The sisters-in-law got on harmoniously in Moscow until March 1902: living together, they could enjoy a private life without gossip. Olga had Nemirovich-Danchenko to lean on; Masha had Bunin. Masha's letters to Anton depict Olga on Anton's name day, carousing past dawn with a crowd of men. The Stanislavskys also hinted to Anton at her joie de vivre - Maria that she flirted with Konstantin, Stanislavsky that her neckline shocked even the roue Aumont, at whose theatre they were rehearsing.22
Now Antonovkas visited Olga in Moscow, not Anton in Yalta. Curiosity about Olga drove Tania Shchepkina-Kupernik and Nina Korsh to risk rebuff; Maria Drozdova shocked Olga by flirting with her brother and talking of her sexual adventures. Olga could not endure either Lika Mizinova or Maria Andreeva, both of whom Masha persisted in cultivating. At Christmas Olga told Anton: 'Lika was drunk and kept pestering me to drink with her, but I evaded her, I don't like it.' To Masha she portrayed Lika (whom many in the company now adored) as a man-crazed, drunken harridan. Ousting Olga's rival, the beautiful Maria Andreeva, from the theatre was harder. To Anton Olga accused Andreeva of acting so badly as to destroy Nemirovich-Danchenko's reputation as a playwright.'23 Olga saw him as one writer facing three merchants - Stanislavsky, Morozov and the actor Luzhsky; Nemirovich-Danchenko was a David among
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Philistines, 'plucked and gnawed at on all sides'. If he left the Moscow Arts Theatre, she said, she would go too. Anton was aware that Olga was loyal to the director, not to the theatre.
Back in Moscow, Masha set out Olga's dilemma to Misha: 'I can't understand her - she's sorry for her husband and she is lonely, at the same time she cannot bear to be away from her roles, probably she's afraid someone might act them better.'24 Olga meanwhile signed a three-year contract. Sawa Morozov, the patron, made the theatre into a shareholders' company. The three 'merchants' invited twelve trusted actors to take 3000 rouble shares in the theatre. Morozov offered a subsidy of 30,000 and a building refurbished by Franz Schcehtcl sit a nominal lease. The shareholders' overall profit in the first year, Vishnevsky reckoned, would be 50,000 roubles. Olga Knippcr tooll.1 share. The talented actor-director Vsevolod Meyerhold and tin- pin ducer Sanin-Schoenberg were cut out. Within a year both left. "' ()\$A Knipper was as tied to the theatre as to Chekhov. Suvorin VIMI*.1 Moscow in early February 1902, to stage his play The Question I [| visited Olga and praised her, to her face and by letter to Anion Possibly this was Suvorin's ploy to win back Anton's friendship, bill Olga never forgave the vilification of Suvorin's reviewers.
In fact Anton prized Olga's independence. She earned more tluin 3000 roubles a year, and only once asked him to cover a mysterious debt. He would not ask her to break a contract. He would rather br with her in Moscow's political ferment, than drag her to the tedious tensions of 'this mangy Yalta'. 'You need not weep,' he told Olg.i, 'you live in Moscow not because you want, but because we both want that.' He complained nevertheless about her masters' ruthlessness in depriving him of her company. Stanislavsky assured him it was more fun to be married to an absent actress than an ever-present nonactress. Nemirovich-Danchenko, however, finally succumbed to Masha's appeals and Anton's hints. At the end of January 1902, returning from his sister's death bed in Nice, he promised 'I shall definitely let Olga come and see you for a short time… I am very frightened (as a director) by her extraordinary pining for you.' He then telegraphed, 'I guarantee Olga will be free 21 February to 2 March.'26 Anton called this 'a teaspoonful of milk after forty years' famine'.
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Conjugal Ills February-June 1902 0 N FRIDAY 22 FEBRUARY 1902, Olga and Anton embraced after four months apart. They spent five days in seclusion. 'The Bishop' was sent to Petersburg. No visitors came; correspondence stopped. Masha was in Moscow. Their week together was clouded twice. On Tuesday Olga bled: she presumed she would not conceive. Parting on Thursday was muted: Anton did not kiss her goodbye as she left for the dash over the mountains. 'You were coming outside,' she wrote to him, 'but the wind stopped you, and I… only realized what had happened when the driver had moved off.' Olga had a roast duck and a bottle of wine to fortify her until she reached Simferopol.
At the station there were no Pullman cars, so Olga took an ordinary train. She suddenly fell ilclass="underline" 'I couldn't get to the door of the ladies', 1 collapsed and couldn't get up, my arms and legs wouldn't obey me, I broke out in a cold sweat. I thought I had food poisoning.' On the train Olga confided in a sympathetic fellow-traveller, who told her she must be pregnant. She doubted it. In Moscow she felt little better. She changed trains and proceeded straight to Petersburg, where the theatre performed in Lent. She had lost weight, her head ached and she dosed herself with quinine. Another actress gave her stimulants. She took painkillers and bandaged her head. By 9 March she was more her old self, eating grouse. Anton stopped worrying. He was cross with her: she would not give him an address.
During their reunion, Anton had received a telegram: Gorky, barely out of prison, had been elected to the Academy of Sciences, whose president was a cousin of the Tsar. In a final round he had won the necessary majority, nine white to three black balls. Gorky was unexpectedly pleased. Then the government and Tsar annulled the election. The radical Korolenko immediately announced his resignation, and pressed Chekhov to resign. Anton pondered. His sympaFEBRUARY-JUNE I9O2 thies were radical, but like Tolstoy he distrusted political gestures.27 Marital life left Anton with a coughing fit that went on for days and nights, but pleasant memories. The day that Olga left, four Antonovkas re-emerged - the headmistress Varvara Kharkeevich, her sister-in-law Manefa, Sophie Beaunier and Dr Sredin's wife, Sofia. Anton told ()lga: 'They all have an identical little smile: "we didn't want to disturb you!" As if we'd spent five days sitting naked and doing nothing but make love.'
In Petersburg that March Olga acted almost every night. New Times now praised her, but the reviewer was Misha Chekhov, her brother-in-law, and she was embarrassed. The Petersburg Newspaper attacked Nemirovich-Danchenko's play mercilessly as 'a waste of effort, dead meat'. The author leant on Olga for moral support, while she too needed comfort. Suvorin came to tempt Olga: iooo roubles a month to join his theatre. There were also painful encounters. Lika Mizinova was in Petersburg, following the director Sanin-Schoenberg who, driven out of the Moscow Arts Theatre, now worked for the Alek-sandrinsky theatre; Lika and he were betrothed. Their happiness upset ()lga. Anton calmed her down: Why so sour? I've known Lika for a long time and, whatever else, she's a good, clever and decent girl. She'll be unhappy with Sanin, she won't love him and above all won't get on with his sister and probably in a year will have a big fat baby and in eighteen months start being unfaithful. Anton's prophecy, wrong on all counts, did not reconcile Olga to her rival.