Tea. At tea we talk about medicine. Finally I'm free, sit in my study and can't hear voices. Tomorrow I'm running away for the whole day: I shall be with Pleshcheev… By the way I have my own loo and back door - if I didn't I might as well lie down and die. My Vasili is dressed better than me, has a genteel physiognomy and I find it strange that he walks reverendy on tiptoe around me and tries to anticipate my wishes. On the whole it's awkward being a man of literature. I want to sleep but my hosts go to bed at 3 a.m. Anton called on Aleksandr: he was amazed to find the children fed and clean, and his brother sober. Anton climbed endless stairs to see Vsevolod Garshin. Garshin was out.25
After one week, Anton took the train to Moscow, unaware that on 19 March 1888, in a fit of depression, Vsevolod Garshin had killed himself by hurling himself down the stairs Anton had climbed. Ever since his traumatic experiences as a soldier in the Turkish wars twelve years before, Garshin had distilled his madness into stories of obsession, such as 'The Red Flower'. Marriage to Russia's only woman psychiatrist did not save him. Garshin's funeral was as grotesque as his death: Leman, an author of a manual on billiards, usurped the ceremony with an inept oration; New Times, which scorned radical writers, was represented only by Aleksandr Chekhov. A quarrel over two commemorative books sucked Chekhov into literary politics. All that came of the controversy was that Chekhov got to know one significant contemporary, Korolenko, the literary lion of Nizhni Novgorod. Garshin's prose of alienation was, however, to influence Anton's later work.
Spring made Anton yearn for the country, but Orthodox Easter was late that year - 24 April - and, Anton explained to Korolenko: 'Anyone absent during the Easter holiday is considered by my household to be in mortal sin.' He had many invitations: to explore the
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JANUARY-MAY l888 Volga with Korolenko, the far north with Leikin, or Constantinople with Suvorin. Babkino now palled. Was it proximity to importunate visitors, or boredom with prurient Aleksei Kiseliov and prudish Maria? In April, to soothe the Kiseliovs, Anton agreed to house their son Seriozha when he went to school in Moscow in the autumn, leaving him free to spend July in the Crimea at Suvorin's new seaside house outside Feodosia, before setting out with Suvorin's eldest son, 'the Dauphin', across the Black Sea to Georgia, and perhaps the Caspian to Central Asia. He would leave his family behind. The dacha he had in mind for them in May and June was in the Ukraine.
Kolia's friends at The Eastern Furnished Rooms, by the conservatoire, included two hapless musicians who were to become Anton's companions. One, Ivanenko, had come to Moscow to study piano and found all the conservatoire pianos allocated; he took up the flute, and made forays into literature, signing himself 'Little lus', a redundant letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. The other was the cellist Semashko, whose lugubrious playing was the butt of the Chekhovs' jokes. Ivanenko and Semashko came from northeast Ukraine, near the town of Sumy. They put Anton in touch with the Lintvariov family, who, like the Kiseliovs, supplemented their income by renting summer cottages. Their estate, Luka, lay outside Sumy, on the river Psiol in hilly wooded countryside, warmer than Babkino, and even better for fishing.
At Easter, Misha, on his way to Taganrog, was deputed to make a detour to Sumy and report on the Lintvariov estate. He recalled: After the stylishness of Babkino, Luka made a terribly mournful impression on me. The manor house was neglected, the courtyard had a puddle which seemed never to dry up, with the most enormous pigs wallowing in it and ducks swimming about, the park was more a wild, untended forest, and there were graves in it; the liberal Lintvariovs saw my student uniform and from the start treated me like a pariah. Anton had already invited half literary Petersburg to stay with him: he was not deterred. Pleshcheev intended to come, so did Suvorin, before taking Anton to the Crimea. Anton bought tackle: he and Suvorin would fish the Psiol together.
Despite Aleksandr's pleas, Anton refused to go to Anna's bedside, and called him a 'loathsome blackmailer':
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Urgent medical help is required- E you won't take Anna to Botkin then at least visit him yourself and explain what's the matter… I doubt if mother will come, for her health is not all that good. And she has no passport. She has the same passport as papa, that would mean long discussions with father and going to the police chief etc. The family's postscripts were no comfort: 'Greetings!!!!! N. Chekhov. Mother grieves she can't come.' and: 'My regards, I kiss you, Anna and the children, Masha.' Aleksandr painted for Anton a picture of domestic hell: The children are running wild: howling, cowering, trying to get to their mother who either cries over them or chases them away. When I get home from the office, more trouble: she demands to see the vile woman I am going to marry, who intends to poison Kolia and Antosha for the sake of her own future children. She demands this woman be searched for behind the door, in the wardrobe, under the table… Just imagine the night, the ravings, the loneliness, the impossibility of consoling her, the crazy words, the sudden transitions from laughter to crying, the children crying in their sleep after being frightened all day. Judge, you Herod's ^sculapius, what a time I'm having and what grief that mother won't come. Aleksandr's siblings showed more concern for strangers. Masha brought home a twelve-year- old boy she found begging. She and Anton gave him money, got him boots from the school where Vania worked, and gave the boy a train ticket to Iaroslavl and a letter to the local celebrity, the poet Trefolev (who looked 'like a plucked crow'). Only Pavel softened to his son: Dear Aleksandr… I sympathize with your grief, but unfortunately can send you nothing, I can only pray, and I advise you to rely on God. He will arrange everything for the best. I wish Anna a Happy Easter and with all my heart a quick recovery, I ask her to forgive me and to forget the past… Your loving father, P. Chekhov. Anton was dreaming of catching perch-pike in the Psiol, 'nobler and sweeter than making love' he told Pleshcheev. Misha was with Uncle Mitrofan: 'Mummy! I'm in Taganrog! happy, cheerful, calm, pleased.' Aleksandr despaired: 'Anna's days are numbered and the catastrophe is inevitable… Please ask our mother and her sister if they'll take the children…' But Anton was adamant in his refusal:
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JANUARY-MAY l888 If I add two rooms for the children, nurse and children's junk, then the flat will cost 900… Anyway, in any spacious flat we would be crowded. You know I have an agglomeration of adults living under one roof simply because, thanks to incomprehensible circumstances, we can't go our own ways… There's my mother, sister, the student Misha (who won't leave even when he graduates), Kolia, who is doing nothing and has been jilted by his paramour, drinks and lies about undressed, our aunt and [her son] Aliosha (the latter two just use the accommodation). Add to this Vania hanging about from 3 p.m. to the early hours and all day on holidays, while papa comes for the evenings… These are all nice, cheerful people, but they are selfish, they make claims, they are usually talkative, they stamp about, they have no money… I refuse to take on anyone else, let alone somebody who has to be brought up… Tear this letter up. You should make it a habit to tear up letters, they are scattered all over your apartment. Join us in the south in summer. It's cheap. The children, Anton suggested, could be left with Aunt Fenichka, who would live in the Korneev house, while the Chekhovs were in the country. Aleksandr had to accept these brutal terms. Anton wrote far more mildly about his dependants to his 'dear Captain' Shcheglov on 18 April: I too have a 'family circle'. For convenience I always take it with me like luggage and am as used to it as a growth on my forehead… it's a benign, not a malignant growth… Anyway, I am more often cheerful than sad though, if I think about it, I am tied hand and foot. Evgenia worried only about her summer in the country, and wrote to Misha: 'It's a pity our dacha is not a success, it's too late now, the luggage was sent at Easter… you wrote little about servants, what the prices are in Sumy, how much they're paid a month.'
On 7 May 1888 Anna took the last rites in Petersburg, while the Chekhovs reached Sumy by train and took a carriage two miles to Luka. Their hosts were friendly, the house comfortable, the weather hot and the setting unspoilt. 'Misha was talking rubbish,' Anton wrote, inviting Vania and Pavel to join them in 6 weeks' time and bring vodka. He invited Shcheglov and wrote again to Vania specifying fish hooks. To Leikin he praised the civilized Ukrainian peasantry. Here, after the diseased and degraded peasants around Babkino, he could
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forget he was a doctor. Soon the- Chckhovs were joined by guests. The arrival of the legendary Pleshcheev thrilled the Lintvariovs: for three weeks they treated him as a god. Belatedly Anton remembered his brothers. On 27 iMay he told Aleksandr to make Aunt Fenichka his children's guardian, and not to pay Anna's doctors: 'If they are waiting for the autopsy to make a diagnosis, then their visits were absurd and the money they dare to take off you cries unto heaven… iMy regards to Anna and the kids.' The next day, before this callous letter had arrived, Aleksandr sent Anton a note: Today at 4.15 a.m. Anna died. Knoch will do the autopsy tonight. After the funeral I
