His spirits fell when he left the house on 20 November. Epifanov, a colleague from his freelance days, was in a hospice in Yalta. Anton found him lying in filth on a straw mattress. Epifanov asked for apple fudge. Anton brought him a piece. The dying man's face lit up; he hissed, 'That's the real thing!' In a day or two Epifanov was dead. Anton's notebooks brood on mortality and Yalta: 'aristocrats, commoners, the same revolting death'. He told Gorky: 'I am overwhelmed by consumptive paupers… they upset my sated and warm peace. We've decided to build a sanatorium.' He began an appeal for the penniless incurable intellectuals who were flocking to Yalta. Undoubtedly the example set by Chekhov was as great a lure for the sick as the reputedly therapeutic climate of the Crimean coast.
SEVENTY-ONE Ô
'In the Ravine'' November 1899-February 1900
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IN NOVEMBER 1899 Anton was composing 'In the Ravine'. It opens with an anecdote that Bunin had told him, of a deacon who ate all the caviare at a funeral. It then moves to sombre memories of Meli-kovo, and especially the Tolokonnikovs, the ruthless peasant-manufacturers. A novel in miniature, giving the lie to any criticism that Chekhov's plots lack action, 'In the Ravine' maps the collapse of the Khriumin family: a woman scalds to death her sister-in-law's baby, and drives her father-in-law into beggary. The 'ravine' is both a moral and a physical abyss: only the hills overlooking the ravine, where the victims wander and keep their faith, rise above the gloom. (At this time Anton was himself literally in a ravine, for the engineers were raising the Autka road by fifteen feet, so that 'every Amazon riding past can see what is happening in our yard'.)
He was distressed by death all round. On 27 December he told Prince Shakhovskoi: 'I am terribly bored and lonely because of an involuntarily virtuous life. I just drink a bit of wine.' A damp cold winter worsened his health. The Dutch stoves that the architect had installed worked badly: he asked Masha to send paraffin stoves. Evgenia and Mariushka found cooking an invalid's diet beyond them. Anton's 'catarrh' grew so recalcitrant, meanwhile, that he gave himself strong enemas. He had pleurisy and wore a compress over his left collarbone. His exercise was catching the mice that plagued the house (for cats now avoided his territory) in a humane trap on a bookcase and carrying them by the tail for release in the Tatar cemetery. The stray dog now sheltered on shavings in a shed and was named Kashtanka.
Yalta speculated about the source of'The Lady with the Little Dog'. When the weather cleared, women, originals or copies, appeared on the promenade with Pomeranians on leads. In Moscow Anton was
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in êii i êièì Ãös talked of even more. Uncle Vania was seen by members of the Tsar's family and by the Procurator of the Holy Synod, Konstantin Pobedonostsev, the Savonarola of Tsarism. Tolstoy noted in his diary: 'outraged'. He told Nemirovich-Danchenko that Telegin's guitar and the cricket chirruping (which the actor Vishnevsky had spent a month learning from a cricket in the Sandunov public baths) were the only good things. He told the actors that Astrov and Vania should marry peasant girls and leave the Professor's wife alone.
Masha was again in a whirl, enjoying the success of Uncle Vania and studying three times a week at an art school set up by Khot-iaintseva. She treated the exhaustion and headaches of her new life with injections of arsenic in her back. She taught at school; she sued Konshin, the purchaser of Melikhovo. She dined with Olga Knipper, Prince Shakhovskoi and his new love. 'Alas, the poor Princess! I have learnt to chat a lot and therefore feel fine in society… something like a salon has come of it,' she told Anton. She was also friendly with Olga's rival, Maria Andreeva, whom Anton found attractive. Aleksandra Khotiaintseva, Lika Mizinova, Dunia Konovitser and Maria Drozdova all gathered around Masha and Olga. Their pretext was that they were collecting money, by raffles and subscriptions, for Anton's projected sanatorium; they hoped, in vain, to be invited to Yalta.
There were violent winter storms. Neither the telegraph nor the mail boat could reach Yalta, and Olga's letters petered out. Anton felt isolated. Some of the Antonovkas reappeared, including Nadia Ternovskaia, who had been previously out of favour: Evgenia approved of her as a bride for Anton, even if she had no dowry. News of Nadia reached Knipper: on 19 January 1900 she wrote: 'Masha tells me that you're marrying a priest's daughter. I could come and admire your conjugal happiness and, while I'm there, disturb it a bit. We had an agreement - remember the Kok-Koz valley.' A month later Knipper was still joking: 'Tell your priest's daughter that she can hold you in her embrace since "that nasty woman" won't be coming until early spring.'
Exhausted by her roles in the Hauptmann play and in Uncle Vania, Olga bore her separation from Anton calmly. Anton was less calm about her liaison with Nemirovich-Danchenko. Masha hinted on the eve of his fortieth birthday: 'I want you to marry quickly, to take a
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clever, sensible girl, even without a dowry… I saw Nemirovich… wearing a coat with moire silk lapels.' Anton's next letter to Olga asked: 'Have you been carried away by the moire silk lapels? It's all the fault of the moire silk coat lapels.' Nemirovich-Danchenko told Olga, when she urged him to show Anton the theatre in Yalta, 'To the director you are valuable, to the author invaluable.' Maria Drozdova, still Masha's closest friend, met Olga, and a fortnight later wrote to Anton: Olga Knipper loves Nemirovich very much and doesn't love me at all… the great actress to judge by these photographs has put on weight and is better looking. I envy Nemirovich… You are seriously in love wim Knipper and want to go abroad, I think that's what you mustn't do. Anton joked that Olga's photo made her look like 'a Jewess… secretly studying dentistry, with a fiance in Mogiliov' and talked of summer abroad on his own. Olga rose to the bait on 5 February: 'That's unbelievably cruel… we shall be together in summer. Yes, yes, won't we, won't we?' Masha saw through Anton's stratagem: 'You try to scare us with your departures… some people get desperate when they hear you mean to go away.'
The beauty and the ministrations of the Antonovkas left Anton unmoved. In February 1900 Masha took Lika to The Seagull. Masha told Anton: 'She wept in the theatre, I suppose [in Pushkin's words] "memories unrolled before her their long scroll".' At the Moscow Arts Theatre, Lika fell for Aleksandr Sanin-Schoenberg, an officer turned stage director. She and Anton never spoke or wrote to each other again, even though Lika continued to meet Masha, Vania and Misha.
Melikhovo would not fade away. Three quarrelsome women teachers used Anton as their arbiter; he implored Serpukhov to relieve him of all civic duties. When Misha wondered if Masha missed the estate, as Evgenia missed her chickens and calves, Masha responded: The buyer came, I handed the lot to him and we left for Moscow… To this day I have been carefree and cheerful because I haven't got Melikhovo and God grant I shouldn't have, nor any unpleasant worries. I live surrounded by respect - thanks to our brother. I have lots of friends.
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Masha reached Yalta on 20 December and ended Anton's isolation. She took a cab to the house, for Anton was too ill to meet her, and forbade Evgenia to wait in the rain. After Masha came Levitan. Anton remarked how he missed Russian countryside, so Levitan asked Masha for cardboard and painted haystacks in the moonlight for Anton's fireplace. Anton's New Year festivities were muted. That Christmas Grigorovich died. Although they had drifted apart, Grigorovich still seemed to Anton to be the most influential of the Grand Old Men to have recognized his genius. Khudekov of The Petersburg Newspaper reported to Anton: 'He talked a lot about you; how deeply he felt for the "involuntary exile" doomed to live far from friends in boring, boring Yalta.' Anton had also drifted away from the Petersburg circles to which Grigorovich's notice had first given him access. After signing his contract with Marx and receiving Suvorin's last payments, Anton barely wrote to the Suvorin household, even though Emilie Bijon reproached him,39 and Nastia Suvorina, on the verge of engagement, sent outrageously flirting letters.40 Suvorin had lost Anton, but was gaining Misha, who, bored in Iaroslavl, on bad terms with his superiors, dreamed of writing for New Times. Suvorin tried to use the younger brother to lure the elder back. Misha wrote to Anton on 22 January 1900: Both, he and she, greeted me like a relative, poured out their souls to me for two whole evenings… The old man with tears in his eyes, Anna with burning cheeks, assured me how upset they were that relations between you and them had broken down. They love you very much. 'Misha, dear boy, I know why it's happened. Antosha would not forgive my paper its policies, that's it…' They are deeply aggrieved that you sold your works to Marx, not Suvorin. Anna blames her husband entirely… 'Aliosha, you know Anton. He's a gifted, decisive, bold man. One day he's here, the next he's off to Sakhalin.'… Suvorin has asked me to persuade you to buy your works back from Marx… Suvorin went on, 'I loved Anton terribly much, and still do. You know, he made me younger. I have never been so frank to anyone in my life as I have with Anton… I'd gladly marry Nastia to him.'41 Anton refuted Suvorin's version. 'I write for your eyes alone,' he replied to Misha, 'since you've been bewitched.' Suvorin's efforts nevertheless won over Misha, who became, a year later, his employee.