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i ï in i i HI itì 141.s told Dr Sredin in Yalta, Nice was paradise and Yalta was Siberia: people here were happy, with no magistrate and no 'puffy-faced Marxists'. A week later Anton saw Nemirovich-Danchenko's mortally ill sister Varvara in Menton, stopping on the way in Monte Carlo. Anton gambled with his friend Franz Schechtel for two weeks, won 500 francs and exclaimed to Olga 'How much Russian money is being lost here'.
The Nemirovich-Danchenkos joined Anton on the Cote d'Azur. To please Olga, perhaps, Anton belittled Nemirovich-Danchenko's wife 'Kitten', whom he had once liked: 'Nemirovich is under house arrest: Katichka won't let him a step from her side, so that I don't see him… she's just like a merchant's wife…' Nemirovich-Danchenko had been unwilling to talk about Three Sisters at first, but he came to love and understand it as the weeks went by. Stanislavsky did not write about it until mid January. He was puzzled about the death of Tuzenbakh: should the body not be carried across the stage, could Anton insert a crowd scene to explain the sisters' calm? These queries did not distress Anton so much as Stanislavsky's delusion that the play ends with 'the author's uplifting thought which will redeem the play's many depressing minutes'. Nemirovich-Danchenko was practicaclass="underline" he demanded cuts in the sisters' monologues. So did Olga, who found Masha - the one passionate sister, the challenging role Anton had written for her - difficult to act.
Olga was worked to exhaustion by Nemirovich-Danchenko. He wanted her to feel 'the tone' of her part in the new play. When Masha and Evgenia left for Yalta on 19 December, Olga collapsed with a bad cold. She went deaf, took morphine and went to bed. Performances were cancelled, but she did not mope. Had Anton met 'beaucoup de jolies femmes… Ecrivez-moi si vous ó trouvez de bien interess-antes'. She made him write to his mother - 'Why upset the old woman? She'll think I made you change towards her.' Obediently he sent Evgenia 10 roubles and a card every three days. Masha, however, angered Anton. She had delayed banking 15,000 roubles received from Marx: 'not careless, simply swinish'. Masha cried at the injustice of his fury. When he sent instructions to Yalta on repairing the stoves and digging round the fruit trees, she would not reply. He had to ask Dr Sredin if Autka and its inhabitants were safe. 'My family, darling, don't spoil me,' Anton commented to Olga.
DECEMBER I900-FEBRUARY I90I
Masha and Evgenia had caught the servants Arseni and Mariushka unawares: the house was unheated, moths had eaten a bedside rug and the divan had collapsed under the weight of old newspapers. Masha looked at the garden and told Anton it was bare. He replied tersely that everything was planted to plan and in five years' time she would see that he was right. The crane that had flown away came back, but it injured itself when it began to dance with the one-eyed crane that had stayed behind: it lay dying in the kitchen. Yalta was cold and Masha was lonely. Olga wrote to Anton: Bunin has been with me today, his nerves all shattered, he doesn't know what to do with himself; I am sending him to Yalta; he's angry at Masha for letting him down and keeping her departure quiet, but she was delayed here and did not know what to do, afraid of tying him down. He is talking about Nice. On Christmas Eve Bunin left for Yalta. He was a godsend. He lived downstairs next to Masha and worked in Anton's sunny study. She called him Bouquichon; he called her Amarantha. Masha's letters to Anton began to sparkle and, while Arseni dug the garden, Bunin appended verses in her name:
Snow falleth, blizzard bloweth:
I have fled down to the south.
Here the cold is not a joke,
Bunin and I look at the views.
All day widi wood the stoves we stoke
And go for walks like little ewes.'8
Masha did not want to teach any more, or cope with Anton's ungrateful finances. She told Olga on 3 January 1901:
Bunin escorts me… I have no time to visit [the sick]. I saw the New Year in at the Elpatievskys' with Bunin and yesterday I went to another fancy dress ball in the Kursaal - pretty good… In Yalta people are dying like flies, several friends died after the holidays -it's loathsome.'9
Ever a dutiful sister, however, Masha left the balls and returned to Moscow on 12 January. Thanks to Bunin, at least she could leave Evgenia behind in Autka. Evgenia was happy: Bunin showed her more affection than her children. She told Anton: 'I've stopped being afraid,
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I've calmed down, as if I've arrived in paradise.' Bunin explained to Anton that his country estate was as cold as the North Pole, whereas in Chekhov's sunny study, while the Tatars hammered paving stones into the driveway, he scribbled and read. For a whole month Bunin deputed for Anton and Masha. Anton approved and Masha wrote Bunin affectionate notes.
Misha had a different view of life at Autka and wrote to Vania: 'Mother has been left on her own in Yalta… It is a sin, a bad sin. If the old woman gets ill, there's nobody to give her water. Poor Mama!' Misha had a newborn son and wanted Evgenia in Iaroslavl to help, but she stayed in Yalta. On 15 February 1901, the day Anton was due back, she wrote: Misha, you write strange things about our life, especially to Masha, why she isn't staying in Yalta, but what would she do here, you ought to ask, and also you mention my going to Moscow and back to Yalta, even now I'm embarrassed at burdening Antosha with the expense, but what can you do, I was so unhappy, I couldn't live, Antosha saw that and he suggested it… Please tear up this letter. Why do you imagine Antosha has thousands? He never did, Meli-khovo was 23,000, 5 for the bank, 8 owed, we've got only 5 thousand. The Yalta land cost 5000 and the house, outsiders built it and ran up a big sum, Gurzuf, he's taken a lot of money from Marx too, there's not much left, he can't hold on to money. Once she had found a new place to live in Moscow Masha went to see Misha in Petersburg. He had sent four letters begging her to come: he was burning his boats, planning a new life working for Suvorin. When she got back to Moscow, Masha wrote firmly to Misha that Anton and she had no spare money.
Olga Vasilieva had busied herself in Nice searching the newspapers for news of deserving poor that she could help. She now wanted to sell a house she owned in Odessa and put the proceeds towards a clinic. In Moscow that summer Anton had been approached by Dr Chlenov, who, despite the puns (his name meant 'penis'), wanted to found a clinic for Moscow's syphilitics. Anton decided to direct Olga Vasilieva towards this venture and became embroiled in the sale of her property and the making of Dr Chlenov's clinic, a project which never came to fruition. In mid January Anton felt that he had exhausted the human material
DECEMBKR I9OO-FEBRUARY I9OI
in the pension. He told Kovalevsky that he had exhausted Yalta too, and that leaving Melikhovo, where he knew about life in forty villages, had been a creative disaster. Once again he wanted to go to Algiers. Kovalevsky prevaricated: he saw that Anton was even iller than three years ago. He told him the sea was too rough, and then refused outright. With Kovalevsky and Professor Korotniov, Anton took instead the coast road to Italy. Olga Vasilieva begged him not to forget her, and left for Geneva. Anton and his companions stopped in Pisa, then went to Florence. On 30 January 1901 they went to Rome. Anton's mood grew grim: he told Kovalevsky he was writing nothing long, because he would soon die. Anton stayed four more days in Rome and watched a penitential procession in St Peter's. Asked how he would describe it, he replied, 'A stupid procession dragged past.'60 Feeling deserted by his friends, Anton took trains from Rome to Odessa and, despite his status as an academician, was harassed by the Russian customs. In Odessa he had an estate agent value Vasilieva's house. On 15 February 1901, across terrible seas, he arrived in a freezing Yalta.
Anton had been travelling for three weeks. He had missed the furore surrounding Three Sisters. Olga had wired the news of the play's triumph to Nice: 'Grand succes, embrasse mon bien aime', but news took a long time to reach Anton. Rehearsals had been troubled: the ex-colonel the theatre had hired to make the military dress and behaviour authentic had dared to overrule Stanislavsky. Olga had argued against the heavy red wig that Stanislavsky wanted Masha to wear. The opening night of Three Sisters on 31 January 1901 confirmed Chekhov as Russia's greatest dramatist and Moscow Arts Theatre as its leading theatre. The public saw their lives enacted: the three sisters stood for all educated women marooned in the provinces. Olga as Masha had every unfaithful wife in the audience in tears. So moved was the audience that the curtain fell to total silence.