AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 1896
wind… People travel to Bermamyt to watch the sun rise… It is always cold on Bermamyt and snow falls even in August and the temperature falls well below zero… The northeast winds that prevail at this time often strengthen at Bermamyt to hurricane level… It is especially important not to chill the stomach: it should be wrapped in a woollen cummerbund.19 The trip to Mount Bermamyt undoubtedly shortened Anton's life.
A day or two later, Anton made for the warmth of the Black Sea. Reaching Novorossiisk, where his brother Alexandr had been so unhappy, Anton was only a night's sailing from Feodosia. Suvorin had waited for him for eleven days. The ten days that Chekhov spent with Suvorin, regardless of his 'cretinous' sons, he would call the 'one bright spell' in 1895 and 1896. The fact that he wrote no letters is evidence of his bliss, not distress. He and Suvorin were more relaxed than ever in each other's company, even though - or perhaps because - Suvorin now deferred more to Anton, than Anton to Suvorin, and Anton saw clearly the flaws in Suvorin's character. On 22 August,it dinner with Shcheglov, Suvorin conceded: 'Chekhov is a man of flint and a cruel talent with his harsh objectivity. He's spoilt, his antOUt propre is enormous.' The same summer Chekhov told Shcheglov: 'I'm very fond of Suvorin, very, but, you know, Jean, sometimes at grave moments in life those with no strength of character are worse than evildoers.'20
Iavorskaia's marriage to the young Prince Bariatinsky was the topic of the day. Both were already married, and needed the Tsar's consent. The prince's mother was horrified, but the Bariatinsky sons needed Iavorskaia's earnings. Moreover, Bariatinsky, a budding writer, wanted a mascot. lavorskaia broke with Tania. Suvorin's diary echoes what he told Anton, who still had an interest in both women: 5 August. Shchepkina-Kupernik… was having lunch with lavorskaia and her husband Bariatinsky, the conversation touched on these two ladies' past, which there was so much gossip about. 'No smoke without fire,' said Tania… After lunch Iavorskaia-Bariatinskaia flew at Tania in front of her maid, speaking in French, accused her of gossiping and so on…'My husband is in hysterics,' she said… 'He doesn't want to see you again, and you must leave right now.' - 'But I'm just wearing a blouse, let me change.' - 'You can change, but that's all.' Tania left without even changing. She borrowed 500
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THE FLIGHT OF THE SEAGULL
roubles from me and is off to attend lectures in Lausanne. She is very upset. Suvorin noted Anton's sigh at the mention of Iavorskaia, but Anton was not seriously affected by her marriage. He was content to pass the warm Crimean days drinking, chatting in the sun, by the water. Suvorin's chief'cretin', as Potapenko called him, Aleksei the Dauphin, was elsewhere, usurping his father's power. Moscow and Melikhovo left Anton in peace: he merely read the proofs for the first third of 'My Life'. A few telegrams arrived from Petersburg. Potapenko had done Anton a final favour (in an act of ineffective benevolence or effective revenge), propelling The Seagull through the Imperial Theatre Committee. Unfortunately the play was given to the theatre least suited to Chekhov, the Aleksandrinsky theatre with its Sarah Bernhardt techniques, and its repertoire of French farce. The Seagull was to be directed by Evtikhi Karpov, who was inexperienced, unimaginative and cocksure. Worse, the first performance was set for Levkeeva's benefit night on 17 October. Levkeeva, a comedienne, would find in the heroine of The Seagull only a satire on her own career as an actress, and her followers would be outraged. The one good omen was that Potapenko and Karpov had cast some fine actors, notably Savina and Davydov, and the still unknown Vera Komissar-zhevskaia.
Suvorin, now sixty-two years old, was depressed as Anton left Feodosia: The earlier you are born the sooner you die. Today Chekhov said: 'Aleksei and I will die in the 20th century.' - 'You may, but for sure I'll die in the 19th,' I said. - 'How do you know?' - 'I'm utterly certain, in the 19th. It's not hard to see, when every year you get worse.' Unable to shake Suvorin's pessimism, Anton telegraphed Masha to have Roman meet the local train from Serpukhov with a coat and galoshes, and left the Crimea where the weather had turned as bitter as his host's mood. Suvorin accompanied him, and they stayed a day in Kharkov to watch a performance of Griboedov's Woe from Wit. On 17 September 1896 Anton stepped out in sunshine at Lopasnia. The burden of running Melikhovo had fallen on Masha and Pavel. She had bought four magnificent beams for the new school. Pavel had the
AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 1896
schoolteacher paper the annexe for Antosha's return, and then his own room. Four weeks in charge had restored Pavel's patriarchal confidence. He told Misha: We expected you for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, you had two government holidays, you could have come, but you refused to accept our hospitality and see us. Mother baked an excellent pie, sturgeon grisde with mustard oil, which you would have liked… For the cattle we made the same 40 tons of hay as last year, that's not enough. Mariushka only bothers Antosha with her ducklings and chickens, he will build a run in the cattle yard for the fowls, but she hatches them in her kitchen and feeds them there, they grow up and get into the garden. Our summer is still magnificent… All summer we have been eating mushrooms fried in sour cream. The clock goes well, on time and strikes every five minutes. The weathercock on the annexe spun nicely, but a storm has shaken it to bits. Chekhov had handed 'My Life' over to the censor, who baulked at the narrator's disrespect for a provincial governor and at the author having a general's widow take a drunken lover. The editors talked the censor round, and Anton was free of his story and of The Seagull; Suvorin had the script for the play and the Imperial Theatre Committee passed it for performance, albeit with condescension: the 'symbolism' or 'Ibsenism'… has an unpleasant effect… If that seagull weren't there the comedy would not change in the slightest… We cannot pass… quite unnecessary characterization, such as Masha taking snuff and drinking vodka… some scenes seem to be thrown onto paper haphazardly wim no proper connection to the whole, without dramatic consequentiality.21 The Imperial Theatre Committee represented Petersburg attitudes and made it clear how the city would receive the play. Chekhov nevertheless went ahead.
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FIFTY-FIVE
Fiasco October 1896 THE GLOW of Feodosia faded slowly. 'I'm overwhelmed by laziness. I was terribly spoiled in Feodosia,' Anton told Suvorin. He bought tulip bulbs, inspected his schools, treated his patients, agitated for a paved road from the station to the river Liutorka and sent Dr Obolon-sky a book 'in memory of the boar we killed on Mount Bermamut'. Lika reappeared the following week. Whatever had happened that August, her attitude to Anton was cooler. Letters stopped, and she came with a male companion (this time, the flautist Ivanenko). The day she arrived death struck Melikhovo: the brightest girl in the village, Dunia, died of a twisted gut. She was buried in the churchyard. Lika always took flight when any tragedy or even tumult struck Anton's household: she left with Ivanenko the next day, not to return, until Anton begged her a month later.
While he was away, Anton had transferred decisions on casting The Seagull from Potapenko to Suvorin and Karpov. Now that Lopasnia telegraph office was open, he sent countless messages to Petersburg, booking tickets and lodging for friends and relatives. Chekhov composed the audience as carefully as Suvorin and Karpov did the cast: the drama in the auditorium was to be as tense as the one on stage.
All summer Anton had helped others by stealth and been found out by accident. He paid half the school fees for a Taganrog boy, Veniamin Evtushevsky, the nephew of Anton's aunt Liudmila, and lobbied publishers to subsidize Dr Diakonov's journal Surgery. The same systematic organization behind the wings is characteristic of his love life and his new writing. To the two last weeks of August 1896, or the two first weeks of September 1896, we can ascribe one of Chekhov's most furtive achievements: rewriting The Wood Demon as Uncle Vania. He cut the cast by half, removing confidants and confi390