danger to her.43 Sofia Kuvshinnikova, everyone knew, had lasted so long because she put up with Levitan's polygamy. At the height of summer, however, Sofia Kuvshinnikova left Zatishie. Levitan was untrammelled: Lika gave him her photograph. At the end of July 1891 Anton sent Lika one last letter, but signed it Masha (the handwriting is Anton's), as if his sister had written it: 'If you have decided to break off your touching triple alliance for a few days, then I'll persuade my brother put off his departure [for Moscow]…' Lika was silent. Suvorin returned briefly, advising Anton not to marry Lika.44
Anton's reaction to what he regarded as Levitan's seduction of Lika was vicious but hidden. His letters stopped. Instead, on 18 August, although work on The Island of Sakhalin was far from complete and his long story, 'The Duel', had only been despatched to Suvorin that
MAY-JULY 189I
day, he wrote to a Petersburg lawyer called Chervinsky. He asked him to find out from the editor of The Cornfield how much they would pay for 'a suitable little story'. Chervinsky took the idea to Tikhonov, editor of The North. Chekhov's revenge on Levitan, Kuvshinnikova and Lika now had an outlet in a story that would be known as 'The Grasshopper'. (Anton's host, Bylim-Kolosovsky, was to wait three years to be even more cruelly caricatured.)
As 'The Duel' neared completion, Anton was inspired by a tenant of Bylim-Kolosovsky. An entomologist, Dr Vagner, whom the locals called 'Spider', was embroiled in a polemic between biologist Professor Timiriazev and Moscow Zoo, where amateurish 'experiments' were carried out on the animals by a Professor Bogdanov, From Vagner, a vehement Darwinist, Anton borrowed many features and arguments for the protagonist, von Koren, of 'The Duel'. Chekhov also edited and extended Vagner's own diatribe against Moscow Zoo into a sketch called 'The Tricksters'.
Bogimovo turned cold as August ended. Chekhov had to face the autumn. Aunt Fenichka, camping in the Firgang house, wrote to her sister for the last time: Dearest sister don't send any more, I cannot cook at all, we simply weep… on the Feast of the Holy Apostles I made soup and on Sunday I was very ill, now I want Ukrainian cherry pie I have no strength… don't invite me, take me to a small flat, here I can't cope… everything is bitter in my throat and I've been miserable so long.4' Anton wrote back to her son, briskly telling him to feed her olives, baked fish and cough powders, asking why he had not called a doctor. A month passed before Anton visited his dying aunt. In August he travelled to Moscow for a day, not to treat Aunt Fenichka, but to inspect the zoo for his article.
On 28 August Pavel arrived in Moscow: he moved Aunt Fenichka and Aliosha out of the house and swept it clean, grateful at least that Fenichka's dog Kartuzik had exterminated the rats which Sod had spared. Pavel too was moving out, for, thanks to Suvorin, Vania had a job in a Moscow school with magnificent accommodation. Anton's heart was with the Suvorins. He consoled Suvorin over the sudden death of his manservant from a 'twisted gut' (in today's terminology,
250
251
ANN I'IS 1)1 IT I.I-K1NAGK
intestinal gangrene); he reassured him over the Dauphin who, fearful that he had OA, had gone to the Volga to drink fermented mares' milk; he congratulated both Suvorins on their womenfolk, who left them to holiday as they wished, and concluded, in accord with the Suvorin philosophy: In women I love above all beauty, in the history of mankind culture… in the form of carpets, sprung carriages and witty thinking.
THIRTY-FIVE
'The Duel' and the Famine August 1891-February 1892 ON 16 AUGUST 1891, her thirty-sixth birthday, Aleksandr's wife Natalia had given birth to a boy, Mikhail. Pavel exalted in his first legitimate grandchild: The Chekhov surname has expanded in the North and the South 'Magnify, i Lord, and visit this vineyard which Thy right hand hath planted.' I arrived here early as the Baptist to make ready the way and clear the Mansions, in which we shall live like herrings in a barrel.46 Aleksandr cherished his baby son: he paid for a designated cow to provide milk of proven origin, but the Chekhov-Golden family was not happy for long. Anastasia Golden, the eldest and once most prosperous sister, was destitute. Pushkariov, her consort, had lost all his money. Anastasia and her children moved in with Anna Ipatieva-Golden, who begged Anton: If 30 roubles doesn't come, we'll all be out on the street. Anton, for the sake of everything holy, help us, I expect we will pay it back, though not soon, and it's hard to ask others, you're different, nobody will know and neither Pushkariov's nor our pride will suffer.47 Anton appears to have sent money, but the Goldens' mother went to live with Aleksandr and Natalia. Called 'Gagara' she spent eight years, as Aleksandr put it, 'applying for admission to the Elysian fields'.
Anton was preoccupied by death. Leonid Tretiakov, the Chekhov brothers' student friend, had died of OA. That autumn Kurepin, the editor of The Alarm Clock, who had nurtured Anton's early work, was dying of cancer of the neck; Aunt Fenichka's days, Anton told Suvorin, 'are numbered. She was a glorious woman. A saint.' On 25 October Fenichka died.48 Suvorin and the Dauphin had come to stay in the Slav Bazaar in
252
253
ANN II N IH IMI.I. ItlNAGE Moscow, only to catch flu and infect Anton. Anton felt so ill that he gave up vodka for good. Suvorin and Anton were both depressed by bereavement. Suvorin had lost his man-servant; Anton had been to three funerals that autumn; Zinaida Lintvariova had died at last and Anton had written her obituary. Anton expressed his despair so vehemently to Aleksandr that his brother destroyed the letter. Aleksandr, who had won respect for two articles on dosshouses and lunatic asylums, responded sympathetically: I deeply and sincerely want to warm you with affection. Poor man, you really have a lot on your shoulders. Your last letter (sealed) created such an impression that my wife burst out howling, and my spectacles clouded over. My dear Antosha, there's nobody to take pity on you. You lack the affection that is given to anyone who loves a woman. Anton, however, shut out women's affection. Elena Pleshcheeva was lost, betrothed to a Baron von Stael. Kundasova had gone to Batum on the Black Sea (hoping he might join her). Lika was ostracized for fickleness. Anton would not see Elena Shavrova. On 16 September 1891 he told her off for her story 'Dead People', where 'gynaecologists were cynics' and 'old bachelors smelt like dogs': Gynaecologists have to deal with a frenzy of tedium that you couldn't even dream of and which… you would find smelt worse than dog… All gynaecologists are idealists… I dare to remind you of justice, which an objective writer needs more than air. When Elena called, Anton announced that he was 'not at home'.49 Lika, feeling drawn to Anton again, was made to feel unwanted, and complained to Granny: 'I see the Chekhovs, and Sofia Kuvshinnikova too, rather seldom… I repent not staying for the winter in Pok-rovskoe [the family country estate]. Sometimes I want so much to see you and get out of here.'50 Lika left the city council; she had seven pupils in the Rzhevskaia school and a few private lessons. Her father had surfaced and was promising her money. She had hopes of studying to be a singer, but, ignored by Anton, she lapsed into hypochondria. All winter she complained to Granny of consumptive symptoms.
Anton's male friends needed him too. Ivanenko the flautist sought work: 'If you reject my request, please send the revolver which we bought together and if you don't, then I'll still borrow one.'51 Anton
AUGUST 189I-FEBRUARY 1892
asked Tchaikovsky to find Semashko the cellist a place in the Bolshoi opera orchestra. Others appealed in vain. In early November 1891 Gruzinsky wrote: 'I sit and grieve, Anton! My wife has caught a chill looking after her sick sister. The sister is better, my wife has collapsed and something serious has begun… Not visiting the healthy, perhaps you call on the sick?'52
Anton gave all his attention to the novel-length story he had sent Suvorin. Suvorin wanted to call it not 'The Duel' but 'The Lies'. Anton stuck by his title. Here was a story far more traditionally Russian than his preceding fiction: two heroes - one with a faintly Polish name, Laevsky, the other distinctly Germanic, von Koren - each preach a set of ideas, one lazily Slavonic, the other manically Germanic, and fight a duel. The novelty of the story is that the author's sympathies lie with neither set of ideas, even though he loves both his characters. Nobody would know from 'The Duel' that Chekhov had been in Sakhalin: the setting resembles Sukhum or Batum on the Caucasian Black Sea coast, and recalls Chekhov's tour with the Dauphin in 1888. The story opens and closes with the sea drowning out the hero's words. The positive figures are the natives who gather in harmony while the Russian colonists quarrel, the naive deacon who interrupts the duel, and the forbearing doctor who mediates between Laevsky and von Koren. Sakhalin's indigenous Ainu and the Buriat Father Irakli contribute only a few touches to 'The Duel'.
'The Duel' has a satisfying plot. Laevsky has come to the Black Sea with another man's wife, Nadezhda. When he finds her husband has died and he will have to marry her, he tries to borrow money to flee. The marine biologist Von Koren has come to prepare for an expedition. Laevsky parodies Tolstoy's ideas on the wickedness of
