left with Masha, carrying her reward, a tan dachshund puppy. Anton took up the cudgels, angrily dismissing Suvorin's taunt that he had fled like a coward. To Leikin he complained that he had a cough and fever - but never mentioned The Seagull. Tatiana Tolstaia invited him to Iasnaia Poliana, but Lika's invitation of 25 October excited him more: Take the express to Moscow, it has a restaurant car and you can eat all the way… I've seen Goltsev, he has solemnly announced to me mat his illegitimate son, Boris, has been born. He is happy, apparently, that he can still father a baby. Though he puts it on a bit, saying he's too old and so on. So 'certain men' could take a lesson from him… I cross each day out in tiie calendar, and there are 310 days left before my bliss!
Chekhov read the warning. Goltsev's child by his secretary (as proud as the father) was the talk of Moscow; Anton even envied Goltsev: 'for at his age I shan't be capable', he told his friend, the dramatist Nemirovich- Danchenko. Lika's mention of Goltsev, as of Levitan five years and Potapenko three years before, was not casual. Nor was the reference to 'certain men'. And could 'bliss' be anything except a date for marriage, or at least commitment? The word provoked Anton to retract, in words as cruel as any of his panic responses to Lika's emotional demands:
OCTOBER-NOVEMBER 1896
Darling Lika, You write that the hour of our bliss will come in 310 days. Very glad, but couldn't this bliss be put off for another two or three years? I'm so afraid! I enclose a sketch for a medal which I mean to offer you. If you like it, write and tell me and I'll order it from Khlebnikov [the jeweller]. The design for the medal is inscribed: CATALOGUE OF PLAYS BY
MEMBERS OF THE SOCIETY OF RUSSIAN DRAMATIC WRITERS
1 Hoo edition, Page 73, line 1. Lika decoded a title: Ignati the Idiot, HI Unexpected Madness. Ignati Potapenko, the father of her child, was I lie last name Lika wanted to recall. All hope of bliss crushed, she went to Granny and Christina and answered Anton: I low bliss frightened you! I so much suspect you think that Sofia [Kuvshinnikova] will prove right and I shan't have the patience to wait three years for you, which is why you offer three years. I am stuck for reasons beyond my control in Tver province and have no hope of being in Moscow before the middle of next week. Although it's real winter here, the Hundred Dachshunds haven't frozen and send their greetings.
I like the medal, but I think with your usual meanness you will never give it to me. I like it in all respects, even its edifying content, and above all, I am moved by your fondness and love of 'your friends'. That really is touching… You don't seem to know that I am collecting your letters to sell and keep me in my old age! And Sapper [Goltsev's nickname] is really a very good man! He is better than you and treats people better than you do!… You can stay with me without fear. I shan't allow myself any liberties, just because I'm afraid of proof that there will never be bliss… Goodbye. Your [Ariadna crossed out] twice rejected, etc. L. Mizinova… Yes, everyone here says that The Seagull is borrowed from my life as well [as Ariadna], and, what's more, that you did a good job on someone else [Potapenko] too! Anton was only a little abashed. He told Goltsev on 7 November that he would see him and Lika in Moscow. Elena Shavrova had also moved to Moscow. On the day he wrote to Lika, Anton, grateful 'for the healing balsam on authorial wounds', sent an affectionate letter to Elena: she had sent him a card with a picture of a masked girl. Elena wanted to stage The Seagull in Moscow and perform in farces in Serpukhov. Which was aim and which pretext - staging the play, or seducing the author - was hard even for Anton to decide. Anton's
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THE FLIGHT OF THE SEAGULL
distraction affected all Melikhovo; the servants slacked, and the family bickered. 'Nobody fed the cattle this morning,' grumbled Pavel.
Fate had reserved its cruellest twist. The plot of The Seagull had reflected Lika's misfortunes: it now foreshadowed them. Lika had left Anton to be seduced and abandoned, pregnant, by Potapenko, just as Nina leaves Treplev to be seduced and abandoned, pregnant, by Trigorin. Chekhov darkened his play by adding one event: Nina's baby dies. 9 November was Christina's second birthday. Granny Ioganson's diary ends the story of an unlucky love-child: 9 November, Saturday: Little Christina is very poorly. Wheezing, chest full of phlegm. 10 November, Sunday: The doctor came, thank God, examined her, and there is hope he can help. 12 November, Tuesday: Lika took the evening train to Moscow… Little Christina still wheezing. 13 November, Wednesday: Lika has come back from Moscow, Christina is dangerously ill. She has croup. We telegraphed Lika's mother to come. Our doctor came, no hope of recovery. The Lord's Holy will be done. 14 November, Thursday: Our darling Christina passed away at 4 a.m. Poor Lika, what an angelic little girl she has lost, may the Lord console her and turn her mind to all that is good, to lead a sensible life.
FIFTY-SEVEN O
Cold Comfort November - December 1896 Niws OF Christina's death took days to reach Melikhovo. Anton had put Lika out of his mind, as he wrote a report on all fifty-nine schools of the district. Petersburg gave him no peace: the 8 November issue of The Theatregoer graphically recalled the audience's unruliness at the first performance of The Seagull, and though the reviewer sympathized, his list of abuse - 'an inflated entity, the creation of servile Iricnds' - was hurtful. Suvorin, like Anton, was sick of the theatre: 'lavorskaia tells all sorts of foul stories about me. And I have to die in this bog!… The theatre is tobacco, alcohol. It's just as hard In wean yourself off it.'
Aleksandr had again surmounted his own particular addiction, and had written Alcoholism and Possible Ways of Fighting It, a pain phlet which argued for a colony for alcoholics on a Baltic island, but he had quarrelled with the Dauphin; his children weir failing in school and the eldest, Kolia, was torturing the dog. From Peters burg Potapenko sent grim news of Anton's latest devotee: 'Dear Antonio,… I gave your regards to Komissarzhevskaia. She is in deep sorrow. Enemies, anonymous letters, undermining - in a nutshell, the usual story of any talent that turns up in the actors' milieu.'
While Misha was brewing beer for the Chekhov family on Saturday 16 November, Christina was being buried. Sofia Ioganson recorded: They're cleaning the whole house, afraid, as the heartless doctor puts it, of infecting other children… Lika is with the two nannies. I'm sorry, very sorry for Lika.' The news made Anton put off his journey tO Moscow by a day or two. Then he left Melikhovo before dawn and took a room in the Great Moscow.34 Evgenia was staying in Moscow with Vania's family. Anton sent her a note:
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?l'S
I III I IK.II I ()!• THE SEAGULL
Dear Mama, I've arrived today, Sunday at n. I need to see you, but as I am up to my neck in business and am leaving tomorrow, I shan't get round to visiting you. Please come and see me on Monday morning at nine or ten. You can have coffee with me. I shall get up early. Lika stayed with Anton all day and he prescribed her a sedative. At 7.00 p.m., when Lika had left, Elena Shavrova arrived with a manuscript, leaving a chaperone in her carriage. She and Anton discussed life in Italy. After a Biblical seven years, the inevitable happened in the hotel room. The cber maitre became the intrigant (as she put it). When Elena came to her senses and asked the time, Anton's watch had stopped. Shavrova regained her carriage and frozen chaperone: it was midnight. All that year broken timepieces - a motif for Three Sisters - had put the Chekhovs' lives in disarray. Now an erotic whirlwind swept Anton off his feet. Shavrova's next letter to Chekhov was decorated with a hand-painted devil in a red coat. She wrote that she wanted fame even more than love, and she would be back with a watch that worked.
Evgenia never got her coffee. At dawn Chekhov sent a porter with a note, 'Dear Mama! Have to go home. Halva!! Buy and bring. Off to the station.' Early the same morning Misha had left Melikhovo to take Masha to the station; he brought back Anton, off the first train from Moscow. Like a returning prodigal son and grateful father rolled into one, Anton had the white calf slaughtered; Melikhovo's rhythm resumed. Chekhov wrote the briefest note to Lika: 'Dear Lika, I'm sending you the prescription you were talking about. I'm cold and sad and so there's nothing more to write about. I'll come on Saturday or on Monday with Masha.'
Lika came to Melikhovo instead, a week later with the painter Maria Drozdova and Masha. It is hard to say what distressed Lika more -to have lost Christina or to be superseded by others in Anton's affections. She spent four desolate days in Anton's study, silently playing patience on his desk, while he wrote letters in pencil on his lap. Drozdova painted Pavel's portrait; Evgenia's new crockery arrived from Muir and Mirrielees; old Mariushka moved out to live in the cattleyard, and a new cook took her place. Books were ordered, sorted, and sent to Taganrog library. On Monday, without Lika, Chekhov went to Moscow to settle his accounts: he had missed the small print
