governess, she knew better than Russian and set about translating Chekhov. To her he was a god who would dispose of her fortune and her person. She would follow Anton from france to Russia, seeking affection and advice, offering everything. In Nice she found him newspaper cuttings, looked up quotations, sent him photographs she had taken, and asked him the meaning of the most basic Russian words. He treated her with a gentleness rare even for him, and tongues were soon wagging.
Anton was growing to like the women folk of the pension. The Fish, the Doll, Red Ribbons, the Clothes Moth and the Slum were more good-natured than he or Aleksandra had allowed. The Fish, Baroness Dershau, became a fanatical Dreyfusarde under Anton's influence, as did many Russians in Nice. When Suvorin's granddaughter, Nadia Kolomnina, came to Nice, Anton used flirtatious banter to convert her too. Only Anton's brothers sat on the fence: Aleksandr and Misha, dependent on Suvorin's patronage, could not afford their own opinion.
Anton now found New Times repulsive, and ordered instead the liberal World Echoes, which exposed the bias of Suvorin's paper.38 Suvo-rin saw Dreyfus as the villain in a war between Christendom and Jewry, on which hung the future of civilization: the question of
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F L i w v. e i N (; n i i i i i; i i e s whether Dreyfus was innocent or guilty was a technicality. Anton argued so vehemently with Suvorin that the latter conceded: 'You've convinced me'. Nevertheless, attacks on Dreyfus and then on Zola -even while New Times was pirating Zola's novel Paris - were even more virulent in the weeks following Anton's remonstrations. Pavlovsky, the Paris correspondent of New Times, and himself a supporter of Dreyfus, found his copy either binned or distorted. The Russian correspondent on the Riviera, Michel Deline (Mikhail Ashkenazi), sent Suvorin a protest: It's not my attitude to the Dreyfus case, but yours which is disgraceful. I refer you to someone whom you love and respect, if you are capable of loving and respecting anybody: A. P. Chekhov. Ask him what he thinks of your attitude to this case and to the Jewish question as a whole. Neither you nor New Times will be unscathed by his opinion.39 Deline's rebuke upset Chekhov more than Suvorin: he hated his name being cited in a public airing of what he still considered private differences, and he ostracized Deline. Anton was bewildered because Suvorin would not retrieve New Times's honour from the Dauphin and Burenin. Anton told Kovalevsky that Suvorin was the most weak-willed man he knew when it came to reining in his own family.40 Anton's tone to Suvorin cooled: he joked that a Jewish syndicate had bought him for ioo francs. He told Aleksandr that 'he no longer wanted letters from Suvorin, in which he uses love of the military to justify his paper's lack of tact': he was disgusted by Suvorin's pirating of Zola, while pouring filth on the man. Yet the two friends still wanted to meet in March.
Dreyfus helped Anton forget Algiers, if not illness. He added guai-acol, an exotic creosote, to his medication. He was downcast at the death of Dr Liubimov on 14/26 January and his burial. Nuisances in La Pension Russe, such as Maksheev the gambler, tempted him to move to a French-run hotel. The Fish, the Doll and the Slum joined forces to dissuade Anton from moving. Maksheev was leaving; the newly converted Chekhovians and Dreyfusardes demanded that the manageress let them and Anton dine separately in the drawing room. Baroness Dershau ('Fish', signing herself Neighbour) showered Anton with notes. She borrowed glue to mend her fan, and brewed him tea.
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Nevertheless Anton was tired of Nice. On 17 January his name day was celebrated very quietly with a visit from Iurasov, the consul. Anton wrote to Suvorin on 2 7 January: The Russian cemetery is splendid. Cosy, green and you can see the sea. I do nothing, I only sleep, eat, and make offerings to the Goddess of Love. My present French woman is a very nice creature, 22, with an amazing figure, but I'm now a bit bored with all this and want to go home. Chekhov's notebooks spawned ideas, but 'A Visit to Friends', the last story that he wrote in Nice, reworked the woes of the Kiseliovs in Babkino into ironic fiction. It was written very slowly. A dissolute husband and self- deceiving wife are faced with the bankruptcy of their estate: they invite the narrator, an old friend, to advise them. He realizes that his hostess is inveigling him into marrying her sister, and thus bailing them out. Too strong to succumb, too weak to protest, he flees, pleading an appointment. The scenes of false merriment and the evocation of a derelict garden are among Chekhov's finest creations, but the story must have had unhappy associations. 'A Visit to Friends', published in February 1898, went unnoticed by the critics and was never republished, although it would be recycled into The (Cherry Orchard. Anton's inspiration lapsed into a prolonged hibernation.
In winter Melikhovo was even quieter; Pavel even put up with Roman's idle wife Olimpiada. The livestock lambed and calved, giving milk for Evgenia and delight to old Mariushka who, Pavel reported, 'is beside herself with joy at lambs gambolling and bleating, and kisses them'.41 Only the dogs gave cause for distress. Village boys fed them broken glass wrapped in bread and killed both the laikas that Leikin had given Anton. (Leikin was later told that the laikas had died of distemper.) The dachshunds, Pavel complained, were attacking everybody, the family, visitors, children. Brom bit Pavel so severely on the hand that all the medical workers of the district were mobilized. Presents, delivered by the Fish, Doll, Slum and Clothes Moth, consoled Pavel. At Shrovetide Pavel watched his guests carefully: 'Everyone ate pancakes… Drozdova 10, Kolia 6, Masha 4.'
On 5 February Evgenia had a telegram from Iaroslavl, which gave her an escape. She left to see her newborn granddaughter, whom
45'
FLOWb KIN(j CI'MI 1 I HIKS Misha and Olga had named Kvgeni.i alter her. Misha announced to Masha: 'We've registered An tosh a as the godfather… I'll ask you to deduct II roubles from Antosha's money that you keep… Mother wonders if Antosha will be offended that I've arranged such a cheap christening.42
Aleksandr had written a farce for Suvorin's theatre. It was taken off after one night because it had no part for the director's mistress. He fulminated to Anton: 'My play is off because of cunt;… expect an offprint of my play which depends so disgracefully on the vagina of Mme Domasheva and the penis of Kholeva… Our theatre, led by Iavorskaia, is a very mangy cloaca.'43 Aleksandr took to drink. Family gave him no pleasure. Natalia loved only Misha, shielding him from his delinquent step-brothers, and found her husband repellent. Little Kolia was rebelling at Vania and Sonia's tutelage, spending, while Uncle Anton was in Nice, his holidays at Melikhovo.
At the end of February toothache struck: the dentistry was brutal. Anton needed a powerful distraction. His fervent admirer, the dramatist Sumbatov-Iuzhin, had come to the Cote d'Azur to win 100,000 roubles to build a theatre. Anton went with him to Monte Carlo. Potapenko was heralding his arrival for the same reason: (26 December 1897)… I've found a way or two of gambling with chances of winning, true, not a lot, but still it's more honourable than writing for God's World… when I win, I'll build a theatre in Petersburg and give Suvorin a run for his money. (5 February 1898) Dear Antonio, Don't joke with me. I really am coming to Nice… You're wrong to say one can't win at roulette. I'll prove it to you. I'll prove amazing things. Wait for me with bated breath. On 2/14 March, Potapenko arrived. The next day, Sumbatovlost 7000 francs and Anton 30. Potapenko was winning. Later, he confessed: Monte Carlo had a depressing effect on Anton, but it would be wrong to say that he was immune to its toxins. Perhaps I did in part infect him with my confidence… that there was in gambling a simple secret which just has to be divined and then… Well, then, of course, the writer's greatest dream emerged: to work freely… So he, sober, calculating, cautious, gave in to temptation. We bought a whole pile of form books, even a miniature roulette wheel and for
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hours sat, pencil in hand, covering paper, with figures. We were working out a system, looking for the secret. ()n the back of an old letter Anton scrawled five columns of figures. Five days later, Sumbatov, Potapenko and Chekhov were spotted in Monte Carlo. Sumbatov, 10,000 francs down, went back to Russia. Potapenko, dishevelled, with black bags under his eyes, was 400 up; a week later he won another no francs. As Queen Victoria arrived from England, Potapenko left Nice for Russia. Shortly afterwards, Griinberg, the accountant at The Cornfield, wrote to Anton saying that Potapenko had informed him that Chekhov needed an advance: he was therefore sending 2000 francs to Anton, assuming that a manuscript was imminent. Anton was tight-lipped; he had lent half this sum to Potapenko. At the end of April, Potapenko, unabashed, wrote: 'I shall send you 1000 francs. About this money, by the way, I've told nobody here. To avoid unwanted exclamations and head-nodding, I innocently lied to everyone and said that you and I had each won 700.'
Nice offered Anton no escape from penury and disease. The unfinished official portrait also caught up with him. Masha had returned to Braz the portrait he had begun at Melikhovo. Anton refused to risk his lungs by going to Paris to pose. Braz was promised by the Tretiakov gallery his expenses to go to Nice and start the portrait anew. On 14/26 March Braz started work in a studio in Nice. Anton was resigned, but severe: he would sit mornings only,
