Pavel had cause to be irritable. In spring 1875 he could not pay his dues for the Second Guild of Merchants and was expelled from the guild and demoted to a simple meshchanin. This entailed loss of privileges for himself and, worse, for his male offspring (if they failed to become university graduates) - as meshchane they became liable to corporal punishment and six years' military service. That spring Anton failed his Greek examinations and had to repeat the fifth year.
The summer holidays of 1875 were the last that the Chekhov brothers were to spend all together, fishing with a special moving cork float that Anton had devised. The boys took with them a frying pan and, if Pavel was out of the way, a bottle of Santurini wine, and cooked their catch on the shore.
In the summer of 1875 Anton was first invited by the family tenant, Gavriil Selivanov, to stay with one of his brothers, Ivan Selivanov (a notorious gambler) and the latter's new wife, a rich widow. It was the first of four or five unforgettable occasions on which Anton went to live on a semisavage Cossack ranch, where the livestock and the }2
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Ukrainian peasants were terrorized by the incessant carousing and gun shots from the house. In 1875, on his first visit, after bathing in a cold river, Anton became for the first time so ill that Ivan Selivanov panicked in fear for the boy's life, and drove him to Moisei Moiseich, a Jewish innkeeper. The innkeeper sat up all night applying mustard poultices and compresses to the sick boy, and over the next few days the innkeeper's wife nursed Anton to a state fit for the cart-ride back to Taganrog. (Moisei Moiseich and his wife inspired the Jewish innkeepers in the story 'Steppe' written twelve years later.) In Taganrog Anton's 'peritonitis' was treated by the school doctor, Doctor Schrempf from Dorpat in Estonia, who inspired Anton to take up medicine as a career. After this illness, Anton took an interest in (ierman, the language of instruction at Dorpat, and showed unsuspected motivation.
That summer of 1875 Aleksandr had matriculated with a silver medal. Despite their poverty, the family decided to send both Aleksandr and Kolia to Moscow, Aleksandr to study mathematics and science in Moscow University, and Kolia to enrol at the Moscow College of Art and Architecture, which willingly accepted students, even if they had only completed half their secondary education, on a portfolio of work. As Tsar Alexander II and his ministers planned more wars, military conscription (for six years) was in 1874 extended: not just the peasantry, but also sons of any class who failed to secure exemption, were liable. If they enrolled in university, the spectre of military service receded; if they graduated it melted away for ever. On 7 August 1875, their luggage packed by uncle Mitrofan, Pavel's two eldest sons took the train to Moscow. They were not friendless there. They would soon be joined by a fellow student from Taganrog, Gauzenbaum; the wealthy Ivan Loboda, a frequent traveller, would check up on them. Apart from fellow students from Taganrog they would find in Moscow their twenty-four-year old cousin from Kaluga, Mikhail [Misha] Chekhov (or Chokhov as many pronounced his surname). Misha was a clerk in Gavrilov's wholesale haberdashery firm of Gavrilov, agent for Coats Paisley's threads. Gavrilov supplied many Taganrog merchants, notably the Lobodas, and had even dealt with Pavel Chekhov. Mikhail, however different in his shop boy's background from his educated provincial cousins, was a sharp 'likely lad' who could find them cheap lodgings.
1874-6
The shock of the big city was considerable, particularly for Kolia who was less resourceful and who had to prove himself to the College of Art. Aleksandr, however, wrote a blase letter on his twentieth birthday:27 We arrived safely. We met Misha. When we talk to him we use the polite Vy just like papa and uncle. I think we are going to get on with him… The hotel is real rubbish. The table somehow dances and limps on one leg. The samovar is like a drunk… My respects to his Excellence Anton as the oldest child in the house… If Vania knew how plump the women are in Moscow. But don't tell him or he'll be seduced… Kolia is spitting in all the corners and under the table. He kept crossing himself on die journey. We are quarrelling over mat… Misha is very kind. We haven't found a flat yet. When someone is coming to Moscow, send the violin, a balaclava, my galoshes and my pen… That same day Kolia explained why he spat and crossed himself against the evil eye:
… the rail journey was shaky to Kursk and at one place our train nearly crashed into a goods train, if it hadn't been for a circle blocking the track. All the passengers were very scared… after tea we went in search of cousin Misha. We asked for him [at the warehouse] and he appeared. A real dandy, quite unrecognizable from his photograph… we answer, 'don't you recognize us?' 'Yes, judging by what Ivan Loboda tells me, if I'm not mistaken.' 'We're your cousins', says Aleksandr.28 Two days later, the brothers were installed in the first of many lodgings, 'Furnished Rooms over the Smyrna Dining Rooms', two minutes from the Art College and twenty from the university. Moscow landladies disliked students, but the brothers' charm worked. Their land-lady told them, said Kolia: 'No rows: play, sing, dance, the only thing that frightens me is rows. Of course you're young men and I have no right to forbid you anything.'
Aleksandr was enrolled, but Kolia was embroiled in misunderstandings that sapped his will power. On 13 August Aleksandr (who had his father's obsession with accounts) broached the subject of money: Enrolling in the University cost me 1 rouble. If [Kolia] passes his examination he won't be able to pay the whole fee: he has to pay
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30 silver roubles by 10 August… The flat costs us [each] per month 5.33, board 6.50, bread and tea 1.50, laundry 1, lighting 1.50, total 15 roubles. We can't live on less… Kolia doesn't know about this letter. He has gone completely dozy, just crosses himself all the time and touches the icon with his forehead. Four days later Aleksandr was still complaining: 'Damn Kolia's pomade. He's been carefully greasing his hair and combing it in with both combs, so that I have got my hair terribly greasy.' Pavel was not interested in his sons' hair. He planned to get Aleksandr to buy goods wholesale on credit and send them to Taganrog. Aleksandr was set against this and, using cousin Misha as a commercial authority, told his father why: Firstly, when Loboda finds out, he'll undercut you in Taganrog… secondly, you can only buy for cash in Moscow…, thirdly, buying on credit costs three times more…, fourthly, Moscow will ask Loboda what sort of person you are, and Loboda will naturally say as suits him: fifthly, Loboda is an expert… sixthly, Loboda is in place and has customers; seventhly, Loboda will squash us with his prices; eighthly, you will inevitably quarrel with him. And now consider Misha's position… he will lose his reputation and his boss will look askance… Keep struggling with the grocery. For the first time, the tables had turned. Pavel had lost his authority and his sons were finding independence. Aleksandr could as a silver medallist always find private pupils in Moscow. Acrimony between him and his father poisoned their relations, though Aleksandr sympathized with Pavel as Taganrog's merchants squeezed him: 'because of some bastard who is only concerned about his ugly mug you and I have to suffer, the thought makes me spit blood.'