Aleksandr, Vania, Masha and Misha Chekhov. Soon Anton would have his flat in the Suvorin house and be offered Suvorin's younger daughter, Nastia, then nine years old, in marriage. Forty years later Anna Suvorina would recall Anton's visit that spring: Our apartment was unusual: the hall was the domain of the children… In one corner stood an aviary with a pine tree where up to fifty canaries and finches lived and bred. The hall was sunlit, the birds sang loudly, the children, naturally, made a lot of noise and I must add that the dogs also took part… we sat down together on a litde sofa by the aviary. He asked the children the names of all the dogs, said he was very fond of dogs himself and then made us laugh… We talked for rather a long time… he was tall, slim, very good-looking, he had dark reddish waving hair, a little greying, he had slighdy clouded eyes that laughed subtly, and a fetching smile. His voice was pleasant and soft and, with a barely perceptible smile… Chekhov and I quickly became friends, we never quarrelled but we argued often, almost to the point of tears - or at least I did. My husband just adored him, as if Anton had bewitched him.1 Anton won the hearts of Suvorin's children (even, for a while, of the Dauphin), of his valet Vasili Iulov and the children's governess Emilie Bijon. The philosopher Vasili Rozanov, also rescued from obscurity by Suvorin, contemplated the publisher's love: 'If Chekhov had said 'I now need a flat, a desk, shoes, peace and a wife,' Suvorin would have told him 'Take everything I have.' Literally.'2
The journalists in Suvorin's entourage were jealous. One, Viktor Burenin, was Suvorin's oldest friend and perhaps his only confidant. Burenin could, with unprintable epigrams and printed barbs, destroy a sensitive writer. Twenty years earlier, when Suvorin sat on a park bench, too poor to hire a midwife for his pregnant wife, Burenin, then a student, had talked to him and insisted on giving him all the money he had. They became inseparable. Burenin's prognosis, as much as Grigorovich's enthusiasm, persuaded Suvorin of Chekhov's importance, but Burenin was allowed to attack Suvorin's favourites with impunity and soon turned on Chekhov: the spiteful New Times clique very soon germinated in Petersburg a hostility to Chekhov.
Anton had a happy spring in 1886: he hardly slept. Suppers with Suvorin, being lionized, intoxicated him. He could now write less for more money: Leikin no longer counted on a weekly contribution. That spring Chekhov gave New Times just one story of note, 'The Secret Councillor'. A touching portrayal of the disarray brought into
138
139
MY II EI I II I II '. E I I I' IK APRIL-AUGUST I 886
a country household by the arrival of a distinguished relative, the story anticipates the pattern of Uncle Vania: a great man comes from the city and wrecks the lives of his country relatives. 'The Secret Councillor' abandoned the sensational tone that Suvorin's readers liked. It is a work that looks back to Anton's childhood in the country around Taganrog and that injects for the first time an element of nostalgia for a lost idyll, which is to colour much of Chekhov's mature prose.
Kiseliov and all Babkino were calling for Anton. Mosquitoes whined; goldfinches sang. Kolia took his paints and brushes, but left his toothbrush and his sackcloth trousers with Anna Golden. Anton hoped that the artist would win over the lover, and ignored letters from Franz Schechtel, raging at Kolia's drunken binges. By 29 April Kolia hurt Schechtel more: he forced Lentovsky, for whose theatre the architect and painter were commissioned, to disgorge another 100 roubles and promptly vanished to Babkino, making sorties to Moscow only for debauchery. Schechtel raged and despaired; he even tried to lure Kolia by putting a letter in an envelope marked 'contains 3000 roubles': 'Friend! I have two overcoats, but fuck-all money - but there'll be some soon… if you'd come and see me for a minute…'3 Schechtel complained to Anton of Levitan's dissipation, too; fornication did not stop Levitan painting, but Schechtel complained to Anton: Levitan is ploughing and sighing for his bare-bottomed beauty, but tJhe wretch is only human: what will it cost him on quicklime, disinfectant, eau de Cologne and other chemicals and how much trouble to treat his amorous slut and make her fit to receive his thoroughbred organ?… Levitan arrived late in Babkino: he was detained in the Crimea, whence he wrote to Chekhov: 'What made you assume I'd gone off with a woman? There is screwing here, but it was there before I arrived. And I'm not hunting for fine picturesque pussy, it just happened to be there (and, alas, has gone).'4 Once Kolia and Levitan were at Babkino, the fun began. On 10 May Anton reached Moscow from Petersburg; the next day he took his mother, sister and Misha to Babkino. They painted, fished, bathed, and played: Levitan would dress as a savage Chechen, or the Chekhov brothers would hold mock trials of Kolia and Levitan for drunkenness and debauchery. Anton composed 'Soft-Boiled Boots', illustrated nonsense worthy of Edward Lear, to amuse the Kiseliov children. Somehow he found time to dispense medicine, and write for Fragments, The Petersburg Newspaper and New Times - comic classics, such as 'Novel with Double Bass'. Anton wrote his first philosophical stories, such as 'The Dreariness of Life', where activists and quietists debate what a civic-minded Russian ought to do. In Chekhov's world, unlike the world of Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, neither party wins the debate: there is an ideological stalemate. This summer Anton was groping for a new type of story, that would evoke the futility of words and thoughts. In 1886 he wrote far less than in 1885, but he was preparing himself for the real mastery of his prose of the following year.
No sooner was Kolia rescued from Anna Golden's bed and Moscow's drinking dens, than Aleksandr burst back into Anton's life. On 21 May 1886, in Novorossiisk, Aleksandr dictated a letter for Anton: Anna added a desperate postscript of her own: For God's sake, suggest what we can do. Aleksandr suddenly went blind at 5 p.m.; after dinner he went to bed as usual, after drinking a great deal, then he woke at 5, came out of the room to play with the children and asked for water, sat down on the bed and tells me he can't see. Kolia insisted that Aleksandr was acting, but the act was convincing: Aleksandr was given leave to go to Moscow and Petersburg for treatment. On 3 June he arrived at Vania's schoolhouse in Moscow. From there Pavel wrote to Anton: I ask my children to look after their eyes above all things, do your reading by day, not by night, act sensibly, to be eyeless is bad, to beg alms and assistance is a great misfortune. Kolia and Misha, look after your eyes. You still have to live long and be useful to society and yourself. If you lose your good sight it is disagreeable to me to see. Aleksandr can see nothing, he is handed bread and a spoon and that is it. These are the consequences of wilfulness and of letting his reason incline to the bad. Aleksandr, Anna, their illegitimate sons, and Anna's elder children, who drifted in and out of her care, lasted two months with Pavel and
140
141
MY II EI I E I Its' E I I V I K APRIL-AUGUST l886
Vania in the school house. Pavel kept calm. Aleksandr was drying out, and his sight was returning. On 10 July 1886 he told Anton: Imagine, after supper, I was banging away with my equine penis at the 'mother of my children'. Father was reading his Monastic Rules and suddenly decided to come in with a candle to see if the windows were locked… He solemnly went up to the window, locked it as if he hadn't noticed anything, had the sense to put out the candle and left in the dark. I even fancied he said a prayer to the icon.5 In mid July Kolia vanished again - to cousin Georgi and Uncle Mitro-fan in Taganrog. Aleksandr and his family came to Babkino. Anton was aghast: he wanted other company. He failed to lure Franz Schech-tel from Moscow, even though he exhorted him, 'living in town in summer is worse than pederasty, more immoral than buggery'. Anton moved twenty miles south to Zvenigorod, ostensibly to depute for Dr Uspensky at the hospital. After Petersburg, Chekhov felt imposed upon by his brothers. Fame brought bitter poison: the prestigious The Northern Herald reviewed Motley Tales: '[Mr Chekhov] will like a squeezed-out lemon inevitably die, completely forgotten, in a ditch… In general Mr Chekhov's book is a very sad and tragic spectacle of a young talent's suicide…' Chekhov never forgave N. K. Mik-hailovsky, to whom he attributed this review.6
The more he felt put upon, the greater his need for Masha. Now she had her diploma, she had grown confident. She had a profession for the coming twenty years: she taught part-time in Moscow in the prestigious Rzhevskaia girls' grammar school, run by a family of farmers and thus known as the 'Dairy School'. Masha was now more than an agency by which Anton could meet strong-minded, intelligent young women. Evgenia was surrendering the household to her. In early August 1886 it was Masha who left Babkino to seek a quieter flat for the family. Like many a sister in the nineteenth century, she was a handmaiden so prized by her siblings that cousin Georgi proclaimed to Anton: 'I have concluded from all the attractive stories from Misha that she is your goddess of something kind, good and precious.'7
More servant than goddess to her brothers, Masha's first conflict of interests arose in Babkino in summer 1886. Taught by Levitan, Masha was painting very fine water-colour landscapes and portraits. Levitan made hundreds of propositions to hundreds of women, but only one proposal. Seventy years later, at the age of ninety- two, Masha recalled it: Levitan dropped to his knees in front of me and - a declaration of love… All I could do was turn and run. The whole day, I sat distraught in my room crying, my head deep in the pillow. Levitan, as always, came to dinner. I stayed in my room. Anton asked everyone why I wasn't there… He got up and came to my room.
