wished Potapenko's articles were as interesting as the chatter of his «rvrn-year-old child 'who hates people and loves animals'. Anna hrgged Anton to lure Suvorin out of the city. On 12 July 1897 Sazo-nova's diary notes: 'Suvorin is stuck in town, waiting for Burenin and (In khov. Burenin is to take his place in the newspaper, and Chekhov In wants to go abroad with.'
Anton had business in Petersburg. The monopoly on 'My Life' expired in summer 1897; Suvorin could profitably reprint the story Willi 'Peasants' as one volume. The book, being over ten printer's «beets, was exempt from precensorship: cuts imposed on Russian I bought could be restored. 'Peasants' had received a burst of applause, end a backlash of condemnation. The right wing liked the idea that II e worst enemy of the Russian peasant was the Russian peasant himself; the Marxists agreed that capitalism had degraded the peasantry further. An evangelical anarchist like Tolstoy, however, thought this work 'a sin before the people', a view shared by adherents
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H.OWI KIN(, (I Ml; I E E IKS of the underground revolutionary movement 'People's Will', for whom the peasantry was the standard hearer of revolt.
In Petersburg Chekhov was to have sat for a portrait by Iosif Braz. Braz now arrived, with luggage and two nieces, to paint Chekhov at Melikhovo. Braz used Masha's room, with its north-facing windows, and piled her furniture in Anton's study.
Braz's arrival signalled to others that they too could descend on Anton. Kundasova and Lika visited. When Masha came back, Misha and his wife settled for July. Volodia, the Taganrog cousin, also came. On 29 June, on his way to Kiev, Aleksandr dumped Kolia and Toska at Melikhovo, with no linen and no time limit. They ran wild. Pavel had them sent back to their stepmother in Petersburg on the 17th. Semenkovich dropped in from Vaskino to rant and chat, bringing with him holidaymakers and their French governess for Volodia's delectation. Local schoolteachers, doctors, postmaster and priest called on business or recreation: they all depended on Chekhov and Melikhovo for a living or for entertainment. Anton, when Braz was not asking him to pose, hid, reading Maeterlinck's The Blind. He wryly commented that he would not be surprised if some relative asked to board a menagerie at Melikhovo.
Braz worked slowly, exasperating himself and his sitter, and after seventeen days the portrait was still unfinished. Few liked Braz's harrowing picture, but Masha fell in love with the painter. When, on 22 July, Braz and his nieces left, Anton and Lika accompanied them as far as Moscow. After an unhappy farewell to Lika in Moscow, Anton went to Petersburg for two nights with Suvorin. They discussed Anton's accounts, which showed that Anton could afford eight months abroad. Before falling asleep. Suvorin wrote in his diary: On Saturday, 26 July 1897 I am leaving for Paris. I could not induce Chekhov to come. His excuse is that he will have to leave in autumn to spend the winter abroad; he wants to go to Corfu, Malta, but if he went now, he would have to return. He said he would translate Maupassant. He likes Maupassant a lot. He has learnt French fairly well.19 Petersburg, Anton found, 'expected a consumptive, emaciated man barely breathing.' (Doctors were aghast that he had gone there even for two days.) Anton avoided Aleksandr and Potapenko.20 Leikin wired
MAY-AUGUST 1897
an invitation to his country estate on the river Tosna and met the first steamboat on Sunday 27 July. He was amazed: 'Chekhov looks cheerful and his complexion is not bad. He has even put on weight.' Anton chose a pair of white Vogul laika puppies from Leikin's kennels, but stayed a mere three hours, sampling milk (which he detested) from Leikin's three cows. The laikas were to be fetched by Suvorin's valet, Vasili Iulov, and delivered by train to Vania in Moscow. In his hurry to get away - Anton claimed an appointment with a professor of medicine in Moscow - he lost the pince-nez with the expensive lenses which Dr Radzwicki had prescribed. In Moscow he spent all day looking round premises for Suvorin's new bookshop, and then had a satisfying night: 'after sinning I always have rising spirits and inspiration,' he told Suvorin. Anton hid from his public, but reporters claimed to have spotted him everywhere from Bad Nauheim to Odessa or Kislovodsk.
August was hot enough to ignite the forests around Melikhovo. It was 450, the leaves went yellow; there was no grazing. Anton was too exhausted to save forests. He told Tikhonov in Petersburg, 'I am completely out of sorts. I just want to lie down.' As he rested, Khot-iaintseva painted him. The new puppies, Nansen and Laika, arrived on 3 August, driving Brom the dachshund to fury. The last relatives left. Volodia was prised from Madeleine the governess and given the fare back to Taganrog. At the Feast of the Dormition, Pavel recorded: 'No guests staying, just the Semenkoviches, the French woman, the priest and the teacher from Talezh… doctor Sventsitsky from Moscow and Zinaida Chesnokova staying the night.' The latter two were treating Mariushka, who was sent to a Moscow clinic. Exhausted by the estate, everyone felt ill: Masha took bromide, Pavel drops. Tiresome guests stayed: the flautist Ivanenko had fallen for Maria Droz-dova. ('Ivanenko talks witiiout stopping… Ivanenko has come again,' Pavel's diary complains in June.) As Anton was too sick to maintain domestic harmony, Roman rebelled against Pavel, who recorded on 15 June: 'Began mowing hay 7.30 a.m. 24 peasants. Roman got 3 roubles. He spent them on vodka for the men and women. They didn't finish mowing.' After the death of their baby, Roman had quarrelled with his wife. All the servants seemed in turmoil. Masha the maid was pregnant by Aleksandr Kretov. Anton promised a dowry if the ex-soldier married her, but Kretov was evasive.
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Only Anton, had he been well, would have been sufficiently unflus-tered to run Melikhovo smoothly, and I'nvcl, Kvgenia and Masha would have to face autumn and winter without him. Evgenia's letters do not mention Anton's health or departure, though she fussed about everything else: buying cloth, harvesting potatoes, Mariushka's cataract. On 22 August Pavel wrote to Vania: 'Anton will go soon. His health is much better, he is more cheerful, he has stopped coughing… It is lonely for us to be on our own, I and your mother, to live in the country. Masha will go to Moscow each week.'21 Nobody detained Anton. Aleksandr was absorbed in two new-found missions, bicycling and temperance. He and his doctor, the psychiatrist Olderogge, had chosen an island in the Alands as a colony for alcoholics. Anton had talked to Suvorin, who spoke to the Finance Minister, Sergei Vitte: a 100,000 rouble grant was in the offing. In Iaroslavl Misha and Olga, expecting their first child, asked little of Anton beyond a loan. Only Masha was unhappy. With Braz's and Maria Drozdova's encouragement, she had decided to train professionally as an artist, but, despite Levitan's protection, she was rejected by the Moscow College of Art. Iosif Braz had left Melikhovo, and Masha, at thirty-four, faced spin-sterhood with all the duties and few of the benefits of a wife.
Lika thought of following Anton to France; the painter Aleksandra Khotiaintseva actually arranged to do so. Friends urged him to depart. Levitan kept up a barrage. Loathing all Germans, Levitan still took Bad Nauheim's baths and gymnastics: 'I occasionally copulate (with the muse, of course),' he wrote. For Levitan the Riviera scenery was 'cloying'. He himself was drawn, despite the fatal damp, to the woodlands north and west of Moscow which inspired his paintings, but advised Anton: 'Everyone agrees that the climate of Algiers does wonders for lung diseases. Go there and don't let anything bother you. Stay until summer and if you like it, longer. Very probably I shall come and join you.' To Masha Levitan confided: 'My dear, glorious girl. I terribly want to see you, but am so bad that I am just afraid of the journey, and in this heat as well. I recovered a bit abroad, but I am still horribly weak… I must have sung my song.'22
Anton had pleaded poverty. Levitan and Kundasova believed him. Levitan spoke to Morozov, Kundasova to Barskov, editor of Children's Leisure. They told the tycoons their duty: each to advance Chekhov 2000 roubles. Accepting only Suvorin's money, Anton left Melikhovo
MAY-AUGUST 1897
at 8.00 a.m. on Sunday 31 August. Olga Kundasova saw him off. Masha followed him to Moscow, where Lika intercepted him with a note: 'I'll fetch you by cab between 9 and 9.30 - not too late for supper, I think. I badly want and need to see you. Where are you going? Abroad?' The next day Anton left Moscow for Biarritz, after a last meeting with Lika, to which neither of them ever later referred.
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SIXTY TWO
o Promenades September-October 1897 Two OLD Taganrog boys met Anton at the Paris Gare du Nord on 4/16 September 1897: Ivan Pavlovsky, a former revolutionary, now Paris correspondent of New Times, and an engineer, Professor Belel-iubsky. They took Anton to Suvorin's hotel, the Vendome. Suvorin was now in Biarritz, but
