Masha and Pavel had on Anton. He and Ezhov loathed losing at whist to Vania (a game that Anton refused to learn). They disliked Masha and found Pavel sinister. Gruzinsky's letters to Ezhov snarl: Ivan Chekhov is a weird character and, as Bilibin says of his older brother Aleksandr, 'a crooked personality'… I don't like Chekhov's father. Yes, certainly he was a tyrant and a wild beast. That sort almost always develop into 'unctuous' types… Maria Chekhova in passing argued that there is nothing more selfish man talent and genius. That was an allusion to her brother who is bursting his guts for them.39 Ezhov saw Anton's parents in a poor light. He recalled Easter 1889: Once Chekhov told his friends at tea: 'Do you know, gentlemen, our cook is getting married. I'd like to take you to the wedding, but I'm afraid the cook's guests will start beating us up.' - 'Antosha,' remarked his mother, 'You should read them your poetry and they won't.' Chekhov… suddenly frowned and said, 'Mother still thinks I write poetry.'40 It was true that Anton's parents may never have read, or listened to, a word of his stories or plays. Ezhov was as envious as he was protective, and he soured his crony Gruzinsky, who complained to Ezhov: Anton Chekhov is strange: he says it's terribly easy to go to Petersburg. His talent gives him perverted ideas about money… He asked me how much Leikin was paying me. [Anton said:] 'Too little, awfully little… I get 70-80, once I got 90 roubles.' And I'm grateful for 40! Anton found celebrities better company. Pleshcheev came to Moscow to celebrate his birthday and Shrovetide: he gorged on pancakes.
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MY III I III lis' KEEPER Anton summoned his colleague I)r Obolonsky to treat the elderly poet. Suvorin promised to come and watch his Tatiana Repina, which, unlike Ivanov, was still running. He sent a balalaika (with no strings) and some photo-portraits of Chekhov; then came a telegram from Anna Suvorina: 'HUSBAND NOW LEFT FOR Moscow DON'T FORGET MEET HIM CHEER HIM AND AMUSE PROPERLY BUT SAME TIME REMEMBER ME.'41 Suvorin did not stay long. Renewed links encouraged the Dauphin to resume writing to Anton: he kept off Jews but, in the spirit of New Times, praised the Cossack Ashinov for invading the Horn of Africa. Anton, with embarrassment, confessed that he knew two of the invaders.42 The Dauphin also reported that their Tatar neighbour in Feodosia had seen Ivanov: the play had induced a fit of hysterics in a lady in the audience.
Ivanov brought in nearly a thousand roubles: 'A play is a pension,' declared Anton. The Chekhovs made merry. Leikin pricked the bubble and told Chekhov that he had lost money by putting the play on late in the season (State Theatres closed on the first day of Lent), that his play gave actors no breaks for applause. Leikin added every drop of gall he could: he reported Palmin's wild slanders. Anton responded: I haven't seen Palmin once this month. How does he know I am losing blood, ill and afraid of madness? I haven't had any haemorrhage, thank God, since I left Petersburg (only just a little)… I have no reasons to fear sudden insanity for I don't drink vodka for days on end, I don't go in for spiritualism or masturbation, I don't read the poet Palmin. Palmin, when challenged, told Leikin that his information came from Kolia. Leikin's dogs, not his opinions, interested Anton. Leikin had acquired a pair of dachshunds and was so much in love with them that he finally had to promise puppies to Anton.
Friendly with so many of the Lintvariov circle, the Chekhovs were bound to return to Luka that summer. Anton began composing The Wood Demon in his head, to write in its natural setting, the Lintvariov estate and the mills on the Psiol. He spent money: he bought a set of Dostoevsky and read it, apparently for the first time: 'good, but very long and immodest. A lot of pretensions.' For fun Anton then composed his most extraordinary play: a sequel to Suvorin's Tatiana
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Repina. Chekhov shows Suvorin's hero, who drove Repina to suicide, marrying in church: the marriage service is ruined by a mysterious lady in black who takes poison, and 'the rest I leave to the imagination of A. S. Suvorin'. The genius of Chekhov's parody sequel lies in the mingling of casual gossip by minor characters with the text of the liturgy which Chekhov knew so well. Anton sent the play to Suvorin: Suvorin went to his print room and had two copies printed, one for himself and one for Anton.
This playful gift for absurdly mixing trivial and serious speech was to lead to two elements that mark out Chekhov's mature drama: inconsequential conversation acting as a counterpoint to tragic utterances, and a plot which hangs on a character who has died before the action starts and about whom we shall never be told the truth. The corpse of Tatiana Repina haunts Chekhov's gift to Suvorin, just as the professor's first wife haunts Uncle Vania, Colonel Prozorov the Three Sisters, or Ranevskaia's drowned son The Cherry Orchard.
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A Death at Luka March-June 1889 CHEKHOV TOOK UP his novel. He also made a mysterious trip to Kharkov, ostensibly to look at a ranch for Suvorin, but perhaps in response to Lily Markova's (now Sakharova) invitation. The trip was, to judge by the hellish aura around Kharkov in his fiction, disagreeable. When Anton returned to Moscow on 15 March 1889, the horse-trams had stopped and blizzards had piled snowdrifts five feet high in front of the house. His mother showed him a postcard from Kolia: 11 March 1889… Dear Mama, Illness has prevented me from visiting you. Two weeks ago I caught a bad chill: I was shaking with fever and my side was hurting desperately. But now, thanks to quinine and various ointments I am better and hasten to work to make up for lost time…43 OA had struck Kolia's intestines. Anton diagnosed typhoid as well. On 29 March Anton, unsure of himself, summoned Nikolai Obolon-sky again to Kolia's bedside, back at Anna Ipatieva-Golden's house: Anna told them that Kolia had not touched alcohol for two months. For ten days, longing to escape, Anton visited the feverish emaciated Kolia. It took four hours to cross Moscow's thawing snow to see him. Anton brought Kolia home. Kolia described his rescue to a Taganrog friend: My bromer sent me broth. Then on Easter Saturday a carriage was sent for me, they dressed me, and sent me to my mother and family. Almost nobody recognized me. They immediately put me to bed. At 2 a.m. on Easter Sunday everybody celebrates, shouting, noise, drinking wine, and I am lying out of the way, an outcast. The week after Easter there was a concilium with Karneevsky [Korneev?] and it was decided mat I should eat as much as possible, drink vodka, beer, wine, and eat ham, herring, caviar.44
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Anton could only muse about his unwritten novel, a work 'with all thoughts and hopes of good people, their norms and deviations, the framework being freedom'. Little freedom was in prospect. There was no money to take Kolia to a warm climate where he might rally, and he could not get a passport. Anton sought consolation in the stoic maxims of Marcus Aurelius, a book he marked heavily with his pencil.
Meanwhile the servants made merry. Pavel and Evgenia were giving their cook, Olga, away in marriage. In late February, at the betrothal, the kitchen had rung with the sound of the harmonica and stamping boots. On 14 April, while Kolia lay moribund upstairs, the wedding feast began. Anton did not feel festive. He invited Schechtel to take leave of Kolia, who was now able to stand, and sent Misha and their mother to prepare the arrival of patient and doctor in the Ukraine. After he had seen them off, Anton went to a meeting of the Dramatic Society and afterwards, he confided in a letter to Dr Obolonsky, looked at the dawn then went for a walk, then I was in a foul pub where I watched two crooks play an excellent game of billiards, then I went to the sordid places where I chatted with a mathematics student and musicians, then I returned home, drank some vodka, had breakfast and then (at 6 a.m.) went to bed, was woken up early and am now suffering. Posting that letter, Chekhov took Kolia to the station and, in a first-class sleeping car, made the journey to Sumy. For the first time in months Kolia slept and ate well. Masha followed a few days later with shoes, a string for the mandolin, and paper and frames for Kolia. Despite, or because of, Kolia's illness, many friends were invited down: Davydov, Barantsevich, the cellist Semashko, not to mention Vania. Suvorin proposed to call on his way to Austria and France. Anton told him: 'How I'd love to go now somewhere like Biarritz where music is playing and there are lots of women. Were it not for the artist, I'd chase after you.'
Aleksandr was not invited. Anton sternly told him that money was the only practical help. Aleksandr offered to marry Natalia - she would not risk pregnancy until she was married. Aleksandr became the first Russian male recorded buying a contraceptive. On a chit for Anton's eyes alone he wrote, on 5 May:
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MY it e i i 11 in ?' e!•: e i» e e Kngulfed by carnal lusts (after long abstinence) 1 bought in a chemists' a condon (or condom - the devil knows) for 35 kopecks. But as soon as I tried to put it on, it burst, probably from fear at the sight of my shaft. So I had no luck. I had to tame the flesh again.4'
Kolia was too weak to flee. By day he sat, or lay in a hammock, sunbathing in the orchard. He ate for four,
