coffin. Letters and telegrams were sent off. Misha went to Sumy to find a photographer. That evening Anton returned. Misha flared up at Aleksandr and Natalia, and
198
JUNE-SEPTEMBER 1889
demanded that they move to separate quarters. After Kolia's death the two brothers loathed each other. Aleksandr wrote a note asking Anton to intervene.
After another vigil with whispering old women and a chanting cantor, a truce reigned. The Lintariovs had Kolia buried in their graveyard, on the hill behind the dacha where he had died. Misha described the funeral to Pavel in Moscow: Mother and Masha were sobbing so much that we couldn't bear to look at them. When we took the coffin out Masha and the Lintvariov girls carried the lid, while six of us - Antosha, Vania, Sasha, I, Ivanenko and George Lintvariov carried the coffin. We said a prayer for the dead at each corner of the church. There was a solemn matins, the church was fully lit and everyone held a candle. While matins was said a cross was taken to the cemetery and all the furniture was removed from the house and the floors were scrubbed… A mass of people followed the coffin, with icons, as in Taganrog: like a procession with the cross. At the cemetery, when we took our leave, everyone was sobbing, mother was in anguish and couldn't be parted from the body… all the ordinary people in the funeral were issued a pie, a headscarf and a glass of vodka, while the clergy and the Lintariovs had lunch and tea. After dinner mama and I went back to the cemetery, mama grieved, wept, and we went back.49 Aleksandr's account to his father adds one detail: 'Everyone is howling. The only one not crying is Anton and that is awful.'50 Anton refused to weep, perhaps for fear his grief might turn to self-pity. The new cross, with Kolia's name painted by Misha, could be seen for miles around from the north, the west and the south.
Obituaries were printed; Kolia's friends forgot their grudges. Diukovsky, the school inspector, who had loved the Chekhovs from their first Moscow years, declared that Kolia was 'my only friend, the most disinterested and sincere of men'. Franz Schechtel wept for a 'lost brother': It's good that he spent his last, perhaps his happiest, days in his family; and, had he not broken with his family for that nomadic life, which drew him so much, he would most probably have been healthy and happy.' (Jruzinsky wrote to Ezhov:
199
MY into i e i its' e e ea i e
JUNE-SEPTEMBER 1889
I'm sad, Hedgehog, sad, as if he were one of my close relatives… Peace to the disorderly but talented and dearest of artists… Poor Anton!' There were requiems and tears in Taganrog. In Moscow Pavel showed fortitude: Dear Antosha, At your aunt Fenichka's request I send 10 roubles belonging to Aleksandr. I read your letter to your aunt, it is very joyful for my parental heart that Kolia took Last Communion and that the burial followed Christian rites. I sincerely thank you for the love which you showed your brother Kolia with respect to the burial and memorial. For this God will show you much mercy and health. Fenichka is grieving, groaning and coughing, she hadn't known about Kolia's death, I hadn't told her. Kolia's obituary is in News of the Day… I should like to visit Kolia's grave, to look and say a prayer. May he rest in peace.'3 Three days later Anton took the family thirty miles to spend a few days at the monastery of Akhtyrka, where they had, only weeks before, clowned and laughed with Natalia Lintvariova and Pavel Svobodin, and Anton had announced himself to the monks as Count Wild-Boar.
When Anton returned to Luka, there were tempting invitations. He was expected by Grigorovich and the Suvorins in Vienna, for a tour of Europe. The actor-manager Lensky and his wife Lika Lenskaia had taken the Moscow Maly theatre on tour to Odessa and invited Anton to recuperate there. Telling Suvorin he was 'yours to the end of my days', on 2 July Anton (with Vania) set off not to Europe but in the opposite direction. Two days later they were dining with Lensky's actors. A journalist greeted Anton: it was Piotr Sergeenko, a Taganrog schoolmate, who took Anton to see Odessa's rising star, Ignati Pota-penko. Potapenko sang, played the violin, told funny stories and wrote plays. Four years later Potapenko was to become an alter ego, both genial and sinister, in Anton's life, but now he was 'the god of boredom'.
The actresses were kindly goddesses. Anton drifted to room 48 in The Northern Hotel: there Kleopatra Karatygina and Glafira Panova dispensed tea, chatter, flattery, flirtation and consolation. The only 'older woman' in Chekhov's life, Kleopatra, at forty-one, was neither sociable nor pretty. Known as 'Beetle', she was the thinnest and most ill-used actress in the Maly. She knew she would never play Ophelia: she played Death in Don Juan. Homeless, widowed young, she understood Anton's unhappiness. Her description of Chekhov that summer has gentle irony as well as motherly concern. She first saw him on the sea-shore: A young man, handsome, elegant, a pleasant face, with a small bushy beard; wearing a grey suit, a soft pork-pie hat, a beautiful tie and a shirt with a frilly neckline and cuffs. Overall, an impression of elegance but… I horror!! he was holding a big one-pound paper bag and nibbling sunflower seeds (a southerner's habit).'4 'Antony and Cleopatra' were the talk of the town, but Glafira Panova, a pretty debutante of nineteen, also fascinated Anton. To Vania, who had gone back to Luka, he described his ten days in Odessa: At 12 I take Panova to Zembrini's for ice cream (60 kopecks) and trail after her to the milliner's, the shops for lace etc. The heat, of course, is unbelievable. At 2 I have been going to Sergeenko's and then to Olga's for borshch and sauce. At 5 tea with Karatygina, which is always very noisy and fun; at 8, after tea, we go to the theatre. Offstage. Treating coughing actresses and planning the next day. Lika Lenskaia alarmed, afraid of spending money; Panova, her black eyes searching for whomever she needs… After the show, a glass of vodka in the buffet downstairs and then wine in a cellar, waiting for the actresses to gather for tea in Karatygina's room. More tea, we take our time, until 2 in the morning and gossip about the most devilish things… I'm completely feminized. I've practically been wearing skirts and not a day has passed without virtuous Lika Lenskaia telling me with a meaningful look that Medvedev [the director] is afraid of letting Panova go on tour and that Mme Pravdina (also virtuous but a very nasty person) is gossiping to everyone and about her, Lika, for supposedly conniving at sin. To Anton's horror, the Lenskys, supposing Anton had seduced and compromised Glafira Panova, tried to engineer a marriage between him and the girl, but, Anton insisted years later to Olga Knipper, he 'had not seduced a single soul'. He asked Kleopatra Karatygina in Petersburg in January 1890: 'Why is that Lenskaia poking her nose in where it's not wanted? Actors and artists should never get married. Any artist, writer, actor loves only their art, is entirely, only absorbed by it:
200
201
MY II EI I II I UN KEEPER
Kleopatra's relations with Chekhov began lightly. Chekhov brought laughter into her life. When she complained about playing skeletons and death, Chekhov gave her a prescription; she was taking it to the chemist's when she saw that it was for 'poison for Pravdin and Grekov', the Maly's lead actors. She fell in love; Anton's friendship was not disinterested. Karatygina had spent half of her life in Siberia, partly as a governess in Kiakhta on the Mongolian border, and she sowed in Anton the seed of an idea. He questioned her about Siberia.
Anton ignored Suvorin's telegrams, although Grigorovich met the train from Russia at Vienna Hauptbahnhof day after day. Grigorovich wrote to Suvorin: 'Chekhov has absolutely no languages and is unused to foreign travel… he hasn't been treating us like a European… lie's a Slav, disorderly with no firm support to help him control himself… I'm now angry with him.'55
Anton was in fact on a boat to the Crimea. At Luka, meanwhile, he had missed an event. Less than four weeks after Kolia's death, Aleksandr wrote to Pavel: Dear Papa, I have kept the promise I made you. Today at 12 I married Natalia Golden. Mama and Misha gave their blessing. Father Mitrofan conducted the wedding. After the wedding we went to Kolia's grave. Aleksandr's timing is matched by an implausibility in the play which Chekhov was writing: Act 3 of The Wood Demon ends with the suicide of Uncle Georges; in Act 4, two weeks later, the cast celebrates marriage. The Chekhovs, teeth gritted, accepted Aleksandr's marriage. Natalia, too, had demanded marriage: since she had arrived as 'children's maid' at Luka, she had found her humiliating status excruciating, even more so perhaps than hearing Anton use her pet-name Natashevu for another Natalia, Natalia Lintvariova. Aleksandr, Natalia and the children left for Petersburg. In Moscow Fenichka had to beg Pavel: 'Natalia asks for 2 roubles, she hasn't got the fare, as soon as they get home she'll send it, she has 50 roubles hidden from Aleksandr.'56 Not for fifteen years did Aleksandr and Natalia visit their relatives en famille. Natalia Golden, no longer a concubine but the wife of a Chekhov, was still a pariah.
On 16 July 1889, reeling from the heavy seas, Anton landed at Yalta. There another three sisters entered his life. With a troupe of JUNE-SEPTEMBER l88o actors in Yalta was the widowed Mrs Shavrova and her three daughters, Elena, Olga and Anna. Elena was a precocious fifteen. She accosted Anton in a cafe; she had written a story 'Sophie', about a Georgian prince's love for her mother. Anton rewrote it for her, making the prince in love
