The horses fared badly: Pavel's diary for 13 February shows his ruthless-ness: 'minus2 2°C in the morning… The horses were worn out, deep snow, God forbid we take such a cart load of wood again. Why doesn't the Society for the Protection of Animals do something about it?'
Anton rested. On 1 March he announced to Suvorin that he would hereafter 'lead a sober chaste life'. Aleksandr and Vania had been taken aback by Anton's philandering: Vania, seeing the array of potential sisters-in- law, begged him not to marry. Elena Shavrova planned one more performance in Serpukhov, to see her intrigant again, as she packed her bags to be a virtuous wife in Petersburg. Lmdmila Ozerova, however, was in Moscow; her passion all the stronger, for Anton giving reasons, such as the lack of a dowry, not to marry her. On 26 February she wrote: All my things, to wit: my pink jacket, my slippers, my handkerchief and so on and also Neglinny Passage, Tverskaia Street, the Moscow City Duma etc. send their regards, are impatient for your arrival and miss you very very much. I'll tell you in secret that they are very jealous not just of you and Petersburg, Serpukhov and Lopasnia but of the air, and I was indescribably saddened because you love and want money, but perhaps you need it for some good cause.
414
415
THE FLIGHT OF THE SEAGULL
Liudmila Ozerova had only seen The Seagull. The next day she read the play and was bowled over: she had found her role, and foolishly addressed Anton by Arkadina's extravagant phrase - 'My only one': Anton, my only one, to fall at your feet, meekly to caress and kiss your hands, to look endlessly into your eyes. To reincarnate in myself all your great soul!!! Words, looks, thoughts cannot convey the impression that our Seagull made on me. Almost by the same post a more interesting actress approached Anton. Chekhov had sent Vera Komissarzhevskaia his Plays. The actress still had Avilova's silver medallion which Anton gave her as a prop. (It interested its owner no more than the stuffed seagull in the play interested Trigorin.) Komissarzhevskaia felt she personified the Seagull and wrote to Anton as if he were Trigorin: 'You will visit me, won't you? Potapenko tells me that you're expected by i March. Are you? I doubt if I'll go away for Lent, although I've completely collapsed. Come, Anton, I terribly want to see you.'43
Chekhov found this invitation to Petersburg irresistible, and the forthcoming Congress of Theatre Workers in Moscow for the first three weeks of March was a pretext to leave Melikhovo. He wanted to deliver 'Peasants' to Goltsev and Lavrov in Moscow, even if no censor could pass the text as it was.
In 'Peasants' he had beaten the 'realists' at their own genre, drawing on his deep knowledge and understanding of the villages around Melikhovo and the peasants who worked in Moscow hotels as waiters. His plot was minimal: the narrator is a camera. A sick waiter, Nikolai, loses his job and goes back to his village with his wife Olga and their daughter Sasha. Shocked by the squalor of his relatives, he dies, while Olga and Sasha are forced to wander off and beg. (Chekhov intended to take tbe story further with the girl's entry into prostitution in the city but the censor made it clear that this would be too sensitive and sordid a theme.) Chekhov contrasts a beautiful valley with imagery of smashed crockery, beaten children, in a series of tableaux that cover autumn, a savage winter, and spring - six months which bring tax arrears, the rape of an errant wife, the beating of another wife by her drunken husband, fire, and the death of Nikolai. 'Peasants' shows the gentry as hateful creatures from an alien world. The good that is left is a strange residue of ideals, as the peasants listen to Olga reading
416
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1897
the Bible, words unintelligible, but consolatory to them. From 'My Life' Chekhov takes the spectacle of the drunken thieving peasants who are more human than their masters, for they recognize the truth and justice that they have lost. This uncompromising picture was to anger Tolstoy and other self-appointed spokesmen of the peasantry. The school of protest writing welcomed Chekhov to its camp. r
4J7
FIFTY-NINE O
Cutting the Gordian Knot March 1897 LIUDMILA OZEROVA, Elena Shavrova, Vera Komissarzhevskaia and Lidia Avilova all called for Anton. So did Levitan. He wanted Anton to examine him, and to be painted for the Moscow's leading gallery-owner, Tretiakov, by the Petersburg artist Braz. Anton alerted Elena Shavrova, about to leave for Petersburg: Dear Colleague. The intrigant will arrive in Moscow 4 March at noon on train No. 14 - in all probability. If you haven't left yet, telegraph me just one word: 'home'… But if you also agree to have lunch with me at the Slav Bazaar (at 1 p.m.) then instead of 'home' write 'agree'. The telegraph operator may think that I've offered you my hand and heart, but what do we care what they think!! I shall come for one day, in a rush. Elena received the letter on 4 March - too late to respond. She searched the Great Moscow and Slav Bazaar, and left notes at Russian Thought, but he was 'as elusive as a meteor.' One note 'in deep despair' begged him to see her in Petersburg. But that evening Anton took his stethoscope to Levitan. He calmed the patient, but wrote to Schechtel: 'Things are bad. His heart doesn't beat, it gasps. Instead of a tick-tock you hear 'fff-tock'. In medicine we call that a systolic murmur.'
In the morning he was back in Melikhovo. Pavel had brought in the priest, to shrive the family and the servants in preparation for Easter. Dung was being tipped onto the greenhouse beds. Anton was short of money because the censor had held up 'Peasants' and Suvorin still had not found the contract for The Seagull. Aleksandr broached Suvorin on Anton's behalf and wrote up his adventures as a farce, celebrating a salmon that Natalia had just cooked. It began:
MARCH 1897
The Missing Contract or the Salmon Tail A Play in 5 Acts by Mr Goose Cast: Suvorins Porter; Suvorins footman, Vasili; A. S. Suvorin; Mr Goose; Mrs Goose Act 1. The spreader of enlightenment and builder of schools. Goose (entering Mr Suvorins hall, reading a letter). 'Put on your trousers and go and see Suvorin: ask where the contract and stamps are and why he persists in not answering my letters. I need the money desperately, since I'm building another school…' (aside) Bare-arsed educators! No money but building schools like water. Burdening me with things to do. Won't bother even to send me a pound of country butter or a piglet for the New Year… Governors, indeed, dog turds.44 Aleksandr came to stay for a few days with his two elder sons. (It was to be his last visit to Melikhovo.) They stayed in the cottage. Aleksandr was hoping for help: Kolia, expelled from grammar school, seemed doomed by the genes he had inherited, according to Aleksandr, from his mother's 'decaying landowner's family'. All evening the priest and Aleksandr drank beer. (Aleksandr had lapsed again.) In the cold morning sun, Aleksandr was sobered by a talk with Anton: My brother was hunched, warming himself in the sun looking mournfully at his surroundings. 'I don't feel like sowing or planting, or like looking into the future,' he broke the silence. - 'Stop, that's nonsense. You're just depressed,' I reassured him, aware I was being banal. - 'Now,' he said firmly, turning his face towards me. 'After my death I leave such-and-such to our sister and mother, and such-and- such for education.' On 9 March 1897 Aleksandr and his sons left. Kundasova came for two days. Nursing Brom, who had been mauled by a hound, and Quinine, whose puppy had died, Anton was withdrawn. The coming of spring, the ice breaking on the river and the prospect of a haemorrhage, Levitan's terminal illness, the commission for his portrait, all turned his thoughts to death. At tea his father sickened him: 'going on about the uneducated being better than the educated. I came in and he shut up.' Anton replied to neither Ozerova nor Shavrova. At last, the theatre contract for The Seagull had been replaced, and he had 582
418
419
THE FLIGHT OF THE SEAGULL
roubles, enough to visit Suvorin and the actors in Moscow, and Komis-sarzhevskaia and Avilova in Petersburg.
On 19 March, as the first starlings flew into Lopasnia, Anton was spitting blood. The next day Suvorin came to Moscow and settled in the Slav Bazaar. On 22 March Anton took his room in the Great Moscow, and in the evening he went to dine with Suvorin at the Ermitage. Before they had begun to eat, Anton clutched his napkin to his mouth and pointed at the ice bucket. Blood was gushing up uncontrollably from a lung.
VIII
Flowering Cemeteries Oh this South! Oh this Nice! Oh, how their radiance disturbs me! Life, like a wounded bird, Tries to arise - and cannot… Fiodor Tiutcher
420
SIXTY O
