with a bit of rope or gallops off the road; Head-over-Heels, aged 7, calm and patient.10 Ivanenko listed five cows, three bullocks, three sheep, a sow and two piglets, three yard dogs. The inventory continues: Dachshunds: Quinine, distinguished by immobility and stoutness (idle and irritable); Brom, distinguished by liveliness and hatred of Whitebrow (a yard dog), noble and sincere. Pigeons: Brown, pedigree, crested, 1 pair; White with black spots (pedigree) 1 pair. Poultry: Old ducks, 4; Drakes, 1; Ducklings, 70; Old hens, 30; Chicks, 50 Servants: Mariushka, widow of indeterminate age, excellent cook and lover of livestock, cows, bullocks, hens, chicks etc.; Katerina, the cow girl; Efim, Katerina's son; Aniuta, chambermaid, spontaneous nature, aged 16. Loves laughing and dances splendidly (suffers, so Mariushka says, from an 'innard' disease); Mashutka, Mariushka's under-cook, covered in freckles, aged 16. Loves bright colours. The
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workman Roman, has shown punctuality and energy, is polite. Answers briefly: 'yes, sir; no sir'. I las served in the army, no medals. Parents: Pavel Egorovich Chekhov and his spouse Evgenia Iakovlevna Chekhova most happy of mortals! 42 years in lawful wedlock (Hurrah!) Children: Anton, lawful owner of Melikhovo kingdom, of the 2nd plot, Sazoni-kha woods, of Struzhkino, King of the Medes etc. etc. Also writer and doctor. Is about to write a tale The Man with the Big Arse. Masha, kind, clever, elegant, beautiful, gracious, short-tempered and forgiving, strict but just. Loves sweets and perfume, a good book, good clever people. Not amorous (has been in love only 1700 times). Avoids handsome young men (soon off to Luka…). Recommends to all her friends the theory 'To hell with it.' A remarkable woman about the house: kitchen gardener, flower grower etc…
FORTY-FOUR O
Potapenko the Bounder July-August 1894 IVANENKO SAW MELIKHOVO AS EDEN. He left it for what he called a tomb: his tyrannical father was paralysed, his mother crippled, his brother dead, he himself had OA of the throat and now would run a farm that even hard work could not make viable. 'I'll have to live like a humorous badger,' he wrote despondently.' Anton's Melikhovo seemed a fairy-tale realm for a man who had come to Moscow fifteen years before to live in two crowded basement rooms.
Shcheglov's diary for 8 July 1894 reads: 'Chekhov on his estate. He is entitled, but how enviably happy his life has turned out.'2 Masha, now that Misha was in distant Uglich, ran the house and estate. Pavel paid tribute to her achievements in the wet summer of 1894: 'On the farm Masha is invaluable for field work, her arrangements are very remarkably clever and calm. Glory to God, she puts any man to shame. Anton reveres her. We're just amazed by her intelligence and order.'3
Anton found a week or two sufficient in his kingdom. Incessant rain spoilt the clover that twenty-five peasants had mown. Only uninvited guests came: not Schechtel, Shcheglov, or Suvorin. Misha and Vania, when the tax office and the school released them, gave Anton no pleasure. Vania could not spend the summer with his pregnant wife: he felt despised by her parents, with whom she was staying, but he missed her and found Melikhovo dreary.
Anton tried to lure Shcheglov: 'We are making hay, the perfidious haymaking. The smell of hay makes me drunk and giddy, so that I only have to sit on the stack for an hour or two to imagine I am in the embraces of a naked woman.' The embraces would remain imaginary. Lika was, despite Anton's advice and Potapenko's neglect, not coming home. First she invited her mother, who loathed Potapenko,14 to Paris, then she told Granny loganson that she was moving to Switzerland for the summer.15
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LIKA DISPARUE
In mid June 1894 Anton was in Moscow, avoiding his brother Aleksandr and his two nephews in Melikhovo. In Moscow Anton met Suvorin for the first time since February. Suvorin and the Dauphin had come to Moscow to sack the manager of their stationery shop. Anton and Suvorin passed three days and nights together, and agreed to travel. They talked frankly. Suvorin told Sazonova: Chekhov is philosophizing as usual, he's very pleasant, as usual, but I don't think he's well. I said to him, 'Why don't you let a doctor take a look at you?' - 'It makes no difference, I have five to ten years left to live, whether I consult a doctor or not.'6 Anton longed to travel, and as far from relatives as he could. Deserted in France, Lika hoped he might keep his promise and come. She wrote to Anton on 14 July a letter which he did not receive until autumn: Your pictures are placed all round my room and every day I address them with some warm words which I still haven't forgotten. Predominantly they begin with the letter S. [swine, sod]. I don't have the custom of hanging my friends' pictures where you put them… I'd give 10 years of my life (and I'm thirty [she was 24]) to find myself in Melikhovo. Just for a day. But there's no chance of coming before winter. Oh what a swine you are not to come and see us. But above all for not stopping me from going to Paris… I should like to have a half-hour chat with you! I mink in half an hour you could put some sense into me. Your girl friends Tania and Iavorskaia have finally left Paris. Varia and I are very glad, although in general we kept them away. They were boasting about a letter you wrote them and of course I couldn't resist the pleasure of compromising you and I told them you write to me every day! So there! Everyone has forgotten me. My last admirer Potapenko has also cunningly deceived me and is running off to Russia. But what a b**** his wife is! Just before Anton received this letter, Ignati Potapenko turned up at Melikhovo: the carpenters had just finished the guest cottage. Anton was, according to Vania's letter to his wife that day, 'ill, horribly depressed'. On Sunday 17 July Potapenko put his side of the story. He left for Moscow the next day. Masha was indignant, but Anton indulgent. Potapenko told neither that Lika was pregnant. Potapenko was now a source of strife between brother and sister:
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when Anton went to Moscow on 22 July, ostensibly to see Suvorin off to Feodosia, he hid from Masha that he had slept in the same flat as Potapenko. Only in September did Misha let their sister know: 'Now it's over, I can confess to an involuntary lie: I did meet Anton and Potapenko in Moscow and my lie was due to the need to hide their secret.' Anton and Potapenko spent five days with 'Grand-dad Mikhail Sablin'17, an eminence grise in the lives of Lika, Potapenko and the Chekhov brothers. Sablin told Tania Shchepkina-Kupernik that Potapenko and Anton were staying with him; the news leaked to Lika. Anton said he was in Moscow to see The Island of Sakhalin through the press. In fact, doubting that Suvorin would ever set off for Italy, Anton was planning a journey with Potapenko. He was desperate to travel.
St George, instead of rescuing the maiden (not having received her last letter), was off with the dragon. Anton returned to Melikhovo for six days and on 2 August left with Potapenko for the Volga. Retracing Anton's route to Siberia, they took a boat from Iaroslavl to Nizhni, to sail down the Volga to Tsaritsyn [Volgograd], and thence to Taganrog. A fortnight later Anton summed up an idiotic trip to Suvorin: In Nizhni we were met by Sergeenko, Lev Tolstoy's friend [and Potapenko's]. The heat, the dry wind, the noise of the fair and Ser-geenko's chat suddenly stifled, bored and sickened me, I picked up my suitcase and fled in disgrace… to the station. Potapenko followed. We took the train back to Moscow. But it was embarrassing to return empty-handed, so we decided to go anywhere, Lapland if need be. If it weren't for his wife [the first Mrs Potapenko], our choice would have been Feodosia, but - alas! in Feodosia we have the wife. We thought, we talked, we counted our money and we went to the Psiol. On their way to the Lintvariovs, Anton and Potapenko stopped off at Lopasnia for letters. They went on to Sumy without contacting anyone at Melikhovo. On 14 August they brought Natalia Lintvariova home with them. Potapenko then vanished to Petersburg, where he sorted out his own and Anton's finances with Suvorin, found himself a typist, and plunged into the literary cesspit.
Anton's family now demanded his care. On 9 August a son, Volodia, was born to Vania and Sonia: after a harrowing birth the baby was well, but Sonia was ill. Uncle Mitrofan, at fifty-eight, was dying. In
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l.IKA UISPARUE July Eton's pretext for going to Taganrog had been to examine Uncle Mitrofan, debilitated by three years of illness. Fleeing Sergeenko, Anton had also abandoned Mitrofan. At Melikhovo lay a letter that Mitrofan had dictated to his daughters, addressed to Pavel, asking why Anton had not come: Our good Taganrog clergy in all the churches are offering ardent prayers for me in my sickness. My pain is in the left side, in the stomach, sometimes in the head, and my legs are painfully swollen, so that without others' help I cannot cross the room, I cannot eat, I have no appetite; my left side stops me sleeping, I sit on the bed almost all night, dozing… When you receive the news of my departure to eternity, would you, the only relative in all our family who has loved and considers it a duty to think of one's kin, for the rest of your life have offertories said for me. Christian faith
