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lit MuiVs contract and only now discovered that he could not reprint 'My I.ifc** as a book for a year. He took the watch that had compro-MII? cl I'lena to Bouret, the watchmaker, who gently told Anton he Ii t.l lorgotten to wind it up.
When Anton got back, bearing felt slippers he had bought for Pavel,.1 liim onsolate Lika was still in his study. Chekhov read a letter from ledumr Nemirovich-Danchenko, who lamented, as did other friends, llbti they never talked properly because… you crush me with your giftedness, or whether because we all, even you, are unbalanced or lack conviction as writers… Urn I fear that so much diabolical pride - or, to be exact secretiveness lias accumulated in you, that you will just smile. (I know your Bnlle.)35 1 in if) November Anton gave Nemirovich- Danchenko, who was soon In br more his interpreter than his friend, the same defence of silence tii In- had to Lika. He sounded like his own fictional doctors in 'A Prcary Story' or Uncle Vania: What can we talk about? We have no politics, we have no life on a social, circle or even street level, our town existence is poor, monotonous, oppressive, boring… Talk about one's personal life? Yes dial can sometimes be interesting, and perhaps we might, but we straight away get embarrassed, we are secretive, insincere, held back by an instinct for self-preservation… I'm afraid of my friend Ser-f.ccnko… in every railway carriage and house loudly discussing why I am intimate with N when Z loves me. I am afraid of our moralizing, afraid of our ladies. Alter Anton had posted this letter one of the stoves began to smell id smoke and the whole family developed headaches. Then tongues of Ieia spurted out between the stove and the wall.36 As Pavel recorded: 'Tonight we caught fire, the wooden beams above the chimney in Minna's room. The Prince and the Priest took part in extinguishing it and put it out with a fire-hose in Vi an hour.' Even Anton was moved to open his diary: 'After the fire the Prince told us that once when he had a fire in the early hours he lifted a barrel of water weighing four hundredweight.' The Herculean Prince Shakhovskoi was a welcome guest; fortunately Melikhovo was surrounded by ponds and Anton, who had seen every year one house or another nearby
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burn to the ground, had prudently bought a fire engine - a stirrup-pump with a bell and a long hose mounted on a cart. Moreover, he and Masha had insured everything from the house to the cows.
Prince Shakhovskoi demolishing the stove and smashing the walls with an axe to get at the flames, stoked by the draught from a badly made chimney, was a sight that Chekhov recreated in 'Peasants'. Peasants doused flames in the attic and the corridor; November's mud and slush flooded the floors that Aniuta had scrubbed; the stench of soot was unendurable. Anton's water closet was out of action. Evgenia, her bedroom wrecked, took to another bed and did not get up for a fortnight. Pavel forgot the pose he had adopted for Drozdova's portrait and roared at all whom he held to blame. The bereaved Lika, brought up, however negligently, in a genteel household, could not bear the shambles into which the fire had thrown the Chekhovs and left the next afternoon.
Constables and the insurance agent came. Masha saw the insurers in Moscow and sought builders and a stove-maker. The temperature was dropping to minus20°C, so the need for a stove-maker was pressing, but the first one they found remembered working under Pavel and refused to come. Weeks passed before Melikhovo was habitable, but the insurers paid, and for a long time Aleksandr teased his brother as 'the arsonist'.
Chekhov wanted to see Suvorin again, but fire or Lika, or both, had stopped him inviting Suvorin to Melikhovo. Instead, he wrote: In the last 11/a-a years there have been so many different events (a few days ago we even had a fire in the house) that my only way out is to go to war like Vronsky [in Anna Karenina; war was feared in late i8y6 - only not to fight, but to treat the wounded. The only bright spell in these i Vi-a years has been staying with you in Feodosia. Small clouds passed between Anton and the Suvorins. Anna Suvorina had forgiven his flight, but had been hurt to find that The Seagull was not dedicated to her. Chekhov discovered that, instead of 10 per cent of the takings from five performances of The Seagull in the contract that Suvorin had arranged, he was receiving 8 per cent, on the basis that the play had only four acts.37 In any case, until they received the contract the Society of Dramatists would not pay him, and Anton had
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left it on Suvorin's desk from which it had vanished. Short though the play's run had been, it had had full houses and the author was owed 1000 roubles. To cap Suvorin's sins, his printers sent proofs of plays and stories haphazardly.
After the fire Lika stayed away. On i December Masha warned her brother: 'Viktor Goltsev was at Lika's this morning.' Despite his rival's presence, Anton invited Lika. Chicken pox had stopped classes at the 'Dairy' school so that Masha could bring Lika, but Lika did not come. She threatened not to come for New Year 'so as not to spoil your mood'. If he wrote her a pleasant letter by the 30th she might come. She had endured worse embarrassment, as more people identified her II the prototype of The Seagull: 'Today there was a reading of The Seagull… and people were raving about it. I even went upstairs… so as not to hear it.' Now Lika had for consolation a young landscape painter, Seriogin, whom she proposed to bring with her, as Masha's guest. She knew it would upset Anton: 'You can't bear young people more interesting than yourself.' Anton invited her, affectionately calling her Cantaloupe. He mentioned Seriogin only in his diary.
On 20 December Anton went to Moscow to prescribe not for Lika (whom he avoided, despite inviting her to Melikhovo), but for Levitan, whose heart was worn out and whose mind was ravaged by depression that twice brought him to the brink of death. Anton examined Levitan and noted: 'Levitan has widening of the aorta. He wears a patch of clay on his chest. Excellent sketches and a passionate thirst for life.' I le pressed Levitan to come to Melikhovo: the artist replied that he couldn't bear trains, and feared upsetting Masha. The approach of New Year enlivened Melikhovo. The stove-makers and carpenters left; a house painter papered the walls; mice were poisoned. Twenty flagons of beer were delivered. Misha and Olga came; Vania arrived alone. Pavel had the snow swept from the pond, so that the guests could skate. The widowed Sasha Selivanova, Anton's childhood sweetheart, partnered Vania on the pond. Gentry and officials gathered like rooks. Never had Melikhovo seen such a crowd. Those who could not come wrote. Usually they begged: Anton's cousin Evtushevsky wanted a job in Taganrog cemetery; Elena Shav-rova wanted a critique of her new story; a neighbour wanted a publisher for his article on roads. The strain told on Anton. Franz Schechtel had heard that he was
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ailing. 'You need to get married to a worldly, daredevil girl.' Anton's reply was half serious: You obviously have a bride you want to get off your hands as fast as possible; but sorry, I can't marry just now, because, nrsdy, I have the bacilli in me, very dubious tenants; secondly, I haven't a penny, and thirdly; I still think I'm too young. When Shcheglov gave the same advice, Chekhov specified as a wife a 'blue-eyed actress singing Tara-ra-boom-de- ay'. As Lika drew back, Elena Shavrova came forward: 'I've been taking bromide and reading Charles Baudelaire… When will you be in Moscow? I'd like to see you. - You see, I'm being frank.' On New Year's Eve, she wished him 'love, lots of love: boundless, calm and tender.' Out of the blue, Emilie Bijon, governess to the Suvorins, whom Chekhov had known for ten years, was also emboldened: Vous trouvez peut-etre etrange de recevoir de mes nouvelles, je n'en disconviens pas, maintes fois je desirais vous ecrire mais au fond je sentais trop bien que je suis un rien et meme miserable en comparai-son de vous par consequent je n'osais risquer cette demande mais cette fois-ci j'ai pris le courage dans mes deux mains et me voici ecrivant quelques mots a mon cher et bon ami et docteur.39 Emilie was one of the most self-effacing of the women who pined for Anton. New Year approached. A sheep lambed. The Chekhov family dressed up as mummers and called on the Semenkoviches. Chekhov dressed his sister-in-law Olga as a beggar, and gave her a note: Your Excellency! Being persecuted in life by numerous enemies I have suffered for truth and lost my job and also my wife is ill with ventriloquy, and my children have rashes, therefore I humbly ask you to grant me of your bounty quelque chose for a decent person. Lika came with Seriogin and saw the New Year in. In the kitchen the servant girls, dropping wax onto cold saucers, looked into the future. Vania, in no hurry to get back to his family, took Sasha Selivanova to the Talezh school and put on a magic-lantern show. Whenever his guests let him, Chekhov would creep into his study to 'Peasants' and write, or cross out, a few lines.
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A Little Queen in Exile January-February 1897 PRETTY, SMALL, regal though forlorn, someone else had, like
