Kolia was busy in Taganrog contacting old flames. He wrote in dog-French, German and Russian reassuring Aleksandr that Maria Faist, his fiancee, loved him: Quand je disais que tu are putting on weight elle disait toujours: Good boy!… I don't know how I shall leave here; Vater refuses to send any money. I told him if I'm not sent off by the 15th I'll steal it and go. Vater envoye pour moi de tabac, deja 2 fois Vania is such a little bastard that nobody gets any peace.29 Anton too reported to Aleksandr on Maria Faist - in dog-German. On 3 March 1876 he wrote his first surviving letter: Ich war gestern im Hause Alferakis auf einen Konzert, und sah dort deine Marie Faist und ihre Schwester Luise. Ich habe eine discovery gemacht: Luise is jealous of dich and Marie und the other way round. Sie fragten mich von dir separately, secretly. But was ist das? Du bist ein lady's man… Evgenia and Pavel were busy salvaging every penny owed to them. Selivanov's niece Sasha owed rent, but Selivanov had left for warmer premises and taken her with him. Evgenia could not afford a rouble a day to heat the house for her remaining tenants: they piled into the kitchen for warmth. Somehow in these conditions Anton gained '5's
1874-6
for Religious Knowledge and German. When Kolia left, his younger brothers and sister cried 'Take us too!', but it was not the children who were off to Moscow. At Easter, early in April 1876, a family council was held: Egor came from Krepkaia, leaving the blind Efro-sinia. He read his grandsons' letters from Moscow and agreed that Pavel had to seek his fortune there. Loboda saw no way out: bills of exchange were falling due. In Russia debtors' prisons existed until 1879 and, despite Pavel's status as police alderman, he risked confinement in the 'pit'. Evgenia told her father-in-law that there wasn't even money for the fare to Moscow. To her amazement, she told Aleksandr, 'he pitied us and gave money… I don't know how to thank him for all his benefactions, he's old and works hard for all his children, for God's sake write to him and thank him, he's already given Kolia 10 roubles.' Egor was dismayed by his sons. In Kaluga Mikhail had died; in Taganrog Mitrofan was just keeping his head above water; Pavel was about to flee in disgrace.
Plans were made to abandon ship. Loboda would not buy the stock. The family hid their unsold wares in the stable. Evgenia hovered between despair and wild hope. She wrote to Aleksandr and Kolia on 8 Apriclass="underline" 'Anyone who meets me will be amazed, I've aged all at once, could you give Papa any more, or might we find a little shop in Moscow to rent…'30
Evgenia scraped together 11 roubles for Kolia's fees at College and handed the money, with Easter eggs and cake, to a Taganrog merchant leaving for Moscow. She packed Pavel's bags. The market stall was locked up and the keys entrusted to Ivan Loboda's younger brother, Onufri. The deadline for Pavel's payment of 500 roubles to the Mutual Credit Society passed. The guarantor, a merchant called Kostenko, paid the 500 roubles and counter-sued Pavel. The builder, Mironov, was suing for the 1000 roubles owed to him.
On 23 April 1876, before dawn, Pavel left Taganrog by cart, so as to evade his creditors' spies at the railway station. He went to the first country halt in the open steppe where the Moscow-bound train would stop. At 2.00 p.m. on 25 April he was in Moscow. In Taganrog Anton took over his father's battle for survival.
40
•I»
SIX
ô Destitution
1876
THE YEARS FROM 1876 òî 1879 were traumatic in Anton Chekhov's life. His letters to his father and brothers in Moscow have mostly been lost, but their letters to him, as well as his mother's and his Uncle Mitrofan's letters, show unremitting hardship and fear of worse.
At sixteen Anton became the head of the household, dealing with creditors, debtors, relatives and friends of the family whose sympathy was limited, coping with his mother's misery and his younger siblings' dismay. Gavriil Selivanov showed himself a hard-headed businessman as well as a family friend: the grim comedy of The Cherry Orchard with the auction, the transformation of Lopakhin from friend into predator and the dispersal of the household to the four winds originated in Chekhov's adolescent years in Taganrog. Gavriil Selivanov played Lopakhin to the improvident Chekhovs. Anton, distress forging both his willpower and his reserve, grew strong.
In this debtor's hell, surprisingly, Anton's marks at school improved. The theatre and private concerts continued to occupy him, and he also went to classes with Taganrog's dancing teacher, Vrondy.31
Anton had already started a handwritten class-magazine, The Hiccup. Aleksandr, when sent an issue in September 1875 and two issues early in 1876, was encouraging, and he showed them to cousin Misha Chokhov. Everyone in the Gavrilov warehouse, including its owner, Ivan Gavrilov, found them amusing. In 1876 a wider window on the world, in the form of the Taganrog Public Library, opened for Anton. The school authorities were reluctant for pupils to use it: the school library had a restricted range of books, cutting pupils off from radical works, or anything seditious, such as the new satirical weeklies and monthly journals - the staple diet of the Russian intellectual. (In school only Father Pokrovsky subscribed to such 'subversive' journals
1876
as Notes of the Fatherland.) Anton joined the library in January 1877, sometimes retrieving his two-rouble deposit to buy food.
The Moscow and Petersburg satirical weeklies influenced all of Taganrog's youth. Destined for the newly literate of the metropolis, for uninhibited students and new professionals, these journals showed irreverence to received ideas and prominent personalities. They encouraged their readers to submit their own pieces - comic sketches, caricatures, polemical articles - for publication and payment. Anton began to submit his own anecdotes for Aleksandr to edit and market through his university contacts. Pavel's first letters from Moscow are full of pathos. Penniless, dependent on his student sons, he was apparently blind to the irony of the situation. From the day after his arrival he continued to dictate: Dear beloved Evochka, Antosha, Vania, Masha and Misha, I arrived safely yesterday in Moscow at 2 in the afternoon. Kolia met me at the station and we got a cab and went to the Flat, where Aleksandr was waiting for us. They were very pleased mat I had come. After a talk, we went round Moscow and then to the Dining Rooms for a good dinner. Three dinners cost 60 kopecks and one bottle of kvas 7 kopecks. I saw the college where Kolia is studying, the university, the Post Office, the Telegraph, the 'Saviour in the Pine Grove'. When we went up there to pray, we were shown the most Sacred relics of St Stefan of Perm… The flat is suitable for three, the. landlady is kind, I was only astonished tliat they never lock their room when they leave, they say there's no need, but a hired servant does the cleaning and might take something, God grant tiiat it is safe… Moscow is not like our Taganrog, there's endless noise, people bustling, the people live the lives they should, mere is order in everything, everyone knows their business… I ask you children to listen to Mama, do not upset her, don't argue with each other, do your homework properly. Vania, see you make an effort. The exams are soon. Farewell, my dear ones. I am always with you. P. Chekhov.32 Pavel and his two elder sons now lodged in one room in a house belonging to a Karolina Schwarzkopf and her family, the Polevaevs. The house was on the sleazy Grachiovka ('Rookery', also known as the Drachiovka, 'Rip-off, or Brawl Alley', but now Trubnaia street);