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the Bible, words unintelligible, but consolatory to them. From 'My Life' Chekhov takes the spectacle of the drunken thieving peasants who are more human than their masters, for they recognize the truth and justice that they have lost. This uncompromising picture was to anger Tolstoy and other self-appointed spokesmen of the peasantry. The school of protest writing welcomed Chekhov to its camp. r
4J7
FIFTY-NINE Ô
Cutting the Gordian Knot March 1897 LIUDMILA OZEROVA, Elena Shavrova, Vera Komissarzhevskaia and Lidia Avilova all called for Anton. So did Levitan. He wanted Anton to examine him, and to be painted for the Moscow's leading gallery-owner, Tretiakov, by the Petersburg artist Braz. Anton alerted Elena Shavrova, about to leave for Petersburg: Dear Colleague. The intrigant will arrive in Moscow 4 March at noon on train No. 14 - in all probability. If you haven't left yet, telegraph me just one word: 'home'… But if you also agree to have lunch with me at the Slav Bazaar (at 1 p.m.) then instead of 'home' write 'agree'. The telegraph operator may think that I've offered you my hand and heart, but what do we care what they think!! I shall come for one day, in a rush. Elena received the letter on 4 March - too late to respond. She searched the Great Moscow and Slav Bazaar, and left notes at Russian Thought, but he was 'as elusive as a meteor.' One note 'in deep despair' begged him to see her in Petersburg. But that evening Anton took his stethoscope to Levitan. He calmed the patient, but wrote to Schechteclass="underline" 'Things are bad. His heart doesn't beat, it gasps. Instead of a tick-tock you hear "fff-tock". In medicine we call that a systolic murmur.'
In the morning he was back in Melikhovo. Pavel had brought in the priest, to shrive the family and the servants in preparation for Easter. Dung was being tipped onto the greenhouse beds. Anton was short of money because the censor had held up 'Peasants' and Suvorin still had not found the contract for The Seagull. Aleksandr broached Suvorin on Anton's behalf and wrote up his adventures as a farce, celebrating a salmon that Natalia had just cooked. It began:
MARCH 1897
The Missing Contract or the Salmon Tail A Play in 5 Acts by Mr Goose Cast: Suvorins Porter; Suvorins footman, Vasili; A. S. Suvorin; Mr Goose; Mrs Goose Act 1. The spreader of enlightenment and builder of schools. Goose (entering Mr Suvorins hall, reading a letter). 'Put on your trousers and go and see Suvorin: ask where the contract and stamps are and why he persists in not answering my letters. I need the money desperately, since I'm building another school…' (aside) Bare-arsed educators! No money but building schools like water. Burdening me with things to do. Won't bother even to send me a pound of country butter or a piglet for the New Year… Governors, indeed, dog turds.44 Aleksandr came to stay for a few days with his two elder sons. (It was to be his last visit to Melikhovo.) They stayed in the cottage. Aleksandr was hoping for help: Kolia, expelled from grammar school, seemed doomed by the genes he had inherited, according to Aleksandr, from his mother's 'decaying landowner's family'. All evening the priest and Aleksandr drank beer. (Aleksandr had lapsed again.) In the cold morning sun, Aleksandr was sobered by a talk with Anton: My brother was hunched, warming himself in the sun looking mournfully at his surroundings. 'I don't feel like sowing or planting, or like looking into the future,' he broke the silence. - 'Stop, that's nonsense. You're just depressed,' I reassured him, aware I was being banal. - 'Now,' he said firmly, turning his face towards me. 'After my death I leave such-and-such to our sister and mother, and such-and-such for education.' On 9 March 1897 Aleksandr and his sons left. Kundasova came for two days. Nursing Brom, who had been mauled by a hound, and Quinine, whose puppy had died, Anton was withdrawn. The coming of spring, the ice breaking on the river and the prospect of a haemorrhage, Levitan's terminal illness, the commission for his portrait, all turned his thoughts to death. At tea his father sickened him: 'going on about the uneducated being better than the educated. I came in and he shut up.' Anton replied to neither Ozerova nor Shavrova. At last, the theatre contract for The Seagull had been replaced, and he had 582
418
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roubles, enough to visit Suvorin and the actors in Moscow, and Komis-sarzhevskaia and Avilova in Petersburg.
On 19 March, as the first starlings flew into Lopasnia, Anton was spitting blood. The next day Suvorin came to Moscow and settled in the Slav Bazaar. On 22 March Anton took his room in the Great Moscow, and in the evening he went to dine with Suvorin at the Ermitage. Before they had begun to eat, Anton clutched his napkin to his mouth and pointed at the ice bucket. Blood was gushing up uncontrollably from a lung.
VIII
Flowering Cemeteries Oh this South! Oh this Nice! Oh, how their radiance disturbs me! Life, like a wounded bird, Tries to arise - and cannot… Fiodor Tiutcher
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SIXTY Ô
The Doctor is Sick March-April 1897 STILL CLUTCHING ice to his blood-stained shirt, Anton Chekhov was taken by cab to Suvorin's suite, No. 40, at the Slav Bazaar. He fell on to a bed, telling Suvorin 'Blood's coming from my right lung; it did with my brother and my mother's sister.' They summoned Dr ()bolonsky, but he could not persuade Anton to go to hospital. Anton scrawled a note to Bychkov, his devoted footman at the Great Moscow, to send the proofs of 'Peasants' on his windowsill to the Slav Bazaar. The haemorrhage did not abate until morning. Anton was calm, though afraid, but his friends panicked. Lidia Avilova, invited to call, could not find him. Bychkov had been ordered to tell only Vania where Anton was.
/Ml day Chekhov and Suvorin stayed indoors. Anton asked Vania to call, as he was 'unwell'. Shcheglov came to see Suvorin. Thrilled to find his two idols together, he left without noticing Anton's perilous state.1 Anton too seemed to ignore it. Early next morning he told Suvorin that he had letters to answer and people to see back in the (ireat Moscow. Suvorin remonstrated, but Anton spent Monday there: he sent a touchy teenager a critique of her novel about fairies; he apologized to Avilova. He wrote, talked, and spat blood into the wash basin.
At daybreak on Tuesday 25 March Doctor Obolonsky was handed a note: 'Bleeding, Great Moscow No. 5, Chekhov'. Obolonsky took Anton straight to Professor Ostroumov's clinic by the Novodevichie cemetery, then went to the Slav Bazaar and woke up Suvorin. At 1.00 p.m. Suvorin saw Anton: Chekhov is in Ward No. 16, 10 above his 'Ward No, 6', as Obolonsky remarked. The patient is laughing and joking as usual, clearing his throat of blood in a big tumbler. But when I said I watched the
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FLOWERING CEMETERIES
ice moving on the Moscow river, his face changed and lie said, 'Has the river thawed?' Suvorin telegraphed Vania, revisited Anton and took the night train to Petersburg, where he tried to allay fears. Sazonova wrote in her diary: 'I'm told it's just haemorrhoidal blood, but they still put him in a clinic.'2 Aleksandr was alarmed by Suvorin's vagueness.