drinking vodka and on your advice just drinks a little wine. Come and see us next summer.'47 Aleksandr's letters to his brothers are not so rosy. Inducing Vania to come for a job in the Novorossiisk customs or to open a private school, he painted instead a horrific picture of his life in this newly founded port. In hopeless debt, he lived worse than in Taganrog, where relatives helped in crises. Here he had 'no table, no chairs, just bare walls and Kolka's shitty nappies, which are the towels'. Out of scrap Aleksandr made a bedstead and a chair, which broke. Only the job was undemanding: By 8 p.m. I am drunk and asleep… I drink so much that even I am ashamed… I catch gobius fish in the mornings. I hired a servant and sacked her after three days… I have instructed people only to shit in the outside latrine, and I recommend pissing in the open… Instead of two young girls I've hired a servant woman, but such a woman that I swear to God one night I shall make a mistake and climb on her instead of Anna. I don't mean to be vulgar, I'm expressing my amazement at her figure. A real Titian woman from a picture of Weib, Wein und Gesang. Aleksandr told Anton how badly doctors were needed in Novorossiisk, how little land cost, how much people would pay for treatment or accommodation. Yet Aleksandr's description of his squalor was so graphic that it beggars belief that he thought he could attract Anton. Vania and Anton refused their brother's invitations to Novorossiisk. Even their sister was not spared the details. Aleksandr told Masha on 18 December 1885 that he wanted 'to start another life, where one wouldn't be nagged day and night, or harassed by an old man's cough and by torn stockings with dirty toes showing through them'.48
Kolia lay low, living on quick caricatures for The Alarm Clock and on Leikin's money. (Palmin had vanished from Anton's and Leikin's purview since March.) Anton answered Leikin's protests about Kolia's cheating on 14 September:
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uo«; I OK cm e iiov It's not a matter of intervention,, hut In jemme. Woman! The sexual instinct is a worse obstacle to work than vodka… A weak man goes to a woman, tumbles into her duvet and lies with her until they get colic in their groins… Kolia's woman is a fat piece of meat who loves to drink and eat. Before coitus she always drinks and eats, and it's hard for her lover to hold back and not drink and eat pickles (it's always pickles!) The Agathopod [Akksandr] is also twisted round a woman's little finger. When these two women will let go, die devil knows. The family was now Anton, Evgenia, Masha, Misha, Aunt Fenichka and, when he was not lodging overnight at Gavrilov's warehouse, Pavel. Kolia had left Anna Ipatieva-Golden for a sordid rooming house. By II April 1886, in the primary school where he was head teacher, Vania had a flat on the Arbat with five rooms, free fuel and light, a servant and, to Pavel's delight, a tricorn and tunic. Aleksandr was out of sight in Novorossiisk. At the end of November the Moscow Chekhovs moved out of Lebedeva's damp, cold house to spacious quarters on the same Iakimanka: Klimenkov's house opposite the Church of St John the Warrior. For the first time each member of the family had a room of their own. Here the Tuesday soirees resumed. Chekhov's friends, whether the louche Palmin or the flirtatious Mar-kova sisters, liked these hospitable apartments. The drawback was one floor up: Chef Piotr Podporin's dining rooms for weddings, balls and funerals, constant dancing, drinking, and the laughter or weeping of strangers.
By the end of 1885 Leikin felt personally attached to Anton, who became one of his very few confidants. He wanted to show off his palatial house and the estate he had bought outside town where the river Tosna joined the Neva, surrounded by pine forests, and raided by wolves. Leikin's letters to Moscow were a torrent equal to the letters and stories that Anton sent to Petersburg. Leikin gave advice on every subject: he told Anton to treat Kolia's morphine addiction with milk. Finally he pressed Anton to make his first visit to Petersburg.
On 10 December 1885 Anton set off for Petersburg to stay a fortnight with Leikin. Although Leikin introduced Anton to men who would change his life - the elderly novelist Grigorovich, doyen of living Russian writers, the newspaper tycoon and publisher Suvorin AUGUST 1885-jANUARY 1886 and his vitriolic leader-writer, Viktor Burenin - Leikin rarely left his protege's side. Petersburg's literary circles sneered at Leikin, and Chekhov's reception suffered. On this first visit Suvorin and Grigorovich received him coolly, and he was even stood up by Kbudekov of The Petersburg Newspaper. The only tangible benefit from this first journey to Petersburg was that Leikin agreed to publish a collection of Chekhov's tales entitled Motley Stories.49
One friendship came of this fortnight in Petersburg: Viktor Bilibin, a newly qualified barrister and Post Office official, Leikin's editorial secretary and, as 'Ygrec', leader-writer. Bilibin was a year older than Anton, naive, curious and generous. Trust sprang up between them, though Bilibin had none of Anton's Bohemianism and was too gentle a writer for Chekhov, who in March 1886 criticized his 'cotton-wool-ness': 'As a columnist you are like a lover to whom a woman says 'You take me too tenderly… You must be rougher!' (By the way, women are just like chickens, they like to be hit at that particular moment.)' However tenderly, Viktor Bilibin played Virgil to Anton's Dante in Petersburg's literary circles. To Bilibin alone Anton confided his doubts about Dunia Efros as a possible consort.
Bilibin had no illusions about his employer, Leikin, and he warned 1 Anton of Leikin's duplicity: Leikin might be happy to show Chekhov off to Petersburg's publishers, but he had no intention of letting him escape. Anton passed on the warning to Aleksandr: 'Living with Leikin, I experienced all the agony about which it is said in Scripture: 'I have endured unto the end.'… Don't rely on Leikin. He is putting every spanner in the works for me and The Petersburg Newspaper.'
Anton washed away the flavour of Leikin's hospitality by celebrating Christmas, the New Year, University celebrations on Tatiana's day (12 January) and his name day (17 January), very wildly. At twenty-six he was taking leave, if not of his senses, then of his youth.
Friends' weddings were a pretext for weeks of hedonism. Dr Dmitri Saveliev was tied and Dr Nikolai Korobov soon would be. In the New Year the artist Aleksandr Ianov in Moscow, Dr Rozanov from Voskresensk and Viktor Bilibin in Petersburg all announced their weddings. Dr Rozanov asked Anton to be best main, and Masha bridesmaid. Anton borrowed 2 5 roubles and a morning coat. On Rozanov's wedding morning he wrote to Leikin: 'Today is Tatiana's day [Moscow University's day]. By evening I'll be legless. I'm putting on morning
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i) i n; a i e n 11 e e i i v dress, off to be best man: a docttir is marrying a priest's daughter -a combination of killer and undertaker.' On Tatiana's day Kiseliov wrote and prescribed an open-air sexual encounter and an obscene purgative as a cure for the inevitable hangover.50 Kiseliov was not far off the mark. Chekhov wrote to the groom two days later: I still haven't recovered from Tatiana's day. I really stuffed myself at your wedding, showing my belly no mercy. Then I went with Dr Uspensky to the Ermitage, then to Velde's restaurant and men to the Salon des Varietes… The result: an empty purse, somebody else's galoshes, a heavy head, spots in the eyes and desperate pessimism. No-o-o, I've got to get married. Kiseliov pretended that he was more shocked by Anton than envious of him: 'There are no limits to your debauchery, after the great mystery of marriage you end up in an unused hotel room and take up fornication.' Before his head cleared, in the early hours of 18 January i H86, after his twenty-sixth name day party Chekhov brought matters to a head.
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Getting Engaged January 1886 MARRIAGE WAS TO PREOCCUPY CHEKHOV for fifteen years before he took the plunge. His behaviour reminds us of Gogol's comedy Marriage and its hero Podkolesin ['under the wheels'], who, when finally confronted with the betrothal he seeks, jumps out of the window. Chekhov was a close observer of marriage. He watched his parents' marriage for forty years. He studied well Aleksandr's and Kolia's liaisons. Ever the best man, never the groom, Anton drifted in his friends' wake. He wrote on 14 January 1886 to Dr Rozanov two days after the wedding: If Varvara [Mrs Rozanova] doesn't find me a bride, I'll certainly shoot myself… It's time I was ruled with a rod of iron, as you now are… Do you remember? A finch in a cage, a new tap on the samovar and scented glycerine soap are the signs indicating a married man's flat… Three of my friends are getting married. Once Anton's head cleared, he wrote a dramatic monologue On the Harm of Tobacco and told Bilibin: 'I've just got to know a very striking French girl, the daughter of poor but decent bourgeois… Her name is not quite decent: Mile Sirout.'5' Four days later Anton wrote again to Bilibin: 'Seeing a certain young lady home, I made her a proposal… I want to get out of the frying pan into the fire… Wish me luck for my marriage.'
Only to Bilibin did Anton reveal this engagement. Masha, a close friend of the fiancee, Dunia Efros, only suspected. To Leikin Chekhov dismissed all thought of marriage. Overhead, on 19 January, a wedding party was in full swing: 'Somebody banging their feet like a horse has just run over my head… Must be the best man. The band is thundering… For the groom who is going to screw the bride this music may be pleasant, but it will stop me, an impotent, getting any sleep.'
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