kind as to continue offering comfort and support to my mother, who is physically and mentally in a very poor state,' he wrote to his cousin soon after his return. 'She regards you not just as a nephew, but as something much more. My mother's character is highly susceptible
to the strong and positive influence which comes from moral support of any kind from a third party. Well, that is a pretty silly request, isn't it? But it is one you will understand, especially as I speak of 'moral', that is to say spiritual, support. To us, nothing in this malicious world is more dear than our mother, and therefore you would exceedingly oblige your humble servant by taking care of his half-dead mother.'3 The effusive language of this letter (one of the very earliest to have survived) is typical of Chekhov's early epistolary style, and is matched by a suitably extravagant calligraphy full of flourishes and curls. Both the style and the calligraphy were to be drastically pared down as he grew older.
Another of the few surviving early letters Chekhov wrote at this time shows the seventeen-year-old's charming naivety. 'Not long ago I went to the Taganrog theatre and compared it with your Moscow theatres,' he wrote to Mikhail that November. 'There is a big difference! And there is a big difference between Moscow and Taganrog.'4 Meanwhile, Chekhov continued to receive desperate letters from his out-of-work father. Even though he was only just about managing to keep his head above water himself by working as a tutor, he was expected to send money to his family in Moscow. 'We don't have a kopeck, please send us at least three roubles,' wrote Pavel Egorovich in one letter; 'we've nothing to pawn. I am dying of grief .. . even if you have to borrow, send us money, or sell something… all hope is on you.'5 It was a terrible burden for a teenager to have to assume responsibility for the welfare of his parents. But Pavel Egorovich also made it clear how much he and his wife appreciated their son's help:
Where there is money, there is honour, respect, love, friendship and all good things, but where there is none – oh, that makes things tough! The people around you become quite different. . . Antosha! Remember this when you grow older, be a benefactor to all who ask your help, never turn your back on the poor. Your parents are an example. How we now appreciate every donation, every gift, sent from God through good people.6
The very fact that these early letters have been preserved, surviving endless moves in the 1870s and 1880s says a great deal about how much Chekhov took his father's letters to heart.
Chekhov moved permanently to Moscow two years later, a year after his Aunt Fenichka had moved north to join the family. Passing his final exams at the gymnasium made him eligible to become a student at Moscow University, and in September 1879 he was admitted to the medical faculty. His destitute parents had been counting on his arrival, sending him regular letters in which they reminded him of the importance of keeping on the straight and narrow and working hard until he graduated. 'When you finish your university course and are given a job, you can do what you like,' wrote Pavel Egorovich on 1 January 1879, 'but it is bad and harmful for young people to go out on the town all night without sleep and then sleep until one o'clock the next day; that means studying is wasted, etc. It is not a rare occurrence in Moscow, but an actual fact, Antosha!'7 This was precisely the lifestyle favoured by Alexander and Nikolai, and Anton was increasingly looked upon as the family's salvation. 'Beloved son Antosha,' wrote his mother a month later, 'we are in great need now … If you could come as soon as you can.'8 'I've had an awful time waiting for letters from you,' she wrote in June; 'I miss you very much.' Occasionally Misha chipped in to let his elder brother know about his latest exam results or the aquarium he had set up (only the goldfish were too expensive, he lamented), but most of the letters from Moscow exhorted Chekhov to trust and obey his Papasha and Mamasha, his true friends, rather than follow his own instincts, and to follow the true light of religion. And then, when his final exams were over, Chekhov was instructed to sell their remaining possessions, as even a few kopecks made a difference to their meagre income. They had been forced to sell his mother's silver spoons, much to Evgenia Yakovlevna's dismay, and at one point were crammed into one room, with two of the boys having to sleep in a cubbyhole under the stairs. Pavel Egorovich would not have parted with the family icons, but the only other decorations were their cheap pictures of London, Venice and Paris – cities which they could only dream of visiting.9
Chekhov's family had moved twelve times since migrating to Moscow. He joined them in a dank basement flat owned by the Church of St Nicholas-on-Grachevka, in an insalubrious part of the city near the red light district. Grachevka Street was notorious for its hardened criminals. Bolshoi Golovin Lane, where the family moved to next, was
full of brothels. Nearby was Trubnaya Square, or Truba as it was commonly known, named after the pipe (the truba) in the white city wall through which the little Neglinnaya River trickled. Trubnaya Square was famous for its Sunday pet market, and every spring on the Feast of the Annunciation, hundreds of goldfinches, chaffinches and siskins would be set free. This was in keeping with a tradition whereby all respectable Russians considered it their duty to let at least one bird free on Annunciation Day. Chekhov was to live in this area for the next six years, and one of his most memorable early works was a vignette about the Trubnaya Square market. Nikolai Leikin, the editor to whom he submitted it for publication in the new Petersburg journal Fragments, thought it had too much of a Moscow flavour and promptly rejected it. 'In Moscow on Truba' appeared in November 1883 in the Moscow-based The Alarm Clock instead.10 After Fragments, The Alarm Clock was the most popular comic journal in Russia, and was certainly more established, having been founded in 1866. Some of Chekhov's earliest Moscow memories found their way into this brief but vivid piece, which clearly made him homesick for the steppe and his bird-catching days in warm Taganrog. Even at this early stage, Chekhov was beginning to develop a distinctive style:
Hundreds of sheepskins, winter coats, fur caps and top hats swarm like lobsters in a pot. You can hear the many-voiced singing of birds, which reminds you of spring. If the sun shines or if there are no clouds in the sky, the singing and the smell of hay makes you day-dream and carries your thoughts far, far away. A row of carts extends at one end of the square. On the carts you will not find hay, cabbages or beans, but goldfinches, siskins, demoiselle cranes, larks, black and grey thrushes, blue-tits and bullfinches. They are all jumping about in clumsy homemade cages, looking with envy at the free sparrows and warbling. The goldfinches will go for five kopecks, the siskins cost more, and the other birds have a completely unfixed price.
'How much is the lark?'
Even the man selling them does not know how much his lark is. He scratches the back of his head and says whatever figure comes into his head – either a rouble or three kopecks, depending on who is buying. There are expensive birds too. On a soiled little pole sits a faded old thrush with a scrawny tail. He is respectable, pompous and motionless, like a retired general. He gave in to his captivity ages ago and has been looking at the deep blue sky with indifference for a long time now. He is probably considered a sensible bird because of his indifference. You cannot sell him for less than forty kopecks. Thronging round the birds are schoolboys, workmen, young people in fashionable coats, enthusiasts in unbelievably threadbare hats and trousers so shabby they look as if they have been eaten by mice.11
As well as birds, there were hares, rabbits, hedgehogs, guinea-pigs and ferrets on sale, and then there were fish:
The fish section is the most interesting. There are about ten muzhiks sitting in a row. In front of each of them there is a bucket and in these buckets is a small inferno. In the green, murky water teem little carps, burbots, minnows, snails, frogs and molluscs. Large water beetles with broken legs dart about on the surface, clambering over the carps and hopping over the frogs. The frogs climb over the beetles, the molluscs climb over the frogs. As a more expensive fish, the dark green tench have an advantage: they are kept in a special jar where they cannot exactly swim about, but they have a bit more room to breathe . . .
