At 4000 roubles, an acre of land was cheap. The promised railway was raising prices. Safe from casual visitors at Autka, Anton could receive 'subversives' and Jews, even though they were banned from Yalta. The Yalta Mutual Credit eagerly lent Chekhov money to build his house. Its director had the Autka mosque divert a pipe to give him the water for cement. Lev Shapovalov, hitherto an art teacher, only twenty-seven, made his name turning Masha's sketches into plans for a house with a half-Moorish, half-German facade. While the
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architect drew, Anton hired a Tatar contractor, Babakai Kalfa, to dig foundations and cart materials. Babakai had chosen a name for this idiosyncratic house, Buyurnuz, 'As you like it'. Friends - Tolstoy or Sergeenko - were perturbed at Anton's enormous financial commitments, for he was not sure whether 5000 roubles that Suvorin had given him was an advance or overdue payment. The Moscow Arts Theatre raised Anton's hopes of more money, and so did Suvorin with a proposal to publish all Chekhov in a uniform edition at a rouble a volume. Castles in Spain, however, did not pay for a castle in the Crimea; even at 30 kopecks a line, Chekhov, his strength waning, would now earn little from new work.
Yet Anton hung on to Melikhovo as a summer dacha. He reassured those who depended on Melikhovo: the postmaster, schoolteachers, district nurses, craftsmen, servants. He ran Melikhovo from afar: arbitrating between the female teachers at Talezh, who were feuding over firewood. He assured the bumbling Doctor Grigoriev, who had failed to save Pavel, that his reputation was unsullied. He defended the postmaster against anonymous accusations of abusing customers. Melikhovo, without either Pavel or Anton, nevertheless collapsed. While Masha was in Yalta, Evgenia, despite the company of a lady schoolteacher, trembled. 'Grief has overwhelmed me, I cannot live in Melikhovo,' she told Misha.2 When Masha got back she found her mother fraught: 'whether the samovar hums, or the stove whistles or a dog howls, it all produces fear and worry about the future,' she reported to Anton. Fire broke out nearby. Masha and Evgenia took servant girls to sleep in their rooms. The ground froze, but no snow fell, so that Melikhovo was virtually cut off from the railway.
On 13 November 1898 Anton gave his mother short shrift: 'After youth comes old age; after happiness, unhappiness, and vice versa; nobody can be healthy and cheerful all their lives… you have to be ready for anything. You just have to do your duty as best you can.' A week later snow fell. Masha locked up Melikhovo. Roman drove her by sledge, with linen and crockery, to the station. Evgenia and a servant, Masha Shakina, followed two days later. They stayed until spring in Masha's Moscow flat, in four small rooms, with borrowed furniture. Masha went back once a month, if blizzards allowed, to pay old Mariushka, Roman and the maid Pelageia. Melikhovo was doomed. The dachshunds were left to the servants and the yard dogs.
NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1898
Thieves dug up Varenikov's apple trees. Roman guarded Melikhovo, ringing bells through the night. Varenikov caught two lads and thrashed them.3 Varenikov then had the teacher Terentieva in tears by telling her he would now close Melikhovo school.
By December Masha wanted to join Anton in the Crimea, for she believed that she too was ill. 'I cough badly in the mornings, I have constant pain in the left chest.' The doctor prescribed quinine, codeine and stout. Anton told her that she had the family's bad lungs. Masha took a lively interest in the new house. Could Anton enlarge the rooms? Would Melikhovo have to go, to pay for this palazzo? 'No, and no,' replied Anton, but he prepared Masha and Evgenia for life in the Crimea. As governor of Yalta's girls' school and friend of its headmistress, Varvara Kharkeevich, Anton offered Masha a post as geography mistress there: the present geography teacher 'volunteered' his resignation. Anton told Evgenia that he was installing an American kitchen, a flushing lavatory, electric bells and a telephone; he was planting roses and cypresses; coffee and halva were cheap; stone houses did not catch fire; rheumatism would not trouble her; her Taganrog in-laws, Marfa and Liudmila, were a day's boat ride away; she could bring Mariushka to live with her; Autka church was a minute away. Anton then bought the Tatar house he had seen two months before at Kiichuk-Koy. Here Evgenia could keep a cow and a kitchen garden, while Masha, if she faced the rock climb, could bathe in the sea. Anton's boldness was astute. Soon he was offered four times the 2000 roubles he had paid.
Anton did not worry about Evgenia. Kundasova told him on 28 November: 'As for her mental condition, it is not gloomy, let alone depressed. In my view, Pavel's death has not affected her too much because she is a loving mother; her children are dearer than a husband to her.' Anton received more consolation for his own state of health than he could absorb. The provincial press alarmed everyone. All Simferopol was told: 'Ominous symptoms inspire serious concern for his life.' Anton sent angry telegrams; the papers retracted, but nobody was misled about his health. One school friend, Vladimir Sirotin, wrote of his own terminal condition. Another, Lev Volkenshtein, offered to do the conveyancing on Anton's property. Kleopatra Kara-tygina wrote in such distress that Anton telegraphed: 'Perfectly well safe sound respects thanks.' Aleksandra Pokhlebina, now a landowner
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at daggers drawn with her peasants, had seen lier old love with Masha in the Tretiakov gallery by his portrait, but had hung back. She broke four years' silence that November 1898: 'My heart is torn to pieces when I think what is happening to you. How happy I would be if I knew you were well… I feared the news of the loss of your father would finally undermine your health.'4 Dunia Konovitser sent chocolate. Natalia Lintvariova came to Yalta: she dithered and roared with laughter about the possibility of buying a plot of land herself.
Elena Shavrova was pregnant in Petersburg, while her ailing sister, Anna, kept Anton company in Yalta. He paid more attention, however, to the eighteen-year old Nadia Ternovskaia, a protegee of his landlady, Uovaiskaia. Nadia's father, a bullying archpriest, turned a blind eye to his daughter's excursions with Anton. Nadia was singled out, she later told her children, because she never talked of literature.5 She loved music passionately and played the piano for Anton, and she was very pretty. Yalta gossiped and Nadia's father made enquiries. Another Nadia - Suvorin's granddaughter, Nadia Kolomnina - flirted with Anton, but soon went back to Petersburg. She warned Anton that Ilovaiskaia's villa, which Nadia Ternovskaia frequented, 'is very damp, everyone knows that. Abandon it as quick as you can, take all your furniture and move to another palazzo.'6 Another woman tempted Anton: Olga Soloviova, a Valkyrian wealthy widow who owned the estate of Soguk-Su, next to Anton's Kuchuk-Koy.
Male company was all memento mori. Dr Vitte, from Serpukhov hospital, was in Yalta recuperating from a heart attack. He looked as if he had been 'run over by a train'. Anton himself was often too weak to walk uphill, sometimes even to leave his room, but Anton rejected radical measures. On 9 October the actress Vera Komissarzhevskaia had begged him: 'There is a Doctor Vasiliev in Rostov. You must go and let him treat you: he will cure you. Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it, I don't know how to ask you… It's awful if you won't, you'll just cause me pain. Do it. Yes?'7 Anton promised - if ever he was in Rostov - to contact this electrotherapist. His 'catarrh of the intestines' gave him constant diarrhoea. In late November a lung haemorrhage began. On the third day he summoned Altshuller: 'Je garde le lit. Young colleague, bring your stethoscope and laryngoscope.' Once the blood had been staunched, he asked Masha for his stethoscope, percussion hammer and ice-pack. He ordered comforts - a karakol hat, a cassoNOVEMHIH DI.CKMBER 1898 wary blanket, a samovar - from Muir and Mirrielees. Evgenia sewed him nightshirts. Vania sent him the pince-nez which he always forgot on his travels, and a new cork pad to stop it sliding off his nose. Anton wrote to Suvorin: 'Tell nobody, my blood frightens others more than me, so I try to spit it out furtively.'