As she improved, Anton began to go out. He met Vera Komissarzhevskaia, with her lover and manager Karpov. He watched a boxing match. He left town to fish. One old flame - Olga Kundasova - was bold enough to sit for hours with Chekhov's wife (who asked her to leave). Feeling affection for both Anton and for Suvorin, Kundasova strove to keep their friendship alive. As Anton's physical health declined, her mental health improved. For all Kundasova's radicalism, she was beholden to Suvorin, as a man who supported her and was not afraid of sparring with her, and she reported to him on Anton's health. She appealed to Anton to heal the rift. Suvorin longed to see Anton. He had told Konstantin Nabokov, uncle to the future novelist, 'There are only two interesting younger men in the whole of Russia, Chekhov and Orlenev [an actor], and I have lost both of them." On 11 June 1902 Kundasova wrote to Anton from Petersburg: To me Aleksei looked none too good and very irritable psychologically. As you wished, there was no discussion of you except for the matter of your health. I beg you with all my heart, write him a few words, perhaps he has not long to live and, clearly, your silence weighs heavily on him. Remember how wretched it is to love somebody and have no response.39 Kundasova pumped Olga for information, and told Suvorin that Anton was in no state to go to Petersburg: Suvorin would have to come to the Crimea in August.
On 14 June Anton slipped the leash. He had decided, after Easter, 'to be a hermit' and mull over a play for their Theatre. Olga could sit up, take chicken soup, and even walk, though she was still too swollen to put on her corset. The selfless Vishnevsky would watch
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LOVI. AND Dl A I 11 over her and nurse her. Anton told Nemirovich-Danchenko: 'The main thing is that I may leave, ami tomorrow, the 17th, I set off with Sawa Morozov for Perm [in the Urals]. I'll be home by 5 July.' The day Anton left, Olga's mother came to take his place with the patient.
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Liubimovka June-September 1902 ACCOMPANIED BY Sawa Morozov and two Germans, and equipped, despite the heat, with a new overcoat and Swedish padded jacket, Anton retraced his honeymoon route of a year before. This time, however, he sailed past 'Drunken Grove' in the dark and headed northeast up the Kama to Perm, to the country of Three Sisters. Boats and trains slowly took Anton and his party to the Urals where Morozov owned an estate and a chemical plant. Morozov may have been one of Russia's 'Rockefellers', subsidizing the arts and revolutionaries such as Gorky, but his workers lived in squalor with a drunken paramedic and an empty pharmacy to treat them. On discovering conditions at the plant, Anton made forcible protests, to which Morozov responded magnificently: the working day was cut from twelve to eight hours. Morozov then abandoned Anton and toured his lands. Anton wandered in the sultry heat 'tormented by having nothing to do, by isolation and his cough', noted a student engineer at the plant.40 It was all, Anton told Nemirovich-Danchenko, 'too grey and depressing to write a play about.' On 28 June 1902, seen off by the workers, whose school was now named after him, Anton took the train back to Moscow.
The object of Anton's trip had been not to discover new horizons so much as to escape from a tedious bedside. Nevertheless, he and Olga had exchanged telegrams and letters daily. 'I'm not worried about you, since I know my little dog is well,' Anton wrote on his first day away. He now called her 'stick' as well as 'dog'. She colluded with him, declaring herself in the hands of decent doctors. To others Olga revealed her nausea, boredom and despair. She was allowed only to read and play patience, forbidden to start guitar lessons. 'How foul, grey and boring everything is,' was her lament to Masha. Her hair was falling out and her intestines needed enemas of olive oil. She
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was 'indifferent to everything or morbidly irritable'. She told her mother-in-law: 'I sit like a sad widow, 1 mostly lie down… If Vishnevsky comes, we sit and read in silence… I am a complete cripple. I keep thinking I shall never get better. And what use am I without health?'41
On 2 July Anton returned to Moscow and the sun shone. The Stanislavskys were themselves off to Franzensbad and invited Anton and Olga to stay in their country house at Liubimovka during their absence. The house stood on the river Kliazma, northeast of Moscow, surrounded by forests and meadows. Here Stanislavsky's servants Egor and Duniasha attended them. Olga lay and later swam and rowed. Anton fished and handed each catch over to Egor to be cooked. Visitors were turned away, and church bells were muted. Olga lived downstairs, Anton and Vishnevsky upstairs, all 'sleeping like bishops'. Dr Strauch checked on his patient. The neighbours, the Smirnovs, were considerate. Their two teenage daughters courted Anton. So did their eccentric English governess, Lily Glassby, who spoke pigeon Russian. Olga was too taken aback to interfere as Lily fed Anton ice cream, addressed him in the intimate form, and wrote him affectionate notes: 'Christ be with you, brother Antony, I love you.'42
Anton wrote almost no letters, and did no work on the play which the theatre was waiting for: he was absorbing material. Nemirovich-Danchenko and Stanislavsky invested their hope for the following season in Gorky's Lower Depths. Anton read the proofs and told Gorky he had 'almost hopped with pleasure' at the play. Confident that Gorky would fill the Moscow Arts Theatre for the autumn, he could take his time germinating his new comedy. Liubimovka's household and suburban trains imbue the setting for The Cherry Orchard. Anton encouraged Egor's ambition to be literate and independent, offering him Vania's services as a teacher. Egor's clumsiness and precious language were absorbed into the character of Epikhodov, while Lily Glassby's pathos infuses Charlotta. Duniasha gave her name to the fictional servant.
The river fish, mushrooms and fresh milk of Liubimovka delighted Anton. He told Masha that it was paradise after Yalta: he longed to own a dacha near Moscow. By August Olga was out of danger. Strauch said she could start rehearsals in two weeks. Even in paradise, however, Anton was restless. He had hidden two haemorrhages from Olga,
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wanted to escape scrutiny and decided to visit Yalta alone. The theatre and Dr Strauch, he knew, would forbid Olga to risk a rough railway ride. She felt deserted, though the Stanislavskys returned home just as Anton left, and Anton implied that he would soon be back. Although she put a brave face on Anton's departure from Liubimovka, Olga was very angry.
Left in Yalta to cope alone with a drought-stricken garden, Masha had not had a happy summer. Her letters to Olga also hint at an unhappy love affair with Bunin. Bunin, between leaving his first wife and finding his second, had a succession of affairs, abroad and in Russia. Masha wrote to him: 'Dear Bouquichon, I was very sad when you left… Of course it'd be nice to be one woman in ten, but nicer still to be the only one, to combine the Yakut girl, the Temir girl, the Sinhalese girl, etc…'43 Anton's arrival would have raised Masha's spirits, had it not coincided with a letter from Olga so hurtful that Masha destroyed it - too late, for Anton had casually read it. Olga sensed a plot: she accused Masha and Evgenia of luring Anton from her when they knew she was confined to bed. Masha replied in distress: For the first time in our lives mother and I have been called cruel for, as you put it, expecting Anton all the time. Even though we took such loving care of you when you were ill in Yalta and in Moscow!! What are we to do - I can't rub myself off the face of the earth. I'll tell you frankly that it is quite enough for me just to hear about my brother that he is happy and healthy and occasionally to see him.44 Olga could not bear brother and sister to be in concert. She told Masha: Why entangle Anton in our relationship?… I was hurt because your stubborn waiting seemed to imply that you didn't want Anton to be in the Moscow dust fussing around me, his sick wife… If you'd trusted me as you used to and tried to understand me just a bit, you'd never have shown that letter to Anton… You're chasing me out of your heart as hard as you can… This letter at least you won't show him, I beg you.4' To Anton she wrote on 28 August 1902: Why didn't you tell me straight out that you were going for good?… How it hurts me that you treat me like a stranger or a doll that