Olga also disliked Misha and his wife, her namesake - 'Where did he get a wife like that from?'28 She dined with them, but could not stop his fawning reviews. Anton washed his hands: 'He loves Suvorin and rates Burenin highly. Let him write what he likes.' Masha lied to ()lga. 'You made a good impression on him, he liked you.'29 In fact Misha had let his sister know of his true feelings: I saw In Dreams on the office ticket and our sister-in-law arranged Three Sisters… Every time we met, the sister-in-law asked if I'd seen one thing or another? I answer no. She knew full well that I had no ticket, but I simply can't ask her to get me one… One evening O. visited me! She brought the children sweets… as though
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l.OVI AND 1)1 Ë III she were duty-bound to visit us, because we are damned relatives who'll take offence if not… [Late one evening] I went to see Lika (for the fifth time) and of course she was out. I passed by O.'s lodgings, knocked. 'Come in!' I did. And, it seemed, at a bad time. Nemirovich-Danchenko was with her, they were having tea and jam. I had interrupted a conversation. I didn't know what to do with myself. O. apparently did not know what to do with me.30 On this occasion Nemirovich-Danchenko and Olga had attacked Misha as Suvorin's hack (even though they were off to see the old man themselves). Offended, Misha left.31
On 31 March 1902, Olga acted Gorky's Petty Bourgeois, a play in which she had to run up and down stairs. Back in the wings she collapsed in agony, and surgeons were sent for. Professor Jakobson and Dr Ott chloroformed their patient and operated at midnight. Olga woke in the morning, badly shocked; in pencil she scrawled a note to Anton, but did not post it for four days: I left Yalta hoping to present you with a little Pamfil, but I didn't realize, I kept thinking it was gut trouble, I didn't realize I was pregnant, much though I wanted to be… Ott and the other one decided on a curettage and confirmed that it was an embryo of 1Ó2 months. You can imagine how upset I was. I've never been in the hands of gynaecologists before.32 Nobody telegraphed Anton, for fear that the news would bring him to Petersburg in spite of the winter cold, but, because Olga's daily letters had stopped, Anton began to worry. Olga wrote on 2 April from the obstetrical clinic: she said she was sitting up and Stanislavsky was taking her back to her lodgings; the season was over, and she hoped to come to Yalta on Easter Saturday.
If this had been just an early miscarriage, Olga could have travelled. Anton, a good gynaecologist and obstetrician, must have been perplexed: how could Olga have been six weeks pregnant, when she had only spent seven nights with him, five weeks previously, at the end of her cycle? Why did two of Petersburg's most distinguished surgeons operate in the middle of the night for an early miscarriage? Nemirovich-Danchenko and his wife set off for Yalta on 6 April to put Anton's mind at rest. Stanislavsky's telegrams swore that there was no danger. Olga gave other clues: 'pains in the left side of my belly, bad pains
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from an inflamed ovary and maybe that's why I miscarried… I still have an inflamed left ovary. My poor belly is swollen and hurts all over.'33 She told Masha: 'Don't tell Anton! the pains are horrible and I am still suffering.'34 On Easter Sunday she sat up; she began daily enemas and was allowed to Yalta only with a midwife. She grudged the 3 roubles a day. She told Anton she would sleep in the drawing room, 'I do have various female instruments and need my own room. It's embarrassing to keep these vile things where a great writer can see them.' On 14 April, a week after Easter, Olga was carried on a stretcher from the boat and taken straight to bed in Autka. Nilus, who was painting Anton's portrait, packed up his equipment and fled. Anton and Masha became Olga's doctor and nurse.
Anton never talked of his doubts about the diagnosis and operation on Olga. His behaviour was caring, but distant. Three months later he wrote to Wilhelm Jakobson and received a telegram from the surgeon in reply: 'No suspicions, remains of egg removed, inflammation of lining.' Bleeding in February, illness throughout March, Olga's collapse and unspeakable ovarian pain, the midnight operation, the swollen belly, followed by peritonitis, indicated, however, not so much miscarriage and curettage as an ectopic pregnancy, laparotomy and infection.35 Only recently had Petersburg surgeons first dared remove an embryo in a fallopian tube: abdominal surgery was risky in 1902 and ectopic pregnancies were fatal. Anton would have known that an ectopic pregnancy erupts between eight and twelve weeks from conception. If this was what had happened to Olga, conception must have taken place when she and Anton had been 800 miles apart.
A season of illness followed, but Olga's physical vitality and Anton's discretion pulled them through. Their distress lay in suspecting that, despite Ott's airy assurance that Olga could conceive 'triplets right away', Olga's fertility must be lowered, if she now had a ruptured Fallopian tube and a damaged ovary. Anton had little time to beget a child.
Anton, depressed by Olga's and his own ills, grew restless and decided that Yalta was too far from Moscow and Autka was too hilly for walking. Two properties nearby had burnt down because the fire brigade had no water. He wanted Masha to inspect property in Sevastopol instead. By 24 April he was alone with Olga. Masha had returned to Moscow to examine her pupils, to have an abscess treated
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by a lady doctor, to flirt (openly) with Stanislavsky and (secretly) with Bnnin, and to celebrate Lika's wedding. From Moscow she boisterously berated Olga: 'Still full of fat, what are you raging about, you lay-about of a sister-in-law? Get up and earn some money for your husband and his crippled sister.' She did not joke with Misha: 'Olga behaves rather oddly towards me, so does Antosha and I am suffering.' By mid May Olga seemed stronger than her husband. They waited to hand over the household to Masha. On 24 May Anton and Olga left for Moscow, the second and last time they would take this journey together. In Moscow Dr Varnek, an obstetrician, found Olga's ovaries inflamed. He put her to bed for three weeks, prescribing summer at a Bohemian spa, Franzensbad, and rest for a year. Olga howled in distress. Anton would not go to Franzensbad.36 His diagnosis was peritonitis: she should convalesce for two years, and eat only cream. In Moscow Olga's abdominal pains grew worse. Anton was too ill to nurse her. Vishnevsky, a tireless cavaliere servente, came to the rescue. At midnight on 1 June 1902 he drove round Moscow to find a doctor who had not yet left for a weekend in the country. In the morning he found one. Olga was now skeletal; she was given morphine. When she could be moved, she would be taken to the gynaecologist Maxim Strauch's clinic. On 6 June 1902 Olga told Masha: All the Yalta suffering is nothing compared to one night in Moscow. I raved with pain, I tore my hair and if I could have, I'd have done myself in. I roared all night in an alien voice. The doctor says no man has any concept of this pain… Everyone is lighting a candle in church for me. Vishnevsky exhausted himself nursing both Chekhovs. Nemirovich-Danchenko came every day and stayed from noon till six in the evening. Stanislavsky, meanwhile, took practical action. He opened negotiations with Olga's rival, in love and in the theatre. After visiting Olga, he wrote to his wife: 'Komissarzhevskaia will lead the conversation around to transfer to our theatre. That wouldn't be bad! Especially now that there is little hope of Knipper for next season… I'm very sorry for her and Chekhov.'37
In Olga's absence, Lika and her new husband, staying in Yalta at a villa where Anton had once rented rooms, were visiting Masha. Fvgenia and the servants went on a three-day pilgrimage to a monasFEBRUARY-JUNE I902 tery. Anton hated the vigil in Moscow and dreamt of sailing down the Volga, as his brother Aleksandr was doing. Olga made a superhuman effort to rally. Maxim Strauch decided that she could go straight to Franzensbad, but she lapsed again with terrible nausea. Dr Strauch brought a Dr Taube to see her. He, like Anton, diagnosed peritonitis, an often fatal inflammation of the whole belly. Olga rallied again. Anton took to Taube; 'a popular and very sensible German,' he told Nemirovich-Danchenko. After four days Anton felt that Olga might be able to avoid a second operation, but he still refused to contact Olga's mother so as 'not to start a flood of tears'.