On 20 December Anton went to Moscow to prescribe not for Lika (whom he avoided, despite inviting her to Melikhovo), but for Levitan, whose heart was worn out and whose mind was ravaged by depression that twice brought him to the brink of death. Anton examined Levitan and noted: 'Levitan has widening of the aorta. He wears a patch of clay on his chest. Excellent sketches and a passionate thirst for life.' I le pressed Levitan to come to Melikhovo: the artist replied that he couldn't bear trains, and feared upsetting Masha. The approach of New Year enlivened Melikhovo. The stove-makers and carpenters left; a house painter papered the walls; mice were poisoned. Twenty flagons of beer were delivered. Misha and Olga came; Vania arrived alone. Pavel had the snow swept from the pond, so that the guests could skate. The widowed Sasha Selivanova, Anton's childhood sweetheart, partnered Vania on the pond. Gentry and officials gathered like rooks. Never had Melikhovo seen such a crowd. Those who could not come wrote. Usually they begged: Anton's cousin Evtushevsky wanted a job in Taganrog cemetery; Elena Shav-rova wanted a critique of her new story; a neighbour wanted a publisher for his article on roads. The strain told on Anton. Franz Schechtel had heard that he was
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ailing. 'You need to get married to a worldly, daredevil girl." Anton's reply was half serious: You obviously have a bride you want to get off your hands as fast as possible; but sorry, I can't marry just now, because, nrsdy, I have the bacilli in me, very dubious tenants; secondly, I haven't a penny, and thirdly; I still think I'm too young. When Shcheglov gave the same advice, Chekhov specified as a wife a 'blue-eyed actress singing Tara-ra-boom-de-ay'. As Lika drew back, Elena Shavrova came forward: 'I've been taking bromide and reading Charles Baudelaire… When will you be in Moscow? I'd like to see you. - You see, I'm being frank.' On New Year's Eve, she wished him 'love, lots of love: boundless, calm and tender.' Out of the blue, Emilie Bijon, governess to the Suvorins, whom Chekhov had known for ten years, was also emboldened: Vous trouvez peut-etre etrange de recevoir de mes nouvelles, je n'en disconviens pas, maintes fois je desirais vous ecrire mais au fond je sentais trop bien que je suis un rien et meme miserable en comparai-son de vous par consequent je n'osais risquer cette demande mais cette fois-ci j'ai pris le courage dans mes deux mains et me voici ecrivant quelques mots a mon cher et bon ami et docteur.39 Emilie was one of the most self-effacing of the women who pined for Anton. New Year approached. A sheep lambed. The Chekhov family dressed up as mummers and called on the Semenkoviches. Chekhov dressed his sister-in-law Olga as a beggar, and gave her a note: Your Excellency! Being persecuted in life by numerous enemies I have suffered for truth and lost my job and also my wife is ill with ventriloquy, and my children have rashes, therefore I humbly ask you to grant me of your bounty quelque chose for a decent person. Lika came with Seriogin and saw the New Year in. In the kitchen the servant girls, dropping wax onto cold saucers, looked into the future. Vania, in no hurry to get back to his family, took Sasha Selivanova to the Talezh school and put on a magic-lantern show. Whenever his guests let him, Chekhov would creep into his study to 'Peasants' and write, or cross out, a few lines.
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A Little Queen in Exile January-February 1897 PRETTY, SMALL, regal though forlorn, someone else had, like Emilie Bijon, brooded for months before sending Chekhov her New Year wishes for 1897: To my dear doctor, A. C. I have known ephemeral happiness And am plunged by you into an ocean of suffering. I am too weak to struggle - I am dying. The light of life is barely glimmering in my eyes… Liudinila «»/«-im.i "' Once Anton's guests had gone the family succumbed to (lulls, migraine and fever; the district nurse, Zinaida Chcsnokovt, wtl Of) constant call for codeine. Nursing his parents, writing 'Peasants,' plan ning his rest in the Great Moscow Hotel, Anton took another burden: the 1897 census. He agreed to supervise fifteen census-takers for tin-district and make returns for his village.41 It was a task as onerous as his survey of Sakhalin; the gain for 'Peasants' was not worth the drain on his strength. The house was besieged by officials and the piano buried in papers.
Kolomnin, Suvorin's son-in-law, sent them a new table clock to replace the clock that rain had stopped, but the post gave it such a hard ride that it arrived in fragments. Anton made another journey on 14 January to Bouret, who shook his head: the clock was beyond repair. It was a bad time for timepieces: that evening Anton invited Elena Shavrova to room No. 9 in the Great Moscow: he was there just that night, he told her, and could not leave the hotel. 'Despite Mrs Grundy, I shall come and see you,' she replied. Nevertheless, tbey went for a ride in a cab. In a journey around Moscow as eventful as Madame Bovary's with Leon around Rouen, Elena Shavrova lost
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the hood of her coat, broke a brooch, and her watch, which, she promised, kept good time, went haywire. After Elena returned to stay with her mother that night, she had, she told Anton, nightmares 'of poisoned men and women, and I blame you for that.'42
Anton stayed another night at the hotel. He called on Viktor Goltsev, who held a party every 15 January, although Masha had warned him that he would find Lika there. He actually seemed to be relieved by Lika's liaison with Goltsev. He and Goltsev calmly discussed their plans jointly to edit a newspaper.
After Anton went home, he devoted his energy until mid February to the census, the school for Novosiolki, and to 'Peasants', which he was now finishing. He even joined the Moscow doctors' campaign against corporal punishment. Lika faded from his life, and Elena Shavrova's affection was deflected into useful work. The performances that she was to put on in late February in Serpukhov were to be in aid of the new school. Anton treated Shavrova as he had Lika: he teased her too about other suitors, real or imaginary, as a pretext for his neglect. It needed only a few weeks of intimacy for Anton to feel an irresistible urge to tease, deflect and even repulse a woman.
Winter at Melikhovo was dominated by food: the family gorged, the animals starved - there was abundant livestock and little fodder. Pavel's diary records: 'We ate a goose… We ate a roast piglet… Half the hay in the barn is gone, God grant it lasts to spring. There's no more wheat straw. We've burnt all the brushwood, we haven't bought wood yet.' A dog was mauled to death by Zalivai, a new hound; Roman shot a cat. This grim tally, like the tedium of the census, was magnified into the horror of 'Peasants'.
Chekhov's thirty-seventh name-day was dismal. None of his brothers came: only the priest and the cantor. The census cast a pall. Chekhov was disturbed by angry demands from a person in Rostov: someone calling himself Anton Chekhov had been borrowing money. Halfway through his expected life span, he began to think religiously. His diary affirms agnosticism as a valid faith: Between 'God exists' and 'There is no God' lies a whole enormous field which a true sage has great difficulty in crossing. But a Russian knows only one of these two extremes and the middle between them doesn't interest him, which is why he knows either nothing or very little… A good man's indifference is as good as any religion.
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1897
()n 6 February, the census over, after attending a peasant wedding rind helping Quinine give birth to a single puppy, Chekhov fled to Moscow for a very wild fortnight, some of it with Liudmila Ozerova, who had written again on 31 January: 'Dear, very, very good Anton, You've probably forgotten her and she understands that she has no 11»:liis, but she begs, begs you not to fail to visit her as soon as you I ÷èí- to Moscow, The very littlest Seagull.' Their first night was not huppy. Liudmila wrote on 9 February: 'Perhaps it wasn't my fault, lint you recalled some other woman whom you love and that's why V«PII found me so repellent and despicable… Your little Queen in? die. P.S. Don't fail to come tomorrow.'' When Anton left Moscow to watch Shavrova performing in Serpukhov, Liudmila took the train wit li him as far as the outskirts of Moscow. Anton's enchantment with her had faded as soon as she fell into his arms. He wrote to Suvorin two days later: (iuess who visits me? What would you think? Ozerova, the famous «V/.erova-Hannele. She comes, sits with her feet on the sofa and looks sideways; then, when she goes home, she puts on her little jacket and her worn out galoshes with the awkwardness of a little girl ashamed of being poor. She's a little queen in exile. In his diary, Chekhov now called her 'an actress who fancies she is great, an uneducated and slightly vulgar woman'. Her feelings were very different: Dear Anton, I'm back! Moscow is empty and bottomless. And I don't doubt that you despise me deeply. But, amidst the gloom that surrounds me, your kind, simple, tender words have penetrated very very deep into my soul, and for the past eighteen monms I couldn't help dreaming how I'd see you and surrender to you all my sick, hurt soul and you would understand everything, sort it out, console and calm it, and instead I met Kolomnin [Suvorin's son-in-law]… I he first night, after you left, I got a very bad chill, and I spent the last day of Shrove Tide so ill that I didn't peck at my corn, and I can't wait for my little white birdy to fly to me, I am burning with desire to caress it as soon as possible. F.Icna Shavrova saw more of Anton than did Ozerova. The author of '(laesar's Wife' had her writings and acting as a pretext. She asked her cher maitre or 'a certain intrigant' to meet her. Anton coyly