sustained Mitrofan for a month. Anton set off for Taganrog, and stayed not with his uncle but in the best hotel. When Anton appeared at the sickbed, Mitrofan wept with joy and declared he 'was experiencing unearthly feelings'. Anton spent a week, but could not prescribe anything other than the heart stimulants which the Taganrog doctors were giving. Anton declared that he could have helped if he had been consulted earlier. He resolutely refused to discuss his own illness, let alone take measures to treat it.18 Telling Leikin that the best treatment for eyes was nothing, Anna Suvorina that the boldest treatment for a bad throat was to leave it alone, and advising the singer Miroliubov that to ensure good health one should lie in bed covered from head to toes with a blanket and rub one's body with tincture of blackcurrant buds, Anton was formulating the facetious approach of Dr Dorn in The Seagull. All that he did for his uncle's family was to send their elder daughter, the seventeen-year-old Aleksandra, to Moscow to train as couturier. Anton then called on the mayor of Taganrog, and asked him to offer Aleksandra a post of sewing teacher. On the eve of Anton's departure The Taganrog Herald annoyed him: Mr Chekhov has been called as a doctor to his seriously ill relative Mitrofan Chekhov, elder of St Michael church. From here the talented writer is setting off to the Crimea, where he has been summoned by Mr Suvorin who has fallen ill and is now living on his estate in Feodosia.
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Chekhov went to the Taganrog Herald office, where an old school friend, Mikhail Psalti, worked, to protest that he was not Suvorin's doctor. He did not call at Taganrog post office, where Lika's letter of 14 July (addressed to Potapenko, as a man more likely to collect his mail) had lain all August. Then Anton boarded the train for a two- day journey to Feodosia (the direct sea route was too rough).
Anton stayed with Suvorin for four days. It was cold in Feodosia: Suvorin had built a magnificent villa with no stoves. The two men set off, via Yalta and Odessa, to western Europe. At Yalta, where plaster copies of Chekhov's bust were on sale, they dined in the park cafe. Elena Shavrova, there on her honeymoon, saw them, but was too shaken to speak to Anton.
Deserted among strangers in Switzerland, Lika longed to be rescued. The family in Melikhovo felt deserted, too. Evgenia was worried about her newborn grandson, and Pavel was distressed by Mitrofan. Masha bore the full weight of running a house in disarray. She complained to Misha: This is the third week we have been rebuilding the stoves, relaying the floors… The stove makers get in the carpenters' way, the carpenters in the painters' and Papa gets in everybody's way… Roman asks for two weeks' leave and he is my only help… Quinine and Brom are howling, they have nowhere to sleep… I'm at the end of my tether, Misha, it really is a terrible amount for one woman to cope with!… I'm also afraid that Anton will be displeased. Never have I felt so much like leaving, throwing up everything, never to come back!'9 Uncle Mitrofan sank into death; his eldest son Georgi gave him water from a teaspoon, while Aunt Liudmila, heavily sedated, wept inconsol-ably. On 9 August, telegrams reached Melikhovo and Yalta: 'God's will our dear parent died eighth evening. Chekhovs.' Pavel grieved. He wrote to Anton, Vania, Aleksandr and Misha, 'how kind Mitrofan was to everybody… Now I have no friend.'20 (Nobody, however, wrote to Mitrofan's and Pavel's sister Aleksandra in Boguchar, nor to any of her children.) Pavel was too busy with building at Melikhovo to attend the funeral in Taganrog. Mitrofan's requiem, one of Taganrog's most memorable services, was conducted by Father Pokrovsky and four junior priests. Pavel was sent a handwritten copy of the
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],IKA IJ I.SPA RUE forty-minute speech that one of the Church Brethren made as Mitro-fan was buried within the church precinct. It began: Before the grave-digger's spade has touched the coffin lid to conceal it in the bowels of the earth, so fateful for so many, by the coffin I hasten with a final farewell word for the man who lies within. You have left us, dear Mitrofan, and left us for ever!…21
FORTY-FIVE O
The Birth of Christina September-November 1894 ANTON'S SECOND TOUR of Europe with Suvorin was secret. His family was led to believe he was returning after a short recuperation in Feodosia, but Anton was as naive as Potapenko in hiding his movements. When he and Suvorin reached Odessa on 13 September and left the next day for Vienna, the newspapers proclaimed their arrival and departure. Odessa's actors lamented that they would be staging Ivanov without the author. The Odessa authorities refused Anton a foreign passport. Suvorin had to throw his full weight at General Zelenoi, Odessa's mayor: in the night Zelenoi sent two men to break open the passport office and bring Chekhov's documents. From Odessa Anton sent consolations to Georgi and his family; he also warned Masha not to expect him home until October (November, he told Mikhail Psalti at The Taganrog Herald) and told her how to save asparagus and tulips from autumn frosts. She was to bring a warm hat to the station when he returned.
The two men reached Vienna on 18/30 September. Lika meanwhile, seven months pregnant, languished in Switzerland. She had moved from a guest house in Lucerne, where English tourists stared at her, into lodgings at Veytaux, on Lake Geneva. With Anton's photographs around her room, lonely and afraid, Lika pretended to be a married woman of frail health in an interesting condition. To (iranny she wrote that, despite a chill, she was in paradise. She went to the post office daily. In Vienna Anton bought an inkwell and wrote to Paris: You obstinately refuse to answer my letters, dear Lika, but I am still annoying and pestering you with my letters… I remember Potapenko telling me you and Varia Eberle would be in Switzerland. If so, write to me where in Switzerland I might find you… I beg you, don't tell anyone in Russia that I am abroad. I left secretly, like
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a thief, and Masha dunks I am in b'eodosia. If they find out I'm abroad, they will be hurt, lor they have long been fed up with my frequent journeys.
I'm not very well. I have an almost continuous cough. I seem to have lost my health as I lost you. Lika did not know where Anton was: two days later she sent a plea to Melikhovo: Not a trace of the old Lika is left and I think, and I can't refrain from saying so, it is all your fault! Anyway, that's fate, it seems! I'll say one thing, I have lived through moments I thought I would never live through! I am alone! There is not a soul around me to tell all that I am going through! God forbid anyone should experience anything like this! All this is vague, but I think it will all be clear to you You are supposed to be a psychologist! Why I am writing all this to you, I don't know! All I know is that I am writing to nobody but you! And therefore don't show this letter even to Masha and say nothing! I am in despair: there is no ground beneath one's feet and one feels somewhere, I don't know, somewhere very nasty! I don't know if you will sympathize with me! Since you're a balanced, calm and rational person! Your whole life is for others and you don't seem to want a personal life of your own! Write to me, darling, soon!… Your promises to come are all rubbish! You will never move. Now Suvorin and Anton were in Abbazia, then a fashionable Adriatic resort under Austrian rule. It rained constantly and, Anton told Natalia Lintvariova: 'There are crowds of Yids here; they speak Russian.' To Anton, the only friendly Russian face was that of a wet nurse Anton had once treated. Abbazia reminded Anton of Maupassant's Mont-Oriol: the journey revived Maupassant's influence in Chekhov's work. On 22 September/4 October he and Suvorin fled to Venice. Lika had replied to Anton, but her letter lay in Abbazia post office, before trailing Anton across Italy: I warn you, be amazed by nothing! If you don't fear being disillusioned by your old Lika, then come! There's no trace of her left! Yes, just six montfrs have turned my life over, not leaving, as they say, a stone standing! Though I don't tiiink you'll throw the first stone at me! I believe you've always been indifferent to people, their failings and weaknesses! Even if you don't come (very likely, given your laziness), then keep everything I write a secret between us,
SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER 1894
uncle! You are not to tell anybody anything, even Masha!… Are you alone! Or with Suvorin? He is the last person to be told about my existence [Suvorin was a notorious gossip]… Potapenko wrote that he might come to Montreux between 25-30 September. The letter reached Chekhov in Nice two weeks late. Anton told Masha, 'Potapenko is a Yid and a swine.' Lika wrote again: 'Darling I'm alone, very unhappy. Come alone and don't talk about me to anybody.'
By now Anton had Lika's last three letters; he could be in no doubt that Lika was pregnant. He needed a new excuse not to come to her rescue. He chose to use Suvorin as a pretext. On 2/14 October 1894, the same day that he denounced Potapenko to Masha, he sent Lika A chilly note: I can't go to Switzerland: I'm with Suvorin who has to go to Paris. I'll spend 5-7 days in Nice, then go to Paris for 3-4 days, then Melikhovo. I'll be at the Grand Hotel in Paris. You had no cause to write about my indifference to people. Don't pine, be cheerful, look after your health. I bow deeply and firmly, firmly shake your hand. Yours A. Chekhov.
