but at about 9 a.m. he was found dead, hanging by a sash in the latrine of Osipov's house. The corpse was dressed in the deceased's usual clothes. One end of the sash was wound around his neck, the other was tied to a wooden beam 8 feet above the floor… to determine Efimov's state of mind at the time he committed the crime of suicide, we have only very few data: the smell of spirits on opening the skull, chest and abdominal cavities entides us to suppose that at the moment of committing suicide Efim was, very probably, intoxicated.32
Forensic exercises had their literary parallel. To Leikin's annoyance, Chekhov earned himself 39 roubles from The Dragonfly with a detective story that they printed in their annual 'almanac'. It is highly original, like all Chekhov's experiments in the genre, which was popular at the time in Russia. As in France, the Russian legal system used an independent investigating magistrate, a more plausible hero than the private detectives of English fiction. In 'The Safety Match' Chekhov took his friend Diukovsky's name for a Clouseau-like investigator who follows up the clue of a safety match, and finds the corpse alive and well, hiding with a girlfriend.
In January 1884, just before Anton wrote up his autopsy, telegrams came from Taganrog: baby Mosia stopped feeding, became comatose, then half paralysed. The Taganrog doctors injected her with calomel, pepsin and musk; they gave her cold compresses and potassium bromide. The prescriptions that Anton wired back were useless. In the early hours of 1 February, while Anton and Masha were at a ball in Moscow, Mosia died in convulsions. Aleksandr wrote to Anton: I can't bear it. Inside and outside me everything shouts one thing: Mosia! Mosia! Mosia!… Anna has gone mad. She doesn't think, isn't aware, but senses the loss. Her whole face is a mirror of suffering. The undertaker came. We haggled by the litde corpse… the discussion was about an oval or an ordinary coffin, brocade or satin lining. Aleksandr and Anna got no sympathy. 'Those that live without the
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law shall perish without the law.' Pavel wrote to Anton on 20 February: Antosha, Be so kind as to turn your attention to Aleksandr, persuade him to leave Anna, it's time he recovered from his madness,… you have more influence over him, persuade him to leave this Burden. It's easy to leave Anna now, the child has died and they're not married. If he values my life and respects me as his own Father, then he can overcome himself… He doesn't seem to understand that offending one's Father and Mother is a grave sin. Sooner or later he will have to pay for this before God. It's no laughing matter to pick up such a Cabbage and bring her unasked into our family, to disturb peace and order in the house… So God has taken the child he loved, therefore his deeds are wrong, he must follow a decent path, as an enlightened man who understands what is bad and what is good. To act out a Comedy and make a novel out of his life is quite unsuitable. We are insulted by this horrible Crime and Misfortune. Aleksandr's unpublished diaries My Daily, Ephemeral and Generally Fleeting Thoughts show he was thinking on similar lines: 25 January 1884: Anna… has never understood me and never will. 1 February 1884: I cannot live with Anna without Mosia…' Pavel swallowed his hostility. In spring Aleksandr was transferred to Moscow 'on the grounds of his father's ill health'. He, Anna - and the Sokolnikov children Shura and Nadia - came to live first in Moscow, then with the Chekhovs in Voskresensk. Aleksandr's diaries augured ill for Anna: 25 March 1884: Neither my wife nor her children were with me, i.e. around me, for a whole day. How I celebrated this day! I chattered to my heart's delight with Anton on learned subjects, with Nikolai about art, I argued with Ivan! But compassion, as he put it, kept Aleksandr with Anna until death. She was now four months pregnant with Aleksandr's second child.
Anton was more affected than he showed. In an album given him a year or two later by a grateful patient Anton kept a photograph of little Mosia.
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The Qualified Practitioner June 1884-April 1885 ON I6JUNE 1884 the University Rector gave Chekhov a certificate of General Practitioner: it released him from military service and poll tax and gave him some of the privileges of a gentleman. Anton wanted to graduate as a writer, too. He chose his best work and, with Leikin's
