On Thursday 24 May 1901 Anton took Vania on an errand, near the clinic where their father had died. He sent his last proofs to Marx and had his mail directed to Aksionovo, a village half way between the Volga and the Urals. He received a telegram from Dr Varavka:
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'Welcome. Have place.' Anton then wired Olga: 'I have everything ready. Need meet before i to talk. We definitely leave Friday.' That day Masha could contain her jealousy no more and, despite her close friendship with Olga, told Anton: Now let me express my opinion about your marriage. Personally I find the wedding procedure awful. And you don't need these extra worries, if you are loved you won't be abandoned and there is no sacrifice involved… It's never too late to get tied. Tell that to your [sweetheart erased] Knipper woman. The first thing to think about is getting you well. For God's sake don't think I'm guided by selfishness. You've always been the person closest and dearest to me… You yourself brought me up to be without prejudices. My God, how difficult it will be to live two whole months without you, what's more in Yalta… If you don't answer this letter quickly I shall be hurt. My regards to 'her'.72 The day of his marriage Anton left instructions for Vania and 50 roubles which he insisted Vania spend on a first-class boat journey down the Volga. He telegraphed his mother, 'Dear Mama, bless me, I am getting married. All will stay the same.731 am off to drink koumiss. Address Aksionovo. Health better.' Evgenia was, Masha later reported, mute with shock, but Anton received a telegram from her, 'I bless, be happy, healthy.' On the morning of 25 May Olga wrote to Masha: Today we are getting married and leaving for Aksionovo, Ufa province, on the koumiss. Anton feels well, is nice and gende. Only Volodia [her brother] and uncle Sasha (at Anton's request) and two student witnesses will be in the church. I had a tragedy and rows with mama yesterday because of all this I don't sleep at night, my head is splitting… I am awfully sad and hurt, Masha, that you are not here with me these days, I would feel different. I am utterly alone, I have nobody to speak to. Don't forget me, Mashechka, love me, we must, you and I must always be together… My regards to your mother. Tell her I shall be very hurt if she cries or is upset because of Anton's marriage. Three days later, waiting for a boat, Olga described to Masha Anton's best farce: At 8.30 I set off to the dentist to have my tooth finished… at 2 I had lunch, put on a white dress and went to Anton's. I had it all out
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with my mother… I myself did not know to the last day when we would get married. The wedding was very queer… There wasn't a soul in the church, there were guards at the gates. Towards 5 p.m. I arrived with Anton, the bride's men were sitting on a bench in the garden… I could hardly stand with my headache and at one moment I felt I should burst out either crying or laughing. You know, I felt awfully odd when the priest came up to me and Anton and led us away… We were married on the Pliushchikha by the same priest as buried your father. I was asked only for a certificate that I was a spinster, which I fetched from our church…741 was terribly upset that Vania wasn't there… Vania knew we were getting married, Anton had gone to see the priest with him… When I got back from the church our servants couldn't control themselves, they lined up to congratulate me and raised a howling and weeping, but I nobly controlled myself. They packed my things, and Natasha that pig let me down… she didn't bring the silk bra and the batiste embroidered blouse. At 8 p.m. we went to the station, only our family saw us off, quietly, modestly.75 Elsewhere in Moscow, at a reception which Anton had asked Vishnevsky to organize, a bemused crowd wondered what had happened to the newlyweds.
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Love and Death The best protection against dragons is to have one of your own. Evgeni Shvarts, The Dragon The bedroom smelt of fever, infusions, ether, tar, that indescribable heavy smell of an apartment where a consumptive is breathing. Maupassant, Bel'Ami
SEVENTY-SIX Ô
Honeymoon June-September 1901 ANNA KNIPPER offered the couple a quick meal before they caught the train to Nizhni Novgorod. Anton and Olga were met at Nizhni by Dr Dolgopolov, who had tickets for the thousand-mile river journey to Ufa, from where they would get a train to the village of Aksionovo and the sanatorium. Dr Dolgopolov had just certified Gorky as too consumptive for prison, and took Anton and Olga to see him. One policeman opened the door; another sat in the kitchen. Gorky's wife was in hospital giving birth. Gorky talked volubly and, when Anton and Olga finally blurted out that they had just got married, thumped Olga on the back.
Dolgopolov put Anton and Olga on a boat that took them down the Volga and up the river Kama towards the Urals, dropping them at a quay called Piany Bor, 'Drunken Grove'. Here they had a long wait for the connecting boat. They should have changed boats in Kazan. There was no hotel; they camped on the ground, in the rain, while a consumptive spat. 'I shall never forgive Dolgopolov. In "Drunken Grove" and sober. The setting is horrible,' Anton wrote. Olga found a hut and made a bed on the floor. They ate salted sturgeon and tried to sleep. At 5 a.m. a tiny, crowded boat for Ufa picked them up; they slept in separate cabins. Anton was lent a rug, but pestered by admirers. They chugged up the river Belaia through wooded hills; the sun tanned Anton's face and bleached the pink blouse Masha had sewn for Olga. After two nights on the Belaia, at dawn on 31 May 1901, they docked at Ufa. They rushed to catch the 6.00 a.m. train, but there had been a derailment and the train did not leave until two in the afternoon. The windows were jammed and the station carpenter could not budge them. They endured five hours of stifling heat. From Aksionovo wickerwork carts took them over a rough hilly track six miles to the sanatorium.
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It was dark when they arrived. They were met by dozens of telegrams and letters and by the news that an Anna Chokhova was there. She was the wife of Mikhail Chokhov, a vulgar cousin whom Anton had avoided for fifteen years.' Morning showed the beauty of Aksionovo - an outcrop of hilly forest in the dreary steppes between the Volga and the Urals, it could have been a resort in lower Austria. Olga regaled Masha with her first impressions: The air was saturated, the fragrance amazing, and it was remarkably warm. Here we were met by Dr Varavka (a great name [it sounds like vorovka, thieving woman D.R.])… Anton travels like a student; I had told him that he would have to bring everything with him. He assured me we could buy everything locally. It turns out there are no sheets or pillows here. The doctor sent over his own… The sanatorium has 40 little chalets… and a house with ten rooms, a dining room, a drawing room, billiard room, a library and a piano. From a distance the chalets look like big privies. Each has two rooms connected only by a narrow verandah, the rooms are middling, all white. You get a table, mree chairs, a rather hard bed and a cupboard, the washstand is on three legs with a jug instead of a sink. Spartan, you can see. They will send over some softer beds and I have been given a mirror. Our chalet is the end one, so mat we get an excellent view of the open country; there is a birch wood right by. We get morning coffee brought to us, at 1 we go to lunch, two hot courses, at 6 a three-course dinner, and at 9 tea, milk, bread and butter. Anton was weighed and he began to drink koumiss, so far he takes it well, eats very well and sleeps a lot.2 v. Dr Varavka fawned on his new patients: a famous colleague and a distinguished actress. Anton studied the twenty house rules and named the place 'a corrective labour camp'. There was no running water, no bathhouse; the 'park' was scrub, the flowerbeds full of weeds. The Bashkirs farmed horses and sheep, but no fruit or vegetables. Anton laughed hysterically and would have fled, but for a landowner who offered him his sauna, and for the river Dioma, where, with Dr Varavka and a young patient, Anton sat trout-fishing. Olga lazed with a book, bathed in the stream, made herself a silk bra, or gathered strawberries and flowers in the woods. Olga's only ordeal was a trip to buy bed-linen, which meant travelling to Ufa, which she cursed -a 'pit: hell, suffocation and dust!' For the first time since childhood, Anton put on weight. Four