Jolted over frozen ruts, Pavel was driven to Lopasnia. It was dark. The doctor put him on a train for Moscow. Three hours later he delivered Pavel to Professor Liovshin's clinic and vanished. Liovshin administered chloroform to the patient immediately.
Masha was with Vania that evening and still knew nothing. At 10.30 they received a second telegram, and she rushed to the clinic. Next Sunday she wrote to Anton:
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After 3 a.m. Professor Liovshin came down and started shouting at me for abandoning an old man - there was nobody with him. He said the operation had been difficult, that he was worn out, that he had cut out two feet of gut, and only a healthy old man could stand such a long operation… he took pity on me and started saying mat the operation was successful, that I could even hear my father's voice. He took me upstairs, I was surrounded by bloodstained house surgeons and I heard our father's voice, fairly cheerful. Again the professor addressed me and said that so far all was fine but anything could happen and told me to come back at 8 a.m. and to pray. Masha and Vania returned next morning and waited until i.oo p.m., when Pavel awoke, his pulse and temperature normaclass="underline" In the evening I found father far better, cheerful, amazingly well cared for! He asked me to bring mother, started talking about the doctors, saying that he liked it here, he was worried only by slight pain in his belly and black and red matter he was bringing up. Vania telegraphed Aleksandr, who caught the overnight Moscow express, bringing with him his camera and glass plates. On the morning of Monday 12 October he went straight to Vania's school house. His Rubbish Dump records: He was alone in the ward, all yellow from the bile… but fully conscious. Our appearance gave him much joy. 'Ah, Misha too has come, and Aleksandr is here!'… Two or three times in the conversation he said, 'Pray!' Pavel then began to show symptoms of gangrene, but Misha and Aleksandr repressed their mutual dislike, and the three brothers dined together at one of Moscow's best restaurants, Testov's. A second operation was performed. After dinner Aleksandr called at the clinic. The porter called out, 'It's all over.' Pavel had died on the operating table. Aleksandr wired an obituary to make New Times the next day.
Evgenia complained that four days of suffering was too little. Aleksandr felt that she believed 'the longer a man takes to die, the closer lie is to the Kingdom of Heaven: he has time to repent his sins.' Aleksandr wanted to photograph the body: The porter told me that father's body was still in the basement and for 20 kopecks took me there. On a sort of catafalque I saw my
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FLOW I HIN«. CI Ml I Ê Ê IES father's body, completely naked, wit li ëè enormous bloody plaster covering the whole belly, but the light made it impossible to photograph. The clinic refused to wash the body until Misha brought a new shroud. Misha, furious that Aleksandr had brought his camera, took charge, as the only civil servant. Aleksandr felt 'completely out of place and unwanted' and was taken to the station by Vania. (Misha and Aleksandr barely spoke to each other again.) Pavel was buried in the absence of his two eldest sons, Aleksandr and Anton. The funeral was a shambles. Masha took 300 roubles from her savings bank and borrowed another hundred. Sergei Bychkov, Anton's faithful servant in the Great Moscow hotel, followed the coffin to the cemetery. Misha wrote to Anton that the funeral was 'such a profanation, such a cynical event that the only thing I am pleased about is that you did not come.' Anton confessed that he felt all the more guilty: had he been in Melikhovo, the mishap might not have been fatal.62
Pavel, even if more resented than obeyed, had been a pivot on which life at Melikhovo revolved. Anton saw Pavel's death as the end of an era. Ignoring his mother and sister's wishes that they should stay on at Melikhovo, he told Menshikov: 'The main cog has jumped out of the Melikhovo machine, and I think that life in Melikhovo for my mother and sister has now lost all its charm and that I shall now have to make a new nest for them.' Anton found a young architect, Shapovalov, to design a house at Autka: he hoped it would be completed by April 1899. A week later Masha left Evgenia in the care of the lady teacher at Melikhovo, and took the train south for a fortnight. (Evgenia refused Misha's invitation to Iaroslavclass="underline" perhaps she loathed his letters addressing her as 'greatly weeping widow'.63) On 27 October Masha was greeted by Anton in Yalta: 'I've bought a building plot, tomorrow we'll go and look at it, amazing views.'
The Russian public felt for Anton. He was deluged with letters, while the papers worried about his own imminent demise. Misha urged Anton on 20 October: Buy an estate, marry a good person, but definitely get married, have a baby - that is a happiness one can only dream about… Let your
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future wife - somehow I'd like it to be Natasha Lintvariova or Aleksandra Khotiaintseva - arrange your life to be just happy.64 Misha wrote to Masha of Khotiaintseva: 'such a glorious person and so talented that I'd like Anton to marry her.'65 Anton thought of Lintvariova and Khotiaintseva as the salt of the earth, but not as potential wives. He was thinking instead of Knipper, annoyed that Petersburg's papers ignored her Irina. He shared Nemirovich-Danchenko's anger when Suvorin accused the Moscow Arts Theatre of plagiarizing others' productions. Nemirovich-Danchenko, recasting The Seagull, had told Anton: 'Suvorin, as you foretold, was Suvorin. He sold us in a week. To your face he was delighted with us, once in Petersburg he fired off a vile little article, I can't forgive myself for talking to him about joining his Company.'66
From Paris Anton received two photographs of a leaner Lika. One was inscribed: 'Don't think I really am such an old witch. Come soon. You see what just a year's separation from you does to a woman.' The other carried the words of a romantic song she used to sing to Anton: To dear Anton Pavlovich, in kindly memory of eight years' good relations, Lika. Whether my days are clear or mournful, Whether I perish, destroying my life, I know only this: to the grave Thoughts, feelings, songs, strength All for you!! (Tchaikovsky, Apukhtin) If this inscription compromises you, I'm glad. Paris 11/23 October 1898 I could have written this eight years ago and I write it now and I shall write it in ten years' time.
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IX
Three Triumphs ô Actresses: The ruin of the son of the family. Of frightful lubriciousness, go in for orgies, get through millions of francs, end up in the workhouse. Though there are some who make good mothers of families. Flaubert, Dictionary of Received Ideas ?
SIXTY-SEVEN
The Seagull Resurrected November-December 1898 IN YALTA ANTON MOVED from dacha to dacha, until Dr Isaak Altshuller took him in for a fortnight. Altshuller, though his surname suggested 'old card-sharp', inspired confidence, for he too had ÒÂ and would prescribe only what he took himself. Altshuller urged Anton to accept exile, and shun the fatal cold of Moscow. Then, until his own house was built, Anton settled in Au mur, a villa owned by Kapitolina Ilovaiskaia, a general's widow and ardent fan.1
Masha never forgot being taken to see Anton's building site at Autka: I was upset and annoyed that he had bought a site so far from the sea. When we reached it, what I saw was hard to credit. An old Tatar vineyard, fenced with wattle, not a tree, not a bush, absolutely no buildings… beyond the wattle fence was a Tatar cemetery and, naturally, a corpse was being buried while we were watching. It was the most grim impression. Only later did Masha appreciate the view of the Uchan-Su river tumbling down to the sea and of the steamboats far below arriving and departing. Her reaction upset Anton; back at Au mur, the villa where they were staying, she relented and sketched a plan of the house they would build.