1893. 7 a.m. Yes, 7 a.m. Things are bad, dear boy, I don't sleep at all and I don't know how and when it will end… When can I summon you to Petersburg? Well, if you stay in die Hotel Russia in the back and beyond, might you not as well be in Moscow, from my point of view, at least? It may be more advantageous for you, though I don't think we were much bother to you, but this really is hateful to me…' Anton's next letter to Suvorin was a kick in the teeth. He had met the Moscow publisher Sytin and liked 'the only publishing firm in
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Russia that has a Russian smell about it and doesn't push the peasant-customer about'. He drew up a contract with Sytin, receiving 2300 roubles for the book rights to old stories. Anton's publications were now in Moscow, not Petersburg, journals. The new editor of The Northern Herald, Liubov Gurevich, gave up all hope of persuading Chekhov to give the journal a major work: in November 1893, to Chekhov's fury - he cursed her Jewishness - she insisted on immediate repayment of 400 roubles she had advanced: Anton telegraphed Suvo-rin, who paid without demurring. Anton rarely paid back an advance. Shcheglov's diary boasts: 'There are four kings of advances: me, Chekhov, Potapenko and Sergeenko.'40
On 19 December, Anton felt ill. He stood Lika up - she had expected to see him - and left for Melikhovo. The clan gathered: Vania brought Sofia down. Lika was invited for the holidays. Her acceptance of 23 December 1893 had a new name in it, Ignati Potapenko's: Dear [crossed out: Igna…] Anton, I keep travelling and travelling but I can't get to Melikhovo - the cold is so terrible that I dare to beg you (of course, if this letter reaches you) to send something warm for me and Potapenko, who at your request and out of friendship for me will accompany me. Poor man!… At the Ermitage they keep asking why you haven't been seen there so long. I answer that you are busy writing a play for Iavorskaia's benefit night. Potapenko added a postscript, asserting his right to bring Lika to Melikhovo.41 Ivanenko warned Chekhov that Christmas: Hurry to Moscow and save her from perdition, not me but her. You are awaited like a god. Lika is very fond of white and black beer and a few other things that are her secret and which she will reveal to you.42 Anton did nothing to save Lika, who now understood that she was being handed over. On 27 December cousin Georgi arrived from Taganrog. Pavel had gone to Moscow to attend as many church services as he could. Anton wrote to his editor at Russian Thought, Viktor Goltsev: 'Potapenko and Lika have just arrived. Potapenko is already singing. But so sadly, you can't imagine!' Anton ended: 'Lika has started singing too.'
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The Women Scatter January-February 1894 ON NEW YEAR'S DAY 1894, Potapenko and Lika left Melikhovo together: Anton told Suvorin the next day: I can't take any more guests. Though there was one pleasant guest - Potapenko, who sang all the time… In the dining room the astronomer [Kundasova] is drinking coffee and laughing hysterically. Ivanenko is with her and in the next room my brother's wife, and so on. As guests and relatives left, they were met in Moscow by Pavel, happier that winter in the company of Vania, his 'positive' son. Pavel stayed in Moscow until 10 January: in Moscow, not Melikhovo, Aleksandr met his father. The last irksome guest left Melikhovo for Taganrog on Tatiana's day, 12 January, when Anton reappeared in the city, in the Hotel Louvre, room No. 54, near his sirens. Anton's brother, Misha, whom Anton made feel unwanted at Melikhovo, decided to leave for good. Despite his work on the estate, Anton was disparaging him for selfishness. (Potapenko also took a dislike to him, calling him 'enigmatic, like all tax inspectors'.) Misha applied for a transfer from Serpukhov tax office. On 15 February 1894 he went for an interview in Uglich, a northern city where mediaeval Tsars had exiled undesirables. Misha was appointed tax inspector in Uglich and left Melikhovo for good on 28 February. His labour at Melikhovo was distilled into a manual for smallholders, The Granary, A Dictionary of Agriculture. A year passed before The Granary was published by Russian Thought. It sold 77 copies in four years.
Anton's fallow period was over: from 28 December 1893 to the first week of January 1894, Moscow readers had a new instalment of The Island of Sakhalin, and three stories, 'Big Volodia and Little Volo-dia' in the newspaper The Russian Gazette; 'The Black Monk' in The
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Performing Artist, and 'A Woman's Kingdom' in Russian Thought. None of the stories was acclaimed: the editors of'Big Volodia and Little Volodia' took fright at the story's sexuality and cut it. (Anton gave his French translator, Jules Legras from Bordeaux, the manuscript for a full version in French.) 'The Black Monk' only later became famous - the first Chekhov story to be published in English. Its medical expertise in the study of OA and megalomania is striking, even though its plot is a tragic love story. A brilliant academic marries the daughter of the man who brought him up, and then, mad and sick, deserts her. The story has a Hoffmanesque mix of music (Braga's elegy) and of the supernatural (the vision of a black monk). But it is as pregnant with political meaning as 'Ward No. 6' or The Cherry Orchard, for much of the story centres on a great orchard, which goes to rack and ruin together with the hero. No reader could fail to align the tyrannical gardener, the hero's father-in-law with autocracy, or the mad hero with rebellion, and Russia with the orchard - an association that would become explicit in The Cherry Orchard. 'The Black Monk' 's publisher, Kumanin, told Shcheglov, however: 'Very watery and unnatural. But, you know, Chekhov is still a name. It would be awkward not to print it.'
'A Woman's Kingdom' is a new departure: in three episodes set in an iron foundry it sketches the disparity and parallel between the workers' misery and the desolation of the owner, a young woman. The story shows the influence of Zola and Dostoevsky - Zola in his portrait of an industrial hell, Dostoevsky in the heroine's disastrous attempt to mete out charity. If Sazonova's guess in her diary is right, and the heroine is based on Anna Suvorina, then the iron foundry is an allegory of the Suvorin empire. The radicals saw none of this: they felt that Chekhov's depiction of the foundry was 'immoral' and 'obsessed with detail', and for the critics 'The Black Monk' was too melodramatic a psychiatric case history. Anton was disappointed that his new works aroused muted reactions. In vain Suvorin lobbied for The Island of Sakhalin to be awarded a prize, while Moscow University rejected the work as a thesis that would entitle Chekhov to lecture on social medicine.
Spurned by critics and academics, Anton connived, to say the very least, at being superseded in Lika's affections too. Olga Kundasova noticed an opportunity to regain Anton's love and made herself known
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at the end of January 1894: 'If you want to behold me at your place, send horses to meet the post-train and collect your mail on Friday 4 [February]. I shall stay the night and then leave for Meshcherskoe. Until we meet beyond the tomb.' Anton told Suvorin she was mad. She did not come. Although she was still attached to Iakovenko's hospital, a year passed before she re-entered Anton's life.
Everyone at Lopasnia and Melikhovo noticed that on 29 January and 22 February Lika Mizinova came and left not with Anton, but with Ignati Potapenko. On Anton's thirty-fourth birthday, 16 January 1894, and for one last time, on 25 February, she saw Anton without Potapenko. When she and Potapenko left Melikhovo on 31 January they took with them on the sleighs to the station what was to be Anton's standard consolation present, two puppies from Quinine, who had mated in the kitchen with one of the farm dogs, Catarrh. The closer Potapenko became to Lika, the more Anton lauded him. 'You are absolutely wrong about Potapenko, there's not an ounce of devi-ousness about him,' he told Suvorin on 10 January. Potapenko and Lika were not deceiving Anton. Potapenko invited 'Signor Antonio' to celebrate Tatiana's day in Moscow and warned Anton: '(8 January)… Lika is away travelling, as a consequence of which I am pining, since I am almost head over heels in love with Lika.' Potapenko was writing frantically to finance his new life. He went on acting as Anton's agent, collecting royalties, handling manuscripts, even in mid February negotiating with the hard-headed publisher Adolf Marx an advance for a novel that Anton would write by 1895 for the popular monthly journal The Cornfield. On the back of Marx's letter of agreement, Potapenko wrote to Chekhov: I told him I thought Chekhov needed to get away to some blissful country but is prevented by worries about family business… Anton, dear boy, go away somewhere to clear skies, to Italy, to Egypt, to Australia, does it matter? It's vital, for I notice a weariness in you… Forgive my interfering in your life, but I love you almost as I would a girl. Lika's letters hinted that Anton could still retrieve her: I am completely in love with Potapenko! What can we do, daddy! All the same you will always know how to get rid of me and dump me on somebody else! I am sorry for poor Ignati - he had to go
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