to 20 kopecks a line, allowing Chekhov more space, preparing to launch him in the 'thick' literary journals. By 1888 Chekhov would enjoy the freedom to write as he wanted, and was distinct from the caged literary animal. As Chekhov reported to his family on 3
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MY ieo inns e i: i:!• i: R December 1887, Suvorin was enthusiastic about Ivanov: 'Everyone is waiting for me to put the play on in Petersburg and is confident of success, but after Moscow I am so repelled by my play that I can't possibly make myself think about it: I can't be bothered…'
Chekhov's success in Petersburg was crowned by the wide popularity of his latest stories in New Times. The story of starving cattle, 'Cold Blood', based on a miserable business failure of a Taganrog cousin, won Anton an accolade from the Petersburg Society for the Protection of Animals. 'The Kiss', set in an artillery regiment (officers like those Chekhov invented for Three Sisters), won admiration from the military. The hero is a shy officer, kissed in the dark by a woman who mistakes him for someone else and whose identity he never discovers. Chekhov had studied the battalion in Voskresensk so well that his readers believed he must be a serving officer. The greatest sensation, however, was aroused by 'Kashtanka', the story of a dog, conscripted into a circus, that recognizes his owner in the audience. It was the first Chekhov story to be published as a book.
Anton's public was now far wider than the New Times readership. Suvorin now needed him more than vice versa. Other grand old men took a liking to Chekhov. One was the aristocratic radical, Aleksei Pleshcheev, who had mounted the scaffold with Dostoevsky, and still wrote an occasional inspirational civic poem. Pleshcheev was for his remaining years Chekhov's most perspicacious critic. Like Suvorin, Pleshcheev hinted that he would like Anton as a son-in-law, but Anton returned, unbetrothed, to Moscow on 17 December. Bilibin wrote his greetings for New Year 1888: 'Gruzinsky tells me that you are radiating all the colours of the rainbow after your Petersburg impressions.'
On Suvorin's advice, and to appease the censorship, Chekhov revised Ivanov. He now called the play a 'drama', but Act IV was intractable: How could Ivanov die a convincing death?
TWENTY-THREE O
The Death of Anna January-May 1888 CHEKHOV ALLOCATED all January 1888 to a masterpiece, 'Steppe'. The Northern Herald's editor Evreinova (who reminded Anton of a 'roast starling') had given him carte blanche on length, subject, and fee. Chekhov had 500 roubles as an advance and another 500 on publication for a story of 120 pages. His income was trebled: never again did the Chekhov family know penury, though they sometimes spent more than they earned. The Northern Herald was not censored: Anton was free. The pressure of weekly or fortnightly stories for three Petersburg journals receded: he fed New Times, but starved Fragments and The Petersburg Newspaper.
'Steppe' flaunts all conventions for extended prose: instead of a plot, we have a boy's journey across the Ukraine, from Taganrog to Kiev, accompanied first by a friendly priest, Khristofor, then by carters, and encountering a cross-section of humanity- an embittered Jew, a Polish countess, peasants rebellious and submissive. Nature - ponds, insects, a storm - overwhelms the boy's mind: he succumbs to a fever. The work has a musical structure: it is a symphony, with a storm and a pastorale as haunting as those in Beethoven's Sixth Symphony. Spellbound by memories of his own childhood in the steppes, Chekhov also had Gogol's 'Sorochintsy Fair' and Turgenev's prose poetry in mind as bench marks. 'Steppe', unmatched until Katherine Mansfield's 'Prelude', is the first work by Chekhov that we can call a classic.
Pleshcheev read the manuscript in ecstasy. In February 1889 it was published. It left musicians, painters and writers awe-struck: Vsevolod Garshin, the most original of younger prose-writers, had met his peer. Critics, notably Ostrovsky (the playwright's brother) risked their necks in praise. Suvorin, Aleksandr reported, 'left his tea undrunk. Anna Suvorina brought him three fresh cups when I was there'. Suvorin's cronies, however, distanced themselves. Aleksandr passed on the
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MY III I II I 1(s' Kill'I It comments of Burenin, the New Times journalist who was most trusted by Suvorin: Such descriptions of the steppe as yours he has read only in Gogol and Tolstoy. The storm that gathers and does not burst is the height of perfection. The characters, except for the yids, are alive. But you don't know how to write long stories… 'Steppe' is the beginning, or rather the prologue, of a big piece you will write. Leikin tried to dispirit Chekhov: 'Hanging is too good for those who advised you to write long pieces. A long piece is good when it's a novel or tale with a plot, a beginning and an end… Anyway, I stopped reading about 25 pages before the end.'
Unlike his experience with Ivanov, Anton was sociable and cheerful all the time he was writing 'Steppe', although he wondered at his story, almost unique in his work for its lack of love interest. 'I can't do without women!' he exclaimed in a letter to Shcheglov.
He found two days to write a melodramatic short story, 'Sleepy', about a skivvy who murders her mistress's baby so that she can sleep (a story that Katherine Mansfield would later plagiarize). He threw off two short plays, the Beckett-like monologue for a superannuated actor alone in the theatre, Kalkhas, later called Swansong, and the first of his fine farces, The Bear, which he later dubbed The Milch-Cow for its profitability. Friends noted Chekhov's soaring self-esteem, and other changes: his flowing hair, and quizzical smile. Gruzinsky wrote to Ezhov in February 1888: 'Chekhov really looks like Anton Rubinstein… a coolness has sprung up between Bilibin and Chekhov.' Bilibin stopped signing himself 'Your Victorina', but Anton's new friend, Ivan Shcheglov, became more affectionate: 'No Frenchwoman can caress so seductively as you can.'
Friends still called on Anton's medical skills. Grigorovich, after Chekhov had examined him, decided to stave off death in Nice: from there he sent Chekhov ideas for stories. From Petersburg Aleksandr issued desolate bulletins about Anna. Surgeons and doctors disagreed. Aleksandr was tormented by temptation as well as remorse - the secretary at New Times had soft black eyes. He asked Anton for moral guidance. Anna's terror of death overcame her inhibitions: she pleaded with her mother-in-law: I beg you, take pity on your grandchildren, come to Petersburg and JANUARY-MAY l888 stay with us. I've been ill for a long time and now the doctors think I must have an operation, that I have an abscess or echinococci [bacteria] (ask Anton he will explain) on the liver and I have to have them cut out. God knows how the operation will end, but I'm terribly afraid and at best I shall have to be in hospital for a long time. Who will be with my children then?… If I had fallen ill in Moscow I wouldn't be so afraid, but here I'm utterly alone and I am so miserable. Do me one more favour, light a candle to the martyr St Panteleimon for me in the chapel and pray to the Healer for me. My regards to Pavel Chekhov and ask him to say a prayer… I thank Anton for his sympathy…24 Botkin, the most distinguished surgeon in Petersburg, examined Anna. There was a brief remission, but by 4 March it was clear that she was dying of tuberculosis of the liver.
Kolia's existence was also threatened not just by disease but by the authorities, for he had evaded conscription. All communications, even from his brothers, went via Anna Ipatieva-Golden. Putiata, Anastasia Golden's first husband, and virtually a brother-in-law, was destitute and dying: Anton felt obliged to offer him treatment and money. The indigent and importunate spoilt Anton's mood. He wanted to go back to Petersburg so badly that, after Lucullian nights together, he shared a train compartment with Leikin. He told his brother Misha that March: I had a bad journey, thanks to Leikin the chatterbox. He wouldn't let me read, eat or sleep. All the time the bastard boasted and pestered me with questions. As soon as I drop off he touches my foot and asks, 'Did you know that my 'Bride of Christ' has been translated into Italian?' At the Hotel Moskva Pleshcheev, Shcheglov and Anton's new editor, Evreinova, were waiting. The next day he moved in with the Suvorins, with mixed feelings, as he suggested to Misha: A grand piano, a harmonium, a divan with a bustle, Vasili the footman, a bed, fireplace, a chic desk - these are my conveniences. As for the inconveniences, they are beyond counting. For a start, I am deprived of the chance of coming home under the influence and in female company… before dinner a long talk with Mme Suvorina about how she hates humanity and her buying today a jacket for 120 roubles.
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After dinner a talk about migraine, then the kids can't take their eyes off me and wait for me to say something unusually clever. They think I'm a genius because I wrote the story of Kashtanka. The Suvorins have named [after the animals in the story] one dog Fiodor Timofeich, another Auntie and a third Ivan Ivanych.
From dinner to tea we have pacing of Suvorin's study from corner to corner and philosophy; the spouse interrupts the conversation out of turn and puts on a bass voice or imitates a barking hound.
