was lured to Babkino by Anton: 'Before my eyes stretches an extraordinarily warm, gentle landscape: the river, beyond it the forest.' Anton wrote mostly about fish - ruff, gudgeon, chub, burbot, perch, carp - and sent for more tackle. Anton's stories, plays and letters show that he was as much The Com-pleat Angler as Izaac Walton. He was not the only obsessive angler on the Istra: a peasant Nikita was arrested for unbolting railway spikes to use as sinkers for catching burbot - a single-minded character whom Chekhov put in a story 'The Evildoer'.
Fishing inspired Anton to write more lyrically: 'The Burbot' makes poetry out of an angler's obsession. Seeing landscape through Isaak Levi tan's eyes enriched Anton's work: after their long walks in May
JANUARY-JULY 1885
1885 with gun, rod, or paints and easel, landscape is as evocative in Chekhov's art as in Levitan's. The Kiseliov family, too, developed Anton: their anecdotes from the arts world and Maria Kiseliova's reading of French magazines and novels provided material for Fragments. Aleksei Kiseliov, inhibited by his wife, was animated by the bawdiness of Levitan ('Leviathan'), Anton and Kolia. On 20 September Kiseliov wrote: Thank you, dear Anton, for fulfilling my request so punctiliously and for sending an exact representation of your illegitimate children, whose similarity to you is enormous. I immediately took the postcard to Duniasha, the cattle girl, and showed her what you're capable of and what she can expect if she becomes pregnant by you and is abandoned to the mercy of fate. In January 1886 Kiseliov complained: 'The difference between my letters and yours, dear Anton, is that you can boldly read mine to young ladies, whereas I must throw yours into the stove as soon as I've read them in case my wife catches sight of them.'
Anton worked a few days as a doctor, relieving Arkhangelsky at the Chikino hospital in early June and performing an autopsy on a peasant. In mid July the madmen in Anton's care spoilt the idyll. Kolia bolted. Leikin reported: 'A few days ago your brother Kolia turned up with Aleksandr at my dacha. He pressed me for cartoon topics… A good artist, but we can't do magazine business with him for he won't keep his word.'44 A week later Kolia came, drunk, to Leikin's office in Petersburg, took the topics and an advance of 32 roubles. On 20 July he reappeared in Moscow at The Alarm Clock and then vanished. He was not seen by his brothers or their friends until mid October. By the end of June Levitan was also in Moscow, in bed with 'catarrhal fever' (as he called his OA). Ia sent Anton his gun dog Vesta to look after, and two roubles for his rent. Kolia and Levitan had collaborated in painting sets for the opera; Kolia once painted a figure on Levitan's empty landscape, and Levitan painted a skyscape over Kolia's figures. They complemented each other - Levitan an excitable workaholic, reluctant to paint human beings, and Kolia paralytically idle, with a dislike of painting nature. Reluctant as Kolia to return, Levitan made his excuses to Anton: 'Going to the country now is nonsense: it would be poisoning myself - Moscow would seem a thousand times fouler
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than now and I've got used to the city… in any case I shall soon see the dear inhabitants of Babkino and, among other things, your repulsive face.'
It was very hot at Babkino, and Anton had a haemorrhage. Nevertheless, in mid July, he went to Moscow to take leave of Aleksandr, who had been appointed Customs Chief at Novorossiisk on the Black Sea, and was passing through Moscow with Anna, baby Kolia and the dog. Vania was travelling with them, to support the ailing Anna on the iooo-mile journey beyond the Don and over the Caucasus. Aleksandr and Anton would not see each other for more than a year.
Babkino had worked its magic. Anton sent to Petersburg a story with a game-keeping background, 'The Huntsman' [Jager]. Short and unpretentious, it pays homage to Turgenev, who had died a year before and whose technique Chekhov was emulating, but it owes much to Levitan's subtle perception and to Babkino's atmosphere. Its peasant characters set the pattern for Chekhov's later love stories. A Chekhovian couple, an unresponsive male and a frustrated female, fail to communicate, while nature all around lives its own life. 'The Huntsman' came out in The Petersburg Newspaper on 18 July 1885. Petersburg took heed.
SIXTEEN O
Petersburg Calls August 1885-January 1886 AUTUMN 1885 brought Chekhov a social whirlwind. Among Masha's friends, the fiery Dunia Efros stood out. In Moscow, where the authorities were increasingly hostile to Jews, she would not convert, and insisted on her Hebrew name, Reve-Khave. Anton had many liaisons - with his former landlady, Mrs Golub, with the landlady of friends, Baroness Aglaida Shepping, and, it is said, Blanche, a hostess at the Ermitage. A more serious love, his Natashevu, Natalia Golden, was now thirty. She left Moscow for Petersburg, from where in spring 1885 she wrote Anton a bawdy farewell: Little bastard Antoshevu, I could hardly bear the wait for your much desired letter. I can feel you are having a merry, free-for-all time in Moscow, and I'm glad for you and envious… I haven't got married yet, but I probably shall soon and I invite you to my wedding. If you wish, you can bring with you your Countess Shepping, but you will have to bring your own sprung mattress, because here there aren't any women of such awful dimensions, and otherwise you won't have anything to be busy on. Since you have turned into a completely debauched man (since I left), you are unlikely to be able to do without - [Natalias dashes]. I can't belong to you any more, since I have found myself a suitable tiger-boy.
Today you are having a ball, I can imagine you desperately flirting with Efros and Iunosheva. Who will win, I wonder? Is it true that Efros's nose has got 2 inches longer, that's terrible, a pity, she'll be kissing you and what sort of children will you have, all that worries me frightfully. I have also heard that Iunosheva's bust has got bigger, another inconvenience!… Antoshevu, if you are irrevocably lost morally, at least don't ruin your friends, especially not the married ones. You scoundrel!
I advise you not to marry, you're still too young… You write rubbish to me, as for the main thing that interests me (more than
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anything else), your health, not a word about that. You have two diseases, amorousness and spitting blood. The first is not dangerous, but about the second I ask you to give me the most detailed information… So, Antoshevu, perhaps you haven't forgotten your little skeleton, but I believe that if you come to Petersburg, you haven't, if you don't come, you have forgotten her… I shall send you stamps, otherwise I fear that the letters will be lost. Farewell, Antoshevu. Your Natasha. I'm glad medicine is looking up, maybe you'll write less and be healthier.4' Natalia was not the last woman to send Anton stamps for a reply, but none survives. The field was clear for Dunia Efros: Anton's business in Petersburg was literary.
Anton was back at Babkino until autumn. Khudekov of The Petersburg Newspaper had not paid him, and it was cheaper living with the Kiseliovs. When he finally returned to Moscow, the Chekhovs moved from quarters that were airy, convenient and cheap. On 11 October 1885, after waiting for the landlord to stain the floors, the Chekhov family crossed the river south to the Bolshaia Iakimanka, Mrs Lebed-eva's house. After five years in one house - the longest period yet in Anton's life - peregrinations had started again. The new flat was small - too small for soirees, but cheap (40 roubles a month), and closer to Gavrilov's warehouse. Doctor A. P. Chekhov's brass plate was mounted, and here he was at home except Tuesdays, Thursday evenings and some Saturdays. A month later, Anton was complaining to Leikin: 'The new flat has turned out to be rubbish: damp and cold. If I don't leave it, I shall certainly have last year's outrage developing in my chest: coughing and spitting blood… Living with the family is horribly nasty.' There was no money for firewood: The Petersburg Newspaper took months to pay Anton. He wrote again for The Alarm Clock, and collected his fee in person.
As the family thinned out rows because fewer. Misha, starting Law at Moscow University, received on 11 August, Masha's name day, Pavel's last rocket: 'In Moscow instead of the educated boy who studied so long at the gimnazia you have turned out a lout, your character in Moscow has become not modest but impatient and rude, what is your education for?'44 Pavel seemed to mellow. He sent Masha (who lingered at Babkino) an affectionate letter and a 5-rouble note: he even corresponded with Aleksandr, Anna and their illegitimate
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child, Kolia, in Novorossiisk. Vania had come back from Novorossiisk. Aleksandr and Vania gave their father good reports about each other. Aleksandr was so touched by paternal forgiveness that he sent a fond letter, giving information, so dear to Pavel, on the price of every product and the liturgy of the church services in Novorossiisk. Anna too felt emboldened: 'I hurry to use the permission you gave me to write a few lines to you… Aleksandr is not
